Storage space may be cheaper these days, but game installs have ballooned to match. When games routinely take up more than 100 GB, you do find yourself wondering how soon you'll be able to uninstall each one to free up that space. The multiplayer fad of the moment will fade, and you'll either finish or get sick of that open world game at some point. What's your personal Deletion Protocol, and what game's next on the chopping block?

What's the biggest game on your computer, and is it really worth the space?

Nick Evanson, Hardware Writer: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Stalker 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered. Storage is cheap! I have a 2 TB SSD just for my Steam library and another one for my Epic and Ubisoft libraries. As things currently stand, the former has 1.35 TBs worth of games on it and the latter has 360 GBs of games (plus 1 TB or so of other apps).

Admittedly, I also have an uncapped 1 Gb net connection so downloading 150+ GB games isn't a problem. It wasn't all that long ago when I was on a 25 Mbps connection and any game over 50 GB in size was a 'leave it downloading overnight' job.

Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: I honestly don't keep a lot of games installed and I'll tell you why: Uninstalling Steam games is a real pleasure. Let me explain.

First, I don't like it when Steam games update themselves without my say-so, because screw you, Steam. I make the decisions around here. So I set all of my games to "Wait until I launch the game." This means that instead of auto-updating, a new patch for a game will turn the title blue in my library and say something like "Update Queued." After a few weeks of me ignoring everything, pretty much my entire library will be demanding an update, at which point I usually get stressed out by the sheer number of updates awaiting my attention and go through the library, deleting every blue title on the list. Ahhh... no more angry blue titles in my library. No more stress. Perfect.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I think Chris is on to something there, but I'm also a prepper when it comes to data and the media I really care about—what if the 'net goes down without impacting my material quality of life in any significant way, and I still want to play the games I love? I feel like I'm going to be a home server guy someday, but for now I just buy a new NVMe drive every few years when I'm feeling cramped.

As for the question, this is embarrassing. The biggest game I currently have installed is Stalker 2 at 155 gigs, which I still have not played, but I hear it's pretty good. Worth it or not, TBD. Second place is Baldur's Gate 3 at 147 gigs and 420 hours played to date. Definitely worth it.

Shaun Prescott, AU Editor: The largest game I have installed at the moment is Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which comes it at 55.16 GB. For games north of 50 GB, I delete them as soon as I've finished them.

The big games are easy to deal with—it's the small games that give me anxiety. My drive is mostly taken up by 300MB–1 GB indie games that I will never delete because deleting them won't make a significant difference when trying to make space for, say, Stalker 2. But all those tiny games add up. Am I ever going to play To the Moon again? Probably not, but what's the harm in 176.88 MB?

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Fascinating to see everybody's Deletion Protocols. My process for deciding what stays or goes is less formal, but consistent: I ask "Am I gonna play this again soon?" and make the tough call.

Just a few days ago, the biggest game on my drive was Spider-Man 2 (90 GB+), a game I already played on PS5 and hadn't returned to on PC in over two weeks. It was time to admit I wasn't gonna finish that playthrough. That's left me with five games between 60–80GB right now: Helldivers 2, Rainbow Six Siege, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Hunt: Showdown 1896, and Marvel Rivals. Four out of five of those are multiplayer games that friends want to play fairly often, so it's rare that I ever delete them.

Andy Chalk, US News Lead: Number one on the chart is Talos Principle 2, at 103 GB. Next is Cyberpunk 2077 at 85.6 GB, which I haven't been able to bring myself to uninstall despite finishing it weeks ago, then Ghost Recon Breakpoint and Generation Zero, which I play with a pal, and Serious Sam 4, which I may play with a pal at some point in the future.

Like Shaun, I have a ton of small games installed, some of which I haven't touched for years, because one never knows when the urge will strike and it's not like deleting them is going to make a difference anyway, right? (Don't do the math, if I wanted someone to add them up for me I'd ask.)

I struggle more with deleting biggish games I really like. Cyberpunk, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodhunt, the new System Shock, Cloudpunk, Pacific Drive, and a host of others are just sitting there sucking up gobs of space, long after I've stopped playing them. Do they deserve it? Hey, it's less psychologically taxing than choosing who stays and who goes. (Less effort, too.)

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Clocking in at 153 GB, mine's Stalker 2, which still lingers on my SSD from when I reviewed it back in November. To be honest, I've got no intention of playing it again until GSC has actually, uh, finished making it, but once it has I've got grand ambitions to go in there and do a 'proper' completionist playthrough like I would've done if I hadn't had to write about the game to a deadline.

As an aside, the smallest game on there is Uplink, an absolute all-timer, at 20 MB. They don't make 'em like they used to.

Asking my coworkers whether their parents were strict about how much time they spent playing videogames has revealed that you should definitely limit your kids' game time, unless you want them to grow up to be videogame critics.

Or maybe it's just about age. The parents of young children I know today are much more likely to restrict their kids' screen time. At the same time, they're also much more likely to play games with their kids, whether that means suffering Minecraft or even Roblox. Come on, son. Wouldn't you rather play Borderlands 2 with your old man?

How did your parents limit your game time? And if you have kids, do you limit theirs?

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Not at all. They wouldn't let me spend all night on the PS2 if I had homework, of course, but they largely let me do my thing. I go back and forth on how I'd handle screen time with a theoretical child. Games are a lot more habit-forming and demanding of time than they were when I was young, so maybe moderation makes sense?

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I was a youngest child, so my parents let me just go nuts too—at least until my grades got so bad early in high school that I was put on a strict "no gaming on weeknights, two hours per day Friday–Sunday" regimen. This was before smartphones too, so I really shaped up. I know as game journalists our default position is "actually games are good for you," but it really is so easy to overindulge, and screen time controls for kids are absolutely the move. Given how early tykes are getting their mitts on tablets these days, that might just be an impossible battle for parents.

My own story has a little epilogue too, imagine it like a Fallout ending slideshow type-deal. When my older brother had similar problems a few years before me, my folks just took away his PC entirely, cutting off a burgeoning Counter-Strike: Source esports career. He's a lawyer now, so I think the moral of the story is to burn the fields and salt the earth unless you want your kid working in games media.

Shaun Prescott, AU Editor: I limit my kids' game time to an hour or so every Saturday and Sunday, though this changes during holidays. I haven't let my kids have tablets and if they're going to play a game it has to be a "good" one (they love Stardew Valley and Minecraft), and not some mindless app-store trash. I obviously love gaming but I don't think too much screen time is healthy for young minds. Even I feel tense and depressed if I sit at a screen for more than a couple of hours without taking a walk or something.

My parents limited my screen time when I was very young, but as a teenager I could use the computer whenever. Not that there was much incentive to do so: my '90s Pentium didn't have an internet connection and I only had a small handful of shareware games, so it was no embarrassment of riches like a lot of kids have today.

Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: If the weather was nice and it was daytime, I had to go outside, so there wasn't much gaming at home for most of my childhood. Luckily, I could just ride my bike through the beautiful day to my friends' house where we stayed inside and played games constantly. Once we had our first PC in the house (this was the late '80s), I could get away with more gaming at home. I think my parents equated console gaming with watching television, which was bad, but equated PC gaming with using a computer, which was good.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: My parents were the same way, Chris. Computer games = educational; console games = toys. Joke was on them when I started waking up before elementary school to play The Sims before getting on the bus. As an oldest child checking in, I was the one with rules unlike some of you lot. The biggest restriction was that the Game Boy was not allowed in the house and was only for car trips. How I ever finished Pokémon Yellow purely during rides to the grocery and sports practice I'll never know.

Tyler Wilde, US Editor-in-Chief: I don't think I've ever fully appreciated how few gaming rules and regulations I had to submit to as a kid, despite my poor grades and general troublemaking. I'm glad I'm not the only one here, lest I feel self-conscious about being so spoiled.

I really don't recall ever being reprimanded for staying up all night playing Quake 2 or dedicating an entire teenage summer to EverQuest. Even when I was younger, I played a lot of early home computer games like Arkanoid, Prince of Persia, and SimCity, although there being one computer in the house must have put a natural limit on that.

As Chris and Lauren say, there was a sense in the '80s and '90s that you were learning technical skills by using a computer—and to some degree I really was—but it was harder to get away with excessive console gaming. I recall crossing the line one day when I stayed home sick from school (probably "sick," really), and asked if I could get a little Super Metroid in since, well, I was home anyway and it was right there. My mom countered that if I was well enough to explore the planet Zebes, I was well enough to go to school. Didn't make much sense to me.

Andy Chalk, News Editor: Pretty much echoing Chris's experience here: My parents flat-out refused to have a teevee game machine thing in the house, but computers were educational so I got one of those instead. There were games (and that's why I wanted one) but "gaming" in those pre-internet, small-town days wasn't nearly the thing it is now, and most of my free time was spent outside causing trouble. So limiting game time wasn't really seen as an issue: My parents were more worried about me going blind from sitting too close to the television, and going deaf from all the loud rock and roll. It was a simpler time. (And they were right about the loud rock and roll, too.)

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Honestly, it's a miracle I made it through school with good grades because my parents were not particularly strict on my game time, like at all. My Mum largely left me to things with my wee PlayStation 2 in my bedroom, and never really gave me any grief for playing it. I do have memories of my dad turning off the wi-fi router in his bedroom so that I couldn't stay up late on my laptop, playing whatever social MMO I was privy to at that moment... along with memories of me trying to sneak in while he was sleeping to turn it back on.

I was that kid with the DS under the covers, whispering to my Nintendogs and quickly putting it face-down when my dad would poke his head around my bedroom door. But apart from making sure I wasn't engaging in too many late-night shenanigans, I was largely left to my own devices. The one exception was when I was sick, of course. I feel like the phrase "if you're too ill to go to school, you're too ill to play videogames" is a universal experience for gamers, and I remember one specific incident where I was off school (genuinely poorly!) and wanting to play Final Fantasy 13 on my arcade Xbox 360, only to discover the hard drive, usually slotted into the top of the console, had been lifted and hidden somewhere. Thanks for that one, Pops.

Nick Evanson, Hardware Writer: As a child in the '70s, only one household in my circle of friends had a console (Atari VCS) and we all spent so much time around his house, fighting over who would get to play Pong next, that they eventually got rid of it. It wasn't until the early 1980s that I had my own computer (ZX81, then ZX Spectrum), but since decent games weren't exactly cheap, we'd perhaps buy a new game once or twice a year but then share them amongst friends (to the point we'd all have mix tapes of 10 games or so).

Most evenings and weekends were spent playing games (or D&D), but as long as homework was done, none of us were restricted in any way—in part because parents just didn't understand them very well at that time or just saw them as a passing fad, but also because we got out of the house to play with friends, taking it in turns to raid another parent's kitchen. Although eventually we just took over the Harrisons' household because Mrs Harrison baked the best cakes ever.

Scott Tanner, Senior Video Producer: Similar to some of the previous responses, my mum in particular thought a games console would be too much of a distraction from homework so I was never allowed one. I wasn't even allowed a Gameboy and, to this day, I have never played Pokémon other than the trading card game.

We always had a PC, though. Dad was an electronic design engineer who had once programmed a crossword game for the BBC B. He isn't much of a gamer though; Tomb Raider may be the only game he's ever completed and it took him a year. I meanwhile had access to the PC for about an hour every night, my earliest memories of using a PC being typing random words into DOS and colouring in Sooty Paint.

Once I discovered PCs could play actual games, I quickly moved on to Age of Empires, Quake 2, and Flight Sim (95), but still only for an hour a night. Only when I got to secondary school and a computer was essential for homework was I able to negotiate more time on the PC. But I was very good; homework first, gaming after. Formative years indeed: I still have never owned a games console and consequently am awful at using a controller. And since 2005 I've dabbled at making games, like my father before me.

Imagine an alignment diagram. On one extreme you have people who consider action RPG to mean purely Diablo-style stuff because they grew up playing PC games and needed a phrase that meant "not Ultima". On the other extreme you have people who grew up playing console games and use action RPG to describe things that are more Zelda-like, because they needed a shorthand for "not Final Fantasy". In between are like seven graded variations based on whether you think Dragon Age became an action RPG at some point, and when.

It's messy out there, gang. What's your personal definition of action RPG, and where do you draw the line?

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: There aren't enough Diablo-likes jostling about to justify having their own roped-off genre so I'm drawing the line at anything that has real-time-with-pause or a tactical pause. Those can be just miscellaneous RPGs: tactical, strategy, turn-based, whatever. Anything without that is an action RPG and I invite no one at all to come up with an exception that confounds this rule.

I guess that sort of makes neither Dragon Age 2 nor Inquisition action RPGs because both have a command menu that pauses combat. So does The Veilguard. And does this make all modern Fallout games not action RPGs because of VATS? Never mind, this is a cruel game, Jody, and I refuse to play it. Path of Exile 2 is definitely an action RPG and the original Baldur's Gate games definitely aren't.

Jake Tucker, Editorial director, PC Gaming Show: If I can dodge-roll it's an action RPG, if I have to pay attention to pages of dialogue it's a regular RPG. In events of a tie, it should be classified based on whether you spend more time reading or rolling.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: There's a simple metric for determining whether something is an action RPG, and it's how many skeletons you can blow up in a minute. Anything less than six: disqualified. Ideally, you want to be able to clear a dozen per minute during normal gameplay—leaves no room for ambiguity.

Bonus points if loot tumbles out in a literal shower of pauldrons, falchions, and gold coins.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: The PITA here is that there are two types of action RPG. ARPGs, which are Diablo-esque isometric games with chunky progression/build systems that nonetheless play out in a very action-oriented way, and action RPGs, which are third-person action games with RPG elements, like God of War 2018, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, etc.

Point being, naming conventions are hell and we all belong here.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Sometimes I need a way to describe RPGs where the story and characters and roleplaying don't matter because they're all about killing monsters and taking their stuff. "Dungeon crawler" was OK when that kind of game didn't leave the dungeon, but when Diablo 2 makes you spend an interminable amount of time in a boring desert it's hard to think of it as a dungeon crawl. For me, action RPG is useful as a way of saying "games like Diablo" because there are a lot of people who love RPGs but don't care at all about "games like Diablo" whether they're Torchlight or Path of Exile or Borderlands.

(Or Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, Dungeon Siege, Darkstone, Revenant, Last Epoch, Sacred, Warhammer: Chaosbane, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor Martyr, Victor Vran, Nox, Wolcen, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, or any of the ones I'm forgetting, or any of their multiple sequels. That's enough games to be their own subgenre, Lauren!)

When we start calling, say, Mass Effect an action RPG because the combat was designed by someone who played Gears of War at least one time, it stops being a useful term. Whether you like them or not, the story and characters and roleplaying are the attraction of Mass Effect just like they are for Final Fantasy 16 and The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Calling them action RPGs because they don't have turn-based or traditional RTWP combat doesn't help people who want games about action, because if you just want that you're not going to sit through all those conversations and cutscenes to get them.

I used to be able to dodge-roll this entire conversation by calling action RPGs hack-and-slash games but now people call anything with a sword in it hack-and-slash so that stopped being useful too. (I don't think "ARPG" is a useful distinction from "action RPG" either.) People made fun of Rod Fergusson when he suggested we bring back "Diablo-like" as a term, but he was probably right. If even the Assassin's Creed games are action RPGs, it's a meaningless term.

I will die on this hill, and when I do the rest of you can probably loot a sweet falchion off my corpse.

You can sort your Steam library in various ways. Via release date, or size on disk, or percentage of completed achievements. One option seems to exist just to give you an existential crisis: Sort By Hours Played.

While it's not going to record all the hours you put into MMOs with their own launchers or games you played GOG or Epic or whatever, there is still likely to be something on your list that makes you think about ways those hours could have been better spent, whether on a more enriching activity, or just on a more fulfilling game.

Nick Evanson, Hardware Writer: 1,1780 hours in Hearts of Iron 4. It's a love-hate thing and it's all about the ridiculous achievements. I've been trying for years to get 100% but every time I get to around the 75% mark, a new DLC comes out and I'm back to square one. One day Paradox will stop updating it and I'll finally be in with a chance of getting them all. Until then, it's just an endless slog of working through strategies to get a certain achievement and hating myself for doing it.

Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: According to Steam my most-played game is Team Fortress 2 (417 hours), which I played pretty much every night for about a couple years after its release and then essentially never touched again. It was a hangout game that I eventually ditched because, frankly, I was tired of getting stomped by people who actually get better at a game over 400+ hours, unlike myself who never improves no matter how many times I POOSH CART.

My runners-up are DayZ (370 hours), No Man's Sky (266 hours), Skyrim (239 hours, though add another 40 for Special Edition), Elite Dangerous (226), and Plants Vs. Zombies (216).

But throw all that nonsense out. My most-played game is actually The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, but I didn't play it on Steam, I played it on the disc games used to come on. I have two main character saves that combine to 500 hours, plus several side characters that probably make up another 100. Why? Cuz Oblivion rules and everything else drools, obviously.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I think I'm probably the odd one out here, in that I don't tend to spend a ton of time in any one game. To find my 1000+ hours examples you'd have to look to other launchers for games like Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Legends of Runeterra, or League of Legends, but even then those are all in my ever more distant past.

I've at least got the near-200 hours in TF2, which feels like practically a career requirement on this website, and with similar chunks of time in both XCOM games, Slay the Spire, and Crusader Kings 2, I certainly fit a particular PC gaming stereotype.

I'm surprised Borderlands 2 is in there. I must have played a lot of it in co-op, even though now I could barely summon a mote of enthusiasm for the series. Balatro is a more feelgood inclusion—a real testament to the hooks it got into me this year that it's already my eighth most-played Steam game ever. I think if LocalThunk ever releases an expansion it'll probably end up at number one.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I've put my hands up on multiple occasions at this point and admitted that I spent a good chunk of my life as a console gamer—listen, I was a child of divorce, I travelled between houses a lot, it was easier and cheaper to cart one PlayStation around as and when I pleased than it was an entire desktop or expensive gaming laptop—so my Steam numbers are a little lacking.

I'm also guilty of spending a lot of time with other non-Steam launchers. I've racked up a healthy triple-digit playtime on The Sims 4 over in the EA app, and I'd rather not try and guesstimate how many hours I've sunk into numerous gacha games over the years.

Honestly, my biggest surprise here is that I put over 30 hours into Halo Infinite. I mean, I barely even remember playing that game for an hour, let alone an entire day's worth of hours and then some. I swear I'll try and play more things that aren't Final Fantasy 14 in the future, too. Maybe.

Jake Tucker, Editorial Director, PC Gaming Show: This omits the 5,000 hours (and counting) I've put into Escape From Tarkov, but the most baffling thing is I don't even think Dota 2 is a particularly good game, I just keep playing it anyway. Everything else feels like it's tied to a zeitgeist. I got into PUBG when everyone else did, Football Manager 2020 as a lockdown hobby, and Rainbow Six Siege when it was a good game.

The most recent explosion is Space Station 14, which I love to put on while I work, connecting to a server in observe mode and watching other players going about their lives like my own personal terrarium.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I might be unique at PCG in not having a multiplayer game in my most-played. This is because I have no friends have excellent taste in singleplayer RPGs and map-painting games. Some of them are easy to explain: I've replayed pretty much all of these games, and things like New Vegas, Mass Effect, Spelunky, and MGS5 are there specifically because I also went out of my way to get every achievement in them even after pouring hundreds of hours in. CK2, EU4, and Stellaris are self-explanatory—Paradox games eat time.

The only outlier, really, is Skyrim, which I don't particularly like. Blame my younger brother, who put a whole bunch of time into the game on my account when he was a wee'un.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: What can I say? I like making little men run around and stab each other. Total War is one of the series that got me into PC gaming and there aren't many examples of a format which has been so successfully iterated upon over the years. The worrying part is that this doesn't take into account anything I played before 2016, such as my countless hours in Rome and Medieval Total War, my obsession with Fallout and Elder Scrolls, or my console gaming.

I've also been playing Destiny 2 since Shadowkeep, so not all that long, but new dungeons, raids, and fun build stuff keeps me coming back.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Obviously the big number here is Destiny 2, a game that—for all of Bungie's many missteps—remains a fun shooter full of cool guns. That 3,000+ hours accounts for a lot of different experiences, from leading friends through their first raids, to tense solo flawless dungeon attempts, to just kicking back with some TV on the second screen and farming for a specific role of whatever the hot new gun is. I imagine there's a few hundred hours in there that were purely dedicated to helping friends clean their vaults.

I think the more surprising thing for me is how many of the games at the top of my list were ones I started playing this year. The relative lack of major, obvious blockbusters has made it a great time for exploring niches, and the result is games like Balatro, Satisfactory, and Against the Storm—all games I played for the first time this year—shooting up to the top of my most-played list.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I'm like Mollie in that my Steam hours don't really tell the full picture by a long shot because I spend so much time in other launchers. The real highest-hour-count games not pictured here are years of Minecraft, Sims 4, Red Dead Online, and Guild Wars 2. I've also definitely got double that Elder Scrolls Online hour count in its own launcher before I download it on Steam and easily another 200 hours of Stardew Valley on my Nintendo Switch.

Honestly I'm kind of proud of how varied my taste is here though. I at one point played a lot of H1Z1 and PUBG when they kicked off but I'm also a woman of taste with the original Baldur's Gate and my niche indie darling Book of Travels. I'm a little appalled that I managed to put 130 hours into Thatgamecompany's cozy live service game Sky: Children of the Light since its PC launch this spring. I really still am an MMO sicko at heart.

Natanael Albuquerque, Social Media Editor: Certified GOG user here. Aside from ranking Football Managers from best to worst, my Steam is divided between an account for regular play, and an account for single player games. Like Robin, my LoL + GOG hours trumps my Steam page, and I can't exactly say how much time I've got on emulation.

Honestly, now that I know I've probably got more lifetime hours in League than our hardcore Destiny vets, I'm happy I've quit.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I rather like Final Fantasy 14 to this day, which is why it's so far up on that list (I spend a lot of time roleplaying in it, as well, which makes me feel a little better. At least it's a creative and social hobby). The rest of these, though, are games I spent playing in my misspent youth; I left my Dota 2 phase behind me years ago, and I only touched Champions Online in this decade because I was writing an article about it. Baldur's Gate 3 is an obvious inclusion, because I have completed 2.8 playthroughs (I gave up on my evil one in Act 3), and it's likely to see another 100 hours when Patch 8 comes out and I have all those yummy subclasses to muck about with.

Outside of that and, say, Elden Ring? This is mostly a historical record of a time where I got to play a lot more videogames, and spent a lot less time writing about them. Special shout out to Mount & Blade: Warband, which had shockingly complex and reflex-based PvP combat with a skill ceiling higher than the Sistine Chapel.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Looking at my most-played Steam games always involves an amount of mourning for me, and not because I've apparently clocked over 1,400 hours in Warframe (having reliable access to a free-to-play game for over a decade can do terrible things). Rather, it's because I'm forced to relive the loss of Marvel Heroes, Gazillion's Diablo-like superhero ARPG that launched in 2013, in which I spent more than 1,000 hours clicking around as various Marvel guys while listening to podcasts. Seems like a weird combo on paper, but it turns out isometric ARPG combat is a perfect fit for playing as superhumans who can sleepwalk their way through throwdowns with roomfuls of thugs. The game had a lackluster start, but Gazillion eventually built a real talent for designing abilities and animations that embodied each hero's schtick; thundering through Dr. Doom's castle as Thor or somersaulting across the chaos of Midtown Mayhem as Spider-Man felt exactly as like imagine you'd imagine it would from seeing it in a comic page.

My Wolverine bleed builds and Dr. Doom sorcery setups were immaculate. The damage numbers from my Captain America's torqued shield throws were a thing of beauty. Even as the MCU started to become exhausting to endure, my love for Marvel Heroes held—until Gazillion abruptly shuttered in 2017 when Disney pulled their license amidst harassment allegations leveraged against the studio's CEO. Every now and then, I'll glance at the Steam discussion forums, where former players are still leaving adding replies to a 275-page thread titled, simply, "Bring the game back :("

Some wounds never heal.

Unfortunate that I can't see the sum total of Dwarf Fortress hours I've accumulated across different installs and PCs since I was 16, though. Time to boost my numbers with the Steam version, I guess.

Andy Chalk, News Lead: I like singleplayer games.

(I'm still playing Cyberpunk, I doubt there's enough left to surpass Elden Ring but one never knows.)

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Holy crap, Andy.

My most-played list is led by three multiplayer FPSes that have carved out a permanent residence in my brain—Siege, Day of Defeat: Source, and Hunt: Showdown. Those Siege hours don't factor in my PS4 or Xbox One playtime, so the real number is well over 2,000 these days. Day of Defeat was the first PC shooter I ever got into, partially because I joined a role-playing army unit led by a 70-year-old vet from Canada.

It's really funny to see Mount & Blade up there because I've never played the base game—all that playtime is in the Napoleonic Wars multiplayer expansion.

Nice to see one 2024 game break onto the list: Helldivers 2 is my personal GOTY and it's so good even my partner, who can be pretty picky about shooters, adores it.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I'm mostly proud of my most-playeds, with the notable exception of Destiny 2. I'm nowhere near Phil, Tim, or Sean's hours, but it was my "early pandemic misery" game, and it's gonna take a long damn time to knock it from the top spot with a diet of mostly singleplayer stuff.

I also gotta say that the messed-up, depreciated, and delisted original Steam release of Dragon Age 2 being up there feels like an honor. Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk are notable omissions for me since I own both of those on GOG instead.

A little while ago I wrote about Troika Games' canceled post-apocalyptic RPG prototype, a cool-as-hell spiritual successor to Fallout from some of the best who ever did it. That article (and Chris' helpful suggestion) had me wanting to hear about the PCG community's Lost Lenores.

Could be a ghost of a concept that just wasn't meant to be, like Troika Games' pitch for Arcanum 2: Journey to the Centre of Arcanum, or something more substantial, like Troika Games' demo for a Lord of the Rings CRPG. Could even be something not by Troika Games, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

What canceled game do you wish you could have played? Here's our answers, as well as a few from our forum.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: There's a whole bunch of cancelled Star Wars games I would've loved to play. Especially tragic are the ones that got canned basically just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time when Disney bought the franchise. 

Everyone knows 1313, LucasArts' answer to Uncharted, but the one I still think of ruefully is Battle of the Sith Lords. It was supposed to be an action game starring Darth Maul, with footage showing him gleefully lopping off the heads of a bunch of Mandalorians. 

According to GameInformer, there really wasn't much more there beyond that idea - they hadn't even figured out what the story was - but really, what more do you need than a double-bladed lightsaber and a load of mooks to use it on? And man, the concept art is amazing - Maul and his brother in kickass Sith armour, Maul chucking people into the Sarlacc pit, Maul totally pulling off a shoulder cape accessory, etc. We missed out on gold with this one. 

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Anyone else remember Gigantic? I sure do. Action-heavy moba style games feel like they've been cursed by an angry and spiteful god, what with the fall of games like Battlerite (which I've written about before), Paragon, Monday Night Combat... the one I always wish I'd played however was Gigantic. 

It still looks gorgeous, with fighting-game tier combat mix-ups I still hear its fanbase praising to this day, and I never got my hands on it. For some reason, the client just didn't work on my clunker of a machine back in 2017, so I decided I'd give it a whirl when I got an upgrade. It shut down in like a year. The need for better game preservation gets thrown into really stark contrast when you can figuratively blink and miss a MOBA that most active players seemed to jive with. Rest easy, Gigantic, I hardly knew ye.

Katie Wickens, Hardware Writer: Does Polybius count as a cancelled game? This dark, mysterious, vaguely conspiratorial arcade game may or may not have ever existed at all. It's believed by some to have been a sick CIA experiment, having appeared in arcades for around a single month at the peak of the hobby, before disappearing without a trace—no boards or game roms have surfaced, but there are those who claim to hold them.

As for gameplay, Polybius was reportedly a kind of fast paced series of puzzles that, while addictive, had a tendency to cause "sickness, amnesia, night terrors, and behavioural changes." Okay, I take it back. That one can stay locked in the ether.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: For me it's gotta be Rhapsody, the idea that Hangar 13 came up with after the studio put Mafia 3 (which, despite everything, I really liked) to bed. It was going to be an '80s thriller where you played a Jewish Russian spy as he got up to subterfuge and espionage in the waning days of the Cold War. 

You'd be passing back and forth between East and West Berlin all the time, your inventory restricted to whatever you could smuggle through Checkpoint Charlie. There'd be gadgets, politics, vengeance, and—you'd hope—a lot of lessons learned from the successes and failures of Mafia 3. It sounded like someone sat down and decided to make a game just for me, basically.

It eventually got transmuted into a, uh, superhero game? Where you fought villains with the power of music? Before it just kind of disintegrated as a project. I hope some dev out there is still carrying a torch for it, though. The world needs more taut spy thriller videogames and I need more opportunities to pretend to be Stierlitz.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Back when I was a full-time console gamer, the first game I ever played when I got an Xbox 360 was Kameo: Elements of Power. It's one of my favourite Rare games where you play as a badass fairy who can transform into all sorts of different monsters, like a blue yeti who can climb ice walls and a boxing venus fly trap. 

That game already had its fair share of development woes, and its never-announced sequel was no different. Disappointing sales of the first game and a shift in focus to the Kinect meant that all we ever got from a Kameo 2 was a tiny bit of concept art. I'm not sure if you can technically cancel a game that was never known to the public until it was gone, but I'm still sad about it to this day. Kameo had so much potential, and I would've absolutely loved to have seen where a sequel could have taken the series.

From our forum

Brian Boru: Oh Command and Conquer Generals 2 is my #1 for sure. Generals Zero Hour was such a fantastic game, my fav of all the C&C games—yes, even above the legendary RA2!

Mind you, my vote is only for a successor to 1-ZH—the monetization shenanigans they were talking about, after shelving the successor idea, was EA at its worst a decade ago.

Zloth: A second Prey game. The first one was great fun, and the baddies were interesting aliens. Unfortunately, Arkane has gone a different direction, and many of the folks central to making Prey have been scattered around the gamedom.

A real Crysis 2. The one that got made dumped almost all the first game's story and re-did the technology so the consoles could run the game. I wish we could have a proper Crysis 2 that continued the story from the first game (and its DLC).

It already looks unlikely that we'll get a second Midnight Suns game, despite in-game indications. That's a shame - I'm really having fun with that game.

Hmmm, Ted's is a 2, Brian's is a 2, all three of mine are 2's...

Pifanjr: As a fan of action-stealth games, I really liked the idea of Starcraft: Ghost. Getting some more Starcraft lore would be a nice bonus as well.

Kaamos_Llama: Someone has to say it, Half Life 3 (or even HL2 episode 3)

As that ones pretty much a gimme, probably Baldurs Gate 3 as it was originally intended. Larians BG 3 looks like its going to be great, but I would have played the hell out of that game 20 years ago or whatever it was.

Interesting fact, Arkane didnt want to call the 2017 game Prey, Bethesda Zenimax management basically forced it on them because they owned the IP and wanted to use it.

McStabStab: As a fan of horror and Kojima games, I wonder what Silent Hills could have been. PT made its mark in video game history. Hopefully the upcoming reboot as well as Silent Hill f will live up to the hype.

Smellincoffee: SimVille. Around the time that SimCity 3000 and The Sims were such great successes, Maxis was working on a game between those two scales -- one where the player managed a neighborhood, essentially. No choosing between different power plants, no "Bob unplug the toilet", but something in-between. 

Part of the appeal was the shared universe: at the time, Maxis was allowing for crosspollination between its games, so that Sims from TS1 could be imported into SimCity 4, and SimCity 4 maps could be used to create TS2 neighborhoods, etc.

Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield: two guardians standing before the labyrinth of autumn. One always lies, and the other can only tell the truth, but which is which? Having two mondo-huge RPGs holding the rest of the year hostage has me thinking about big games, the anticipation, setting aside time, tying up loose ends in whatever game you've been playing up till now.

The last time this happened, I don't think I was ready for how much Elden Ring would just dominate the two months after it came out for me. Right now, I'm trying to wrap up a Deus Ex: Human Revolution playthrough. I've already given up on my Fallout: New Vegas guy—I got him to a good stopping point and just let things lie, maybe I'll pick it back up in like, half a year. I generally think I take this stuff pretty seriously, but I've always been blown away by the stories of people taking a week off work for the release of Destiny or World of Warcraft expansions.

How do you prepare for a mondo-huge game release? Here are our answers, as well as a few from our forum.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Honestly, for the most part I don't prepare at all. I almost took a week off for Final Fantasy 14's Endwalker expansion but decided against it, which ended up working in my favour since it got delayed by two weeks pretty close to the original release date. In fact, I think one of the only games I've ever specifically taken time off work for was Grand Theft Auto 5. Such a bizarre left-field choice for me, but yeah. 

I usually find that if I throw myself deep into the hype and carefully prepare myself for release, I fall off the game after a few hours and never think about it again. Most of the time I end up getting surprise-attacked by a big release that I try just so I can talk with my friends about it, becoming utterly consumed and losing months of my life to it. This is the way.

Andy Chalk, US News Lead: I do my best to ruin everyone else's good time by reminding them that new game releases are routinely shit shows, and even if the servers don't buckle and it's not a sticky swamp of bugs and performance problems, the hot new thing you're looking forward to probably isn't going to be all that good anyway.

Hey, you have your fun, I'll have mine. [Editor's Note: Baldur's Gate 3 is going to be really, really good Andy. I don't care what you say.]

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: 1) I gather my nine children in the parlor and tell them tonight is the night I face the Beast what took their Ma. In case I don't return, I hand my eldest (Silas, 11) my weathered hunting rifle as he bravely fights back tears
2) I stand in front of my grandpappy's portrait and wordlessly vow to rid this land of the evil that has stalked us for generations. Lightning flashing through the windows of the great room makes the portrait almost seem... alive
3) I wrap my cloak tightly around myself and clutch the obsidian dagger as I step out into the driving rain to join my most trusted farmhand, Cyrus. He, too, has born the pain of the Curse all these years

Oh, sorry, misread the question. I thought it said how do I prepare for confronting the Wraith of Tottenham Falls.

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: Cry, make a spreadsheet, cry harder, drink far more caffeine than is necessary or medically recommended, then burn myself and my retinas out by staring at a screen for 10+ hours a day.

Oh, I almost forgot: ready myself for it to be properly shit so that I'm pleasantly surprised when I enjoy it.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: If my experience with Diablo 4 is anything to go by, my process is to be completely uninterested during pre-release, try it out for work, play about 15 hours of it and then return to something that came out a minimum of ten years ago. Currently wrapping up a Mass Effect playthrough. That game's pretty good; you guys heard of it?

From our forum

XoRn: There's a scuba gear rental place surprisingly close by (for a guy in the mid west that is). I schedule a rental there for the day the game comes out. Then I tape my debit card to a rock and throw it into the near by lake and WAIT FOR REVIEWS.

That's to say I don't prep anymore. I don't take time off work or stockpile snacks and soda.

My life just doesn't have time for every big title on the horizon so I have to pick and choose my vices. I also generally find it easier to wait for a sale for a big single player release if I manage to not pre-order it.

McStabStab: After preordering Cyberpunk AND Battlefield 2042 the only thing I do to prep for game releases now is sit and wait for both critic and user reviews to roll in. Even one of my most beloved games, Cities: Skylines, is getting a sequel and I can't bring myself to think I'll be buying it without seeing the reviews first. My answer would have been different years ago but this is the state of gaming in 2023.

BeardyHat: The game will still be there when I'm ready to get around to it and I feel no need to be a part of "The Conversation", as I don't really use social media. When I was a kid, I could get hyped for something new, but I'm nearly 40 now and there's no game so groundbreaking that I need to stop my life for it; not to mention, there is generally going to be something comparable for me to play when the new shiny thing comes out anyway and the differences are so minor, why drop my precious money and time on the new thing? Because marketers say I need to?

I added 10 hours to my playtime in Torchlight 2 when Diablo 4 came out and I'll probably pick-up my Baldurs Gate EE save again when 3 comes out or maybe even finally try and make it through something like Pillars of Eternity.

I'm sure Starfield will be neat, but I'll play it when I feel the pull of something in space and I want to spend $20 on a new game in 4 years.

Brian Boru: [Re: Taking off work for MMO expansions] Yeah, I used to do that too, along with some of my buddies. But what many don't realize is the reason was to avoid the interminable water cooler chat from players during release week!

Alm: I think taking a week off is the most extreme thing I do for a game launch. I've already done it for Hogwarts Legacy and Tears of the Kingdom this year. I don't have enough leave left for Starfield unfortunately.

I am thinking of upgrading my PC for Starfield though which is probably more extreme than taking leave to play a video game.

Konquerah: It is a bit of a grey area for single player games or just massively driven story games. I'd rather sneak in a few hours, so I am not behind the curve. But this is generally because I don't wish to see any spoilers online anywhere. And more often than not, people don't have a filter online.

I'm not too fazed if it's a massive multiplayer game, though if a group of friends wanted to take a couple of days of and geek out over something, then I would probably take the time off to have a laugh with them.

mainer: Most years there are seldom any "mondo-huge" game releases that I'm interested in, and even those that I'm marginally interested in, I'll take a "wait & see" approach by reading reviews first. This year is exceptional, for me at least, in that there are two massive single player RPGs being release in Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield, and both (unfortunately) are being released at nearly the same time, even with the earlier release of BG3. Both games will take months of my gaming life, and with tons of replay value, so they'll be residing on my SSD for a long time.

First order of business is to clear some hard drive space, as these games are not small. Starfield will be around a 125 GB, and Baldur's Gate 3 around 80 GB, and that's the current early access version, I think the official release will be larger (especially with 174 minutes of cutscenes). Freeing up 200 GB of drive space is not an easy task.

So I'll go through my SSD, moving old save files, screenshots, and mods no longer used to one of my storage drives, and maybe uninstalling some games that I won't get to for a while, as well as looking for any other media or programs that I really don't need. Some modded games, like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout New Vegas are essentially permanently installed, as well as associated mods & utilities. So there are difficult decisions to be made.

As we get closer to release, the choice of what to play becomes more relevant to me. I don't want anything too involved (story-wise). Currently, I'm trying to finish up the System Shock Remake (though I'm having some trouble in cyberspace), and if I finish (or bail) on that, I will probably go back to an older game and I can drop in or out of without a problem because I know it so well. But definitely, not a new game.

What is a "cursed" videogame? I'd argue any game that feels like it should be a Simpsons background gag (see: My Dinner With Andre: The Arcade Game, Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge), or else could be the game people are playing on-screen in a videogame-themed episode of Law & Order: SVU. The Mystery of the Druids, Limbo of the Lost, the Eragon movie tie-in, Golf Magazine: 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples, the 2014 Thief reboot, there is a case to be made for "cursed" status for all these games.

One of my cursed games is probably The Spongebob Squarepants Movie: The Game, released for sixth generation consoles and based on the Battle for Bikini Bottom engine. I have a crystalized memory of being nine years old, sat on the floor of my parents' finished basement in front of one of those massive aughts-era rear projection TVs. 

I was playing The Spongebob Squarepants Movie: The Game on original Xbox, but I was listening to my dad's CD of the U2 album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, on my dad's old Sony Discman. While I was immersed in the finest(?) soft rock Ireland had to offer, to an external observer, this tableau would have been largely silent. If that's not cursed, I don't know what is—someone go back and save that boy.

Have you ever loved a cursed videogame? Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: “Cursed” is definitely the word I’d use to describe Let It Die. This bizarre action-roguelike from Suda51 was objectively rough—it was frustrating, it didn’t run well, half its systems made no sense, and its awkward multiplayer components were reliant on a playerbase that was doomed to shrink days after release. But by God it had style. 

When a game starts with a conversation with a skateboarding grim reaper called Uncle Death, you know you’re in for something special. Its bizarre splatter horror meets Japanese arcade culture meets Hieronymous Bosch visuals was like nothing else in gaming, and I would genuinely place Naomi Detox, an apathetic teenage girl who hangs out in the game’s hub and tells you about how horrible her boyfriend Justin is, in my top five favourite videogame characters ever.

All that swagger was so compelling that for a while I was able to convince myself that I was actually enjoying playing Let It Die, but eventually my patience for throwing myself at the same grimy, unforgiving levels over and over and awkwardly managing my stable of fighters to defend against attacks from other players ran out, and I was forced to wave Uncle Death and Naomi goodbye. I couldn’t even bring myself to try the very suspect-looking sequel, Deathverse.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: What if The Sims was all boobs and also really, really bad? Well, 2005 called with Playboy: The Mansion, a semi-steamy sim brought to you by the same developer who got fired by Blizzard for doing a terrible job of Warcraft 2's Beyond the Dark Portal expansion. It manages to take all the things that make The Sims engaging—needs to manage, careers, complex social relationships, random fires—and completely does away with them.

Who needs all that anyway when you can be Hugh Hefner himself, throwing parties, having sex with women and convincing them to pose topless on the cover of each haphazardly thrown-together issue of Playboy you're tasked with making? Don't forget to schmooze with journalists so they can write the articles too, the entire reason people buy and "read" Playboy, of course.

I wouldn't say I love the game, but I certainly have a soft spot for its incessantly annoying jazz soundtrack and deeply tragic 2000s videogame sensibilities. It's terribly dull in every single way, but it's a nice reminder of the era where absolutely everything had to be a videogame. Even saucy magazines. 

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: I'm not sure everyone would agree it's cursed, but for me, Spore definitely was. I made some truly horrifying creatures in Spore and when I first played it, it was on the shittest laptop imaginable so it ran slower than normal which made things ten times worse. It's a game I think about often because the premise lured me in like the weird little fish I am but sometimes I think it was all a fever dream. Why did it need to be made and, more to the point, why is there not a 2023 version?

Another would probably be Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time. I don't know what made eight-year-old me think it was going to be fun, but I remember it being the first time I played a game and feeling like ????? the entire time. It was just bad and weird and I did not understand what I was supposed to be doing, which hasn't really changed. Bugs Bunny was bested only by the Small Soldiers movie adaptation video game. Weird. So weird. 

Everything was dark and gloomy and there were so many strange noises coming from the dark and it just ruined what was (okay, is) one of my favourite films. The music was so bombastic for a silly game about a little plastic dude and it lives in my head rent-free.

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: My secret shame is a mobile game: Deer Hunter [Editor's Note: Is Rich a Deer Hunter Classic fan or a Deer Hunter 2018 enjoyer? Only the man himself knows]. It's not a good game. It's not even an especially edifying game. It is a first-person shooting game where each level is a small landscape where various animals, including but not limited to deer, gambol around: and you line 'em up and blow those furry critters away. 

So far so standard. But what hooked me in Deer Hunter was the close-up slowdown effects. Think Sniper Elite. As the challenge increases you have to aim for the brain or the heart or the lungs of an animal and, when you take the shot, the game moves into a kind of slowmo bullet cam that tracks your projectile all the way into the poor animal's body, before everything returns to normal speed after the hit and the carcass slumps to the ground. 

This game treats a good shot on a deer like a heroic moment, the highlight of humanity's achievements, and I find this effect hilarious. To the extent that even though I don't really game on mobile I still have Deer Hunter on my phone for whenever I'm especially bored. It's full of mobile F2P bullshit, the upgrade paths gouge you, killing animals for sport is not good practice, everything about this game is bad. But I love it. 

Evan Lahti, Editor-in-Chief: [straightening a fedora, Evan blows a theatrical volume of smoke into the air] 

int: noir game critic's office

Sure, since y'asked nice, I'll gab about game that broke my heart: I reviewed LawBreakers. I gave it an 84. I called it "Nimble, graceful, and original" and "delightfully nuanced." I praised its "low-grav ballet" even as I criticized its characters and modes. I was one of the most enthusiastic voices in the world on this flawed-but-interesting video game. 

LawBreakers was taken offline one year later, and Cliff Bleszinski's studio Boss Key folded with it not long after. Zero percent of players prestiged, according to achievement data. Taken too soon, forever in our hearts, forever aesthetically dissonant, RIP 2017-2018. 

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: When I was a kid I played the hell out of Adventure Quest's flash version. It was a relic of the old internet—is, it still exists, though I doubt it'd be recognisable to me today. Back when I was playing it, it still had like, 2000s-era flash graphics mixing it up with the slightly more detailed stuff they were doing in a low-budget mash of artstyles. Here's a clip (god bless you, MMO hut). Anyway, I was a werewolf, I hit monsters, it was a good time.

Then there was Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue for the PS1. For some reason little Harvey was obsessed - probably because we didn't have a lot of games, but also when you're a kid you don't really have a critical eye for anything. I remember hopping around the first few levels a lot. The opening theme is burnt into my head. Absolute banger.

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor: I played a whole lot of Xbox 360 arcade game 'No Luca No' in my younger years. If you aren't aware of it already, it has a simple premise: you stop a cat from eating your cereal. It was so easy to play a whole lot of it. 

Maybe it's unfair to call that game cursed, but it's definitely one of the weirder ones I've played too much of!

Andy Chalk, US News Lead: Remember the original Prey? Took more than a decade to get that sucker from concept to clearance bin, an ugly schmozzle that involved multiple development teams, an almost-cancellation, and a complete switch in game engines. When it finally came out, it was an outstanding shooter and a pretty good sales success, too—and yet somehow, plans for Prey 2 immediately ran face-first into the same swirling mass o' troubles that plagued the first game.

The second time around, there was no saving it: After 3D Realms couldn't make it happen, Bethesda acquired the rights and dazzled us all with a brilliant cinematic at E3 2011, but ultimately pulled the plug on the whole thing for reasons it was never entirely clear about. Prey—the name, not the game—eventually came back in 2017 as a System Shock-inspired immersive sim, and it was great—and it tanked, and now Arkane is doing stuff like Redfall.

Anyway, Prey (2006) is excellent and you should play it. If you can find it, that is—it was pulled from Steam several years ago. A powerfully cursed game indeed.

And god dammit, I still want to play this:

Jon Bolding, Freelance Contributor: I've been playing Dwarf Fortress since at least 2008 and I don't expect to ever stop. This is a game where too many sock-finding calculations will crash your PC—so yes, Ted. I've loved a cursed game.

From our forum

Alm: My first gaming system was the Gameboy. We didn't really know what games would be good back then. I would say that most of our Gameboy games could be classified as cursed.

One of the games I started with was Bart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly. Being young, I kept at it, believing I was just bad at the game but, looking back, reviews were not good.

It holds a place in my memories of equal love and aversion.

Pifanjr: Do the Star Wars Lego games count? I feel like those games have no business being as good as they are. I fairly recently tried playing one of them with my daughter, but the platforming controls were sadly still too difficult for her.

Zloth: I just recently discovered the joys of having my ruler be cursed in Old World, so I'm trying to avoid being triggered here....

I've played quite a few games that were outright unplayable at launch - thus earning a ton of cursing from many players. Arkham Knight was pretty fun a year after showing up on PC. Sword of the Stars 2 was fairly good a year and a half after release. X Rebirth was fun enough two years after release that I played through it twice!

Mainer: This may or may not fit your criteria for a "cursed" game, but for me it would be Gothic 3 from Piranha Bytes released back in 2006. The game was cursed from the start with the forced release when the game was clearly not ready or complete, by then-publisher JoWooD. Hundreds of bugs on release, dialogue not triggering, critical NPCs not being where they're supposed to be which usually resulted in quests (minor or major) to break completely.

But I loved that game (and still do) with its open world exploration, combat, and dialogue choices when dealing with the Orc occupation of the mostly human continent of Myrtana. With a dedicated group of modders, the community patch was created and eventually fixed the vast majority of bugs. Current version is 1.75 which is available on Steam in the beta branch.

Kaamos_Llama: I think just about every game I ever played as a kid on the ZX Spectrum was haunted in some way, but I'm damned if I can remember the names of any of them.

I spent a lot of time as a slightly older kid playing World Championship Boxing Manager which was pretty terrible by even 90's standards. You wanted cursed right?

Pacifist runs, "Nuzlocke" attempts of Pokémon, heck, even the venerable speedrun are just a few ways that players have derived new challenges from games outside your usual difficulty slider. Some developers have even responded by building such challenges into their games: the Thief series used to instant-fail you if you killed anyone on the hardest difficulty, while "hardcore" modes in games like Diablo 4 or The Witcher 2 introduce mechanically-enforced permadeath.

I've been thinking about this sort of thing as I replay Deus Ex for the umpteenth time, quicksaving before and after practically every stealth takedown. Similarly, my early game pacifism always gets replaced with a late-game eagerness to slice up MJ-12 commandos with the Dragon's Tooth Sword. I lack the self-discipline for anything else.

Do you ever set self-imposed challenges when playing videogames? Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Christopher Livingston, Features Producer: Heck yeah! I played Fallout 4 non-lethally with a knockout mod and another time without ever leaving Sanctuary. I played Skyrim while trying to only do things an NPC would do, and tried to build an entire working city in Cities: Skylines that fit within a highway offramp. Making up your own rules or giving yourself personal challenges isn't just a fun way to play games, it's the best way to play games. I guarantee the quest you come up with will be better than any official quest the game gives you.

And honestly, you can learn a lot about how a game works by making your own rules (or breaking the existing rules). In medieval city builder Patron I decided I wanted to fill an entire trade ship with cherry-flavored cookies and to do so I really had to dig in deep, closely watching the production lines, monitoring the resources chains, and figuring out how to stop my citizens from eating those delicious cookies themselves. I learned way more about how the game worked than I would have if I hadn't come up with my silly cookie challenge.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I think every games journalist is obligated to do a full stealth pacifist run of an immersive sim at least once in their career. I did them in both Deus Ex Human Revolution and Dishonored, and though it can't be very engaging and interesting treating games like that as a kind of perfectionist's puzzle, the thing I ran into in both was that people who get spotted and stab people sometimes get a lot more fun toys to play with and an overall enriched and more varied experience. 

Stealth is more fun when you live with your mistakes sometimes, and though narratively the ideal of taking the moral high ground of never spilling blood is appealing, in practice heaping up sleeping guards in vents is arduous and absurd. 

These days when I set myself special conditions, I do it in small ways. One I come back to often is forbidding myself from using fast travel. It doesn't work for all games, but in really dense and rich open worlds, forcing yourself to actually navigate the space and have a kind of natural structure to your adventures can totally change your perspective on the game. 

Dragon's Dogma is the perfect example for this, with its lengthy but superbly satisfying journeys, or Shadow of Mordor, where every jog across Mordor is a chance for more orc drama to erupt. I loved doing it in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, too, which has enough sidequests and events that you can really get that feeling of setting off on an adventure like a hero out of Greek myth, sailing around distant islands and having all sorts of wild encounters before, weary and forever changed, journeying back to your home town. 

It really makes you realise how abstract digital spaces become when you can just freely teleport around them—once you stop, you actually start to get the lay of the land, and appreciate the work the developer put in all the more. Ah, there's that mountain with the funny crooked point on it—not far to go now!

Sean Martin, Guides Writer: I have a tendency of doing weird Total War campaigns where I set myself very specific goals and end up getting completely carried away. One of my favourites was when I decided to get Durthu the Sword of Khaine in Mortal Empires and use him as a one treeman army, so beelined over to Ulthuan, nicked the sword, and had Durthu lumbering around by himself destroying entire armies. Total War: Warhammer is really well set up for those fun roleplaying campaigns, especially with all the character backstory.

Three Kingdoms is another where I started imposing weird restrictions on myself, like fighting entire battles using only heroes. There was also that time I almost managed a pacifist run, but faltered at the final faction due to an overly stubborn Kingdom of Yan who just wouldn't play ball.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I feel like I'm playing games all wrong because I never do this! I'm not sure why, honestly. I even play a butt ton of The Sims 4 and never do this, and that game is all about making up your own challenges and rules! I'm too busy meticulously decorating houses and apartments to ever reach the gameplay part. 

Maybe I should live a little, break the rules, be a bad boy. I feel like it can give you a whole new appreciation for games and their little quirks, and can breathe new life into things you love. I'll give it a go at some point... probably.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Life is already one long exhausting challenge and I'm just here to have fun. That said, I've done your typical stealthy pacifist runs in games like Dishonored, but they are never as good as when you just let rip with wild powers and murderous intent.

It's not really a challenge, more just evidence that I'm a sicko, but I do like to imprison people in glass cells in The Sims, complete with chairs outside so people can watch the show. I've killed off whole neighbourhoods this way. I'm really nice in real life, trust me.

I guess my decision to ignore stats and only care about fashion in Cyberpunk 2077 was kinda a self-imposed challenge. Thankfully, however, that's no longer necessary now that you can create purely cosmetic outfits that hide the hideous togs you've selected for their big numbers.

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: I've done Soul Level 1 runs in various of the Souls games, but particularly Dark Souls which I adored. At a certain point I'd played through the game so many times that it just seemed fun to set myself a challenge that would've seemed impossible when I was first entranced by this forbidding and brutal world. 

Ornstein and Smough had once wiped the Anor Londo walls with me but on my twentieth runthrough had lost the fear factor and, having done everything there was to do in the game already, I couldn't care less about dying. The only downside of the run was using the club as a weapon (because of stats there's a very limited selection of weapons) but even then I eventually came to love that critting enemies just resulted in a giant baseball swing to their gut. Friendship ended with miracles, because Pyromancy is my best friend now. 

And... well, I did have a bit of a purpose. I did the Four Kings on my SL1 run first to awaken Kaathe and, eventually, acquire the red eye orb. This meant that, before completing my runthrough by beating down Gwyn with a club, I could go back to the Undead Burg or the sewers beneath and invade low level players as a naked fire-spewing maniac (with a club). I would like to apologise to my victims for such acts, but you all died real good.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I played The Temple of Elemental Evil with a party of half-orcs who all had single-digit Intelligence scores. That game's got even better low-IQ dialogue than Fallout 2, and though technically you can experience it by just having one dope in your party to do all the talking, I thought it would be funnier to have a whole squad of thickos. Wizardry was not their forte.

Before that I was into making Skyrim a survival game with mods like Frostfall, and set myself the challenge of crossing the whole map on foot without fast travel. I made it harder by forgetting you can cure disease at temples and doing half the trip with Rockjoint, but it made me realize how different the regions of Skyrim really are. 

When you teleport from place to place you don't get to see the snowline as you leave the frozen shore of the Sea of Ghosts while making for the foggy swamps of Hjaalmarch. What really makes Skyrim's map special is that, unlike most of the open world games that followed it, it doesn't fill up with repeatable activities. The only things that get added to it are actual places, towns and standing stones and giant camps, so it never becomes a checklist of things to do. It feels more like an actual map.

From our forum

Frag Maniac: If it's a game I really like, I usually play it to death and often set challenges like no upgrades and sometimes no HUD on hardest mode. I particularly like games that think outside the box and use more than just higher HP for enemies and more damage dealt to players on the hardest mode, like more enemies or enemies that are smarter and faster. I've also played some race games on hardest mode with a head start for the AI.

I usually make video walkthroughs of such challenges [Check out Frag Maniac's YouTube channel].

I'm currently playing Far Cry 6 on Guerilla with all HUD elements off. I'm not doing a video walkthrough of it though, as it would be far too many lengthy videos for my slow 5Mb upload speed. It's been going pretty well, but I had difficulty on the mission where you fly a plane over Castillo's tobacco fields and drop napalm bombs on them with a contraption Philly made with a baseball pitching machine you stole for him. 

With no HUD markers onscreen it was really hard to tell exactly where to drop them, causing me to make several passes and the plane got shot down. Worse yet, because I had to replenish my ammo at a workbench, when I got back to finish up the first set of tobacco fields, the game reset my progress to where ALL of them needed to be burned again. 

So it was back to a workbench to equip my Supremos with as many incendiary throwables as I could, That along with a couple of Resolver shotguns with incendiary shells allowed me to finish the burning of the fields part. Taking out Jose's chopper was even harder though, as I had not unlocked any RPG type weapons yet, or the Resolver weapon that fires explosive devices long range. 

Instead I used the Resolver weapon that fires an EMP pulse long range, a Resolver shotgun with rotating magazine, and a Resolver sniper rifle with blast rounds. It still took a long time and I died twice. The Resolver EMP rifle is pretty much useless on that chopper.

Brian Boru: Usually. In shooters I avoid the biggest weapons, as they don't suit my preferred non-melee playstyle. Also minimal use of explosives like grenades, mines etc.

In strategy games like Civ, sometimes I'll refuse to initiate any tech trades or diplomatic overtures. Other times it'll be to wipe out other civs on my continent.

Essentially when playing games, I write my own story or narrative, so it depends what self goals or challenges support the story I want to write at the time.

McStabStab: There was no "100% everything" achievement for Mad Max, but I wanted to 100% everything anyway. My goal was to do it without fast travel. Mission accomplished:

Pifanjr: Does not playing as a stealth archer in Skyrim count?

I've tried a nuzlocke run, but I quit after losing my starter. I realized it would take more grinding than I was willing to put up with to get through the game.

For most games however I get bored of the gameplay long before I can come up with my own challenges.

Colif: I set a rule for my characters in Torchlight 2. If they die at all on way to 100, the build is wrong and I start again. Last time I played I got one to 100 without dying which was an achievement as she used cannons and one of them is more dangerous to my health than enemies as it does 8 damage to me per second. I would show a screenshot of it but TL2 doesn't seem to like the clipping tool in win 11. Use it and screen just drops to desktop

mainer: The first game I thought of when I read your post was Deus Ex. Like yourself, I've played it countless times over the years, and always go with a stealth-type character, thinking that this time I'll be able to complete a true pacifist playthrough. It never happens, because at some point my self-discipline fails as well, and that's when I first get access to the sniper rifle. The lure of sneaking and lining up that perfect head shot is just too strong, it's just too much fun to pick off unsuspecting enemies from a distance.

Almost every single player game that I've played, I have certain goals that I set for myself, even though they make no difference in the outcome of the game or in what Steam achievements that I receive. Such as romancing Jaheira in Baldur's Gate 2. That's a game-long internal quest that's accomplished through dialogue (and there's a lot of dialogue). One wrong dialogue choice at any point will result in failure, and it's definitely a challenge, as she's quite opinionated.

Another big challenge that I set for myself is getting all the collectibles in a game, and I'm thinking mainly of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games from Bethesda. Some are known collectibles, like the Bobble Heads in the Fallout games. Others I create in my head. Like collecting all the Gnomes in Fallout 3, one each of the Nuka Colas in Fallout 4, and my big one, collecting one copy of each book in Skyrim; then displaying them, in alphabetical order on bookshelves in my home. It does require a few mods for the shelves & organization, but it's a challenge that I've set for myself for every playthrough of Skyrim, but have yet to achieve.

Johnway: Not so much these days. But when i was young I certainly did. I would replay the same games and to spice things up I usually added challenges, namely don't lose a life, beat game without powerups, play all levels that sort of thing. Nothing too fancy. Then again, when I was young beating games without the cheats on was a challenge so...

Sarafan: I sometimes self-impose some challenges, but these are usually restricted to very old games. For example, Eye of the Beholder from 1990 has a feature which allows you to manually set all attributes to the maximum value during character creation. I imposed a restriction that I can increase only two or three attributes to max to make the game a little more challenging. 

I also restricted myself during playthrough of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection games. I decided not to use saves like in the original version of this series, unless I have to stop playing for some reason. In newer games I rarely impose any artificial restrictions.

I often find myself haunted by an observation from former PC Gamer editor Samuel Roberts on The Back Page podcast: there is no sight more unwholesome than that of an adult lit only by the light of a computer monitor. That supremely gruesome vibe is only maximized if someone you love ever has the misfortune of walking in on you when two "choombas" are bumping uglies in Cyberpunk 2077, or, god forbid, you're Naked Raiden getting choked by his stepfather who was also the president in Metal Gear Solid 2.

I have always been tactical about approaching such content when sharing a house with someone else, but there have been some close calls. I turned to the PCG staff and forums to find out about the times someone stumbled in at just the wrong moment.

Has anyone walked in on you during an embarrassing moment in a game? Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Like Ted, I was always quite tactical about my BioWare time while living under another's roof. These days I can do what I damn please and romance whoever and whenever in the privacy of my own office. 

Though I do sometimes wonder if my partner is going to come ask for my help with dinner while I'm mid-Yakuza. It's not like there's actually anything unseemly about me watching four tattooed dudes rip their shirts off at the top of Millennium Tower but, well, you know.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Ugh, I'm about to expose my whole ass here.

I'm no stranger to games that err on the side of degeneracy, and yet somehow I was totally clueless about Senran Kagura's reputation. I was on a bit of a rhythm game shopping spree back when my PS Vita was my prized possession, and picked up Senran Kagura: Bon Appetit dirt cheap in a sale.

The thing is, I used to play my Vita on my hour-long tram journeys to college. Yeah, see where this is going? I booted up Bon Appetit and, uh, perhaps I should've vetted it beforehand. There were a lotta boobs, a lotta butts and a lotta conspicuously placed whipped cream. 

Unfortunately, I realised that the game was NSFT (not safe for trams) around the exact same moment the conductor leaned over my shoulder to see what I was playing. I looked at him. He looked at me. He asked something along the lines of "What the hell is this?" and I embarrassingly fumbled my way through an explanation. We somehow became quite friendly after that, cool guy.

Richard Stanton, Senior Editor: Love Bayonetta. When that game came out I played it constantly, gradually mastering the incredible combat system and having the time of my life. My partner at the time wasn't much into videogames, and walked into the room while I was finishing off a boss. In Bayonetta, the eponymous witch's hair becomes a giant hell monster that proceeds to chow down on whatever unfortunate boss you've just beaten, in a very graphic way. 

Also very graphic is the fact that, as her bodysuit is made of her hair, Bayonetta cavorts around while all this is going on, with strategically placed strands of hair (just about) obscuring her bits. 

So there I was, sitting in front of a giant flatscreen with a naked woman pole-dancing, while hunched over the pad hammering the X button (to make my hair monster eat the boss better). My partner looked at the screen, looked at me, said "pervert" and walked back out. We're no longer together. But I still love Bayonetta.

Phil Savage, UK Editor-in-Chief: Sometimes the Yakuza series is a lot, OK?

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: The thing I'm always most self-conscious about someone walking in on is character creation. There's something very embarrassing to me about someone witnessing me spending an hour crafting my little person down to the finest detail, while the digital doll stands there frozen, often in their undies. How can it not come off like I'm realising some sort of pathetic fantasy, where I'm sculpting an ideal form I either wish I was or wish I could bone? 

Slumped in front of my PC in a sweaty t-shirt and boxers, staring blankly at the screen with my mouth half open, while I carefully tweak my avatar's gleaming six pack or nervously adjust the boob slider; my own face pale and unshaven as I meticulously sculpt the perfect jawline on a head I'm going to cover with a helmet within 10 minutes of starting. How can that not look perverse? At the very least any observer has got to be thinking "Why is this guy so obsessive about the bridge of an imaginary elf's nose?"

Whenever someone has started watching me during this intensely private process, I've gotten complete performance anxiety, and either just quickly settled on a look I secretly hate and resent, or made some excuse to quit the game entirely. I've no idea what this very specific hang-up says about me, and frankly I don't want to know. 

Andy Chalk, US News Lead: I don't have any comparable stories to share but, uh, holy cow, Robin.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: I was going to say that this has never been an issue for me because I have no shame, but after reading Robin's answer I now think we're all sweaty perverts and I feel deeply embarrassed. Thanks, Robin!

From our forum

XoRn: I'm drawing off of a repressed memory here, but my dad walked in basically the same moment I unlocked the romance sequence with Miranda in the engine bay.

Him: "Hey, whatcha playing."

Shepard and Miranda making out.

Me: "Uh. Mass Effect 2."

Him: "...This is a game."

Miranda jumps on Shepard and unzips her skin tight body suit revealing her bra and chest.

Me: "I think I picked the wrong option."

Him: "Sure you did..."

DXCHASE: When I made this video here [Editor's note: a very NSFW video of a Ken doll anatomy-having nude man in Kingdom Come: Deliverance], my son had walked into the living room where my pc was at the time, its good they didn't show anything.

ZedClampet: Apparently when my daughter was little she used to sneak downstairs and watch me play games (I always wore a headset and had no idea she was doing that). There was violent/gory/horror stuff that I wouldn't have knowingly let her watch, but nothing that I would consider embarrassing. 

There's not really anything embarrassing in the games I play except for my own ineptitude. My wife once watched me not be able to find my way out of a room for about an hour. Now that was embarrassing.

As a card-carrying PC gamer, I love immersive sims⁠—System Shock, Deus Ex, Gloomwood, Dishonored⁠—it's a genre I adore. At the same time, I'm just so bad at them. On paper, Thief's expert mode with its expanded level objectives is the way to play the game, but I just can't do it—it's normal or bust for me. In Nightdive's System Shock, the combat encounters I've awkwardly stumbled through have far outnumbered my canny tactical coups.

And that's okay! I may never be "good" at immersive sims, but I'll always return to the genre no matter what, and the open-ended nature of those games makes my rare triumphs in them all the sweeter. I've got a sneaking suspicion every gamer has one such game or genre they love despite being very bad at it, and for this E3 season-delayed Weekend question, I polled the PC Gamer staff and forums for their own struggle-favs.

Is there a game you love despite absolutely sucking at it? Here are our answers, as well as some from our forums.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I come back to Dungeon of the Endless year after year for a few runs at a time. It's a real-time tactics RPG—which they refer to as a rogue-like dungeon-defense, officially—where you're taking a team of stranded sci-fi folks through ships overrun with creatures, managing buff upgrades, character levels, and the light available in the ship each time you open another door and face another wave of auto-battler-adjacent fights. 

I don't totally suck at it, but I'm not, like, great. And after years of slowly chipping away at it I've really not completed as many challenges or unlocked as many ships as it feels like I should've. And that's alright with me! It's a weird sort of comfort game, not one I need to dominate.

Christopher Livingston, Features Producer: Spelunky-4-Eva. I have never beaten Spelunky, let alone Spelunky 2. I don't think I've even come moderately close to beating either game. I'm pretty sure I haven't even gotten better at Spelunky since the first time I played it. For some reason, every run I make, it's like my muscle memory has been completely erased. I never learn, I never improve, I always die stupidly and horribly. 

I never even got good at reliably killing bats, the wimpiest damn creatures in the game. But I love it! I think Spelunky is one of the best games ever made, it just so happens I'm one of the worst Spelunky players to ever live.

Katie Wickens, Hardware Writer: All my life I've never really been good at games, shooters especially. Fallout's VATS was a lifesaver, honestly. I've only completed a handful in the nearly thirty years I've been a gamer, but the one I keep going back to despite being a massive scrub is Call Of Duty Zombies.

I started playing that way back when Nacht der Untoten was the staple, and I was absolutely terrible at it. I remember a group of lovely Irish guys carrying me through Kino, which helped me get to the stage where I could happily trail zombies without freaking out.

I've now clocked over 26 hours in WW2 Nazi Zombies and still haven't bloody completed it.

From our forum:

Alm: A lot of live service games. As the aim mainly is to improve your skills, I've never reached a particularly high level in any of them. CS:GO, I got to an OK-ish level but that took a few years of being absolutely terrible. And it's like golf in that I probably suck at it again after not having played it in about a year and a half (I got sick of the toxic community).

Also: Hearthstone. I play every day but I'm hopeless at deck building and knowing all the match ups. I'm more of a casual player.

McStabStab: Chivalry 2. I can't drag and feint like the level 100+ players out there, but what's great about that game is if you're playing for the objective you don't need to be the top frag on the board. Participating is enough to have a good time and the chaos and confusion of the battles means you don't always have to be perfect.

Pifanjr: I don't think I absolutely suck at any game, but I do have weaknesses. My main weakness is that I hate looking up guides on how to play, the joy of playing games for me comes mostly from discovering everything myself. However, I'm also lazy and never really get as deep into any game as the type of player who writes guides.

So like Alm, I also suck at Heartstone, because I don't want to use someone else's guide to make a deck and I don't care enough to spend the time to perfect a deck myself. I love the single player adventures though.

Another weakness is that I'm bad at multitasking, which holds me back in RTS games, especially since I don't want to look up build orders. I loved the Starcraft 2 campaign, but I got slaughtered in multiplayer by early game rushes.
If I would get over my distaste of guides I'd probably be a lot better. I once got some tips for Starcraft from a competitive player and went from being destroyed by the AI to getting second place in a 8 player free for all. I lost from the first place because of my bad multitasking skills making me lose my entire air force while I was distracted.

My other weakness is my lack of patience. It's usually not too bad, but it's a problem in turn-based strategy games where a single mistake can be disastrous, like chess for example. It's also why I doubt I'll ever be able to finish Angband.

BeardyHat: I love old adventure games, but as soon as I start having to constantly read a guide on what to do, I lose all interest. Recently put about 4-hours into Star Trek 25th Anniversary and got to the third or fourth episode, but then was totally lost. Looked-up a guide and while the stuff you're required to do isn't completely esoteric, I'm not sure I'd have figured it out on my own, but at that point, I lost all interest in the game. I might as well watch a video of someone playing, which doesn't interest me.

As for games I love that I suck at? Probably RTS games. However, part of the fun of games for me is doing well or, at least, feeling like I'm doing well, so I refrain completely from multiplayer, because I'll simply be crushed.

mainer: ARPGs. Mostly older ARPGs, like Diablo 1 &2, Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, and Sacred 1 & 2. I love the frantic, real-time combat, the loot gathering and finding high-level or set-piece equipment, building and leveling up the different characters, and the overall atmosphere. But I also suck at certain things, like major boss battles. 

I find myself dreading them, fighting them more aggravating than fun, and very little patience to fight a boss multiple times in a row. I'm pretty good in mob battles and with most mini-bosses, but those chapter-ending or quest-ending bosses are my bane in ARPGs.

I'm also not much of a "farmer", where you have to grind certain areas or battles over and over trying to get better equipment drops. A certain amount of grinding is inevitable to level up your character, but I'm not good at doing a specific area or battle multiple times just for the chance of better loot.

ZedClampet: I don't really have an exact answer to the question because if I really, really suck at a genre, I avoid it. It's hard for me to enjoy something if I'm extremely bad at it. If the question is what games that I'm sort of bad at but still enjoy, then the answer would be pretty much be everything that I'm playing. I'm not particularly good at gaming.

Now that I think of it some more, I do actually have a specific answer, and that is V Rising. I'm constantly getting confused with the controls, and yet I've just started my 3rd playthrough.

The venerable IBM Model M remains a cultural and design touchstone for what a computer keyboard looks like, and with good reason—they really got it right the first time. Still, enthusiasts and manufacturers have been getting kinda nutty with it in recent years, producing various ergonomic keyboard designs and even tiny keyboards that minimize cost and maximize your desk space.

I used to think I was function keys and number pad guy for keeps, but for the past year I've been living that 65% life and loving it. If you're unfamiliar, that means my board has 65% of the layout of a standard QWERTY, meaning no function row or number pad. Accessing my missing quick save, quick load, and Steam screenshot keys just requires a simple two-key combo press.

I'm sure it's not for everybody though—Alt codes only work with the num pad, so I've had to get creative in Gdocs to access my beloved em dash. Likewise, if your work involves anything computational or requires a lot of numerical entries, fuhgeddaboudit, you're gonna want the pad. Meanwhile, there are layouts even smaller than 65%, astounding exercises in minimalism and key combo memorization that stretch the limits of my credulity. But for gaming and writing? 65% suits me just fine.

Would you ever use a tiny keyboard? Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I'm the kind of guy who always wants to feel like they've got all the options available. Just the thought of needing a key and it not being right there on the board makes me sweat. I do like the look of small keyboards, but the functionality makes no sense to me at all. What are you even using that extra space for - an enormous mouse?

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: I'm currently using Everest 60 because I have tiny hands and it is perfect. I have a detachable numpad I keep to the right and programmed my own shortcut keys so it's super easy to use, not to mention very comfortable to write with given I am a smol gal. Whenever I try to type on a full-size keyboard I feel it takes me ages and I'm as clumsy as a swan trying to open a packet of crisps. It's comfortable for gaming as well—again, the small hands thing doesn't stop being a problem when I'm using a mouse and keyboard to play games. It's cute and pretty and makes nice sounds and my carpal tunnel has all but disappeared: get on the 60% hype train!

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I downsized to a tenkeyless keyboard a while back and, like Ted, there are a couple Alt codes I really miss with the loss of my numpad. I've developed a highly codependent relationship with the website emdash.fan, highly recommend. I also sometimes miss having a PrntScrn button in highly specific cases that I cannot presently recall. I could definitely never go down to those adorably small compact keyboards I see the minimalism fans using that do away with all the function keys and arrow keys. I've been on my Steelseries Apex Pro TKL for around a year and I've still never really settled into the loss of my numpad.

Dave James, Hardware Lead: I'm in the Lauren A. camp with my Everest 60 keeb, and I love it. Though what the hell are you doing sticking the detachable numpad on the right? The left side is where it's at. Then you can calculate stuff and use a mouse with the other hand; how else do you deal with spreadsheets? I know some people are ultra-dependent on alt-codes, but I'm such a dimwit I've never managed to get them to work on my machine for some reason. Instead I've become very adept with the Windows emoji pop-up keyboard (Win+.)—it's really handy when grabbing the old emdash, particular characters, or slapping emojis into articles to really wind people up. I've also set Google Docs up to always give me an em dash when I double-strike the standard dash. Easy.

But for me, the mini keyboard is absolutely the way to go for gaming. No-one needs F keys in 2023 and the extra space afforded to your mouse hand by a small form factor board really works for me. Those lunatics who go super-minimal and pick a board without even a set of cursor keys? Man, those people are a lost cause.

Andy Chalk, News Lead: I'd like to try one, because my current keyboard is large and heavy and sometimes I think to myself, man, it would be nice if my keyboard wasn't so large and heavy. Maybe it would be, anyway. This is why I'd like to try one, because who knows? Maybe it'd suck! (I think the truth is that sometimes I'd just like to try a different keyboard.)

The one thing that would likely keep me from switching to a tenkeyless permanently is—just like everyone else—I use alt codes more regularly than you might think. When doing currency conversions for Steam sales, for instance, it's nice to be able to just blap out £ and € alongside $ without having to click into a dropdown menu, or whatever it is that people do when currency symbols aren't a regular part of their lives. The em dash is a big one too—(see, there it is)—I have OpenOffice set to auto-convert -- to — but I rarely use it because it doesn't work anywhere else (like Thunderbird, for example), so my reflex move when I need one is to use the alt code. I think I'd have a hard time giving that up.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I swapped to the Razer Huntsman V2 tenkeyless a few months back and I can't lie, I'm only sticking with it because the sound of the keys on my Razer Huntsman Quartz was starting to irritate me (and had been irritating the rest of my household for two years). I miss my numpad so much, it ruled! Especially as an MMO player, having access to as many keys as possible keeps my brain happy. There's no way in hell I could ever go smaller than a tenkeyless. What about your arrow keys? Your PrntScrn key? Those sweet sweet Alt codes? Only agents of chaos go for anything less than a 90% keyboard.

Phil Savage, UK Editor-in-Chief: Lotta small keyboard advocates up in here, and I've got to say: nah, I'm good thanks. As someone with such terminal MMO brain that I'll rebind inputs to fill up all available space, I just get too much use out of the default layout to consider cutting down. I could probably get by without F8. And 'ins' is doing nothing for me. But otherwise most of my keys are doing work as a timesaver for some niche MMO or sim. To be honest, my current keyboard doesn't feel uncomfortably big, so I've never felt the need to even try to live life without a number pad. Would a smaller board feel even better? Maybe. But if I never try one, I'll never know what I'm missing out on. 

From our forum

Kaamos_Llama: I had a 75% keyboard from 2014 or 2015 until a couple years ago, would still have one if the USB cable hadn't broke. I like having the extra desk space a lot. I used to miss a numpad occasionally but its been so long since I had one I've forgotten about them at this point.

The 2 I've had since then have been TKL, which are great, but there was something pretty sweet about having a really tiny keyboard too. It would take some time to get used to having a full size board again, and probably a bigger desk.

Brian Boru: Answer to your question is a big no—if that's not clear, let me clarify: NO.

I use my KB a lot, so every ounce of efficiency I can squeeze out of it makes a difference—mostly psychological of course, but hey, the inside of my head is where I live.

My KB is even bigger than 100%, got an extra row of media keys above the F keys, and an extra column on the left. I don't use all the extra keys, about 50%—cheap and programmable were the main draws.

[later in the thread] It's not in me to skimp on where I spend a lot of time. Can't see myself trying to sleep in a 65% bed.

Zloth: If I don't use an ergo-keyboard, my wrists start hurting after a few days. That means a big keyboard for sure.

EM dash? (google google) Oh, you mean the long dash! I guess the minus sign isn't good enough for some people.

Pifanjr: I've used a laptop without numpad before and I didn't like it. There were bigger problems with that keyboard than the missing numpad though.

I use the numpad of my current laptop quite a lot, but that's mostly because I lost the regular 6 key...

Colif: Sort of, I used one of these [Sidewinder X6 keyboard with modular numpad] for about 5 years and most of the time the numpad was unplugged.

Numpad could be attached to left or right side. I normally had it off. But ever since then I have used normal size keyboards

Lutfij: I have both, the X6 and X8, loved it so much that I wanted to complete the set with an X3 and X4 as well, the latter 2 are unused and even in their original packaging waiting to be unboxed.

Yep, the numpad when attached to the left, would double as a macro, made your keyboard feel like a pseudo TKL, move the mouse closer to the keyboard. This was before Asus decided to jump into the keyboard scene.

Currently, this is my daily driver; Keychron Q1v2(in Shell White), with a Retrogaming XDA profile keycap set that I sourced nearly a year ago.

PCG Dash: I use this tiny mechanical set from Logitech and have never run into any problems!

For games like The Sims 4 or Arma 3 (which need a few numpad keys by default for camera controls etc.) I can get by binding those functions to the emoji buttons down the right hand side.

DXCHASE: I love how some of the smaller compact keyboards look esp. the custom designed ones like the ones at computex this year I also like really clean looking setups with these wireless keyboards and mouses.

BUT I need a 100% full sized keyboard (WIRED!) with sound controls and all. It needs to be heavy duty too. I'm a big rough and tumble gamer and need my peripherals to match. Corsair K70 gang!

mainer: My answer is no. I've never considered using a tiny keyboard, and from my personal perspective, I just don't see any practical use for them. I prefer a full-sized keyboard with a padded wrist rest and numpad. I use the numpad constantly, especially outside of gaming, and a solid, padded, and attached wrist rest is important for me, in gaming as well as being a touch-typist (though I don't know if it's the "proper" form, I always rest my wrists on the wrist rest).

I also like the weight of a full-sized keyboard, especially if it has a metal frame, as I can "spaz-out" a bit in a real time action game without knocking the keyboard halfway across the desk. My current keyboard (and has been for the last 5 years or so) is the Corsair K95 RGB Platinum. Solid as a tank and has no issues, though the ICUE software from Corsair can be a bit flakey.

I'm not much of a multiplayer guy, especially now. My relationship with online gaming has always been: get into a game my friends are playing → get too into that game my friends are playing → my friends stop playing → now I'm just getting incredibly upset at strangers in solo competitive queue and eventually go back to single player RPGs. I have never once made a new friend by meeting them in a videogame or community around a videogame, though weirdly enough I have made a friend through Twitter of all places.

I know people do make friends through the games they play or their attending online communities though, with no real-world connections otherwise tying them together. My brother got so close to his Counter-Strike: Source clan mates that he drove out to meet one at a Ruby Tuesday in rural Michigan back in the aughts. Friendship can bloom, even on the battlefield!

Have you ever made a friend through a videogame? Here's our answers, as well as a few from our forum.

Tim Clark, Brand Director: Absolutely. I've been playing Destiny 2 with mostly the same rotating cast of clan mates for about six years. We don't swap pics, other than of pets and bbq food, so I've mostly never seen their faces, but we've spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours together, complaining about the game, trying to keep our tempers during day one raids, shooting the shit about perks, and new weapons, and plenty of real-life stuff too. I know there's a lot made about how it gets harder to make and keep friends as you get older, but for me—particularly as someone who's moved state multiple times—the stability of having a regular group of gaming pals has been a great blessing. 

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I've lost count of how many friends I've been blessed with thanks to Final Fantasy 14. They'll always hold a special place in my heart, even as I've stepped away from the MMO to focus on other games and hobbies. Not only was I lucky enough to join a lovely guild, but I was also able to make friends just by hanging out in the same spot in Limsa Lominsa every day. When I had Covid during New Year's Eve in 2021, my guildmates were the people to hang out with me, celebrating the arrival of 2022 in Discord while video chatting, drinking and mucking about in-game. It's a memory I'll never forget.

Even if we haven't played together for a few months, I still regularly keep in touch with a handful of them. Being able to take that friendship and still maintain it away from the thing that brought us close has been something I've really appreciated, and I'd consider them all as much a friend as anyone else in my life. I even bumped into one of my Limsa friends in real life after a concert last year. Talk about a small world!

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I literally grew up on top of a mountain, which made seeing my IRL friends a bit of an endeavour back when I was 13-15 years old, so I spent a lot of time messing about on the family laptop. It wasn't quite up to the task of rendering anything so resplendent as graphics, though, which meant all I could really play was Achaea, a text-based MUD, on the mighty 256 KB/s (on a good day) we had up there. I made plenty of friends and the occasional enemy, and spent a lot of sleepless nights chattering away with American guildmates, all of whom were the kind of amiable weirdos that still chose to play MUDs in the year of our Lord 2006. I've lost touch with most of them, save one, but the experience left its mark: My speech is still peppered with Americanisms I picked up from my Achaean pals, all of which sound absolutely ridiculous in my plummy, posh-boy British accent.

I don't play any MMOs now, though. They all have graphics. Gross.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I've made tons of friends online over the years, through and around games. Some were really fun, transient relationships -- shout out to GatoPescad0, who I met on a random Halo PC capture the flag server in like 2004, added on Xbox Live and reunited with for about two weeks with every new Halo release up through Halo 5. But I've also established some lifelong friendships through gaming forums—as I'm writing this I'm actually spending the weekend with a friend who I met through a Final Fantasy forum in the year 2005. Another of my closest friends, who I see a couple times a year, I met playing Halo 3 in college. Meeting people through videogames: highly recommended! 

It also makes me a bit sad that I don't think our current social media platforms are nearly as effective as fostering these kinds of friendships as the game forums and nascent online voice chat programs of the early 2000s were. Part of that is just the societal shift as a whole—being online was once an escape that it isn't anymore, and when you were escaping you tended to gravitate towards other people who felt out of place in their day-to-day lives. The centralized scale of social media and the follower-following structure is just not great at facilitating close friendships. That's one reason I'm glad to see Twitter dying and everyone rethinking how social media works in general right now. There's definitely a better way... and arguably we already had it figured out 20 years ago.

From our forum

McStabStab: In the year leading up to my first son's birth I went HARD into gaming. I knew my free time would soon be limited so I went all in. It started with PUBG and I joined a couple of discord servers that grew into communities of people that I would talk to and game with daily. We even got to the point that we were gifting each other games and helping out with other life projects (gofundme's and such). Some of the group was meeting in person but I always stayed away because I knew that it would all come to an end for me eventually (and you never know if someone could be HH Holmes).

I tried to keep gaming online after my kids were born but couldn't justify the use of time versus actual dad responsibilities, so I pretty much ghosted my group. Turned off notifications from the discord, went invisible on all communities, and that's all she wrote.

A few folks have reached out since then just to see if I'm alive, and I just tell them that life is crazy busy with kids... and it's the truth. I do much more single player gaming now, and if I am playing online I don't want people to see I'm on and expect me to commit to a match. I'm sure others have had the same experience.

DXCHASE: I've made friends but nothin like actual friendship-y. I played with a group of guys in HS semi-professionally in Ghost Recon and GR:Island Thunder but when those games faded, so did us playing together.

Currently I "run" a clan in Destiny 2 with a good majority of active players, but I havent really formed a "friendship" with any of them (even though I have tried on some occasions!) outside of my wife and son who are also in the clan. A lot of my play is either with them or solo outside of the occasional person asking for help, but it's not like we are friends and all.

Pifanjr: I have never made a friend through a videogame, but I have made friends through online games. Sort of, none of them lasted after I stopped playing.

I played in a West Marches style D&D campaign for about 2 years, until it slowly fizzled out when the main GM stopped being as engaged. I didn't keep in contact with any of the other players, though one of them did wish me a happy birthday last week out of nowhere.

I also played Mafia for quite a while on the forum where I met my wife. I actually met up with a couple of people I had gotten to know when I went on a trip to the USA. I stopped playing when life got busier, but I was still in a Discord server with people I used to play with. However, at some point I muted it and now I never check it anymore.

ZedClampet: I've made friends in games before, and we still chat occasionally over Steam. I stopped playing multiplayer games, so that doesn't happen to me anymore, but I may fire one up when my son goes away to college this fall, as I don't have any real world friends who game.

Colif: Yes, though it was on PlayStation.

I made a few playing Journey but I could never understand them, as in that game, the language options are limited to noises, and everyone had to use same "words". So I made friends with Japanese people and a bunch of others in that game. One feature of game made that sad... you can never play with people on your friends list... so it's a one off.

I have made friends with people via forums associated with games. I was in a PlayStation clan, I still sometimes talk to one of them. It splintered once PS4 came out.

mainer: Only indirectly. I only play single player games, or the single player campaign in some games that have multiple modes of play. Maybe it's because I'm an older gamer (69 years old in April this year), as there was no internet, no cell phones, no PCs, no consoles, and no games; outside of board games and whatever your imagination could produce back when I was in grade school through college. There are some, like "Skyrim Shirley", who overcame that barrier. That "barrier" isn't an excuse, but it has definitely been an influence on the types of games I play.

But I have made friends because I was a gamer and we connected because of that. As an example, I have 2 friends, both younger than me by 20+ years, and both married (and one of them with 4 children), while I'm just a single "old-guy". Yet we connected because we were all avid gamers of single player games, especially RPGs. We were able to form a bond through that experience that is still ongoing with frequent emails and sometimes meeting for lunch. Those relationships also have expanded into talking & caring about real life issues in our lives.

I remember the days of CRT monitors—beefy, chunky behemoths that made it so all but the most dedicated of warrior monks were one and done when it came to computer monitors. Now though, I feel like you're hard pressed to find a PC gamer who isn't operating off at least two screens, while the new work from home paradigm means that a laptop on one of those lifted stands paired with an external monitor is a common sight even on non-gamer desks.

PCG executive editor Tyler Wilde has mentioned that he focuses better with one monitor instead of the requisite 21st century hacker cave panel of panels. I would quietly scoff at this—"I don't get distracted, I'm built different!" I may not actually be built different. While working off my laptop recently I found I was getting stuff done way faster limited to a single 1080p screen. Without an extra 2,160 pixels of real estate to my left, I had to stay on top of how many tabs I had open and take care of tasks one at a time. When gaming, I find I often just leave my second monitor on the desktop—you have to alt tab to do anything on it, and don't we all just Google search for guides on our phones anyway?

Is life with multiple monitors actually better? Here's our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Lauren Morton, Associate Edior:  Life with multiple monitors probably isn't actually better but it's too late for me to quit now. I'm the hacker mode heathen who has a main monitor, one above it, and a vertical monitor beside them. Walking into my office is like every NCIS episode where Gibbs has to go ask Abby to match some fingerprints or whatever except I'm pretty sure she was managing to pull all that off with like two monitors, tops. So do I really need to see Discord, Slack, Tweetdeck, and my current Google Doc all at the exact same time? Probably not. Would I focus better without? Probably. But how else am I supposed to spend an evening if not playing a farm sim on my main monitor, barely paying attention to an anime on my top monitor, and watching a Discord stream of my mates yelling at Warzone on the third? 

Sarah James, Guides Writer:  Yes. I mean, I like to think it is. I can't actually imagine myself being restricted to one screen nowadays and constantly having to tab to different windows. I did it for a while, sure, I just feel like the majority of my day would be taken up with trying to find the right window, rather than actually writing. Like Lauren, I have my main monitor reserved for my Google doc of the moment or whatever game I'm playing, then my second monitor is for Discord, TweetDeck, Slack, and another browser window (with approx. 67,000 tabs open) for whatever I'm researching at the time. Unlike Lauren, I don't have a third monitor but if I did, I'd probably use it exclusively for Slack and Discord. Damn, that's actually a pretty good idea.  

Chris Livingston, Features Producer:  If I had my way my desk would look like a NASA control center with a monitor in every possible direction. It's not that I have so much going on I need every square inch to contain a screen—I don't have a high enough brain cell count to multitask. I just lose track of things if they're not full-screen. If I open a program and then later put a browser window on top of it and then open a folder on top of that, I'll completely lose track of the first thing I opened. I'm constantly reshuffling what goes where and minimizing window after window after window, it would just be easier if everything on my PC could open on it's own dedicated screen. That's not too much to ask, is it? 

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor:  When I used to use three monitors, I looked like an alarmed parrot all the time, snapping my gaze to one display after the other in an endless sequence: Discord, email, Twitter, email, Discord, Twitter, email, Discord. So I just use one monitor now. It's not so bad. It used to be that Alt-Tabbing out of a game was a dice roll—would it crash, would your whole system hang?—but on modern PCs it's usually trivial. I'm not sure it's made me better at focusing, though. I just open window on top of window on top of window, as Chris describes. 

Morgan Park, Staff Writer:  I was humbled a few months ago when my 10-year-old second monitor died and I was forced into simpler times. Some parts of my desktop life are better on a single screen—it's slightly easier to stay on task when distractions are more clicks away—but the downsides are starting to drive me up the wall. Tabbing away from our morning meeting on my single monitor has made me look like a fool several times as I bring up a story idea that Tyler W is already displaying for everyone to see. I can't watch my friends' Discord streams and play my own game at the same time anymore, which sucks but has made me a more active spectator. I'm constantly contorting windows into half pages, quarter pages, or little column pages that make every website look like a phone browser. Get me out of there! I need a monitor.  

Andy Chalk, News Lead:  I've been rolling with three monitors for a few years now and at this point I basically can't function with any fewer than that. It's essential for my job because I never have to take eyes off my Twitter feeds, Discord, or Slack, all vital tools for staying on top of everything that's happening. And it's essential for my after-hours personal life, because I never have to take eyes off my Twitter feeds, Discord, or Slack, so I'm always on top of everything that's happening. Is it essential to my psychological well-being? Probably not! But "concentration" isn't really my thing anyway, so from a purely functional standpoint, having lots of stuff to flick my eyes through works pretty well for me. I wouldn't go back. 

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor:  Life with two monitors is undoubtedly the best life, to the point I am considering adding a third vertical screen. My brain and screens have 40+ tabs open at any given time, with one screen for reading and one for writing on—including having Slack etc open on it—because my neurodivergent ass needs that level of structure to function. I do have a TV just to the right of my screens that I'll sometimes watch YT or have Spotify running from, so I guess I'm heading into fourth screen territory. Maybe I need more eyes? 

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor:  I only have one monitor, but when I finally went from 1080p up to 1440 and had room to comfortably keep two windows open side by side it changed my life. Taking notes while in a video call used to be a hassle, now it's a breeze. I can keep an eye on Slack while I work in a giant spreadsheet, or transfer stuff back and forth between two documents without a bunch of alt-tabbing. The temptation to get a second monitor and make things even easier is definitely there, but where does it stop? Will I end up like Adrian Veidt in Watchmen, divining the future by staring at a wall of screens? 

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer:  I am a needy little dual monitor baby and I refuse to go back. Every time I have to use a laptop, I have a proper moan because I hate constantly minimising and maximising windows. It's a small problem, I know, but for work it makes a huge difference for me. It's great being able to have notes and Slack open on one screen while I write away on the other. Even when I'm hanging out with pals and gaming, being able to have both Discord and my game visible at all times is a blessing. We're that friend group that streams everything we're doing, so I always enjoy glancing over to see what everyone else is up to while I tinker away in my own game. Even if I'm not in a voice call, it's great being able to quickly peep messages or have a YouTube video on the go while I'm grinding. Besides, my endless ream of Chrome tabs have to go somewhere. 

From our forum

Frindis: I'd say it is much better. I can have a spreadsheet open while playing ARPGs or multiple smaller windows while playing games where I don't need to be too focused. I actually won three PUBG matches while watching the Eurovision final, so I found that to be quite funny since I rarely don't win that much in the same timespan when I am just focused on one screen. I often watch streams/podcasts while I play semi-afk games, like Runescape, so having another screen with multiple windows open makes the entertainment value higher.

Rolfil: I've used a second monitor for over twenty years. Firstly when I did software development with a laptop. Having a larger second monitor then made coding and debugging a lot easier.

For gaming my second monitor is always smaller and usually has Opera open on it. Good for looking up hints for games if I get stuck, running the built in Spotify app or browsing the PC gamer forums. 

Recently I bought a 1440p, 31.5 inch MSI 1:1000 curved monitor which is fantastic as a primary monitor as it's much more immersive.

Alm: I don't game on multiple monitors but for work, having two monitors is more than 2x better. Also I can have WhatsApp and Halo running at the same time which is very handy.

Slasken: Definitely better. I have two ultrawides. Depending on the game I play, and I play a few laid back games, like in example Football Manager or Cities Skylines, I can have a video playing on one monitor, and the game on the other. Sometimes I have a guide up on one screen if I am playing an RPG/open world game. I don't think I can ever go back to one monitor.

Zloth: I don't have a second monitor for gaming. Windows-right-arrow and another desktop shows up if I really need to look something up. If I need to continuously look at something, the new Steam beta has that pin-a-note thing.

A second monitor for work is pretty handy but, for gaming, I just want to play my game - nothing else.

P.S. Careful opening up multiple tabs on your browser! You know where that ends up!

Brian Boru: Hugely better, similar to how color monitor is better than monochrome. I've had 2 for ~20 years, plus a brief spell with 3 which proved too much.

When gaming, I have mostly comms apps open on 2nd monitor so I'm aware if someone needs something. I work on the same PC, so of course for that 2 monitors is way more productive than just double one monitor.

I also like my little always-visible panel of gadgets on the 2nd monitor, like those we had on Windows 7—I'm on Win10. With main monitor on right, I have the Windows Taskbar vertical on its left side, so it's in between the 2 monitors. Little QoL things

Colif: I don't have space for 2 monitors. It took me long enough to adjust from a 28inch to 32inch screen, for a while my top left corner was ignored... I still mostly use the right side of screen. Never run browsers in full screen. Unless watching a video.

Two would be nice but I don't have anywhere to put the second one... and would be invented reasons to use it.

Pifanjr: Personally, I hardly use a second monitor if I have one. There are times where it's convenient, but those are pretty rare.

At work we have a wide, curved monitor that easily fits two windows next to each other if necessary, so I stopped using my laptop screen as a secondary screen. At home it's not worth the money to purchase a second monitor for the few times it would come in handy.

DXCHASE: This is a "depends on what you do" situation for me. For streamers and people who work at a PC? Absolutely it is, I see dual monitors being used by people who don't even know anything about computers because its easier to get work done.

As for me? No, 1 ultrawide (OLED) monitor is all I need for what I do, If I were to get into streaming I might run a second monitor, but right now my "second monitor" is my tv in which if I want to play from the couch, or watch a movie from the pc for family movie night etc. I'll plug it in and use it, but other than that I have no need for a 2nd monitor.

mainer: I've never used more than one monitor with my home PC, as I like a large, detailed screen, even if I have to sacrifice speed. My current monitor being 43", 4K, 60Hz takes up most of my desk; so even if I wanted to add a 2nd monitor, I just don't have the desk space. I've seen pictures of multiple monitor setups, and they look really impressive, but it's just not for me.

Productivity-wise, I can see the advantage in having a multiple monitor setup if you need to have several windows open at once, but I'm retired now so I'm not very productive. I do mod a lot of games, and often have a mod manager, various modding utilities, file explorer, and my browser open at once. In that situation I could see an advantage, but with a large screen I can maneuver around almost as well.

Gaming-wise, I think I would find it too distracting from my immersion in a game. I don't need to have any other app open and visible while I'm gaming. With a one big screen I'm in the game world, without twitching my eyes to another screen.

Sarafan: I use two monitors regularly. Actually it's essential in my work. I'm a news writer and columnist on one of the technology sites in my country. It sometimes requires to have dozens of web browser tabs open simultaneously while writing a text. I can't imagine switching windows every time I need to check something. Having two monitors makes it possible to have text editor open on one screen and a web browser or something else on the second. It's pure convenience and I'm so used to it that it's almost impossible for me to work on a laptop with a single screen.

On the other hand, I rarely use second monitor outside work. When playing games, informally browsing internet or watching streams I don't even turn the second screen on. I don't need it in these cases. Sometimes it can get useful when I need to consult something with the internet while playing a game, but I usually check it on the phone or very rarely use Alt+Tab. So in work it's essential, for entertainment quite unnecessary, but in general... yeah, life is better with a second monitor.

It's something you probably don't think too much about, how you go from crowbar to 9mm pistol to GEP Gun to The Blade of Kings in an FPS, but on a casual survey I was surprised at just how many mouse wheel switchers we've got on the PC Gamer Staff—it just seems so fiddly and clunky to me! I'm a ride or die number row arsenal manager, with the Q key in reserve as my go-to "switch to last weapon." 

This method is not without its faults though—with my right hand on the mouse, I heavily favor the left side of my keyboard by WASD. In really old-school FPSes with expansive arsenals that take up the whole row from one to zero, I find I'll favor the pistols and shotguns end of the spectrum while letting my BFGs and Riveters lie fallow.

Which is better, switching weapons with number keys or the scroll wheel? Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: When I'm playing an FPS with a mouse and keyboard, I really want to be moving my hands around as little as possible, so I do tend to prefer using the mouse wheel. It does depend, though, how long it takes weapons to switch, and how many weapons there are - if it's causing me a big delay in play, I'll probably give up and use the numbers instead.

The actual best solution, though, is when games have a weapon wheel you can bring up that pauses or slows the action while you pick your next weapon. Doubly so because, to be completely honest, I play FPS games with a controller more often than a mouse and keyboard these days. 

Jody Macgregor, Weekend Editor: In the early stages of an FPS where all you've got is melee and baby's first pistol—please don't give actual pistols to babies, this is a metaphor—then I'll use the mouse wheel to select them. But later on, once the arsenal accumulates and I somehow have five guns, a rocket launcher, a grenade launcher, and 15 medpacks I will never use in my various pockets and holsters, then I switch to the number keys. The wheel just doesn't feel precise enough. I guess I could switch to clicky-scrolling instead of the free-and-easy smooth style, if I was some kind of freak.

Robert Jones, Print Editor: I think I'm with Robin on this one. An option to bring up a weapon selection wheel with a button press is my overall favourite option, with the game action either slowed or stopped altogether while I browse my arsenal at my leisure. Like in Doom Eternal, where selecting your weapon is actually a welcome (albeit super brief!) respite from the non-stop bloody carnage. Then I'd say I favour number keys as, providing I can remember which weapon is assigned to which one, I can be quicker and more precise in weapon switching.

Andy Chalk, News Lead: Depends on the game. I've been playing a lot of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, which allows two ranged weapons and a melee, so I use the wheel to switch guns and the thumb button to throw hands. (I also find the wheel is better in general for fights against other humans, where standing still means a quick death, because I can switch weapons while keeping my fingers on the WASD keys.) For other games with bigger arsenals, I prefer the number keys—it's quicker and easier to go straight to the weapon I want, rather than having to riffle through them like I'm looking for a note in a file folder.

I'll also very occasionally use the weapon wheel popup in games I'm not familiar with, because I can't remember what the guns are and don't care enough to learn.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I'll accidentally mouse-scroll past my desired weapons a million times before I use numbers to switch out my kit. I find it way more finicky. I know you only have to move your finger from WASD for a fraction of a second, but my touch typing is genuinely awful and I usually end up missing the correct key anyway. Though as Robin and Rob said, a weapon wheel is the secret correct answer here. 

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: The correct answer here is: be taken unawares by an enemy, randomly flail at both your number row and mouse wheel in blind panic, accidentally select your melee weapon, and die.

But if I'm just nosing through my armoury in an idle moment, I'll do it with clean, precise numbers rather than the uncaring roulette of the mousewheel.

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: Seeing some shocking weapon wheel praise around here; once upon a time you'd be asked to leave the LAN party for that kind of talk. I'm not a very precise weapon switcher myself, though. I'd like to be a number switcher—efficient, precise—but my fingers are clumsy and I can never remember which number is which weapon, so I use the scroll wheel like a scrub. I like feeling the little click click clicks.

Phil Savage, UK Editor-in-Chief: In my heart, I know that using the keyboard to switch weapons is the objectively correct answer. It's quick. It's precise. It feels elite. Tapping a number to arrive at the exact tool you need in that situation? Badass. Every time I mouse scroll past the weapon I actually wanted and end up getting killed, I know in my heart it was because I still haven't taken the time to train the muscle memory needed for a keyboard swap to feel natural. 

The problem is a mouse scroll is just so easy. It happens with the hand that is already doing all the other things related to guns, like aiming and shooting. My left hand is too busy strafing, surely I can let my right hand handle this one? Oh, wait, it scrolled too far, to a heavy weapon that's out of ammo. That's me dead again. Damn.

From our forum

Frag Maniac: For me, it really depends on the game. Some games have really slow switching when using the scroll wheel, and I find these are usually games that are heavily console oriented, use a weapon wheel, and aren't ported well control wise to PC.

I find using number keys usually is faster, but in games like Doom Eternal that have a ton of weapons and gadgets, I find it's best to use a few keys close to the nav keys (which is WASD for me), and the mouse thumb buttons for the ones you use most.

That said, I'm perfectly OK with using the scroll wheel in games that don't have a ton of fast twitch, overt combat, like ones that are more stealth oriented.

Kaamos_Llama: I'm usually on the mouse wheel because its easy and I often hit the wrong one when I try to use the number keys. Like Frag Maniac, recently in Doom Eternal I was forced to practice with the number keys dues to the speed of it. I liked it a lot, but damn that game was fast and unforgiving.

Been playing Metal Gear Solid V recently and using the keys there too now I think about it, only 1-3 up to where I am now though, and obvs nowhere near as hectic as Doom Eternal.

Brian Boru: I don't go for melee or BFG style play, so my primary weapons are almost always an AR and a shotgun in slots 1 & 2. I have scroll wheel muscle memory deeply embedded for those two, which is necessary because I traverse mostly on foot.

When I need a sniper or bow or launcher weapon, I press the 3 or 4 key—it's almost never a time-critical move, so the delay of moving fingers from WASD to the correct key isn't an issue.

Selecting explosives like grenades, molotovs, etc. is always a KB job via keys 5-0, whereas weird or seldom-used stuff like a fishing rod or repair tool are weapon wheel material.

mainer: Hands down, it's the scroll wheel for switching weapons. It's much faster (for me) as I don't have to change either of my hands positioning, just slightly flex the middle finger on my right hand. Plus, I like to keep my left hand resting on the W-S-A-D keys and any other movement associated keys (ALT, Shift, CTRL, Space, ect). Depending upon the game, the list of keys my left hand is responsible for can be lengthy.

I'll still bind weapons to the number keys and use them occasionally, with the most frequently used ones in numbers 1-4. But trying to hit the 7-8-9-0 keys in the heat of battle is just way too cumbersome for me to be effective.

Frindis: I use number keys/other easy access keys for most of the more action-paced games I play that rely on swapping through several weapons or skills fast. If only a couple of weapons to cycle through, I'll use the scroll wheel.

Here is a fun fact: Did you guys know you could actually use the endless scroll wheel (Logitech G502 Hero got one) for shooting in some games? In the Battle Royale game called Super People for example (before it got patched) you could not only swap your weapons with the scroll wheel, but you could also shoot as fast as you could scroll the mouse wheel. Since it didn't stop when you scrolled, you could basically shoot some guns so fast that a semi-automatic weapon would literarily sound like an automatic weapon.

DXCHASE: Destiny 2 now kicks you out of certain places if you use your scroll wheel like that. I have the G502 and if i use it to cycle thru weapons fast in certain areas of the game (the commonplace called The Tower for example), i get kicked from wherever i am to orbit. Probably has something to do with Bungie thinking its cheating, but idk for sure.

As for the question at hand, I'm a numbers key guy. I have made mistakes that have killed me trying to switch with the scroll wheel (going by what i need/want at that moment for example) but I also like using Q as someone mentioned earlier.

We have a surfeit of mouse buttons these days, and I found myself wondering: "I know how I deal with this cavalcade of stupid buttons, but how about everyone else?" Call me old fashioned, but I'm a three, maybe four mouse button guy tops. Give me left, click, right click, a scroll wheel, and maybe a cheeky thumb button for when I'm feeling spicy. My current mouse has nine buttons, including two set for DPI shifting right next to left click. I kept accidentally going from 1600 to 1200 to 800 while furiously clicking on heads or ordering around my party, so I defied the brain trust at Logitech and disabled them completely. I'll use a thumb button for melee or a special ability on occasion, with the other one reserved for push-to-talk on the tail end of curry night when I don't want to go burping on the Discord call.

Meanwhile, I have a dear friend who's so hopelessly hooked on those weird mice with the full number pads on the side, he wouldn't even consider anything else when shopping around for a new one recently. For this Weekend Question I turned to the PCG staff and forums to ask:

What do you use those extra buttons on the side of your mouse for? Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Christopher Livingston, Features Producer: Whatever a game maps to the Left Alt key, I move to my mouse thumb button. I just find Left Alt to be too awkward to reach, a deadzone for my fingertips. Maybe in a farming game or something I'd leave it there, but an action game where it's got an important function (block/defend in Dead Island 2 is the only recent example I can really think of) I find it way easier on a mouse thumb button.

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: Thumb button is melee. In games which don't have a melee attack to bind to the thumb button, I just pretend. Boring dialogue? Melee it. Jump scare? Melee melee melee. Email I don't want to answer? Melee and I'm outta there.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: If anything, I need more mouse buttons. I currently have just two auxiliary buttons on my thumb, which I only just put to good use recently during the Diablo 4 beta. I often complain about hotbar style combat being boring but I'm ready to admit that part of my grudge is just that I'm bad at it. My left hand is a total farce of dexterity, fumbling around on the 1-4 keys and constantly losing my place. Diablo 4 puts a skill each on my left and right click by default and I added to that by putting another on my middle click and a fourth on one thumb button. Damn did it make a difference in my ability to chain skills. Clearly my left hand should only be trusted with WASD duty henceforth. I don't know if I want to map my entire hotbar to a thumb numpad but I am eyeing up the possibility of upgrading for a few more buttons.

Andy Chalk, News Lead: I'm of a mind with Ted on this one. I think my mouse has seven buttons, but I can only reach four of them comfortably and so that's all I use: Right-click aims, left-click shoots, middle-click interacts, and thumb button punches. (I also used Logitech's software to disable the DPI adjustment buttons because god dammit, those things are a pain in the ass.) For anything beyond that, I have a keyboard.

(I can't wait to read what Mr. "I've Been WASDing Wrong My Whole Life" has to say about this one...)

Editor's Note: Regrettably, PCG Senior Editor Wes "I've Been WASDing Wrong My Whole Life" Fenlon was unavailable for comment in time for publication. Andy's throwing of the gauntlet remains unanswered.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I've long since come to accept that my caveman brain is incapable of keeping track of more than left click, right click, and a scroll wheel, so the function of the extra buttons on my gaming mouse is mostly getting hit accidentally. Honestly even beyond the struggle of remembering what they all do, my experience has been that none of these mice have figured out actually comfortable and natural positions for extra buttons—it's never felt comfortable or intuitive to me to use them, they always seem to require an awkward claw position to hit reliably. Death to extra buttons, I say. 

Sarah James, Guides Writer: World of Warcraft. I don't just play WoW, obviously, but it's the only game I've ever bothered to keybind the nine extra buttons on my mouse that I regularly use. I actually have twelve extra buttons, but I've never been able to reach the top row comfortably, so I just pretend they aren't there.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend Editor: My current mouse is a Logitech MX Anywhere 2. It's got two thumb buttons but no middle-click, which is bullshit. Clicking the scroll wheel just switches between smooth scrolling and the clicky kind, so I set one of the thumb buttons to middle-click to be able to block in Ghostwire: Tokyo, deconstruct whatever slapdash shack I tried to put together in Valheim, or whatever else a game maps to middle-click. The thumb buttons never feel right though, and thank goodness Ghostwire: Tokyo has a dodge now so I don't need to block. If I played more MMOs I'd probably get used to using them, but I'm too much of a dilettante to do that and so they feel awkward and my thumb keeps slipping off when I need it.

Robert Jones, Print Editor: Despite using the streamlined perfection of a Razer DeathAdder for what is now the best part of, literally, decades, and only using a typical three-button plus scroll wheel configuration almost always, I've still got a real soft spot for ridiculous rodents that have more buttons than an elevator in the Burj Khalifa and look like a Transformer. I'm talking about pure pwnage machines like the Mad Catz R.A.T. 8+, which offers PC gamers the idea of a gaming mouse as doodled by a bored 10-year-old in a maths lesson. The R.A.T. 8+, for example, has eleven programmable buttons, a barrel scroll wheel, a 16,000 DPI sensor, a customizable weights system, and modular body panels. And the look is a splendid mash-up of 2000s-era gaming peripheral design where less was never an option, and a mouse from the year 2077. The thing is, though, as Dirty Harry famously said, "A man's got to know his limitations", and my limit in terms of gaming mice buttons is definitely three, not eleven, and I rarely go over 3200 DPI in terms of sensor sensitivity. Razer and Mad Catz, I'll expect my cheques in the mail.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I'm one of those super annoying people with a different mouse for each occasion. I always have my Razer Naga and my Razer Basilisk plugged in to swap between at any time. The former gets used when I play Final Fantasy 14 or Guild Wars 2, though I only use the top two rows because my hands are hopelessly small. Playing MMOs with a purpose-built mouse has been a game changer for me, and I don't know how I'd have coped through hundreds of hours of raiding without it! I love my chunky little numpad friend. Most of my general browsing and other games happen on my Basilisk since it's lighter and a tad more ergonomic. I usually bind those buttons to stuff like reloading or melee attacks—if an action feels super annoying or uncomfortable to perform with my left hand, to the mouse buttons it goes.

From our forum

Alm: I stubbornly don't use the side buttons. I stick to l-click, r-click and mouse wheel. And I occasionally accidentally hit the sensitivity buttons too.

mainer: I've never used the side buttons on any mouse, and I prefer a heavier mouse that isn't loaded with a bunch of buttons that I'll never use. Left mouse button, right mouse button, and scroll wheel are all I need in a game. I've been using Rats for years, with my current "mouse" being a Rat 8.1. Only three left side buttons which I never use. There is one button, right behind the scroll wheel that controls DPI on the fly, and I will occasionally use that in game. All the other controls are for weight adjustment, length, and side panels; so it fits & feels perfectly in my hand.

Slasken: I use one of them for the escape key.

Excellent for a laidback time on YouTube going out of fullscreen, or in games when you can't be bothered to move your finger the three centimeters to hit the esc key.

Brian Boru: Current mouse is the original Logi MX Master, with a spare for whenever this one wanders off to double-click heaven. 8 buttons in all, of which I use 5: LC, RC & scroll on top; Side scroll for Front & Back moves, plus one of the clicky ones for Paste when I don't want to move finger to KB shortcut.

Work is my #1 priority, but this works great for my gaming also as I have the DPI fixed at 800 if I recall correctly, which keeps headshots rolling in

Zloth: I've just got a couple of thumb buttons. They mostly go unused but, when they're needed, they are very handy! If I need more than those two buttons, it's probably time to pull out the game controller.

Pifanjr: My wife bought a mouse with a bunch of extra buttons after she started playing World of Warcraft seriously, because her guild members kept telling her she would need it. She still hasn't started using them and recently got the achievement for getting a 2000+ Mythic+ rating, so it seems to me they're overrated.

I do occasionally use one of the side buttons. In Vermintide 2 I mapped one of them to the tag function, because otherwise I would forget to tag stuff or not be able to in the middle of combat. I've also mapped it to the melee attack, grenade throw or going prone in other games.

ZedClampet: I always use ambidextrous mice with buttons on both sides, and I remap important keys to them. For instance, I don't want to ever take my hand off the mouse, so anything that would require my right hand while typing gets put to the mouse, like "M" for map, "J" for journal, "I" for inventory, etc. Sometimes, like in V Rising, I put all my specials on the mouse buttons. They are just easier to hit for me.

Colif: Mine has 3 buttons on the left side that I have never used. Front one is actually disabled, whereas other 2 are forward/back on webpages I think.
I generally only use the left click, right click & scroll wheel. I only use the cpi toggle if I have accidentally clicked it already. The faster speed on mouse only really exists for when I am in bios.

neogunhero: I like having just two buttons on the side for my thumb, I don’t want more than two. I like using the back one for changing firing modes in FPS games, or for accessing my favorites menu in Skyrim. The front button is used for changing optics (canted iron sights or zoom level), or to quick cast a healing spell. Each button is multifunctional for different kinds of games.

Johnway: I have the razor basilisk which gives me 3 side buttons. The top button that slows down your DPS (to make super accurate shots) i never use. it doesn't do anything for me and i've never needed to use it. Plus its sort of too far for my thumb to use.

The other side buttons get a lot more use. Outside of gaming, its merely the forward and back buttons when browsing the web. When i play games the use for the keys are more varied depending on the game tbh. At a basic level its the "use" button. So i can free up the E or F key. other times i bind grenades or recovery. On some occasions, its the melee key or they are for special abilities that are the most useful or too far away from the keyboard that i have to lift my hand off to press(so generally anything in the 5 key - 0 keys)

Rolfil: I have a Steel Series Rival 300 which is a pretty standard mouse. It's right hand only (I'm actually left handed but never got on with using a mouse in my left hand.) and has two side mouse buttons.

I normally just use the side button nearest my wrist. If it's a game with a lot of jumping involved then I use it for that, I find it much easier than hitting the right spot on a massive space bar.

For Path of Exile I if I'm using a Mana Flask I have it mapped to that. If not I have it mapped to my Quicksilver Flask.

If I'm using Push to talk on Discord then I use the other side mouse button.

We love the way our plucky little computers are just scraping by, glorified DIY projects that somehow run the latest and greatest games. When we're in a good mood, we'll say it's a fun quirk of the hobby. The first time it all goes wrong though, a failure to boot, maybe some sparks flying, well that's a right of passage isn't it? 

For this Weekend Question I turned to the PC Gamer staff and forums to ask about the times it all went wrong, and printed below are their accounts of character building disasters on the front lines of PC building.

What's been your worst PC building catastrophe? Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Cleaned my CPU with coffee machine descaler. I'll be taking no further questions at this time. Thank you.

Okay, fine. Look, in my incredibly intricate personal filing system that you couldn't possibly understand, both my plain white bottle of 99% isopropyl alcohol and my plain white bottle of mysterious fluid that obliterates coffee machine limescale live side-by-side. In harmony. Normally, this is not a problem, but one bleary-eyed evening I happened to be installing a new CPU cooler on my machine, and well, I picked up the wrong one. 

I'd love to say something like "I immediately realised how weird it was that the thermal paste was being a real pain to scrub away" or "I couldn't have failed to notice that the liquid wasn't evaporating with quite the alacrity I'm used to," but I'd be lying. I scrubbed the hell out of that chip, replaced the cooler, and only noticed something was amiss when my system failed to boot. It was at that point that my gaze alighted on the bottle and I realised my error.

No harm done in the end, though. I just took off the cooler, took out the CPU, and constructed a majestic contraption whose purpose was to angle a hair dryer at the chip socket for a period of 25-35 minutes. Then I put everything back together and the machine sprang to life, cooler and also limescale-free.

Those bottles still live next to each other in my kitchen cabinet.

Andy Chalk, News Lead: I've been fortunate enough to avoid any super-major hardware catastrophe in all the years I've been playing on PCs. I think the biggest headache I've run into was a failed BIOS flash. It's been a long time and so the details are faded and lost, but I was pretty big into overclocking back in the days of the Duron and Celeron, and one day while cavalierly messing with forces I didn't fully understand, I bricked my motherboard. 

Not the biggest deal ever, except that this was in the pre-Amazon days (it existed, but was not the behemoth it is today) and I live in a small town, so my only option for replacement was to wait several days for some random online hardware dealer to ship me one, or make the hour-long drive (one way!) to the nearest retailer—which is what I ultimately did. There was much bad language involved, and money I could ill afford, but I'm sure I learned a valuable lesson. No idea what it might have been, though.

Robert Jones, Print Editor: Many years ago I used to have a summer job building PCs while at university, a role that educated me quite well in the noble art of rig construction, so I've never actually broken a PC or component during a build (fingers crossed that continues!). However, I have fried numerous components through overclocking. I've killed a GPU, RAM, a motherboard and numerous PSUs over the years and, let me tell you, the feeling of going from a fully working PC to a bricked case of burnt-out silicon through your own lust for a few extra frames is truly gutting. 

Luckily, most overclocking today is much easier and safer thanks to decent software and bios options, so I've not had an OC failure for almost a decade now. Plus, being honest, I just don't see the need to overclock anymore as the needs of even today's most demanding AAA games, providing they've not been released as an unoptimized mess, are way behind modern PC gaming hardware, meaning you don't need to be running your system with the case door off just for them to be playable.

Jorge Jimenez, Hardware Writer: Diablo 2 melted my first PC. As a kid, I had one of the case fans on my PC crap out on me one summer when I played too much Diablo 2, which would overheat and shut down. Since I didn't have any money to replace the fans, I ripped them out and replaced them with a tiny desk fan I stole from my dad's office that clipped onto the top of the PC case and blew air into the opening. I didn't know anything about proper airflow, but you know what? It worked! 

For about a month, that is. I hadn't realized that were other issues going on when you try to run a fairly demanding PC game on a PC that didn't meet the minimum requirements by a long shot, and the PC basically died of exhaustion. I'd be sued for PC gaming malpractice if I were a doctor. Thankfully, my folks got me a proper gaming PC the following year when I was a freshman in high school. 

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: My CPU started overheating while I was reviewing Sea of Thieves. After some frantic investigation, which included putting my ear next to the CPU to try to hear the problem, I concluded that the pump in my closed-loop liquid cooler had died. I ran out to a computer parts store (they still exist!) and bought the same cooler, because what were the chances of getting two duds? Maybe a year later: dead pump. Your experience with AIO liquid coolers may vary, but with my CPU about ready to give up the ghost after so much stewing in standing water, I junked it and built a new PC with a big-ass Noctua heatsink and dual fans. I've never looked back.

Dave James, Hardware Lead: My first PC build was the most problematic, though not the most catastrophic. I was but a child when I undertook building a PC from parts my brother and I had specced out. This was in the days of motherboard jumper switches dictating clock speeds and Cyrix Intel CPU analogues. I spent a good few years bug fixing that machine and I never ever loved it.

But years later, I had one I did love. While working on PC Gamer's mag progenitor, PC Format, my main rig had evolved into a monster with twin Titan GPUs. The first brushed aluminium beauties were glorious cards, back when $700 for a GPU was a lot of money.

In a fit of hubris I decided to upgrade to a new, larger slightly prettier chassis. By now I'd built innumerable PCs from scratch without issue, but this time, for reasons still unknown I flipped the power switch at the end of the build and one Titan popped, fizzed, and expelled a terrible pall of acrid smoke.

I'd turned it into little more than a Titanic paperweight for no good reason beyond useless aesthetics.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Back when PC Gamer still had a big office in San Francisco, there were always enough parts lying around to throw together a PC or three, so I'd sometimes just build one on a whim as a little Friday afternoon treat. I think at one point most of us in the office were working off of PCs that I built, and this usually went off without a hitch. But one afternoon I put a system together in about 45 minutes, feeling pretty pleased with how fast I was... until I pressed the power button and nothing happened. 

Over the next hour and a half I checked every cable, swapped out the RAM and boot SSD, the graphics card, the power supply, and nothing worked. Finally I ripped out the motherboard, removed the CPU, and put it in another board we had sitting around—and it booted no problem. The ASRock motherboard, which was new-in-box—untouched!!—had arrived dead. Don't think I'll ever forgive ASRock for making me check every component of that rig in vain.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I'll keep it short. My partner ordered a new power supply for her little Dell machine. The whole thing seemed a little sketchy since the propriety Dell PSU had a name that was just numbers and letters and we weren't 100% sure it was the right one. I got a lot more sure when I plugged it in, everything started to spark and smoke, and the GPU caught fire. I panicked and carried it out to the patio. Mission failed.

From our forum

Brian Boru: I've only had a couple of boom-booms, both with same components, both within months of each other, around 20 years ago.

If you built PCs back then, then you've heard of the infamous exploding capacitors. I hadn't heard until the motherboards in both our PCs went boom, one event also taking out a HDD.

I quickly learned the advantage of making sure my components used Japanese capacitors—the duds were all Chinese as far as I know. There was a lot of talk about industrial espionage being involved, with someone stealing an incomplete formula to start the debacle!

Kaamos_Llama: I have a couple, although one is less a catastrophe than noob mistakes.

Sometime in the mid late 2000's I bought a second hand Radeon X1950XTX off Ebay and installed it in the Dell XPS I had at the time. Everything worked fine, for a few weeks. At some point I realized that it wasn't performing in games and when I opened up the case I could see the fan was barely spinning. Obviously I had no idea what I was doing and after a bit of searching online downloaded some sort of fix that forced the card to go to full clockspeeds. At that point the screen threw out some nice pink and green artifacting, and then went black. Funnily enough the card never worked again after that.

The second, more minor one happened when I built my first system from scratch, I put it all together and proudly took pictures. Took a few days to realize that the PSU was upside down. The label should have been a clue. Bonus points for spotting the case fans behind the HDD cage are backwards and the front fans were exhausting as well.

Check out this beaut!

Colif: I left the sticky tape that held the heat sink onto fan, on when installing CPU. It didn't take us long to figure out. That was almost 20 years ago now. I still remember.

Normally get someone to help when making now, hopefully we both don't miss silly things. Last time I missed that we had installed 2 fans in as intakes when they should have been exhausts. Took until I replaced the fans this year to notice our error. It hadn't really broken anything.

Alm: I seem to remember buying a motherboard on my first build about 20 years ago that wasn't recommended by the CPU manufacturer (AMD). And when I eventually had problems with it there was no support because it wasn't on the list of recommended motherboards. That was the only real nightmare trouble I've had though. I learnt a lot on my first build.

neogunhero: You know how some older case fans came with 2 types of connectors, one that plugged directly into the motherboard and another, alternative one that plugs into the power supply?

After I thought I finished connecting everything perfectly, my PC would not power on. The RGB lights were turning on for a few seconds before going out, so it was getting power to it…

Turns out I created an infinite power loop where it would send power into my computer and right back out. All because I used both connectors on all of my case fans. Needless to say, using only one of two of those power connectors did the trick and it booted right up.

Against all odds we made it to 2023! And while the holidays can be filled with travel and trips, family gatherings, and social obligations, it can also be a fine time to hunker down and play some games.

Not everyone gets a nice long holiday vacation, of course, but we hope you found at least a little time to ring in the new year with some extended PC gaming sessions. If so, what did you play? One of 2022's best games? A game that's been in your library for years that you finally had time for? An old favorite you wanted to revisit? Or did you just keep on playing the game you've already sunk dozens of hours into?

Either way, we'd love to know in the comments. Here's what the PC Gamer staff played over the holidays:

Cult of the Lamb, Melatonin, Dorfromantik, Bear & Breakfast

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor: Through the magic of the Steam Deck I got through a handful of games over the break. My most played holiday videogame was Cult of the Lamb—turns out what I've wanted in a game this whole time is Animal Crossing with more ritual sacrifice. Or The Binding of Isaac but cuter.

Melatonin is just one of those rhythm games that you pick up and don't put down until you've finished it. And Dorfromantik offers such a chill vibe it's a perfect fit for the holiday season. I've also been getting into the Airbnb game in Bear & Breakfast, though I've still got a ways to go before I'm a woodland property magnate.

Generally what I've really loved about all the games above is how respectful they've been with my time. Even in the games I had expected more of a grind for resources or upgrades or what have you, there wasn't much of one. They're all so easy to pick up for an hour, maybe even thirty minutes, and feel like you've made progress and experienced something, you know, fun. Of course, the Steam Deck made it all possible. I doubt I'd have played any of them if I had to go sit at my PC all alone.

Cult of the Lamb

Tim Clark, Brand Director: It takes a lot to drag me away from the Destiny 2 loot grind/death march, but I've also been playing Cult of the Lamb, mostly on Steam Deck despite some slowdown issues. I can't get over how gorgeous and coherent the whole occult-meets-cutsie aesthetic is. It makes me want to lift the little animals off the screen and pop them into my mouth. Which would probably be more kind than what I have been doing. To be fair, I try to be a beneficent cult leader. The flock demand a mandated day of rest? Sure, I guess. A follower wants to try eating poop? I'll rustle that right up. 

I've even used dark rituals to resurrect my favourite spouse several times, which has to be peak Mr. Wife Guy behaviour. But if you turn up at my polycule of anthropomorphized furballs preaching any form of dissent, expect a sacrifice before sundown. Honestly, though, had I not been too idle to write a 2022 Personal Pick, mine definitely would have been Cult of the Lamb. The blend of roguelite dungeoneering and satanic base management is pitched so perfectly that it's surely going to be a future classic.  

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, Midnight Suns

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: I want to say I played The Witcher 3 for two weeks solid but I bounced between XCOM 2: War of the Chosen and Midnight Suns. Stupid sexy Blade.

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Stevie Ward, Community Manager: Can you believe I’ve not played this absolute gem of a game already? Strategy, talking worms, and with Ice magic abilities and custom character creation I get to live out my Elsa fantasy. The co-op has been brilliant and I lost whole days to it over the holidays. I’m not much of a crafter so I’m going high wits and persuasion and hoping my partner levels up their archer and warrior to where I don’t need to worry about much other then triumphantly singing "let it go" while I ice those bad guys and smugly heal the party from a distance. A cold never bothered me anyway. 

Warhammer 40K: Darktide, Battlesector

Jody Macgregor, AU/Weekend Editor: I had a very Warhammer 40,000 holiday. My zealot in Darktide has a boltgun now, ho ho ho. After hitting max-level with a sharpshooter, going through it again really made clear how front-loaded the story stuff is. The prologue's wonderful, then it dumps you into the actual game and from then on almost every cutscene is someone repeating that you're shit and they don't trust you yet.

It feels like the story's conclusion got punted off into the distance to be theoretically delivered via future updates, which is like every live-service game I guess. Not a fan of that, but the moment-to-moment bolter/axe action is intense and the mid-mission banter is better written than those cutscenes with the crew, so I'm still having a good time.

I also went back to 40K turn-based strategy game Battlesector. A horde survival mode versus daemons was added as a free update, and there's a new DLC that lets you play the Sisters of Battle. Combining the two is a good time, enhanced by the way Battlesector blends its musical themes together. While the daemons are rushing in it's all heavy metal chug, then it goes choral and uplifting for the nuns with guns. You hit end turn, and the guitars kick in again. It's like the musicians are dueling at the same time you are.

Space Marine, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Just before the break I updated our guide to the best Steam Deck games to include Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance... which, of course, just made me want to play Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance all break, slicing my way through every cyborg on earth while listening to nu-metal. First I had to finish 2011's Space Marine, which I started last month after Darktide stoked my interest in getting deeper into Warhammer 40K, to Jody's delight. Space Marine was a good time, but it's a bit simple as melee action games go and really just made me hungrier for Revengeance's action. Over the last few days I finally got a few hours deep into Rising and brushed up on my parry skills. A veteran Konami Metal Gear producer said ambiguously in Famitsu that 2023 will be a year of "many announcements," and I pray that one of those is Platinum making Revengeance 2. The world deserves it.

I've also dug into Stranger of Paradise with PC Gamer's Mollie Taylor as a co-op partner, and that game is a delightful mess. The story is confusing as hell—no one seems to agree on whether Chaos is a made-up fairy tale or some dude we can actually kill—but the action is just as good as I'd expect from a Team Ninja game. It really feels like Nioh Lite: breezy action-RPG combat where you accrue job levels at lightning speed and are constantly slotting in new abilities and gear. It layers on about a dozen combat systems that it doesn't explain to you at all, but once I started blindly feeling my way through I found a really fun game at the center. I expect to have more to say about this chaotic gem in a few weeks.

Hell is Others

Andy Chalk, US News Lead: It was a very non-gaming holiday for various reasons, and the little time I put into playing went entirely to Hell is Others, my personal pick for 2022. The queue times were occasionally brutal, the sad byproduct of declining player numbers, but the gameplay is ideal for short, sharp sessions where everything goes right or wrong in ten minutes or less. I even put some human hearts in my mini-fridge! Which is to say, I scored a couple PvP kills. I don't generally do PvP but other players picked fights and I got lucky. Made friends with one of them afterwards on Twitter, so that was a nice holiday bonus.

Horizon: Forbidden West, Hunt: Showdown, and D&D

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: My partner had the week off with me during this holiday break, so I spent most of my time away from keyboard. Other than a few great late night Hunt: Showdown sessions, it was a big week for me and my PS5. After 70 hours I finally finished Horizon: Forbidden West's story, checked off darn near every side quest, and then went after the platinum trophy since I wasn't ready to stop shooting parts off metal monsters yet. That's an incredible game if you're not yet sick of 2010s open world design. I was for a while, but Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, and Horizon brought me back. Forbidden West is easily the best-looking game I've played, too, so I eagerly await a PC version. 

Our weekly D&D session went pretty well—my ranger friend tamed a wyvern and I stabbed a guy in the back Dishonored-style. 

Len's Island, Stranded: Alien Dawn, Poker World

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I had planned to play open world survival game Len's Island through the break, but I started a few days before vacation and beat the third and currently final boss after about 20 hours of play. It's in Early Access, so hopefully more will be added soon because it's genuinely a lot of fun and I'd like to spend more time with it.

I moved onto Stranded: Alien Dawn, the Early Access colony builder which I've gotten quite invested in over the break. Managing my four little former astronauts has been an enjoyable struggle as they craft and farm, improve their skills, battle giant alien bugs, and occasionally lose their tiny minds and go on eating binges before puking all over the floor of the base.

Also I played a lot of poker on my phone for the days where I was too lazy to even get off the couch and sit down at my desk. But that's what holidays are for.

Marvel Snap, Marvel's Midnight Suns

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: Honestly I didn't play many games this break. For the first week I was brought low by one of the countless winter bugs that's going round at the moment, and all I could manage was feebly earning a few cubes in Marvel Snap. I love that it's quick and simple enough for a disease-addled brain to handle, but still engaging enough to not just feel like a grind—it's the perfect thing for just dipping into for 15 minutes a day. Though I am getting pretty wary of its ever more shocking microtransactions...

After that, I spent a big chunk of time away from my hardware while I was visiting family, and I ended up reading a load of comics instead. I love using Marvel Unlimited on my tablet—it makes it so easy to jump around different series as I futilely try and catch up on all the different crossovers and events. I ended up re-reading a big chunk of Jason Aaron's Thor comics, which are excellent, even if doing so just makes me freshly angry about Thor: Love & Thunder. 

I guess this is basically going to be an extended advert for Marvel and its many fine offerings, because when I was reunited with my PC, it was Marvel's Midnight Suns that sucked up all my gaming time. I'm at a point with it now where, much as I'm still enjoying it, I can sense that I need to start pushing for the end before I get sick of it. Slapping Hydra goons and flaming demons around is still as satisfying as ever, but the missions do repeat just a little too often—it feels like it's crying out for a big expansion that adds a third faction or something to really mix things up in the endgame. Anyway, I'm hoping to get that polished off before the rush of new 2023 games kicks off in earnest! Maybe after that I should get really into DC... 

Warhammer 40K: Darktide, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Return to Monkey Island

Robert Jones, Print Editor: My festive spirit has been on a bit of a rollercoaster ride this winter holiday. I've stuck a good chunk of time into Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, but not as much as I wanted to due to it crashing on me at every opportunity. My record for crashes in a single mission was seven returns to the desktop. I may have sworn more than once, too.

Elsewhere, I jumped back into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt after its big ray-tracing patch in December, only to be frustrated that my rig's Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090Ti couldn't prop up my otherwise mid-range system enough to get a playable framerate when I turned the graphics up to Ultra+. At least Geralt's feet were nicely illuminated while he bathed in the tub.

Finally, I revisited Guybrush and chums in Return to Monkey Island, which is just as delightful as the classic original games in the series. Some of the puzzles have got me seriously, sometimes frustratingly, scratching my head for a solution, too, which is exactly as it should be for a point-and-click adventure game.

Total War: Warhammer 3 and The Witcher 3

Sean Martin, Guides Writer: I'd been holding off doing a crisis mode campaign in Total War: Warhammer 3 (with all of the endgame scenarios enabled) because I reasoned that the holidays would be the perfect time to buckle down and try to deal with the apocalypse. The problem is, I'm far too changeable when it comes to Total War.

At first I reasoned that Archaon would be the perfect pick; why not fight the new endgames with the old endgame? I vassalised most of the world and made it their problem instead. Then I hopped into an Imric campaign thinking that an army of legendary dragons might be better... then a Faye Enchantress host of Grail Knights... then a Gor-Rok and Lord Kroak Saurus stack. I came to the conclusion that I struggle to play Total War campaigns for more than 150 turns if they're not extremely fun, or some kind of weird experiment like that time I gave Fellhart 25 Black Arks. 

Luckily, the next-gen update of The Witcher 3 was waiting in the wings so I figured I'd play a little. Next thing I knew I was sailing to Skellige and the holidays were over. While there's so much to love about that game, I forgot how brilliant it is at weaving quests and characters to tell the story of a place and its conflicts/tensions. Even though I've played it before, I found myself engrossed all over again.

Disco Elysium, Stray

Katie Wickens, Hardware Writer: I'm finally save scumming my way through Disco Elysium, which isn't a very festive game to have been playing over the holidays, I know, but anyone who knows me will appreciate that every day is Halloween for me. I did have a little go on Stray over the break, which has been quite a welcome break from the morbidity of Revecholian life. Especially when the family cat, Tiddles, decided to join in. 

Phasmophobia, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Sky: Children of the Light

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I didn't clock too many hours actually gaming this holiday. Most of my time was spent on devouring an entire trilogy of books while I afk farmed pumpkins in Disney Dreamlight Valley and chased down Elsa to join my village. I put in an evening on Phasmophobia, which is still a great low-key way to spend a couple hours with my siblings even though every interface update it gets seems to be a 'two steps forward one step back' kind of affair. I also put in a bit of time in Sky: Children of the Light on my Switch after having my moan about wanting weirder MMOs to exist. I stand by it and I think Sky is a neat subversion of the genre even if it doesn't call itself an MMO. It's still allegedly coming to PC at some point, so I'll hassle you all about it harder someday.

Marvel's Midnight Suns

Jorge Jimenez, Hardware Writer: I beat Marvel's Midnight Suns and became obsessed with maxing out my relationship with each of the heroes. I was having a hard time bonding with Spider-man so I gave him a ton of snacks until we became best friends. 10/10.

Vampire Survivors, Death Stranding, Lego Marvel Superheroes

Richard Stanton, Senior Editor: Bit of a grab-bag, but I started off the holiday season by writing about Death Stranding, which made me want to play Death Stranding again, and before you know it I was halfway up a mountain soothing a baby with a supermarket on my back. I'd also been meaning to check back in on Vampire Survivors, given the pace of updates, and found it even more frenetic and fun than ever: this really was the surprise package of 2022 for me.

But for most of the holiday it was kiddie time and a full house, which rather nixed any hopes of Elden Ring NG++. The festive go-to was Lego Marvel Super Heroes, which I bought on boxing day because my son likes a cartoon along the same lines. The game's nearly a decade old but it has split-screen co-op and most importantly the Hulk, so most of my gaming time this holiday season was spent suppressing the inner urge to gripe about the endemic design flaws in Lego games while having a brilliant time teaching my kids to fly around as Iron Man. 

The Case of the Golden Idol and more Overwatch 2

Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: Everyone was right about The Case of the Golden Idol. I finally sat down and poked around in it long enough to see it through. I'm not great at these types of games but I had the time to sit with each scene and scenario and think about it while on break. I didn't expect the game to have such a clear view on history, class, and faith and how all of those intertwine, and be able to communicate that through a rabbit hole of increasingly bizarre scenes. Oh, and the music is stellar, too.

I continue to play Overwatch 2 for some reason. I'm broken and can't be fixed. The game's second season and Winter Wonderland event are pretty mid, but it's fun to press the buttons in this game and I will never be free from that desire. 

Originally published in 2020.

The nice thing about this question is there's really no wrong answer, because every year is a great year for PC gaming. Maybe you're especially a fan of 2007's Orange Box, Bioshock, and Crysis, or you really love 2015 because it brought us The Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid 5, or you think Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, and The Sims 2 helped make 2004 the best year for PC gaming ever.

Like I said, there's no wrong answer!

But it's still something to discuss and argue (hopefully politely!) over: What was the best year for PC gaming? Below you'll find answers from our staff as well as some from the PC Gamer forums. Let us know your favorite year, and why it's the best, in the comments below.

1999

Evan Lahti: '99 is a religious moment for competitive FPS players over the age of 30. Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament formed a new era for competitive FPS. You might think of them as a similar style of game, but they were built on opposing philosophies. Quake 3 was defined by its purity: its weapons were simple, but in the hands of athletic players, they were paintbrushes for pain that could be combined with an elegant movement system. In contrast, UT looks like the Canyonero: a rocket launcher stuffed inside a grenade launcher, an attack-and-defend mode that played out like a castle siege, mutators, low gravity railgunning, Chainsaw Melee, a gun that lobbed piles of poison goo. 

Throw in Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike (the mod, at least), and 1999 is unquestionably the primordial pool from which most current competitive shooters were spawned. I guess some other stuff came out that year too: System Shock 2, Everquest, Planescape Torment, Homeworld, Age of Empires 2, Alpha Centauri, and C&C: Tiberian Sun.

2007

Jody Macgregor: You could make an easy argument for 2007 on the strength of The Orange Box, Supreme Commander, Crysis, BioShock, and STALKER, but this is really a personal pick. It's the year that got me back into PC gaming after the cost of upgrading and buying games here in Australia had kept me away for a few years. Portal and Team Fortress 2 helped win me back, but so did a lot of excellent low-spec games like Recettear (still the best JRPG I've played), Peggle, Deathworm, and Osu! I spent a lot of 2007 playing The Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion as well.

1998

Andy Chalk: 1998 is the year it all began for me. Thief: The Dark Project, Baldur's Gate, Fallout 2, Half-Life, and StarCraft (which I wasn't really into, but it probably deserves a mention) all showed up in '98, which makes it not only a seminal year for gaming, but also a launchpad for so many bigger and better things. With the exception of Fallout 2, which deserved so much better than it got, each of these represents the starting point of series that were deeply formative on a personal level: The Thief and Baldur's Gate series still share the top spot on my all-time best list, and even though I'm not as enthusiastic about Half-Life as I used to be, Half-Life 2 set a standard for shooters in a way that's never been replicated. Without 1998, none of it happens—that makes it a hell of a good year in my eyes.

2002

Tyler Wilde: I'm tempted to go with '96 or '97 for Quake, Quake 2, Diablo, Zork: Grand Inquisitor, and other of my all-time favorites, but the start of the new millennium feels more notable to me. In 2002, games felt bigger than they ever had before: I could stand on the wing of a plane in Battlefield 1942 while someone else flew it, see the Command & Conquer world from a unit's perspective in C&C: Renegade, go jetpack skiing in Tribes, and explore a whole island in The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. It wasn't as if big 3D spaces were unheard of at the time, but that year sticks out to me as the year we'd truly escaped hallways. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3 also came to PC in 2002. 

Meanwhile, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault remains one of my favorite shooters ever—my virtual M1 Garand skills will never be better than they were then—and the release of Warcraft 3 marked the beginning of a brief period when I went to gaming cafes and drank Bawls (plus it's among the most influential games of all time, in large part due to its mod scene). No One Lives Forever 2, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, and Mafia help seal it for me. I wish there were some indie hit I could point at to score more points—Cave Story was 2004—but I suppose every year can't be representative of everything. Good year, though!

3057, or maybe 1995

Wes Fenlon: I don't need a long list of games released in a given year to tell you which year was the best for PC gaming, because it's clearly 3057, the year MechWarrior 2 takes place. As that 31st century warfare documentary has shown us, future PC gaming will have each of us fighting for our lives in a sweet-ass mech. Yes: in the future, all computers are inside giant robots, obviously.

(Anyway, 1995 was a super influential year: MechWarrior 2, Command & Conquer, Warcraft 2, TIE Fighter, and Dark Forces all hit the PC that year).

2004 

Steven Messner: A little surprised no one has beat me to this because 2004 is clearly the best year for PC gaming. In that short span of just 365 days, some of the most influential games of all time were released alongside a bevy of really good games that didn't have quite the same lasting appeal. Obviously the big one to note is Half-Life 2, but World of Warcraft also launched in that same year along with Rome: Total War (which redefined the series), The Sims 2, Far Cry, Counter-Strike: Source, and Unreal Tournament 2004. This year also had a number of great cult classics, like City of Heroes, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, EverQuest 2, Battlefield Vietnam, Tribes: Vengeance, Need for Speed: Underground 2.

I could go on... so I will. Painkiller, The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Star Wars: Battlefront, Final Fantasy XI: Chains of Promathia (one of its coolest expansions), The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, Doom 3 (it sucks but I still love it), Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Looking back, that's an absurd number of really good games that could satisfy almost anyone.

Crazy year, that 2004.

2015

Phil Savage: If I judge years based on how heated the discussions were during PC Gamer's Game of the Year process—and honestly, why wouldn't I—2015 is the clear standout. As an RPG fan, The Witcher 3 was one of the best games of the decade—huge, beautiful, and full of great writing. As a stealth fan, Metal Gear Solid 5 was an intricate sandbox full of toys—everything from the iconic fulton balloon to the horse that poops on command. 2015 was the year that brought us the best detective game of recent memory in Her Story, the best city-builder of recent memory in Cities: Skylines, and one of the best tactics games of recent memory in Invisible, Inc.

It also brought us 80 Days, Life is Strange, Rainbow Six Siege, Sunless Seas, Undertale and Pillars of Eternity. It brought GTA 5 to PC. It wasted hundreds of hours with Rocket League. And, look, personally I liked Fallout 4, so there's that. Notably, it's also the last year (to date) in which we awarded a 96% score—historically, for the UK side at least, the highest we give out. While there may be years with more historical importance, I'd argue 2015 remains the best of the last decade.

1982

Chris Livingston: This is what happens when you answer last—you have to get creative. But 1982 was an incredibly important year for me personally: it's the year my parents bought us our first home computer, an Apple IIc. And with it came Choplifter, my very first computer game.

I devoured as many games as I could that year, including Aztec, which was basically Spelunky before Spelunky: a randomly generated tomb-raiding game filled with traps and dynamite, snakes and monsters, destructible walls and floors, and a precious idol to bring back to the surface. Loved it.

There were plenty of others I played that year: a fighting game called Swashbuckler, turn-based strategy Taipan!, adventure games Sherwood Forest and Zork 3, all which helped form my early and lasting love for computer games.

From our forums

Frindis: I think 1993 was the best year for gaming and I especially give Doom that reason. Doom was one of the first games to make multiplayer FPS quite popular and I remember how cool it was to attend local LAN events trying to get that sweet frag. There is a little slice of entertaining gaming history to be found when looking up some of the greatest Doom players in the past.

Lead programmer John Carmack would also make it easy for players to make their own maps, thus opening for both competition and yearly praises of some of the best WADS. While not being the first game you could mod, this one definitely was the most popular, carving the way for future modding communities. Another thing to mention is that being able to understand the game data also opened up for speedrunners to tighten the scores and still to this date people are competing in getting the best times.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention it was the most violent and gory fps game that year, how the 2D was made to look 3D, the BFG, kick-ass soundtrack, monsters from hell, erm..story and that Doom recently got a megawad: an unofficial sequel to the fourth episode from none other than John Romero, one of the original creators of Doom.

Mazer: A lot of my childhood favourites seem to be clustered in 1997.

Mainstream hits like Fallout, Quake 2, Hexen 2, GTA, Dungeon Keeper, The Curse of Monkey Island, Age Of Empires etc. Cult classics like MDK, Interstate '76, Oddworld: Abes Oddysee, Dark Earth, The Last Express, Myth: The Fallen Lords, Outlaws, Privateer 2, and Twinsen's Odyssey. We got ports of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Shadows Of The Empire and Panzer Dragoon to test our new graphics cards, and Carmageddon's release in Australia was completely uncensored in a very rare move for my country.

It's also the year in which the naming conventions of the Dark Forces series officially went off the rails with the release of Star Wars Jedi Knight - Dark Forces 2. It's by this logic that I'd like to move that we officially rename the final game in the series, Jedi Academy, to now be 'Star Wars Jedi Academy - Jedi Outcast 2 - Jedi Knight 3 - Dark Forces 4'.

Zloth: Actually, 2016 was a mighty good year:

• Witcher 3 came into its own with Blood & Wine
• XCom 2 came out early enough in the year to be in good shape by the end of the year
• Final Fantasy 9 (on PC) - not my favorite FF but well worth playing
• Battlezone 98 Redux - which I really really want to play some day soon
• 2016 version of Doom
• No Man's Sky showed up and I, for one, really liked it early on
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Valley - a short, sweet, and very pretty game
• Rise of the Tomb Raider was pretty fun
• Dishonored 2 (PC Gamer's GotY)
• Stellaris and Civ 6 - but it was definitely too early to play either in 2016, IMHO.
• Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen showed up on PC
• X:Rebirth's Home of Light DLC appeared early in the year so, by summer 2016, X:Rebirth had gotten quite fun.

MaddMann: Personally I would say 2004. Some of my all time favorite games that I still play to this day, and some that have died, but left me with great memories. Some of my favorites from 2004:

• Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven
• Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
• Steel Battalion: Line of Contact
• Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword
• Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
• Far Cry
• Final Fantasy XI
• Fight Night 2004
• Painkiller
• Hitman: Contracts
• Metal Slug 3
• Thief: Deadly Shadows
• Doom 3
• Silent Hill 4: The Room
• Call of Duty: United Offensive
• Fable
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
• Katamari Damacy
• Rome: Total War
• Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War
• Counter-Strike: Source
• EverQuest II
• Halo 2
• Half-Life 2
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
• World of Warcraft
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith Lords

McStabStab: For me I'd say 2000.

• Diablo 2
• Red Alert 2
• The Sims
• Deus Ex
• Shogun: Total War
• Counter-Strike

Kaamos_Llama: Oh man 1998 has Halflife, Starcraft, Baldurs Gate, Fallout 2, Thief Dark Project, Commandos and Grim Fandango. Games of that era had so much influence on future games.

Looking back over the last 25 odd years though, it seems every year has an argument. Good times!

There are bad bots, who ruin matches of Team Fortress 2 and extend the queues in MMOs like Lost Ark, but I'm here to celebrate the other kind—the kind who've been helping to fill up lobbies in the quiet times when there aren't enough humans on your server since Quake's Reaper Bot, or who round out your squad in a co-op game when you don't have quite enough friends to make up the numbers. When bots are bad they're annoying, but when they're good they can be preferable to people. Well, some people. You know who I mean.

Which multiplayer shooter had the best bots?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: They weren't "good" bots in the sense that they played the game well or made up for a missing teammate, but I really loved the bots in Counter-Strike: Source. They were literally the only entities in the game that would use its prepackaged radio callouts ("tango down", "enemy spotted") and they all went by cute little first names like "Toby" or "Bert." My favorite gag people would pull was to set their username to impersonate one of the bots, actually use those in-game callouts to trick their teammates, then absolutely pub stomp their unsuspecting opponents.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: The bots in the classic Star Wars Battlefront games, made by Pandemic Studios in 2004 and 2005, may not have been geniuses, but they didn't need to be. You don't expect a Stormtrooper to have great aim or one of those battle droids from the prequels to do anything other than say "roger roger" and immediately die (but in a funny way). What they need to do is run around like wild making the appropriate noises while flinging enough laserfire that it's sure to spank off nearby objects dramatically while you take cover to let your weapon cool down.

My housemate and I played both those games to death, refighting the Battle of Hoth for hours, murdering ewoks on the moon of Endor, and playing this one Mos Eisley hero assault mode where everyone spawned as named characters from both then-current eras of Star Wars. Which was absolute chaos. Those games were designed for two teams of 16 players and there were only two of us, but throw in 30 bots and they became glorious mayhem.

Jorge Jimenez, Hardware Writer: Titanfall 1 and 2 had awesome bots and sold the notion that you were part of a larger conflict. There were always enough bots to make the maps seem busy and chaotic but never enough to threaten you. Also, they were soooooo satisfying to stomp on when you did call down your massive Titan. Respawn should make a Titanfall 3. Please make a Titanfall 3, Respawn. Stop ignoring my DMs.  

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I was gonna go with Unreal Tournament—I don't know if the bots were particularly good or not, but their very presence let me and my friend stay up literally until sunrise playing Facing Worlds after everyone else had bailed. But I think I'll go with Counter-Strike. 

At some point in the early days of CS (before it was a standalone game, I'm pretty sure), I was playing a terrorist on one of the hostage maps. I killed a CT who was trying to escort a hostage away, and he flopped to the ground and dropped his gun. I was completely shocked to see the hostage pick up the CT's gun and shoot me dead with it. I had no idea hostage bots could actually do that. I think I laughed for five minutes just out of surprise and delight. I don't recall which version it was, or if it was a modded server, or what. But it was brilliant.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: Unreal Tournament's bots are neanderthals by modern standards, but 23 years later I still remember their proclivity for hurling insults and catch phrases. The bots would sound off at intervals throughout a match, popping up like an ancient DM (complete with a little portrait of the character) to shout something like "Sorry, did I blow your head apart?" after a kill. 

Rich Stanton, News Editor: I was a really big fan of Evolve, warts and all, and I'm still kinda bummed at how quickly the playercount absolutely cratered after the first few weeks. Sometimes you can just sense that it's not going to happen for a game and it was clear very early on that this was going to be the case. Probably the only compensation was that it had genuinely decent bots and, when it was in the doldrums, I'd often end up as either the monster versus a mix of humans and bots or vice-versa, and the way the bots strategised made it almost as much fun as with a human team. 

In Evolve's case it was all about how they mimicked the kind of behaviour you'd expect from 'real' players in a tactical co-op setting like this, and their usefulness in helping to track the monster and using all the game's mechanics as they should be used. But now that I've got a 'legit' PC answer out of the way, I'm going to say Perfect Dark on N64, simply because I was once a teenager with lots of spare time who adored that game. It allowed you to tweak the bot personalities, and I spent god knows how long playing a singleplayer version of the multiplayer, setting myself genuine challenges or just teeing up the daftest combinations I could think of.

And a final shout-out to CS: GO's bots, now sadly removed from competitive (though still elsewhere in the game). Not so much the behaviour but just because I used to smile whenever a player on the team dropped and we ended up with Bot Gabe on our team, and it felt like Newell had come in to help us take care of business.

From our forum

Frindis: I remember playing against bots in Unreal Gold back in 1998/1999. They had different levels and at the highest difficulty, they were quite the challenge when you had a few of them on the map.

Pifanjr: I played a lot of Battlefield 2 against bots as a teenager. The AI commander was very predictable and limited and I don't think the bots listened very well to orders if you played as a squad leader or the commander yourself, but then again real players often don't listen very well either. I also don't think they used the transport helicopters, but they used all of the other vehicles pretty well.

invader: Remember playing Unreal Tournament back in the day against bots because dialup in my country was shitsu. You had several difficulty levels to choose for the bots (like six or seven) but as a child I didn't like to lose so I never went above a certain difficulty (medium I think, but can't remember). Sometimes one was set above the rest and my team of regulars went against that harder bot... alone.

McStabStab: Perfect Dark (which I believe is getting a port so technically a PC game, yeah?)

Perfect Dark had bots called simulants which you could pick from to apply different difficulty levels and types. For example a "VengeSim" always attacks the opponent who killed it last, and "PeaceSims" who only try to hoard the guns in the levels so other players can't get them. It added a lot of flavor to the multiplayer matches.

Sarafan: With no doubts Unreal Tournament from 1999. The bots were so good and natural that they were hard to distinguish from real players. This made the game accessible even for players without internet connection. I spent hundreds of hours playing it alone myself. It was wonderful to have multiplayer experience without the need to pay for expensive internet connection.

Probably the bots were one of the things which made the first UT so popular. Its main rival, Quake 3 Arena, had very bad AI and that's the reason why I preferred UT. Even to this day it's very hard to find a game with better bots.

"I love the idea of PCs as distinct from consoles in the sense that they're like the Millennium Falcon," says Evan Lahti, PC Gamer's editor-in-chief. "Occasionally we have to kick them to keep them running." Relying on a different sci-fi series for his analogy, Charlie Brooker once said "PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people", explaining that "Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis".

Especially if you built it yourself, your PC probably has the equivalent of a wonky hyperdrive motivator. It doesn't work exactly the way it's supposed to, but you've learned to live with it. Like aging cars, or indeed people, the less reliable they become the more personality they have. 

What's a weird quirk your PC has? Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: Speaking of the Millennium Falcon, you know that scene in whichever Star Wars movie it was, where the Falcon is all shot up and C-3PO is writhing around all tangled in wires and cables? That's my PC's quirk. It's a prebuilt, and I had to open it to add a new SSD at one point, and so I pulled all the neatly placed cables and wires out of the way and once I'd done that I couldn't get them back in to close the side of the case again. I don't know how they were arranged before I opened it, but once the seal was broken there was just no way to close that side panel again without something getting wedged or stuck or smooshed or touching a fan. There's just not enough room. So to be honest I just left that side panel off and there's some exposed cables sorta sticking out. Quirky!

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: My PC is still equipped with a cantankerous 1080 Ti with an all-in-one watercooler. Every so often, in what I can only assume is an act of rebellion or a fit of ennui, that cooler will develop an air bubble in one of its arteries that stops water from flowing and sends the GPU temperature skyrocketing up to a hundred degrees celsius. The only solution when that happens is to spin the entire PC upside down—just straight-up turn the tower on its head—and keep on trucking. The process somehow shakes the air bubble free and lets the card breathe, at least until I turn the PC back the right way up and, a few months later, run into the problem once all over again. Just one of life's little rituals.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I thought my PC was messed up because the coil whine is loud, and sometimes it shorts out if you plug in a USB-C cable that's already hooked up to a device on the other end. Meanwhile, Joshua's over here with a computer that needs to be flipped upside-down like a newborn baby to keep it from boiling. How do you even figure a solution like that out? (We asked, his dad suggested it. Dads just know things.) Honestly, what's next?

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: My PC whispers. 

I thought my speakers were hissing at first, but upon closer investigation it became clear that it was coming from inside my PC. And a hiss is more consistent than this. It's more like quiet murmuring. I've opened it up and had it running to identify the source, but all my efforts have failed so far. It's definitely not one of the fans. At this point, I've just resigned myself to the fact that it's either cursed or haunted. 

Tim Clark, Brand Director: My girlfriend and I both have our PCs in the same office room. Any time she gets up from her chair, my dual monitors flicker to black three or four times before settling. Fine if you're just toiling away in a spreadsheet, potentially ruinous if you're in a DPS phase of a flawless Destiny raid run. You might assume the obvious answer is that there's a loose display port connection, but I've triple checked and the cables are snug like sleeping princes. Here's the real kicker: When I get up out of my chair, nothing happens. Logical conclusion: Girlfriend's haunted.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I've probably told this story before, but as a teenager my friends once edited some of the core system sounds on the PC I had at the time to add about 30 seconds of silence, and then the creepy croaking sound from The Grudge. It was infrequent enough, and just long enough of a gap between doing something and hearing the noise, that it was impossible for me to figure out what was causing it. For months I was just baffled. 

Coincidentally during this period I torrented a bunch of episodes of a pretty light-hearted anime, but somehow the files got corrupted in a way that I still can't explain. When I first opened them they played fine, but when I then went back to watch them, they were replaced by live-action scenes of gore and torture that I didn't recognise from any horror movie I had on the drive. The upshot is that I was pretty close to declaring my PC to be possessed for a number of weeks. Eventually my friends admitted to the noise prank, and I discovered the origin of the disturbing scenes—a movie I'd downloaded and forgotten about called The Devil's Chair (incidentally a dreadful watch), though I still can't explain how the files got intermingled.

On the plus side, I've been shot of that 'quirky' PC for a number of years now. On the downside, my current work laptop sometimes writes letters out backwards as I type them in Gmail, another bug that has left the PCG hardware department and trained IT professionals scratching their heads. It's possible I'm the one who's possessed. 

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: For a few months my keyboard would turn off for a few seconds whenever I shifted it on the desk, which was a huge pain in the butt since I like to do a lot of my outlines and drafts in a notebook. I was terrified that this was the soldering repair I'd done on it getting wonky somehow, but the real culprit was more devious. I'd gotten a neat-looking coiled "aviator" cable on Amazon to complete the "mechanical keyboard nerd" look without ponying up for a more expensive option. Big mistake, because the $30 option I went with cut a few corners and wasn't delivering enough power to my keyboard. I swapped back in the plain, matte grey rubber USB-C cable that came with the board and the problem disappeared overnight. I swear it's the wild west out there for USB-C cords, I've never bought one off Amazon or at Walgreens and had it work right.

Imogen Mellor, Features Producer:  My PC now is still the one I built back in 2019 just before I entered the games industry full time. This thing is a workhorse, I've only ever had to change one thing about it, the RAM, but it posed an interesting problem.

The build I followed was one recommended online, and my original chips were pretty small. Additionally my CPU fan is a massive be quiet! number that does the job but is almost the size of my head. Both fit perfectly fine together but when I needed an upgrade I bought some fancy RGB RAM, popped it in my machine and, oh, the fan's front doesn't quite fit. Oops. 

Did I return the RAM? No. Did I replace the fan? Also no. They're just shoved in there. The be quiet!'s front fan is balancing on one of my cards and though I always say I'll fix it one day, it works fine so I refuse to touch what's technically not broken. 

From our forum

Brian Boru: Only minor quirks with mine—I use it for work as well as play, so I iron out anything major asap. Sometimes Fences messes up on boot—icons all over the screen like a normal person's *shudder*. Only happens maybe once a month, and restoring previous 'snapshot' sorts it out in 20 seconds, so… yeah, I live with it.

Reminders pop up on screen in the middle of gameplay, aargh! Can't complain tho, their job after all is to pull me out of the game to do something useful—altho I still think useless is seriously underrated.

DXCHASE: My first build included a PSU that wouldnt hold its switch in the 'off' position. As soon as I let it go when I switched to the off position it went back. Never had any issues with my PSU but that switch not staying.

Pifanjr: The front two USB ports don't work. I don't remember why, either there's no way to connect them to the mother board or it won't work even when connected. It's quite inconvenient, especially one of the back USB ports is broken too, so I can't plug in all of my devices at the same time, and the back doesn't have the little cover around the USB ports so switching stuff around always makes me worried I'm going to break something else.

My friend recently had a far more interesting problem where his SSD would stop being recognized by Windows after playing Vermintide 2 for a bit since the last patch. It doesn't do this with any other games as far as I'm aware and the SSD always comes back after a bit.

McStabStab: Every once in a while when I boot up my PC it doesn't go past the mobo screen. I just hit the button again for a quick power down and then a third time for another boot up and everything's gravy from there. It doesn't happen often enough that I've tried troubleshooting it, but if anyone here thinks it may be a more serious problem let me know!

Zloth: My monitor does a weird thing once every month or two: a vertical column of pixels won't display where it should. Instead, it shows up on the far right side of the screen! Depending on what wallpaper I've got (if any), it may not be easy to see until I start reading text. I can fix it just by turning the monitor off and back on again.

PointnClicker01: My computer does not have any noticeable quirks yet (it's still quite new so maybe soon) but I do have some funny quirks with my internet browser sometimes.  I'm using Opera and many many tabs at once and I've realized that my browser decides depending on his mood whether to show me the layout of a page correctly or in freestyle.

People around me keep telling me to use Firefox instead… But honestly? I like these quirks. After all, when I'm feeling stressed, I am also tending to squirl some of the phrases I'm saying. Also, the strange layout even made me curious to ask how the communication between a browser and a website does work.  And being curious is one of the most important things to me.

When it comes to work though, I have started to use another browser for some parts to get my work done correctly. However, I know I will never feel as comfortable as with my own browser.

Frindis: I got this woman on my screen in a Santa outfit that appears when I least want it. I mean, I don't really want her to appear at all, but when I try to uninstall her, she says "you are on my naughty list" and then she turns off my computer. Last night I was playing Warzone 2.0 and just as I was about to get my chicken dinner she slowly walks over the screen while blowing me a kiss. I did not get my chicken dinner! I am never installing freeware from ebaumsworld ever again!

Biggly: The RGB on my CPU liquid cooler* periodically switches off—only when I'm mid-game or in a browser, though. Also, my browser sometimes shows ads for Femfresh after the missus has been on my computer.

*No doubt a pointless extra expense but I was feeling flush at the time. Please don't judge me.

If you were having trouble with Malenia in Elden Ring, you could rely on Let Me Solo Her to win the fight for you. If you were having trouble with pretty much anything in Final Fantasy 7, the Knights of the Round could be relied on to drop more than 100,000 points of Arthurian damage on it. And in Yakuza: Like a Dragon you can whip out your phone and call a storm of lobsters to fall on your enemies as the "Plague of Pincers". Relying on a summon to help you win a particularly hard battle isn't cheating—it's just phoning a friend.

What's the best summon you ever summoned to help you out?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I was gonna say it was definitely the time I summoned an army of hippos in Assassin's Creed Origins. But then I remembered I didn't really summon them, I just threw sleep darts at them until they fell in love with me, and I think I used the cheat console a bit. I also remembered they were pretty bad at killing Romans.

Then I also also remembered I played Pillars of Eternity as a party of bears. Those were proper summons, cuz I was playing as six rangers, I made them each summon a bear, and then just left the rangers behind and used the bears. And they were awesome! There are very, very few problems that can't be solved by six bears.

Fun fact: a group of hippos is called a bloat (or a thunder, or a crash) and a group of bears is called a sleuth (or a sloth). Isn't that fun?

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I still think the magic system in Baldur's Gate is the best I've ever seen in an RPG, and that definitely extends to the summons. Out of all the options like Planetars or Mordenkaiden's Swords, I still love the humble spell, "Animate Dead."

It's only 5th circle, so it's even accessible in the first Baldur's Gate's level range in the enhanced edition. The skeletons you summon have such a generous timer they're effectively up until they die in battle, and they even scale in power as your necromancer beefs up. No pre-dungeon buff stack is complete without three or four of these bad boys.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: My campaign against Malenia, Elden Ring's most notoriously difficult boss, was going badly. Facing her in a fair fight exposed my kung fu as foolish and weak, and the summons I called in for help weren't much better. One managed to almost finish the job, until I got nervous in the late moments of the fight, tripped on my own dick, and died; all the rest were simply demolished and dispatched as though they were low-level NPCs. But as despair set in and I began to entertain thoughts of walking away, I saw the glowing sign: 

Stand Back I Do.

With nothing to lose, and no one else left, I clicked. In a moment, the figure appeared, wielding a sword and wearing some nondescript armor. They were unremarkable—unimpressive, even—but they answered the call, and there was nothing else to do. We exchanged bows; they did some quick pre-fight preparations. And then, side by side, we marched toward destiny.

Entering Malenia's lair, I booked it to find a place to hide while Stand Back I Do rushed our foe. What transpired after that cannot fairly be called a fight. It was an absolute housecleaning. Malenia charged and thrust and slashed furiously, while Stand Back I Do danced through it all with practiced ease, dodging and landing blows effortlessly against a raging whirlwind who had repeatedly killed me within seconds. At one point they actually stopped mid-fight and waved at me, as if they were worried I wasn't paying attention and might miss a cool move. It caused me a moment of intense panic, because I absolutely was paying attention and now my saviour suddenly was not paying attention and JESUS CHRIST WHAT ARE YOU DOING SHE IS RIGHT BEHIND YOU

Of course they returned to the fight a second later, and not long after that it was all over. It was such a thorough dismantling that I almost felt bad for Malenia, the famed Blade of Miquella, Goddess of Rot, breaker of Starscourge Radahn—reduced to helplessness in the face of this true hero, someone I wish I could have properly thanked as they faded out of my game, waving all the way.

I could not—and so instead, I paid a small tribute on Twitter. And I will always remember the day I met the one they called...

Stand Back I Do.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: In Nioh 2, you occasionally come across this thing called a scampuss. It's basically a cat the size and shape of a basketball. If you stop to pet one, it'll follow you through the whole level.

Generally in soulslike games, I'm not a fan of summons. I'm no masochist but it does all feel a bit empty if I just get another player or an overpowered AI ally to beat the big challenges for me. But the scampuss doesn't throw out loads of damage or tank bosses. It just kind of bumbles around being an adorable mascot and a minor distraction to enemies. A perfect companion to keep your spirits up when the going gets tough. 

Honourable mention to Torrent from Elden Ring, if they count. I'm a big fan of horses that just materialise out of thin air, none of that "Ooh I was just hiding slightly off-screen" nonsense. 

Jody Macgregor, AU/Weekend Editor: In South Park: The Stick of Truth you could summon Jesus Christ to fly down from Heaven and shoot people with a machine gun. That felt a wee bit OP, to be honest. 

On the subject of returning from the dead, I'm playing the Vampire Counts in Total War: Warhammer 3's Immortal Empires campaign right now and to my surprise relying on the basic Raise Dead spell a lot. All it does is drag a unit of zombies up out of the ground, but they can block charges, prevent ranged units from shooting, flank units that are already in combat, and just generally be quite useful. Plus they eventually deal more damage than a direct-damage spell would, and help exhaust enemies while they do it, meaning that after finally defeating the zombies they'll be less effective fighting anyone else. It's not as  just a handy spell to have.

From our forum

Zloth: I would give it to the original Final Fantasy 7, Neo Bahamut's summon: Giga Flare. There are stronger summons for sure, but this one is the most fun just for the spectacle of it.

Honorable mention to the Anima summon of Final Fantasy X, and the tornado spell from Dragon's Dogma.

Sarafan: There can only be one winner—Planetar summoned by high level mages in Baldur's Gate 2. He's almost invincible. This celestial being is capable of taking out whole groups of enemies and we're talking about high level enemies. Planetar has some impressive resistances and a 25% chance of decapitating any opponent with a single blow, if that target fails a Death saving throw. What more, he's capable of casting priest and mage spells. If you pair him with one or two Mordenkainen's Swords, you'll have a team that's capable of taking out almost anything the game throws at you. The only exception are the top level bosses, but even then these summons are an immense help.

McStabStab: I'm a huge fan of the Bone Widow in Divinity: Original Sin 2. My ranger character has points in necromancer abilities and I use the spider to distract and soak up damage from enemies while I hurl arrows at them. It's great for a 1 memory slot skill so early game it's a boon.

Pifanjr: I feel there must be a much better answer, but the first thing that comes to mind is the Dremora Lord from Skyrim, one of the strongest summons in the game and great for keeping your enemies busy for a while, if not outright killing them.

Kaamos_Llama: The one that sticks out in recent memory is my Ancestral Follower from Elden Ring who I used right up until the end. I did try the Mimic Tear but it wasn't as good at breaking poise as the Ancestral Follower who also fires arrows from range, and tbh I just got quite attached to having the giant horned dude around.

It may be a little silly, forking over $150+ for a game you can get for half that, but I think we've all been tempted by the siren song of a videogame collector's edition, and upscale re-releases like the Knights of the Old Republic packages from LimitedRun gratify a primal part of my gamer brain. I wanted to hear about the tchotchkes our staff and community treasure, or else the buyer's remorse they'll never be able to forget.

What's the best (or worst) videogame collector's edition you've ever bought?

Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I still feel a bit annoyed about Black Ops a decade later. This is the last Call of Duty game I bought, and my interest in the series was already waning by this point. But my friends and I loved the Zombies co-op mode in Treyarch's previous game, World at War, and decided to buy Black Ops specifically to play more Zombies. The only problem: only the Hardened Edition came with the Zombies maps. And at launch, I believe there was no option to buy them separately, so it was either spring an extra $20 for the Hardened Edition, or miss out on the one mode we actually cared about. 

So we paid up, and we played a lot of Zombies. That mode was definitely worth 20 bucks. As for the other $60 I spent... well, there's a reason I didn't buy another Call of Duty after that one. I was tired of the ridiculously quick TTK pace of the multiplayer, and Black Ops' campaign mostly just annoyed me. I'm not sure those great few weeks of Zombies co-op were worth having "THE NUMBERS, MASON" stuck in my head for the rest of time.

Phil Savage, UK Editor-in-Chief: I once moved houses three times in a year, and ever since I've avoided collector's editions. The acquisition of videogame tat is ultimately just a problem that one day I'll be forced to solve. The one thing I've kept is Anno 1404's collector's chest—a bizarre little package that, yes, includes the standard art book and a bonus DVD, but also some more outlandish items. 

There's a compass, which admittedly I've never had a reason to use. There's also a little pouch containing six almond seeds, useful, I guess, in case I'm ever stranded on an island and need to produce goods to kickstart a new trade empire. Look, it's still full of junk, but it's interesting junk that's different from the norm. Admittedly I'm only picking this because I didn't buy the World in Conflict collector's edition, which came with an actual piece of the Berlin Wall.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I'm usually very anti-collector's editions - no one on earth needs a big plastic statue from a game they haven't even played yet. One of the few I've ever indulged in was the one for the classic, short-lived MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. I've still got it on my shelf, and it's absolutely bursting with genuine quality—there's an exclusive Warhammer miniature of one of the main bad guys, a lovely graphic novel that sets up all the game's factions and their conflicts, an art book full of some of my favourite concept art ever, and... well, a mousemat, which is admittedly not quite as exciting. But not a stupid piece of plastic or pointless coin to be found. Even the box is a hefty, durable artifact in its own right. Shame it's lasted longer than the game did. 

Rich Stanton, News Editor: My hype for Starcraft 2 was off the charts, and I played Wings of Liberty obsessively for about two years after release, so how could I ever resent this perfect big box that opens like a Terran self-building structure (not really but, y'know, the box has big industrial teeth that slide apart and back together again). Therein you'll find the usual suspects of an elaborate art book and soundtrack CD, but this came alongside a USB stick in the form of Jim Raynor's dog tag with the OG Starcraft on it, a fabulous behind-the-scenes 'making of' DVD, an absolutely terrible comic book, and various in-game downloadables including a must-have WoW pet of a miniature Thor.

Straight to my belly please Blizzard. I love this collector's edition mostly because I retain such fondness for this game, and recently a friend I used to play with visited me for a weekend. We did a bit of co-op gaming on our laptops one night, and it wasn't too long before I'd fetched the WoL Collector's Edition so we could re-examine it. At this point I remembered / realised it also included three sticker sheets: one for each of the game's factions. Obviously we threw the Protoss and Zerg ones aside, then re-affirmed our unbreakable manly bond by tastefully and carefully decorating our laptops in the Terran stickers. Still delivering value a dozen years later: now that's what I call a collector's edition.

Andy Chalk, News Lead: Tough to pick just one "best" but I think I'd have to give it to Neverwinter Nights. Absolutely massive box, with a gorgeous (and also massive) art book, full-size poster, full manual, game discs, soundtrack disc, mousepad map, and even a long-sleeve shirt for some reason. It's a glorious thing, and it holds a special place in my heart because I got it through the last real interaction with an EB Games employee I ever had. Shame the game itself was so mediocre.

The worst collector's edition, off the top of my head, is probably Half-Life 2. Big-ass box, nothing of note inside. Like I need a Prima Game Guide for Half-Life 2? We're not playing Myst here, guys.

By the way Phil, I think I have that World in Conflict Collector's Edition. It's pretty sweet.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I love filling the shelves of my home office/gamer hole with plastic crap, simple as. If we're talking about a game I'm excited enough for (would have hit Elden Ring, but its special version was only on consoles), or a re-release of an old favorite (you better believe I snagged those LimitedRun KotORs) I'll do it, damn the consequences. And I'd do absolutely evil things for Andy's NwN collector's edition.

But I will never forgive BioWare for what it did to me with the Dragon Age: Inquisition "Inquisitor's Edition."

Lockpick set, war table pieces, ink and quill, all looks decent right? When I call them plastic pieces of crap, I want to stress that half of these things were broken out of the box, just impossibly low quality. The cloth map, possibly the thing I was most excited for? A blurry, low-res jpeg of Thedas, the same one that's been up on the Dragon Age Wiki since 2009. The only halfway decent thing was the tarot card deck, and guess what I lost first and most definitively, somewhere between college moves and my parents' basement having a minor flood? I know that last one isn't BioWare's fault, but cut me some slack, I'm emotional and irrational here!

From the forum

DXCHASE: My Skyrim collectors edition is pretty great. I love the dragon statue and I still have the original box with its books and everything on display. that would be my favorite.

Brian Boru: "I think we've all been tempted by the siren song of a videogame collector's edition?" Oh no we haven't! 

I've never bought what you're talking about, but I have bought Collector's Editions of game franchises—best undoubtedly being the 17-game Command and Conquer Ultimate Collection.

In the casual game world, Collector's Edition does not include anything physical but rather extra files like a strategy guide and art book, and then also extras in the game—i.e. a different version of the game—like collectibles and extra levels. I haven't bought many of those, with the best being the CEs of the excellent Royal Envoy series which provided ~50% more levels.

Zloth: I got a version of City of Villans that had a tiny, plastic Ghost Widow figure. That's the closest I've ever gotten to a Collector's Edition style statue. I do still have the plastic figure, so I guess it's a win.

The KotOR2 stuff doesn't appeal to me at all... except the poster that has HK-47 in the background. I would pay maybe a dollar for that. [Editor's note: I paid a lot more for it than that, bucko!]

Krud: Probably the best one I ever bought was the Warcraft III Collector's Edition, as it came with a TON of cool physical stuff (though nothing like a helmet or canvas bag, just art books and a guide and posters and cinematic DVD's and whatnot, I don't remember the specifics, as it's been a while), and I got it for dirt cheap from a store that apparently didn't know it was worth far more than the $25 I paid. (This wasn't that long after The Frozen Throne had come out. I think the regular base game was going for $19.99 at the time.)

Honorable mention goes to The Roberta Williams Anthology, which was less a "collector's edition" and more of a... well, collection in general, showing off her legacy in Sierra (while also plugging Phantasmagoria, which only came as a demo on it, IIRC.)

Having said that, I don't know that I've bought any "collector's editions" since I went digital downloads only. Except for maybe some GoG offerings that are labeled "collector's editions" despite it all just being digital swag. I think the term generally means something different nowadays, usually referring to a more complete version of the game. Though if the only difference is the Advanced Deluxe Legendary Edition comes with hi-res wallpaper and the soundtrack in FLAC format, I'll probably not spring the additional ten bucks or whatever they're asking.

mainer: I've purchased quite a few collectors' editions over the years for games or game series that I really enjoy. But I'm a bit picky about those that I do purchase, as I look at what type of physical "loot" is included, more so than just the digital "rewards" for paying extra. PC gaming is my number one hobby, and being a kid at heart, I love those things like cloth maps, statues, unique card decks, hard cover art books, replica coins, and all the other little physical items that might be included. I am not, however, interested in those collectors' editions that offer only digital rewards, such as in-game weapons, armor, pets, or in digital art books or soundtracks.

Naming my favorite collector's edition is a bit tougher, but it would have to go to the original Pip-boy collector's edition for Fallout 4. The original CE sold out in less than 48 hours, and you got an actual Pip-boy (in a Vault 111 crate) that you could actually wear, plus you could insert your smart phone (though not all makes/models) into the Pip-boy, download the Pip-boy App, which connected to your game so that you could access all stats, maps, and quests, just like you would in the game. In theory at least. The App was notoriously buggy and only worked about 75% of the time, I don't think it's available any longer. But it remains the only interactive CE that I've ever owned. In addition, you also got the Season Pass so that you got all future DLC for free.

Without doubt, the worst collector's edition I've ever purchased was Ultima 9 Ascension. A huge game box that was hard to fit on shelves, and entirely unneeded for what little it contained. A cloth map, a poster, a few unique tarot cards, and a certificate signed by "Lord British". Disappointing to say the least, and what made it worse, was that the game was terrible & buggy and a poor reflection on such a great RPG series. A very sad end.

With the pace of new hardware generations and the incentive to iteratively upgrade a PC, I find it easy to turn my nose up at "obsolete" hardware. That said, the more time passes, the more I get nostalgic for my rigs of old, and retro computing content creators like LGR certainly don't help the feeling. I turned to our staff and community to see if they're susceptible to the siren song of dual core CPUs and megabytes of VRAM, or if it's Core i9, RTX 4090 all the way.

What's your favorite PC you've ever owned?

Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I live a life free of petty nostalgia. My favourite PC is my current one, because it's the most powerful one I've ever owned. When I eventually get a new one, that'll be my new favourite. I crave only the most modern hardware for playing the most modern games. 

It doesn't help that I tend to run my PCs into the ground—most of my previous machines have been replaced out of necessity, getting so outdated and unreliable that by the end I resent them. A new PC is a relief, an old one is just a big heavy box that I now have to find a way of getting rid of. 

If this makes me sound like some kind of callous monster with no respect for his hardware, then... yes, that's basically accurate. 

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I am not immune to nostalgia. I have a soft spot for 3.5 floppy disks in rainbow, transparent plastic. I saw a TikTok gag about "how we turned on our PCs in the '00s" that was a person touching a power button with their big toe and smiled. But my current PC is definitely my favorite because it's the first time I've ever had one with an intentional aesthetic and not just everything I could afford slapped together. My first gaming PC was my mom's old home office Dell that I learned how to jam new RAM into to play Guild Wars and Fable on. After that finally did in I took whatever I could get off CyberPowerPC with $800 I scraped together during Black Friday in 2013. I was running that same mobo until 2019, I'm pretty sure, with every other part Frankenstein'd around it. So yeah, my current setup with its white case and glass wall and proper monitor arms is my favorite because it was finally, for once, on purpose.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: I see my PC more like an adversary. Sure, we have good times, but just when I'm like "This sure is a great PC", that's when it strikes. A BSOD. A weird grinding noise. Why is that light on the motherboard flashing? Over the last 20 years I have wasted so much time troubleshooting, repairing, returning and screaming obscenities at PC components. But I always get my revenge. Like that time I spilled a Pot Noodle on top of it. And my lax attitude to dusting. Which of course creates more problems, and the cycle continues.

Given this combative relationship I don't really have a favourite one. But my current PC has a window that allows me to stare harefully at its guts, so that's cool I guess. 

Dave James, Hardware Lead: I don't actually have a favourite PC. And it's not some 'I love all my children equally' sort of thing, either. I have a complicated history with the PC, and mostly a job which has meant, for the past couple of decades, I've had no stable platform, just a Ship of Theseus that's constantly changing inside and out. That's meant I don't really have much of a soft spot for any of them specifically.

My first was an SX-25 based machine, a gift born of my dad being made redundant, which had more impact as the machine I first spent time writing on rather than because it delivered anything in terms of gaming. I still went back to my Amiga 500 for that. Mostly because SX-25 meant a 486 chip that ran at 25MHz. It did, however, give me my first taste of upgrading when I visited a local computer fair to buy a DX4-100 chip. It was also my first taste of upgrade failure as I had no clue that I also needed to buy a heatsink, too. 

Then I built my first system from parts my brother bought. It was a nightmare of motherboard jumper switch trial and error and I was bug fixing the fucker for years. Neither machine really has me that nostalgic for a past that was fraught with desperately trying to free up memory in DOS and battling to get a 3DFX system stable on a Cyrix chip.

Then I bought a laptop for university that put me at the limit of my overdraft from day one, a place my bank account would reside until long after I'd started my journalistic career. That was murdered by revellers at a particularly destructive house party in my third year. Sad times. 

After that came a PC I built for £150, which was unremarkably shit and died from sogginess stored in a friend's basement while I lived on a boat. Then I upgraded my partner's old student PC with a second-hand Pentium III and shoddy ATI GPU, before finally dropping £500 on a gaming PC after I became staff writer on PC Format. Though it still had a dodgy graphics card, which eventually our then Tech Editor upgraded for me, and that started me on a path to my current PC. 

Through many iterations of CPU, GPU, motherboard platform, chassis, storage, and memory, that machine has over time transformed into the machine I run today. I guess that's my favourite PC, maybe just because it's the system I'm using all the time, and maybe because of its representation of the PC's constant evolution.

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: I miss my previous PC. It wasn't as powerful as my current setup, but it had clear sides so I could see all my beautiful RGB lights. RIP, bb.

Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: I've only ever had one PC, the one I own now. I admit, I've not always been a PC gamer, my parents bought into the Apple ecosystem before I even knew there was a difference between the computers. I remember going to Steam on my handed-down MacBook to see what I could play and found it shocking that there were only a handful of games available. 

I couldn't play anything on PC until I was at university and had a boyfriend with a gaming PC then. That's when my conversion started from console gamer to PC gamer and now, well, it's hands down my favourite platform. As soon as I left university I built the PC I'm still using today and it's a workhorse. It's a little... janky and I've had to upgrade the RAM to keep up with my needs but I love it all the same.

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor: My favourite PC was from a company called Tiny Computers. If you know anything about British PC brands from the late '90s, you might be aware that Tiny Computers did not survive long into the '00s. Yet still I loved the PC my family purchased from the company. For the PC, sure, but mostly because of what came bundled with it.

I was, I don't know, it's a blur, around six. It was 1998 or early 1999, anyways. My Dad was in the process of ordering us a PC for the house, which was very exciting. This was our first family PC, and up until now I'd not really had much time around computers. So, my Dad orders the PC over the phone, as you do in the '90s, but when he comes off the call he's clearly had a bad time of it. 

Turns out, when the call was wrapped up, the folks over at Tiny Computers hadn't actually hung up on him, and he had heard down the phone a bunch of swearing and general bad language, which may or may not have been at his expense. I genuinely don't remember. So he calls them back, tells them about it, and I'm going to guess some sort of backroom dealing took place.

Next thing we know, we receive our first PC. It's a lumbering box containing a tall tower. Now that would be exciting enough, but lo and behold my entire PC gaming hobby would also kickstart that day. Because also included with that PC were a handful of luminescent orange, green, and pink CD cases, and inside each one a PC game, including Tomb Raider and Motocross Madness.

A sort of make-up gift from Tiny. Or more likely a way to bribe my Dad into not telling anyone more senior what went on.

And I spent many hours trying to yeet my polygonal motocross bike up the side of a cliff in Motocross Madness thereafter. Time well spent, if you ask me. I'm sure my mum was thinking the PC was for homework or something, but fate brought PC gaming and me together. And that Tiny Computer became something extra special even if it wasn't actually very good. 

Tiny Computers went bust a few years later—maybe it was all the free games they were giving away. 

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: It's gotta be your first, right? Mine was a laptop: a slab of glowing plastic emblazoned with an Alienware logo that my dad managed to get cheap on eBay in 2009. It weighed like 50 pounds, vented heat like a Victorian steam engine, and at some point its tiny ATI GPU overheated and warped in such a way that the textures of any game I played would extrude haphazardly towards the centre of the screen. 

It sucked and I loved it. Sure, it was a struggle to use, but it also gave me my first shot to try out all the games people had been yammering about on the forums I'd haunted for most of my adolescence and childhood: Deus Ex, Planescape, Baldur's Gate, VtM: Bloodlines, and so on and so forth. No machine since has been as much of a commitment or as much of an eye-opener.

Alan Dexter, Senior Hardware Editor: My current PC is without question my favourite gaming system so far. It's nothing particularly special by most standards, but it's quiet and is plenty powerful for gaming. Although, not quite as stellar as it was just a couple of weeks ago when it packed an RTX 3080. Unfortunately, Dave needed to steal that from under my nose as his trusty Founders Edition died during a bout of benchmarking. 

Still, the RTX 2080 Ti I'm using in its stead is capable enough for most of my gaming library—Hearthstone, OW2, Magic Arena, and the odd return to Night City to see if there are any stones left unturned. It'll more than cope with WoW: Dragonflight swooping in to covet my time in the foreseeable future, too.

I still have a soft spot for my first gaming PC though, a secondhand 486-DX50 system I bought in the mid-90s that required constant tinkering to get it actually gaming. It was a time when you needed to know your way around the config.sys file—I would spend far too much time trying to free up space to run the latest, greatest games and far too much money hunting down components that would only improve things by the smallest amounts. But I learned a thing or two, and it would eventually set me on the track to working for PC Gamer, so all those hours messing with components and yes, gaming, would eventually pay off.

Andy Chalk, News Lead: I think I have to agree with Josh on this. For all practical purposes my current rig is my "favourite" because it's the biggest and best and all that, but the thrill of having my first PC (and my first PC games) is tough to beat. And I miss how much more tactile those old PCs were compared to new systems: The satisfying clunk of a 3.5" diskette popping in, the frightening grind of a 5.25", the incredibly loud keyboard clicks, that weird shit the monitor would do every now and then that seemed to presage an explosion that never happened—all nostalgia, absolutely, and if pressed I'd have to admit that I wouldn't want to give up the convenience and bounty of the current day. But it was a great machine and it served me well, and if I'm picking a fave, that'd be it.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I have really fond memories of my high school PC. My uncle built it for me as a birthday gift and I "helped" by passing him tools and listening as he explained what everything did. That thing fully transitioned me from playing half-and-half on Xbox 360 and the family PC, to being a PC gamer. 

I didn't even know what the components in it were until I did some research this year. I recognize the distinctive shroud of XFX's Radeon HD 6790 as my old PC's GPU, a more budget card that really clashes with my memories of that thing being so powerful! I do wish I still had that 6790 as a memento of all the hours of Neverwinter Nights 2 and Dragon Age: Origins it rendered for me.

From our forum

Kaamos_Llama: I had poor excuses for gaming machines before 2004 when I finally had enough of my own money to pick up a Dell XPS ( Pre Alienware buyout XPS was Dell's gaming range).

One of these:

I bloody loved this thing, even though it was a Pentium 4 540 (with HT!) at the time AMD were first pulling ahead of Intel. I initially had a Radeon X300 SE GPU in it because I had no idea that it was terrible when I was configuring it. Not too long after I replaced that with an ATI Radeon X800 GTO, which was unbelievable to me at the time. F.E.A.R, HL2, and Doom 3 looked great in SVGA on my huge 17" CRT.

But am I nostalgic? Not really. Loved that machine but damn I have access to a more games and better hardware now. I'd still love to build retro machines from the time, always liked LGR and Clint, but I don't have space or time to do it.

Alm: I think my current PC is my favourite. I like how powerful and convenient gaming PCs are these days. I have fond memories of the first PC I used (my Dad's 486 SX-25), and the first computer I bought with my own money in 2001. It had a Chieftec Dragon case that was later used by Alienware.

Brian Boru: For its time, the first IBM PC I personally owned in 1990. I worked for Wang at the time, and put my name in for an in-house lottery sell-off of a few dozen PCs. Since we made the machine, I was able to get it juiced up above the norm 

Even with serious discount, it cost ~£3,000 which is roughly $8,000 today—which demonstrates the incredible value we get today from PCs. I remember I was able to get a 40MB HDD and 8MB of RAM, plus dual floppy drives! Oh, and a color monitor

Of course a PC is only a doorstop by itself. That PC is wrapped up in my first big intro into the whole hardware & software world, outside and beyond the narrower confines of work PCs in the 80s. So that of course enhances its stature—you never forget your first, right?

Frindis: My favorite has to be the first PC that introduced me to gaming - the Atari 520 ST.

I had a big red joystick to go with the PC and used to play Beyond the Ice Palace, Ikari Warriors, Zenon, Arkanoid, Wizzball, and Buggy Boy, to mention some of the cool games. It was also a PC that I used to play with my family, especially through the Arkanoid game, so it was a fun way to get the whole family playing together and having fun.

Krud: When I consider my ENTIRE computer gaming history (which I admitted wasn't doing when I first answered), in terms of bang-for-buck, lifechanging elements, and whatever else, my all-time "favorite" PC was the Packard Bell 286 I got in high school, arguably my first "real" PC (from a gaming perspective), on which I played some of my all-time favorite games, from Space Quest I and the Hitchhiker's Guide text adventure, to Sam & Max Hit The Road and the world's slowest version of X-Wing. (I used some sketchy shareware driver called EMM286 to make the game think I had EMS memory. I think I got it to run at 60 frames per minute. Yep, not a typo.)

mainer: As others have stated, my current PC is my favorite, even though it's almost 3 1/2 years old now (July 2019), it still does everything I need it to do and run games at high/ultra settings (admittedly I play more older titles than new). The only upgrades I've done is a video card back in 2020.

I don't miss my older PCs, especially back in the days of staring at a CRT monitor for hours (which often weighed 30lbs or more).

WoodenSaucer: My favorite of all time was my Commodore 64. It was my first experience in computing, and I ate it up. I started learning to program on Day One, and I ended up knowing that thing inside and out.

My next favorite computer was probably my first Windows based PC, which came much later in 1995 because I was broke. But it was my re-entry into the PC world, and it was very exciting. It was a Packard Bell with a 75MHz Pentium, 8MB of RAM, and a 540MB hard drive. It had SVGA graphics, and I couldn't believe how great it was compared to my Commodore. It was so exciting.

Obviously, I've had PCs and laptops since then that were much, much more capable than those. But they were all just incremental upgrades, and those two were the most exciting for me.

Johnway: if I had to pick one PC? I think it will be my Amiga 500. It had been my faithful companion when I was a 5 years old and had been playing it for nearly a decade. Made many good, happy memories playing the amiga. Whilst everyone at school had NES, SNES, Megadrive/Genesis, I was the Amiga kid and no one knew any of the games I played.

In the end I had to ditch it in 1999 when the mouse on the amiga finally gave up the ghost. Plus I needed a Windows PC for school work and had to move with the times. Didn't make getting rid of it any easier, felt guilty for several days as if I had betrayed a good friend for personal reasons. I still occasionally find myself reminiscing about the Amiga and taking time to go to the Hall of Light Amiga database to read the old amiga magazines and reviews.

RPG classes often feel like a bit of a personality quiz, letting us choose the fantasy we'd like to embody, but what if you got all isekai'd into one and had to make do? Most of us, if we're being honest, would be level one commoners with six hit points, but let's play around in this space and give ourselves the benefit of the doubt: our ideal selves, playing to our strengths in a fantasy world.

If you were a companion in an RPG, what class would you be?

Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Well speaking of isekai-adjacent stuff, I did watch a couple episodes of "I Don't Want to Get Hurt, So I'll Max Out My Defense" about the newbie VRMMO player who just stat dumps into defense and accidentally starts winning fights with her shield and thought "oh no, it's me." 

I'm not sneaky or fast enough to be the cool stealth thief character I always play. I'm not strong or very good at memorizing spells. Honestly, I'm just very stubborn, which is why I've made a few similarly stupid novelty builds in RPGs that should not (and don't) work, so becoming some unlikely tank who can only absorb damage and use party support buffs is probably me.

Jody Macgregor, AU/Weekend Editor: I am old enough that when I think of traveling to a fantasy world I think of "portal fantasy" like Narnia and the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon instead of whatever isekai manga about being hit by a truck and reborn as a slime the kids are reading today. 

In which case I would be a wizard, but inevitably a rubbish one like Presto from the D&D cartoon, who casts spells by pulling objects out of a hat and is only useful when the universe takes pity on him and lets him find a use for the random birthday cake or whatever he just brought into existence. So yeah, wizard. I'll be the one party member who doesn't use Intelligence as a dump stat.

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: I'd be an archer who also happens to be strong in destruction and alteration magic (hello, yes, Oblivion would like it's skills back). All sneaky-beaky then boop! Arrow in the face. Or maybe I'll sneak up and set you on fire, who knows?

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: My go-to character is a sneaky thiefy Garrett type, or else a dark mage/necro depending on the ruleset. That's not me though. In real life I'm big, strong, clumsy, and good natured, so I would absolutely be the Neutral Good human fighter you pick up in the first town who helps you tank the goblin caves. The world needs Alistairs and Carths, after all.

From our forum

Crapulence1337: I'd fall into a magician class of some sort. Namely because I'll disappear when it gets heavy and show up again in time to celebrate the win.

No, but seriously, I'd go magician because most of everything else feels too human-like. It's like eating at the same joints on vacation that you can at home; give me something different, something I can't do already.

SleepingDog: I would like to think that I would be a Paladin but that is wishful thinking. I don't think I could endure the training and praying to get there. Then there is the bit about being holy. In reality probably a Mage.

Zloth: Bard!

What? You don't want to bring me along on the adventure? Well shucks, I guess I'll just stay back here, safe in the campsite, while you go off to get chewed on by a variety of monsters. Be sure to bring back plenty of gold!

DXCHASE: Wizard/Magic, Necromancer, summon the dead to play with them.

Brian Boru: Archer/Ranger, playing a stealthy scout and overwatch kind of role. Hang near DXCHASE the necro, so he can resurrect me when needed

Colif: We don't need no Zombie Brian Boru around here.

Kovanen: Some sort of Dwarven Warrior, carry around a big ol' axe while drinking and complaining about everything. Would occasionally bring Zloth on adventures to reach things from the top shelf, while he serenades me of tales about the famous Brian Boru

Pifanjr: Fantasy: assuming the arcane language used for casting spells is just Latin, I'd be a wizard. Not that I remember much from the six years of Latin I had in high school, but there's probably still enough knowledge floating in my brain to get a good head start.

Science Fiction: anti-tech tech specialist. As a tech specialist, I would know exactly how unreliable most tech is and would never trust any of it. For example, I could reliably defeat any AI by posing it a paradoxical question.

Post-apocalyptic: Scientist and repair guy. I'm not actually good at either, but I just happen to find a database containing a huge selection of manuals and DIY/how-to books.

McStabStab: Dogmeat. *woof*

More and more, devs have had to balance shooters where some players use gamepads, and others rock mouse and keyboard. The latter's dominance in FPSes used to be unquestioned, with some PS4 players apparently turning to absurdities like the HORI Tactical Assault Commander for that m&k edge. Now though? Overwatch's controller aim assist is so good that they disabled it in PC-console crossplay matches, while some players in Destiny or Apex Legends proactively make the switch for a competitive advantage. 

Would you play an FPS with a controller if aim assist helped you win more?

Here are our answers, as well as some from our forum.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I'm not a real competitive person, though I do like to win—there's a Magic: The Gathering card called Meathook Massacre that just got banned from Standard for being too overpowered, and I had two of them in my deck at the time. What I am is an incredibly lazy person, and the effort of having to adapt to a controller would stop me from bothering. 

The other day I launched a new game, saw one of those "this game is better experienced with a controller" messages, looked across the room to where a wired 360 controller was sitting, and then played something else instead of walking over to get it. So no, I wouldn't play an FPS with a controller for the sake of racking up some wins, not out of a sense of nobility and fair play, but because I just couldn't be arsed.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I would take my PC outside, stack up the components in a nice pile, pour lighter fluid on it, and set it on fire before I played an FPS with a controller. The whole idea of having a PC is that you don't have to use a controller. Kinda like how having a car means you don't have to use a horse. I mean, if I ever actually considered using a controller to take advantage of aim assist⁠—and to be perfectly clear, I would not—why wouldn't I just download a bot and let it do all the work? "Hey, look at me, I'm a videogame superstar, woooooo! A winner is me! My mom says I'm a handsome boy!"

And to expand a little bit on what Jody said, any game that claims it's "better experienced with a controller" is lying.

Phil Savage, UK Editor-in-Chief: I wouldn't, but not because of any grand, noble gesture. The simple fact is that decades of playing FPSes on mouse and keyboard means I don't have the muscle memory to easily switch to a controller. Yes, shotgunning in Apex is much more effective on a pad. Yes, handling The Last Word in Destiny 2 is way harder with a mouse. The aim assist bonuses undoubtedly give specific advantages in those games, in those situations. But what I'd lose out on is basically everything else. My movement, positioning, and, yes, even aiming would be worse for having to learn a new control method. And I'm not prepared to go through months of relearning all those skills, being demonstrably worse overall for game after game, just to end up in a place where—maybe—I am marginally more effective in very specific scenarios.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I wouldn't go as far as Andy does, but I'm a little baffled at how people manage to play an FPS with a controller, the same way I have no idea how people manage to play Fortnite or PUBG on a phone. I just don't have that kind of talent. I haven't used a controller regularly since I had an N64 in the late '90s and have lost any controller skills I may have had in the 20+ years since. There's no amount of aim assist that could help me in an FPS other than "total."

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I'm only here because Andy thinks that no games are better on controller, but we all know that Real Yakuza Use A Gamepad, actually. The truth is that I play most games with a controller if possible and I really don't play shooters that often, even less FPSes specifically. I suppose I did play PUBG with a mouse and keyboard for quite a while at its peak. If it had proper controller support and aim assist yeah, I'd for sure have used my preferred input device if it helped me be less shit at shooters. But it's not like the gunplay was my focus. I just like creeping to the final circle as if it were a PvP stealth game.

From our forum

Zloth: No. Aim assist really bugs me. I don't like missing, but when I do miss and it hits anyway, it's even worse. That makes me wonder how much I've been missing and scoring hits anyway, which makes me think I don't really deserve to be doing as well as I am. Blah.

I'll still turn it on if the game is one where mouse/keyboard doesn't work out well, but I'll grumble as I do it.

DXCHASE: Today, no. I started off using one when I first switched to PC and hadn't fully embraced playing with a KB+M. Certain games (Destiny 2) were just so much easier to get a better K/D against other players because of the aim assist but after a few years of getting better and better with a KB+M in PvP I now loathe the ability one gets with a controller in PvP.

Crapulence1337: The only game I've ever played with a mouse and keyboard is Phasmophobia. For whatever reason it's the only game I can't sufficiently play with a controller. I play everything else, FPS games included, with a controller (or steering wheel and pedal setup if applicable). My wife has made it clear to me that I already won the game/life with her, so no need to in a video game.

ZedClampet: Yeah, I love the idea of handing over control of my character to algorithms. Can I have movement assist and "look in the right direction" assist, too? Really, I don't see why I have to do anything. Can't I just log in and have the assist play while I alt-tab out and watch funny animal videos on reddit?

WoodenSaucer: I just want to mention that there are two main types of aim assist. One kind attracts your reticle to the target when you get close, like a magnet. The other kind just lets you shoot in the general direction, and your bullets are attracted to the target. Horizon: Zero Dawn uses the second type, and I hated it. I much prefer the kind where your reticle gets attracted to the target.

But I agree with Kaamos in that it needs to be subtle and not extremely noticeable. The magnetic zone around a target needs to not be too big, and it shouldn't be really quick and jarring to snap to the target. If it's done right, it's great in my opinion. But it's easy to do it wrong.

Shodan_: I'm fluent in both. So I have, I would, and I'd do it again. Although I usually turn off auto aim, I enjoy playing FPS games with a controller very much. Matter of fact I used Joy2Key to make Dark Forces 1 playable on an Xbone gamepad and twin sticked it on hard. It was honestly fantastic and the fiddling around with settings was 100% worth it.

My PC is plugged into a big ass TV through HDMI and I usually game 7 feet away from it, slouched in a La-Z-Boy. I work at a desk all day, I'm not gaming at one. I'm that guy. I can absolutely M&K with the keyboard in my lap no problem (you're not twin sticking Apex Legends) but if it's a slightly slower paced game or the emphasis isn't necessarily on combat (Things like the Long Dark) I'll go for a gamepad and regret nothing. When I play multiplayer with friends I will go M&K. Mechwarrior 5, Ready or Not, 7 Days to Die, ARMA 3, etc., I'm using M&K.

Do you care how your character's clothes and armor look in MMOs? Have you ever spent hours getting the perfect clothes to complete your outfit, or used transmog to make sure you stay looking slick no matter what loot you find? Or do you just wear whatever mismatched jumble of accessories gives you the biggest bonuses?

How much time do you spend on MMO character fashion?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: When it comes to MMO armour, I actually kind of enjoy just being a victim of the loot tables. By just equipping whatever I find that has a higher number, no matter how incongruous it makes me look, I get to see my character constantly evolving visually in this organic way. Even in very different genres, whenever I have access to any kind of clothing system or anything like that, I like to find ways of gradually changing appearance over the course of the story in some slightly random way, just to see what weird looks come up and to feel like my character is going about their life rather than designing themselves the perfect hero costume.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Mate, fashion is the only reason I'm here. I mean sure, I'll prioritize the critical path quests or sometimes map completion (my other obsession), but my motivation for what to do next is always fashion rewards. 

I chose which dungeon in Guild Wars 2 to run daily (Citadel of Flame) because I wanted the complete armor set. I joined the Thieves Guild in The Elder Scrolls Online because, well, I always join the Thieves Guild in Scrolls games, but also I really wanted the leather armor. Even when I'm not actually sitting at a dye station choosing between two identical shades of black dye, I'm still technically spending time on my fashion.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I usually wore whatever gave the most pluses in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and all the other MMOs I've flitted in and out of over the years. Only Lost Ark has made me start to think about putting together a lewk. And even there I haven't got into dying outfits and all the other stuff real fashionistas do. 

Instead, I've just been collecting cosmetics and the ridiculous accessories given away in Lost Ark's Twitch drops, which you earn by watching a streamer for four hours. And that's why my sorceress basically looks like a pear and my artillerist is rocking a pair of 8-bit sunglasses.

Mollie Taylor, News Writer: Huehue, this is my time to shine. I'm a chronic Final Fantasy 14 player and as any Eorzea dweller knows, glamour is the true endgame. I've spent hundreds of hours grinding relic weapons, armour, and paying excessive amounts for the latest glamour item. The chest piece on my Paladin probably took the longest—Stormblood's relic armour is a long and arduous journey, especially if you're grinding it alone. Thankfully I wasn't!

Final Fantasy 14 has a really nice mixture of both casual and immersive clothing items, and I tend to flip-flop between the two depending on my mood. Then I either have AFK in Limsa Lominsa to show off my sweet new getup or, of course, jump straight into /gpose and spend forever taking screenshots for the validation of my friends and guildmates. Fashion grinding is such a big part of Final Fantasy 14 that there's even an entire lookbook website dedicated to it called Eorzea Collection. It's my go-to when I'm itching for a new outfit but stuck for inspiration.

Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: Final Fantasy 14 is the only MMO I've played that prompted me to care about what I wear. My bunny girl changes outfits depending on the situation and season. I hit the glamour dresser up whenever the main story takes me to a new location. I started playing FF14 after years of time in World of Warcraft where I wore whatever the newest raid sets were and never thought about it again. Now, I have a FF14 OC that I didn't know I wanted and it's all because of how stunning the fashion is in that game and how easy it is to get into it.

From our forum

Zloth: Just whatever gives the best bonuses, which could be a mess:

City of Heroes/Villains was a breath of fresh air. You didn't get armor, so you wore whatever you liked.

ZedClampet: The MMO I used to play let you transfer the stats of any equipment onto any other equipment, so you could be wearing the best armor in the game, but have it look like any other piece of clothes that you liked.

I did spend a decent amount of time doing that. I had friends and family playing the game, so I thought it was fun to create nice outfits. I would travel to venders in different worlds and buy what I needed or grind for crafting materials to make what I needed.

It wasn't a main focus of mine, but when I got tired of grinding for money and breeding pets and farming bosses, I needed to have something to do.

Pifanjr: Stats above style every time.

Frindis: I like to use some time to make myself look fabulous. Here is a picture from Runescape where I am at the Deep Sea Fishing hub with my water lycan pup. I do like to have different bonuses on my character and I'll override those items with better-looking clothes so I can still have the bonuses while looking good.

DXCHASE: If there is a transmog system...hours, if its just a generic build at the beginning... a couple of minutes.

Sarafan: The only MMO in which I spent a decent amount of time in the last years is The Elder Scrolls Online. The game has this characteristic that most outfits look quite aesthetic, so I don't have a problem that characterized Cyberpunk 2077 (yeah, it's not an MMO) where there was a challenge to find good-looking clothes. Of course there are better and worse looking armors in TESO, but I usually go for the statistics. It's nice to have a good looking hero, but it's even better to have a hero who has chances to survive encounters with enemies.

HowLongToBeat.com will tell you how much time it'll take to finish any given game, though the number for "Main Story" seems to assume a cutscene-skipping speedrunner's pace. HowLongToBeat's figures are pulled into both Augmented Steam and the Xbox App on PC, but do you actually look at how long games are ahead of time, whether because you're trying to figure out if they're worth the cost, or to figure out if they're short enough that you'll have time to make it to the end?

Do you check how long games take to finish before you play them?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Tim Clark, Brand Director: Not usually, unless it's a huge RPG and I'm looking for a ballpark figure of the kind of commitment I'm taking on. It's also encouraging to read a review for a more snacky game, like Immortality, and learn that it's only going to run to about eight hours before you see the credits. Makes me more inclined to pick it up. At the other end of the spectrum, someone probably ought to have warned me that I'd sail past the [redacted, but several thousand] hours mark in Destiny 2 without 'completing' it.'  I believe it's called an intervention.

Rich Stanton, News Editor: I'm more likely to be attracted by a short runtime than put off by a longer one, if that makes sense. I don't have all the free time I once did to indulge my love of RPGs and enormous open world games, but when something takes my fancy I'll happily snack away at it over months, and I'm also pretty comfortable leaving games unfinished. So when someone says Starfield is gonna be four times the size of Skyrim and take hundreds of hours to explore fully or whatever it doesn't make any difference, because I know I can play Starfield for 20 hours and I'll have fun.

I do find the way players talk about runtimes more generally to be kinda nonsensical, especially when we're talking about unreleased games. Games aren't movies and the whole point is that if you love a particular world you can spend as much time in it as you like: Dark Souls probably takes 30-40 hours to complete, but I spent thousands in Lordran. What matters about Starfield isn't how long you can feasibly go from the start to the end, but whether you actually want to be in this place.

And much like Tim, I do have a sharper eye nowadays for stuff that I can be done with after an evening or two. We all love the epics, but these days a four-hour game is just as attractive to me.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I definitely like to know how much of a commitment I'm in for before I start a new game. Partly that's just because I only have limited free time these days—if something's 100 hours long I've got to seriously consider if it's worth even starting, and if it's more like four then that's appealingly achievable. But I do also find that knowing how long a game is as I'm playing it can have a pretty big impact on my experience. 

I think we've all run into situations where you felt like a game was just getting started and then abruptly ended, or seemed like it was getting towards the end only to stretch out for another 20 hours. Having clearer expectations can help me take a game more on its own terms in those cases, and avoid disappointment. 

Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief: I'm the opposite of Tim. If I'm settling in for a big RPG, I already know what to expect. I'm taking on a project that will likely take me many months. I have already done the necessary mental preparation to deal with that, and, if I enjoy a game enough that I want to keep going to the end, it doesn't really matter if that takes 50 or 200 hours. I'm more likely to look it up for more linear games—singleplayer shooters or third-person action affairs. The calculation here is more: is this doing enough to justify the time I'm spending with it? If I'm only mildly enjoying myself, it's good to know whether I'm fast approaching a conclusion or still have another 10+ hours to go. Because if it's the latter, I'm out.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I don't think I ever specifically check. I'll be honest, I don't really complete most big games anyway (I never did the final mission for Cyberpunk 2077, for example) so it doesn't particularly matter how long it is. I'll play until I feel like stopping. Sometimes it's useful to know before buying something like a puzzle game, and Steam reviewers often mention how long it took them to complete. But otherwise, I don't really remember needing to know how long or short a game it was before playing. As long as I enjoy the time I spend it doesn't matter if it's one hour or a hundred.

Lauren Morton: Like Chris, I'll check out timing on puzzle and adventure games. It's good to know that Tunic is about a 12-hour game and A Short Hike is about four. The trouble is that I spend most of my time with RPGs and, despite not being a completionist, I routinely blow through even the most forgiving time estimates.

HowLongToBeat estimates a completionist run of Yakuza: Like A Dragon takes 102 hours. I rolled credits at 120. A main story run of Divinity: Original Sin 2 allegedly takes 60 hours, but I played 150 without seeing the end. I spent 90 hours on my first Oblivion save file without ever touching the main story. Shockingly, my first Disco Elysium playthrough did clock in pretty average at about 23 hours. Estimates can't help me when I already know I'm slower than sin.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I don't check how long games are, but I'm usually glad when I find out. Better to know a game I'm really digging is going to end a bit earlier than I'd prefer. Recently I've had the opposite problem. I'm on an incompletionist streak. Can't seem to finish anything! I boot up a game I haven't played in a while or install a new thing on Game Pass, mess around for a few hours, then completely fall off. How does Immortality end? I may never know.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I don't bother. I usually have a general idea about a game's length before I get into it. Far: Changing Tides is short, Elden Ring is long, that sort of thing—and that's good enough for me. And like Lauren, length estimates are pretty much meaningless to me anyway. I can screw a ridiculous amount of time into a game if there's dicking around to be done.

Katie Wickens, Hardware Writer: I've never checked, because inevitably I'll get distracted by side quests and never finish the game anyhow. And for someone whose main focus is sim games in which there's hardly ever a clear win state, there would be no point. How long does it take to beat Cities: Skylines, I wonder?

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I usually check because I like to know how much story is left. When I'm reading a book and I feel the number of pages on my right thumb getting smaller, it's like a sense of acceleration. I get more immersed when I know the climax is coming. (I have an e-reader that shows your progress as a bar at the bottom of the screen, and it has the same effect.) Knowing I'm about seven hours away from wrapping up a visual novel is like realizing there's less than a quarter of a book left to go—we're on the home stretch, so best buckle in because this is when the wild shit usually goes down.

From our forum

WoodenSaucer: No, that's pretty low on the priority list for me. I care about a lot of other things before that. But I'm a slow gamer, so whenever I do check how long it takes, I usually double what they say. Haha.

Brian Boru: I will take note of comments in reviews about length. Too long doesn't bother me, as fully finishing a game is not a priority—but too short could make it not worth my while, especially if there's a learning curve. Poor RoI :)

SleepingDog: I don't check but note it if it is mentioned in reviews. Generally we get told if the game is short (<20 hours??) so I will take that in to account regarding what I am willing to pay, but since I wait at least 12 months or longer it generally isn't an issue.

Kaamos_Llama: I do out of curiosity, if it's a sort of actiony singleplayer non-fully open world game with a campaign I'll check sometimes to see roughly how far I have left to go. It never affects my decision to buy a game though, I don't believe in any kind of dollars-per-hour metric to justify a game purchase. I'd rather have a fantastic 10 hours than a humdrum 100 for the same price.

In 4x or party RPGs I don't usually check as its not really as relevant because there's more chance that it will be played more than once.

Zloth: Yeah, I'll check the time if I think it might be under 40 hours. If the game is going to cost more than $1/hr, it better be a really good!

Pifanjr: I don't check specific numbers of hours. The genre usually indicates the amount of time you can spend on a game pretty well and I do my research into the content of a game before buying/playing it, so I'll have a good idea of how many hours I'll be able to get out of it.

McStabStab: Absolutely. My job and my kids usually occupy around 16 hours of my day. If I'm going to commit to a game purchase I gotta make sure I'm willing to commit to the time it takes to finish it as well. Often times I'll chip away at games like Assassins Creed: Odyssey over a long period of time. I purchased AC:O at the end of 2019 and didn't finish it until May of 2022. That's over TWO YEARS to complete the storyline of one game! Mind you I jump around to different tiles throughout, but if I'm going to commit to a lengthy title I want to know it first.

ZedClampet: As if I'm going to finish a game. The only time I check "how long to beat" is when I think, "Jebus, how much longer is this going to go on?" Most of the games I play don't have endings, anyway.

Colif: No. The games I play are understood to go a long time... but they aren't story-driven, they are character-driven... the game doesn't end just because the story does. You just play the story again with same character but evolved. I am more likely to be disappointed if it does just end.

mainer: As I mentioned in another post in the PCG Forum, I've always been more of a "slow-runner" than a "speed-runner". The types of games I play are mainly RPGs or RPGish in nature (like some immersive sims), and those games, overall, take a longer time to complete from start to finish.

However, I do appreciate, and make a mental note of, the time it took the author of a review article to finish the game. Such as, "it took me about 40 hours to complete the game and most of the side quests". I can take that number and double or triple it and know that it would take me at least 80-120 hours for a complete game.

But there are also many variables involved depending upon the game. Open world games, such as the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games from Bethesda, have so much to do, so many places to explore, so many quests & factions, that those games can literally be never ending. Throw in a detailed crafting system, an expansive home or settlement building system and my hours can run into the hundreds.

Other variables that can affect my hours played include detailed mini games (Caravan from FONV or Gwent from Witcher 3), complex character interactions & relationships (Mass Effects & Dragon Ages), or the flexibility to mod a given game. The reviewers time to complete a game, and I do appreciate that base number, rarely has any effect on my game purchases or playing time.

Foxhood: I do try to avoid very long games. Balance my time between games and working on my other hobbies. This had lead to some long games having ended up ditched and never completed sometimes. Unfortunate, but hey. I had my fill of fun and that is all that matters in the end.

That said. If I encounter one of those games that successfully bring out that little voice that goes "Just one more turn/run/day..". I and my other hobbies: be doomed...

invader: Sometimes. Specially since GamePass, when there is a game that I wanted to play but its about to leave the service, to see if I can squish enough time until its removed to finish it (I did that with a Plague Tale recently... I had to take a sick day at job but worth it )

TheHuntingHorn: Yep, I like statistics and knowing how much time I'm likely to get out of a game, and also cataloguing how long it takes me to play games. I've been using HLTB for a year or so now for both purposes, also to gather my thoughts about finished games there in the form of reviews. Also good to be able to look up when I finished which game. Sort of the Goodreads of the gaming world.

If anyone's interested in starting to catalogue game times and completions for their own games, I can recommend Playnite on PC as a launcher that automatically tracks your time played across all sorts of launchers/storefronts, so you don't have to manually time playthroughs of games that don't have their own ingame counter.

Did Euro Truck Simulator 2 improve your reverse trailer-parking? Can you build a PC thanks to PC Building Simulator, rattle off the NATO phonetic alphabet and read maps at light-speed thanks to Arma, or understand orbital mechanics thanks to Kerbal Space Program? Maybe you learned about actual programming from a Zachtronics game, in which case you're better at them than me.

Have you learned a real-world skill from a game?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: Crusader Kings has genuinely taught me a lot about medieval politics, particularly succession laws. You never forget the first time your kingdom goes from running like clockwork to split in three and embroiled in chaos just because you didn't know what 'gavelkind' is. It's a very direct lesson in why there were so many succession crises in the period. And as you learn strategies to avoid it happening again, you realise they're the same strategies real rulers used—such as Christian kings sending troublesome sons off to the church, or Vikings constantly conquering to grab up enough land for inheritance. The series isn't perfectly accurate, but it includes enough real info to teach you about medieval religions, cultures, noble families, military forces, and more.

Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief: Thanks to the Yakuza series, I now understand the rules of Mahjong. This, as yet, has not proved at all useful in my day-to-day life. But I am pretty good at Mahjong Handle, a Wordle-a-like about guessing a Mahjong hand.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I can't handle games with hands so Mahjong was out, but the Yakuza games taught me how different darts games are actually scored. It's not exactly a miraculous real-world skill, but I did put it to use recently by coaching an acquaintance at a bar through the right targets to shoot for in a game of cricket darts. Wasn't my fault he was way too drunk to execute the win though. The strategic advice was totally solid.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I've learned a lot of theory I will absolutely never make practical use of from games. Sure, I know all about reverse-parking trucks thanks to Euro Truck Simulator 2, but I don't drive a car. I'm as likely to make use of that knowledge as I am the things I learned about BDSM from playing Ladykiller in a Bind. 

The one undeniably useful skill I've picked up from PC gaming is just knowing my way around using a computer. Having to futz about to get games running, to get mods working, to fix things when they break? That's taught me an incredibly useful life skill and I owe it all to good ol' PC gaming. 

From our forum

ToxicOffender: The Sims taught me everything about social interaction with other people and thanks to Hitman I also know how to get rid of them unnoticed.

Pifanjr: I've learned most of my English from video games. I started playing very young, so my brother had to translate for me a lot. He's always been fascinated by language, so he was a great teacher and video games were a great motivator to learn.

ZedClampet: I've learned a ton about cars by playing Car Mechanic Simulator games. I can now open the hood and tell you what all the parts are and what they do. I can also recognize the various types of farm equipment and know what they do from playing Farming Simulator games.

DXCHASE: Having long gaming sessions into the night when I was kid has helped me develop the ability to work overnight with ease and not feel tired at 4,5 or 6 in the morning.

WoodenSaucer: I learned how to secure a field and defuse bombs from playing Minesweeper. I also learned how to negotiate peace treaties between kings and queens of various nations and implement prisoner exchanges, by playing solitaire.

But come to think of it, I guess Solitaire is really kind of racist. You take a deck that is full of diversity and work as hard as you can to segregate the various suits/races back to where they supposedly belong.

Johnway: Doorkickers. The one game that made me actually go on the web and learn CQB tactics by swat teams. Namely breaching and entering and how to clear rooms etc. Ok, it was more a quick 30-1hr read on some website, but it was insightful and certainly something I tried to incorporate into the game itself and some other games. Didn't stop my team becoming swiss cheese in some missions though.

McStabStab: Back in 1999 when Counter-Strike released in its earliest form as a mod for Half-Life I was still not even in High School. My typing skills increased leaps and bounds because before voice communication was in games the only way to talk trash was to type it. I credit my quick typing ability to C:S.

Zloth: I learned a lot about the aviation in World War 2 from Air Warrior. Terms like split-S, immelmann, barrel roll.... We even had a convention in Washington D.C. to see the aircraft in museums. I don't know if you would call that a skill or just knowledge, but I'm glad of it.

Sarafan: This probably won't be the answer that was precisely intended by the Author of the question, but I actually learned from games how scripts in programming work. Many years ago I was a creator of maps for the first Starcraft and Operation Flashpoint (ARMA: Cold War Assault).

When I started my journey with modding, I had exactly no knowledge how the games work. I was dreaming about creating my own content, so started tackling with the editor for Starcraft 1. Step by step and thanks to the work of other modders I started to reverse engineer existing maps. This gave me an understanding that to make some action you need to assign them conditions and voila! The hardest thing to understand in making new maps became a piece of cake!

With Operation Flashpoint it was even more interesting. There's no way you can open existing developer made campaign maps without some serious tackling and I desperately needed to figure out scripts commands used in some of them. What did I do? I opened the campaign file in Notepad. Among some standard gibberish that you get when you open such files this way, there were beautiful fragments of standard text and among other this were the scripts that I was looking for. Now I just needed to scroll to the desired mission and find the script I was looking for or just automatically search the file, when I had some suspicions about the correct words that were used in it.

All in all this experience gave me a lot of knowledge about gaming editors. Although I never made a step forward and didn't start to play with something more powerful (like Creation Kit for Bethesda games for example), I still have some plans to make use of the things I learnt this way.

Frindis: I'm good at problem-solving and making stories and I believe some of that comes from countless hours solving puzzles in point & click games and being able to really delve into the lore of different games.

I have good eye-hand coordination with solid reflexes from countless hours in FPS games. It has definitely helped me in different sports, not to mention having better situational awareness overall.

I have no problem with public speaking. I'll produce a text and tell it to whomever without any problems, and bits of that trait I believe come from times in TeamSpeak and similar channels with different roles in MMO games, obviously with the motivational push from a friend or two.

Playing games has also made me more interested in audio/video editing, even if I have not gone as far as making any machinima video or similar. I am thinking of streaming though, so in that sense, gaming has opened a new way/idea for me to both play and perhaps also earn a living from doing it in the long term.

A more lust for learning I would most definitely say gaming has thought me. Right now I am playing Assasin Creed Valhalla (day 1) and I am looking forward to jumping on the educational section of the game and learning more from my own heritage as the game is set in Norway.

The great joy of playing with my nephews is one of the biggest ones and being able to educate them on how to play from the early age of maybe 6-7 years old and also learning from them while following their road to adulthood.

There is so much more I could have added. Seriously, I could probably write a book about just what gaming has done to my upbringing and how it still affects me deeply. The learning aspect and with it its skills are always evolving in that sense.

The @FutureGamesShow Twitter account asked this question as a poll, providing three options: 1) You can play it now! 2) Three months out... 3) As soon as it's a project. You can check how the numbers broke down on the tweet, but let's see what you think. 

How soon before release should a game be revealed?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum. Future Games Show is also running a competition for folks in the UK and EU, who can win a Streamplify bundle including a microphone, webcam, and ring light. You've got one week left to enter.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I think purely as a consumer, if I wasn't a journalist, I'd be perfectly happy with publishers announcing stuff like three-to-six months before launch. Less lead time means less time for online communities to whip themselves up into a frenzy before launch, less time to wait if it's something I'm really excited for, and less super thin, pointless marketing beats just to pad out the preview cycle. 

But at the same time I think the layers of secrecy in this industry are often absurd. There's a lack of transparency around games development that gives players a distorted view of how things work, and negatively impacts the lives of studio staff—often for the sake of games we all know are being made anyway, thanks to regular sequels and leaks. So another side of me wishes we were a bit more like the movie industry—less secretive and less hung up on the initial announcement of a project as a big deal unto itself. 

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Two years, max. For the love of god, I wish they'd stop putting out 20-second pre-rendered trailers for stuff five years in advance. It's just kinda tiresome.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: The rational part of me only wants to know about games a few months ahead of time for the same perfectly good reasons you've all given. The other part of me has been a Dragon Age fan for 12 years and has spent eight of those waiting for the game now titled Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. I don't like the tiny Hansel and Gretel scraps of information leading me on a painstaking journey through the Wilds to Morrigan's mum's cottage, but that part of me was happy to find out back in 2020 that the next Dragon Age game was happening instead of waiting for that confirmation until, well, a year or so from now probably.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I like a bit of anticipation, speculation, a good teaser, a proper trailer... I'd say six months is a great amount of time between the reveal and launch, but even hearing about a game a year before it comes out is usually okay.

It does seem weird when something is revealed years before it comes up, but thinking about it from the developers' perspective, it would be kind of weird, maybe even a real problem, to work on something for years without ever telling anyone what it is. Once there's a reveal, at least you can mention it by name. It might be something of a relief to finally be able to admit what you spend all your time working on.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: A month or two, tops. I'm tired of the extended hype cycle, I'm tired of developers creating games "in partnership with the community," I'm tired of knowing every little detail about a game before it's out, and frankly I'm tired of watching developers and publishers clown around with Big Secret Stuff only to have it leaked all over the internet like a blown brake line three days before the embargo.

It is possible that I'm not doing a great job of separating my consumer self from the guy who writes about videogame news for a living, I will grant. But honestly I'd be happy not knowing about them at all until one day I wake up and get clocked in the face with * N * E * W * * G * A * M * E *!!! I miss the days of walking into a shop, browsing the shelves, spotting something and thinking, "Holy shit, what is this?" I just don't have that sense of intrigue and excitement anymore. Is the endless parade of hype and info better for me as a consumer because I'm more aware of what I'm spending my money on, and less likely to sink it into something I end up hating? Maybe. But is it better for me as a gamer? Absolutely not.

Jody Macgregor, AU/Weekend Editor: In an ideal world I'd like to know as soon as a game's being worked on. Avoid all the hassle of secrecy and rumors. Just get word out there and I'll pop it in the back of my brain, probably forgetting about it a month later.

We don't live in an ideal world, though. We live in one where internet fandoms are absolutely bug-fuck and froth themselves into a frenzy of anticipation over the tiniest bits of information, then storm and roar and fall in a rage on whatever disappoints them. In this world, yeah, minimizing that with something like the five-months-ahead-of-release announcement schedule Fallout 4 had seems sensible.

From our forum

ZedClampet: I don't mind reveals that are years out, but I prefer them to be just a few months out like the Fallout 4 reveal, if I remember correctly. That seems really rare, though. But I actually got more excited about Fallout 4 just because it was releasing pretty soon.

Pifanjr: I'm fine with reveals years in advance, but don't expect me to actually get excited until maybe 2 months before release. Even then, I've experienced enough broken promises from developers/publishers that I my hype won't reach its highest point until the game has already been released and I can see what other people are saying about it.

Brian Boru: Years AFTER release, when:
♣ Whichever bugs are going to be fixed, have been—and I can decide if I can live with what's left.
♦ The DLC trickle has finished, and there's a real 'Complete' version.
♥ Mods have been updated for the final version, so I know if I can avoid the usually horrible intro half hour, and what bugs, UI and balance issues have been solved by the community.

What a reveal that would be! "Look everyone, our game doesn't mostly suck any more!"

Colif: Reveals are only surprising if its a new IP. Otherwise its almost a given everything will get a sequel. I think a year or more before its due is too soon... looks at Skyrim 2. Duke Nukem Forever (lol). I won't include early access as you can play them... otherwise Star Citizen says hello. I feel Diablo 4 was too soon as its not out until next year... so I can just go back to ignoring it again.

Alm: I always love a reveal. Shadow drops are very exciting but any time I feel hype if it's something I'm interested in.

Kaamos_Llama: 3 months before sounds pretty good, at that point they'll have it working and you'll be able to see gameplay. I don't really like to follow things too closely or play betas, a general idea is enough and then keep the surprise intact.

So many great games already out there and easy to find surprises that I find I don't really get hyped up by new game marketing unless its a sequel to something I really, really loved.

mainer: Given those choices, I'd go with 3 months, though I think it's exceedingly rare to see a reveal that close to release. The best game reveal for me was Fallout 4 as @ZedClampet mentioned. It was revealed around June of 2015 and then released in November of 2015 and I was so psyched for a new Fallout game and knew I could play it in just a few months, and that's extremely rare these days. Plus, it had one of my favorite promo trailers:

Frindis: I used to love finding out everything about a game, even if it was a couple of years before the release. Now I am more interested in getting them as soon as possible and around the 3-month mark & what @ZedClampet referred to with Fallout 4. Fallout 4 was how it should be, straight down to the core of giving something to the gamers without having to milk every goddamn penny! Here is hoping Obsidian Entertainment might just do something similar with their upcoming RPG game: Avowed. Not heard any news for a long time, so it would just be perfect for them to say: Coming this Christmas!

Johnway: Personally I would like reveals for games when they are ideally months out to finish or at least a point of absolute commitment and in the works. What I DON'T want to see are trailers to hype (announcement trailers) or trailers with no ingame footage and just movies.

Too often I see games too early and it either dies or it changes from all recognition from the initial game and makes the previous hype/previews an absolute waste of time. Beyond good and evil 2 I'm looking at you. Do we even have a game or has money just been wasted hyping nothing?

DXCHASE: I like reveals within 3-6 months before release. If it's something I want, it gives me the right amount of time to plan on making time for it when it releases. Destiny 2 does a pretty good job with this.

Doing something like what CDPR did with Cyberpunk? No way, that was probably the worst approach to releasing a game I've ever seen. They started teasing it what? 7 or 8 years or something like that before it released? Nah, anything over a year or so I can do without. I guess maybe if its a remaster of a classic, I dont mind knowing a long time ahead of time because its something I already played. (Gothic remake/Mafia remake for example).

Now if the game industry could only normalize not putting a release date out so the anxiety of pushing back release dates goes away. Nothing more annoying about this than seeing a game being advertised (like cyberpunk) and having the date get pushed back several times. Just say its in development until its actually ready to be released.

WoodenSaucer: The Elder Scrolls VI is the one that frustrates me the most. Do you guys realize they made that announcement over 4 years ago, and they still haven't even started on it? 

But I'll say this, at this point I think TES VI will come out before Metroid Prime 4, which was announced 5 years ago, and we've never heard a word about it since then, except that they had to scrap it and start over with another developer.

Kovanen: Typically 3 - 6 months, but prior to a properly finished release. None of this, it's got a million bugs & glitches but we'll fix them as we go along for the next 12 months.

I'd be interested to see games not be revealed and announced. You login STEAM one day and there's a "Today's Releases" page with the new games and nobody knows a thing about them. Obviously it wouldn't help with the marketing aspects, but would definitely have some fun surprises.

Sarafan: It actually doesn't matter that much to me. Usually I always enjoy a reveal of a game that I'm waiting for. However I don't like when a game comes out a few days after the reveal. There were a few examples of that (e.g. Fallout Shelter or Gwent: Rogue Mage). This doesn't build a proper hype and is simply less entertaining. If I'm waiting for a game, I like to watch some trailers before it's released, read about the gameplay, see screenshots, discuss all these things with friends etc. When a game is released almost instantly after the reveal, there's no room for that. Developers that release their games instantly resign from a free marketing campaign.

Krud: Depends on the depth of the reveal and how much work they've done on it already. If it's still in the concept/planning stages? Don't even tell us, because not only might it never come to pass, but its form may change drastically between the initial pitch/presentation and the release product. If you're mostly done and are polishing? A year is fine.

Just don't drop a trailer with what looks like a finished world two years in advance, or in the case of TES6, four or more years before the release.

Thanks to HenrykForkbeard, who posed this question on the PC Gamer forum, asking. "If you were a video game, what genre/type of game would you be and why? (Extra credit for a story/character description)." It's definitely a much more interesting query than "what kind of tree would you be", a question that only rarely lets you know which people are messy dating sims.

If you were a videogame, what kind of game would you be and why?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: An open world RPG with no limit on how many things you can keep active in your quest log. All the quests sound cool. I want to finish all of them but I can't choose which to do first—the closest? The biggest? The main questline? My favorite companion's personal quest? All I know is I'm going to pick up every single quest I can find, get halfway through most of them, complete the least consequential, and ignore the main quest as long as I'm allowed, all while stuffing my inventory with crafting materials I've hoarded even though I can't remember what they were for.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I'd be a classic point-and-click adventure game where the protagonist wanders slowly around offering half-baked quips about things when you click on them. One of those ones where you’re constantly getting stuck and just bashing random objects together hoping they combine into a solution.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I'd be a stealth game. I'm just over here quietly doing my thing on a low-chaos Clean Hands playthrough. (In this game the healing items are cups of tea.)

Sean Martin, Guides Writer: I'd likely be a Total War game, but specifically that advisor you can't work out how to turn off. You know, the one who pops up at random times to shout stuff like "YOU ARE AT WAR WITH THE ETRUSCAN LEAGUE!" or chooses inopportune moments to ramble about the minute differences between spearmen.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I am too clever by half and will make you feel bad for your choices no matter what they are. I am Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords.

Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: I'd be an action-RPG about a woman with a bow. As an archer in real life, I always pick archery builds when they're available and so I'd ideally be a game where the archery was both good, and fairly accurate while being fun. I'm still waiting for any improvement from Wii Sports Resort.

Rich Stanton, News Editor: My game would be half survival sim where you maintain a base, then half a Katamari-esque physics sim where feral children screw it all up as you flop uselessly around trying to contain the mess.

Andy Chalk, US News Lead: I'm an idle game. Leave me alone and I'll do what I do.

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: I took up amateur boxing a year ago, so I guess I'd be a fighting game. I haven't actually competed, though, so we'll say it's in early access, and only includes a training stage right now. Also, I injured my wrist earlier this year and had some pretty unhealthy habits prior to my mid-30s, so you're using a creaky old controller with a sticky D-pad, and sometimes your preferred character appears to wince during their idle animation, which is weird. Still, you're pretty sure you'll be good when the full game releases. Your character gets winded quickly, but their hubris stat is maxed out, which you assume is good.

Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: I'm definitely either a narrative-driven RPG, with lots of choices and romance and drama, or a chaotic management sim.

From our forum

HenrykForkbeard: I think I'd be an RPG with a roller coaster of emotions story line that is distinctly like Dark Souls in terms of its annoyance and difficulty. The story would be based around 8 individual characters that you'd follow through on a journey to find out in the end, it's really only one character that existed with split personalities and lots of loot.

WoodenSaucer: I was thinking of Solitaire... because I just want to be alone, but everybody plays me for a cheap thrill.

Pifanjr: One of those edutainment games that teaches you programming. It has a story to tie all the programming assignments together, but it's pretty weak.

Kaamos_Llama: Something that ends up in development hell because all the creatives have totally different ideas, and then it never gets released.

Frindis: I'd be an annoying John McClane with a headache type of character in a detective point-and-click FPS game set in a neo-noir looking world. I'd work at night getting a slight tan from all the burning neon lights feeding on my headache which will make me even more eager to end the night and finish my mission. The missions will come from my Boss, Mr. Biggles, a sad creature with a pointy tail wearing an ugly-looking hat from the mid-80s. The kind of hat you think makes you look cool but in reality, you look like somebody stomped your face in a puddle of Melvin the mop guy and made that your hat.

Biggles would always give me those annoying phone calls just as you are going to bed, telling me that YOU are the only one he had on his list and who can do the job. In reality, you know that he hates your guts and hope you slip up on the job, killing somebody. I'll always give him the "Yes, sir" then I slam the phone, drink acid on the rocks, and scream the way down to my rusty old sleeper bike.

I'll put on my snakeskin helmet, slam the pedal down and ooze down the bright lanes of hell while listening to the only music a sane person in this shitty world would listen to - A catatonic deep bass punk music by the Great Warheads.

mainer: An open world, party-based (4-6 companions) RPG. Either a fantasy or sci-fi theme, or maybe post-apocalyptic. Companions and NPCs would have real in-depth personalities and have advanced AI, so that they feel like living, breathing people (no more repeating the same dialog over and over). Lots of dialog and banter. Conversations and choices made would always have some affect in the game whether large or small. Exploration and discovery would be key features. Perspective would probably be 3rd person, though I'm not opposed to 1st person or even isometric.

ZedClampet: My game would be Napping and Video Games Simulator because I'm about to retire. The main character would be an old guy who sees a young guy when he looks in a mirror.

Brian Boru: After the incredible success of my board game, I've been inundated with requests to bring it to the video game world. The clincher was when Gabe offered to release it as the B side of Half Life 3—so design is well under way, working title Brian's Saga.

You play as me, of course. Starting as a young prince of Thomond, the game begins in 976 after the death of your older brother and your first action is to drive the Vikings from Limerick city and secure it.

After that tutorial-like prologue comes Act 1, expansion until dominating the southern province of Munster by 978. Act 2 continues the expansion until achieving domination over the southern half of the island by 996—this will be the toughest part of the game, with many shifting alliances and strong opposition.

Act 3 is securing the High Kingship of Ireland by 1002, mainly by defeating the previously dominant O'Neills. Rather than the previous clan v clan battles and skirmishes, this period will feature full-on major campaigns and conflicts.

Act 4 is the final one, dealing with various rebellions, but mainly culminating in the final epic Battle of Clontarf in 1014, where you lead your army against a Norse-Irish defense of Dublin—and finally end the Vikings as a military force on the island.

Only 4 acts, but 50-100 scenes all told, just fleshing out some at the moment. Only sure one is the game's final scene, the big duel where you cleave SilkBeard in two, thereby making him ForkBeard…

So there you have it. While the outline sounds like one long bloodbath—and it is!—there will be a major diplomatic game going on beside the military one. If you don't bring the right guys onside, if you don't marry the right woman, if you don't give the right gift, if your daughter doesn't accept the right proposal… you get the idea, things will quickly go south on the battlefield. Which clearly isn't good, since most of your push is northwards 

I haven't decided yet, but seems natural for combined turn-based strategic and diplomatic phases interspersed with tactical resource claiming and military action. Perhaps dynamic, switching to tactical only when there are opposing strategic moves into the same region.

There will be an easy difficulty level where you don't have to meet the 'by year' targets, and I'll probably take some liberties with the map to enable more naval tactics—navy was a big part of BB's success.

Anyway, early days yet, Gabe says I have a bit of time to flesh it all out.

ruzuyu: I'd probably be No Man's Sky at launch...

SWard: Am.... Am I candy crush?

I asked PCG Lauren and she suggested I'm probably Jackbox, cause it's loud and interactive.  She's achingly right.

Krud: Probably The Stanley Parable.

[Krud looked carefully at his answer. He knew that some might read more into this choice than he intended, and wasn't sure whether to stick with it, but ultimately decided it was as good an answer as any. He then returned to pushing buttons at his desk.]

When a videogame opens with so many sliders you'd think it was a 1990s sci-fi series starring John Rhys-Davies, do you dive right in and start adjusting your character? Do you wallow in that thing for hours until you've created a face perfect enough to shame God? Or do you just say 'good enough' and get on with playing the actual game?

How long do you spend in character creators?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: At first I'm really into it! I check out all the hairstyles, followed by facial hair when available. Tattoos, scars, piercings, and so on, always fun to choose. I'll find the eyes I like, make sure the eyebrows look good, fiddle with the nose and lips. 

Then I'll notice there's options for, like, cheekbone width. And cheekbone depth. And cheekbone spread, size, weight, shading, sharpness, and 10 other cheekbone attributes and I just don't have that many opinions about how my character's cheekbones should look. Then I'll see options for stuff like ear rotation, eyebag density, neck occlusion, pore diameter, iris clouding, philtrum profundity, and by this point I'm like "Look, I'm sorry I ever came here, please just let me enter my character's name and leave and I promise I'll never come back."

So, like, 5-10 minutes I guess.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Like, total? Or just the first time? Because I'll probably spend about 30 minutes in a character creator initially. "I just want to play the game," I'll think, trying not to be extra, not to take my face so seriously, just be chill about it, even as I tweak every single slider just in case. 

At minute 31 I have to see my character's face in the harsh light of game day, outside the mood lighting of the creation screen, and oh god her eyes are too far apart and her hair is brighter than I realized and also I chose a really boring hairstyle and I know better. I know I want my character to stand out but I chose that half-pony because I was trying not to be so ridiculous but I should have gone for the extravagant updo. 

I've spent a lot of time in Dragon Age Inquisition's Black Emporium changing my face after the fact. And also a lot of cash at Red Dead Online's barbershop. And real money on character appearance consumables in MMOs. 

I dunno... two hours?

Tim Clark, Brand Director: I once blew the first hour of a two-hour Dragon Age Inquisition demo fannying around trying to get the freckles on my character just right, so you can only imagine the amount of time I'm willing to spend once unconstrained. Pretty sure I had to restart Mass Effect multiple times to rectify fish-lip disasters that were only revealed once in-game. Can we do how much time do you spend on MMO character fashion next, because it's... a problem.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I'm at a point with character creators where I'm happier for the devs to just give me the choice of 10 preset faces. The modern trend towards endless precise sliders is a special kind of trap for my brain—I'm obsessive enough that I need to make my character look exactly perfect before I can start, but at the same time impatient and uncreative in a way that makes me terrible at getting good results out of that great a level of choice. I pretty quickly end up in this weird zone where nothing looks right my eyes, like the visual equivalent of when you say the same word too many times and it loses all meaning. 

It'll end up taking me hours to find something I'm happy with, and then inevitably the moment I step into the actual game, I'll realise my character looks terrible in the default lighting, or their clothes sit super weird on their body, or some other flaw I can't possibly live with. 

At this point it's perfectly normal for me to restart an RPG several times over trying to get a result I can live with. I practically had a nervous breakdown when Monster Hunter World asked me to design a cute cat friend too. 

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: At least 30 minutes. If a character creator has sliders and color palettes and more than just a few basic presets to flick through, I'd say I usually spend somewhere between 30 minutes and a full hour getting my character just how I want them. I definitely stress over cheekbones (they should be pointy, but not too pointy) and eye spacing and hmm do those brows make them look too angry or just tough? I don't think I've ever restarted a game once I created my character just to change something, but I definitely fret the details. At least until I hit the hour mark: that's about when I go into "fuck it" mode and impatiently rush through the rest of the creation process.

Robin, if you thought Monster Hunter World asking you to create a Palico was bad: Monster Hunter Rise asks you to make a cat and a dog and then you can recruit a labor force of like, a dozen furry friends. It's way too much.

I still love my Monster Hunter World hunter, though. That's a good character creator.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor:  I mentioned in my review of Saints Row that I spent a fair while in the character creator, and then after the tutorial I ended up switching to the first default. After reading the other answers I'm glad to know I'm not the only person who ends up unhappy with their custom face, though sometimes it's because I make up a character who doesn't fit the story rather than because from some angles my cheekbones could cut glass. 

In Dragon Age Origins I made a human rogue with a Michael Caine vibe, a middle-aged tough guy, then the prologue cast me as the younger son of a noble who looked the same age as me and kept calling me "Pup." Feh.

Lost Ark is probably the game where I've spent the most time in the character creator. I have a small army of alts themed on characters from other games. My paladin is Dragon Age's Alistair and my sorceress is Warcraft's Tyrande Whisperwind. I've made Geralt and Harley Quinn and Jeanette Voerman from Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. 

Normally a character as distinct as Jeanette would be impossible to recreate thanks to her heterochromia, but Lost Ark lets you make characters with eyes of two different colors. The fangs were tougher to pull off, but the facial tattoo options include a kind of crescent moon that I mirrored to make two of, then angled and moved down to her lips. After all that effort she ended up wearing armor with a hood that completely changed her hairstyle. I don't know why I bother.

From our forum

Brian Boru: 15-20 minutes max in the few games where I've had character creation options. But there have never been 'tweaking' options, like size of eyebrows or mouth. I would spend much longer cumulatively in Photo Mode, making adjustments for each shot.

Zloth: I normally don't spend a lot of time adjusting my characters' looks. Maybe 5 minutes. There are some exceptions when there are a LOT of options for the looks, though. City of Heroes/Villains is going to take a good half hour per costume slot.

ZedClampet: My process is to glance at the default, male character. and decide if he is acceptable. If so, then I just skip it altogether. That's how it goes the majority of the time. Every now and then I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Default, so I might cycle through some faces and hairstyles, but it doesn't take but a minute. If it's one like in Fallout 4 where you can change even the smallest detail, I might fiddle with it a couple of minutes.

But, see, none of these characters can compare to me IRL. I'm so hot the air around me gives off a faint sizzling sound. I look how bacon tastes.

Colif: I normally play games where after an hour or so my character has a helmet on and I never see their faces again, so character creation is... not very long.

Pifanjr: Let's just say I think I've definitely spend up to an hour just crafting my Skyrim character, which I then never saw again because I play the entire game in first person and he's covered head to toe in armour 100% of the time.

Sarafan: I spend a lot of time in character creators, but not in the character look editors. Usually most time consuming is selecting the appropriate set of abilities and skills. This can take ridiculously long especially if there are some random variables. My personal record is 8 hours spent to create a whole party in the first Icewind Dale. It’s something fascinating in re-rolling dices of all those stats until you get a satisfying result.

mainer: Being an RPG fanatic, I love a deep, detailed character creation system, I will spend literally hours in character creation, depending upon the complexity and how many characters I'm creating. If I'm only creating one character, as in the Elder Scrolls games, it might only take me an hour or two, and I'm not overly fanatical about a "looks-type" creation (although appearance & body type can be important for a 3rd person view and/or a photo mode).

But what really consumes my time are games where you create a party of 2-6 characters and your game experience & survival is going to depend upon the choices you make and there's no included "re-spec" option later in the game. Make your choices wisely and live or die by them.

D&D games are a good example, where your choices of race, class, profession, alignment, stats, skills, and proficiencies will dictate your success or failure in the game world. Roll those dice, again & again & again, to get that perfect build you're looking for. I'm envious of Sarafan's 8 hours spent on his Icewind Dale party. Solasta Crown of the Magister is a more recent D&D game (party of 4) that I've spent hours in character creation, Rolling dice over & over, and spending points on skill, abilities, and feats. A very old-school and detailed system.

JarlBSoD: Spore! Anyone remember Spore? The game where character creation was more fun and took more time than you spent on the rest of the game?

The Warcraft grunt's "Stop poking me!" is a classic, but it's hard to go past some of the things units in Company of Heroes come out with if you click on them too much. The Age of Empires and Command & Conquer series had plenty of memorable quotes too, and it's worth trying to select enemy troops in Total War games just to hear them insult you.

What's your favorite thing a unit in a strategy game says when you click on them?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: Honestly, how can you beat the classic 'Zug zug'? Warcraft 3 is definitely still the gold standard when it comes to clicking on units. I remember being blown away when I discovered that, after enough prods, each unit would spout its own unique joke lines. Now that's world-building. 

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I could name so many I love: Starcraft's "In the pipe" homage to Aliens, Warcraft 2's "ready to work" and that pig sound effect I swear to god I hear in every movie with pigs in it. But in the end, there can be only one. The bravado of Command & Conquer's commando knows no equal. 

There's no better throwaway line read in all of RTS history than "That was left-handed." He sounds like Guy Fieri casually flipping a burger with his off hand while holding a cigar in the other. It's even better when the commando follows up his next kill with a hearty chuckle and a "You got it." Sublime.

Rich Stanton, News Editor: I was obsessed with Starcraft 2 for several years or, more specifically, I was obsessed with building giant marine armies as Terran and then shooting lots of Zerg and Protoss. God I love those grumpy little guys, and when you select them they say a range of things including, most often, "You want a piece of me, boy?" 

I also adore the insolence you get from them: "this better be good" or "you gonna give me orders?" Then the tragic moments where, with your eyes elsewhere on the map, an enemy swarm descends on a small detachment and your radio crackles with a tough guy's panicked yell of "we could use some help here" which, sadly, will never arrive. I'll always hold a candle for those brave Terran boys. Now let's build some more.

Sean Martin, Guides Writer: Total War has some absolutely standout voicelines, from Scottish captains in Medieval 2 saying "I'll rip off yer head and spit down yer neck!" to Shogun 2's "shameful display!" But despite that, I think it's hard to beat the classic priest "Wololo" from Age of Empires; hearing it immediately transports me back to that game/time.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Warcraft's orcs are funny and all, but they'e just a rip-off of Warhammer's version. Both visually (the green skin and tusks), and vocally. Anyway, the best videogame version of them is probably the slugga boys from Dawn of War, who have three different barks where they just shout variations on WAAAAAGH!

From our forum

JarlBSoD: Work work.

Dungeon Keeper: I thought Dungeon Keeper had some funny ones, but after looking into it I don't think your units actually say anything, it's just the mentor's voice that's funny.

Brian Boru: Nice n crispy—Telsa trooper, Red Alert 1 Aftermath
Why don't you drive?—Libya Demolition truck, Red Alert 2
Thank you for the new shoes—Worker, Generals Zero Hour

Lutfij: Ka-boom! - Crazy Ivan, Red Alert 2

Frindis: "Go back to the main menu and try out the tutorial" - Company of Heroes

ZedClampet: In Total War Warhammer 3, there are a lot of good ones, but my favorite is one of the Tzeentch generals who seems to have been voiced by Gilbert Gottfried. He's extremely enthusiastic. A lot of times when you click on him he just yells, "It's meeee!" which for some reason cheers me up.

After you win the game, you get Be'lakor, the perpetually angry and gruff antagonist as a general. If you are in the Kislev area where it's snowy, he will say (with no small amount of disgust) "So many snowflakes." Reminds me of your typical Internet discussion and cracks me up. At least he doesn't call you a "beta" if you ask him to retreat.

Zloth: The fun quotes in Sacrifice come if you select a unit, then just sit there and think. They'll start taunting you into moving. An earthfling (which, as you might guess, throws rocks at enemies) will eventually say "Yeah, got mud on your face." then "You big disgrace!" then "I will ROCK you!"

McStabStab: Starcraft Zealot: “My life for Aiur” is always the #1 in my book.

Humble Bundle had a Boomer Shooter Bundle, and games like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun proudly wear the label by choice. Maybe it's time to give in and accept the '90s-style retro FPS subgenre is going to be stuck with a silly label because it sounds funny. (And it does sound funny, no argument here.) Or maybe it's time to get prescriptive. At the risk of resembling the kind of person who argues run-based permadeath games aren't roguelikes unless they're full ASCII, here's a chance to make your case for an alternative.

What should boomer shooters be called?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK: Sure, Boomer Shooters, why not? No, it is not a great name, I will grant you that. But do you know what else is not great: basically every genre name that has ever stuck around. We have a subgenre of RPGs, CRPGs, where the C stands for computer. It excludes a whole bunch of RPGs that are also on a computer. 

And massively multiplayer online game may have made sense back when the internet was new and this was all very exciting, but the implied sense of wonder just feels quaint nowadays. As for MOBAs, where do you even start? Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas? That's just all PvP games. Sorry, Quake is a MOBA now. I don't make the rules.

So yeah, whatever, we collectively gave a genre a silly name. But maybe that's better than pretending there's any actual logic to this.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: What's next, Gen Z RPGs? Millennial MMOs?

I know we all enjoy a good rhyme, but "boomer shooter" misinterprets history and creates confusion about who actually played these games. As someone who spends most of each day thinking about how to describe games with words, you can imagine how this gets under my skin. My dad is an actual baby boomer, someone born between the end of WWII and 1964. If you were 32 or younger when Doom released in 1993, you're not a boomer. It's that simple. I'll gladly call them retro shooters, '90s FPSes, or anything else that isn't mildly ageist.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: In the same way millennial became shorthand for 'young avocado fans', boomer has become a catch-all term for 'shit that's old'. Conveniently this means we'll be able to keep using it even once the actual boomers are all dead. It's a practical evolution. With that in mind, it seems fair to call these things boomer shooters. It's also fun to say, and a pun to boot, which puts it leagues ahead of nearly every other genre. It's evocative in a way that matches these bombastic relics, and while it might be a bit silly, so are boomer shooters. I say let it live! 

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I'm honestly really surprised at how much 'boomer shooter' has caught on in recent years—as Evan says, it has very little grounding in the actual age of the audience for them, and the vibes of affectionate nostalgia don't really marry up with how the word 'boomer' is usually deployed (as in, to dub something out-of-touch bullshit). 

I don't understand why people don't just call them 'Doom-likes'. People love calling everything a '-like' these days. And it has some nice symmetry with 'Doom clone', which is what a lot of games were dubbed in the original game's wake, before 'first-person shooter' caught on. 

To be honest though I've long since come to terms with the fact that gaming is always going to be full of absolutely dreadful genre names. 'Metroidvania'? 'Soulsborne'? 'MOBA'? 'eSports'? We shouldn't be allowed to name stuff at all. 

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: It's a shame that Twitch is called Twitch, because you used to be able to call old school fast-paced shootybang games twitch shooters and everyone knew what you meant. Now it sounds another name for people who've just done a hatecrime.

I've been using Gen X FPS. It'll never catch on.

From our forum

Zloth: We stopped calling them Doom Clones? 

Brian Boru: Fogey Fraggers! Geezer Gunners. Assisted Aimers.

JarlBSoD: What even is a boomershooter? I kinda doubt that many, even if they existed ofc, started playing shooters in their 30s - 50s back in the '90s. Kinda get the feeling that most people playing games in the '90s were born in the '70s or '80s IE NOT boomers  So lets just call them Doomclones as usual. Move along, nothing to see here! If anything it should be called Retro shooters if one does not want to use the term Doom Clone. 

Alm: I am a millennial and 90s shooters were a golden age for me. I guess I would call them Disk Dynasty Definitives. But Boomer Shooters rolls off the tongue better.

WoodenSaucer: The early FPS games were my generation. I'm Gen X, not a boomer. Call them X-Games.

McStabStab: DOOM clones was always the name for these... even though they're really all Wolfenstein 3D clones. Corridor Shooter is another name I've heard a lot.

redmark_: Seriously, boomer shooters just reminds me of a bunch of old geezers wielding boomsticks a'plenty...

CParson: Arthritis Inducers.

ZedClampet: Crap Graphics Action Shooter.

Sarafan: I believe that this genre was called "ego shooter" in the past in some countries. Not that I think that it's a good idea to practice necromancy over this phrase, because it was mediocre to say the least. I'm trying to take the question seriously, so I would prefer the term retro shooter. It's self-explaining. The phrase is better for people who are new to the industry. Everyone can say right away that it's a shooter made in the old style. We can of course discuss that not every boomer shooter is a retro shooter, but I believe we should simplify things not complicate them without a serious reason.

Pifanjr: I think DOOM clone works best. Video game genre definition seem to get broader and broader and/or video games combine aspects of several genres, meaning the best description is usually to compare it to specific other games instead of/in addition to slapping a genre label on it.

flashn00b: I think I like the "Doom Clone" nomenclature more, but that will likely have my age showing.

Hell, Boomer Shooter more or less seems like a general categorization of FPS, and I think games like Ultrakill, Turbo Overkill, and to a lesser extent, Doom Eternal helped pave the way of an offshoot of the Boomer Shooter known as the movement shooter. I think for more traditional old-school-style FPS games, Doom Clone would probably be more appropriate, whereas the new-school boost-dashing/wallrunning/etc. would probably fit more in the "movement shooter" category.

Steyn: Killer boomer.

Volley: I'd call it 'Golden Era FPS' or 'Golden Era Shooter' which was the 90's and early 00's. 

However, I am going through some of my 90's PC Gamer magazines and the term "Doom clones" was used by PCG a LOT to describe any FPS that wasn't Doom, yet came out after Doom, even System Shock and Descent, which were nothing like Doom other than having a first person perspective, haha.

Krud: Dang, my perspective on this went on a roller-coaster as I read the posts.  First confused as to the existence of "boomer shooter" in general, then thinking it was about explosions, then the notion that it's a reference to Baby Boomers? I mean, my dad was a fairly young Baby Boomer, and he had zero interest in FPS's. Which is anecdotal, I know, but I really think 2.5D/3D gaming was primarily the purview of Gen X.

I'm just a handful of years away from being lumped into "Millennial", but I still have very clear memories of the release of Wolfenstein3D, Doom, Quake, Heretic, etc. And most of the programmers were fairly young (though older than me.) Heck, I was programming (mediocre) text adventures when I was 14-18. (By the time I was 19 the genre was seemingly dead and buried, only to resurrect several years later under the name Interactive Fiction. Or maybe it was always there and I just didn't know where to look. But I digress.)

If I were going to assign a label to any games as "Boomer," it would be the early arcade games (Galaga, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Asteroids), pinball, and text adventures. And Solitaire.

Our community manager, Stevie Ward, has been going through her collection of PC Gamer's print edition and asked what everyone thought was the magazine's best cover of all time. "I have to say, it actually tends to be games I don't play", Stevie said.  She helpfully linked to a gallery of recent issues,  and you can also look at our sweet subscriber covers on Twitter, which present a guff-less version of the magazine, light on text.

What's your favorite PC Gamer magazine cover?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: I don't have much affection for Duke, but the "Come Get Some!" November '97 issue is the one I most closely associate with my time as a PC Gamer reader, even though it featured an infamous game: Duke Nukem Forever. I love the splashy feature opener in the image below. I still remember individual boxouts and ads from this issue, like the absurdly text-heavy "The way to a man's heart is through his sternum" ad for Half-Life that has absolutely nothing to do with the game. 

This was a moment in PC Gamer's history when our page count was at its peak (a bricklike 448 pages in this case), and the issue remains a time capsule from an interesting moment in PC gaming history—post-Doom, post-Quake, but pre-EverQuest and Unreal Tournament, a moment when everyone was excited by the possibilities of online gaming, but also a time when those imaginations were outpacing what was playable.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: Not only am I going to pick one of my own covers, I'm going to cheat and choose a split-run. We put together the 'Escape Your World' issue at a point where lockdown was really wearing us all down. I wanted to make an issue that reflected that feeling, but in a positive way—at a time when you couldn't explore or travel in the real world, we embraced the escapism inherent to games. 

It took a lot of work to find a way to visualise that. Usually we would always try and avoid a design that didn't have a strong central character, but in this case I really wanted the landscape itself to be the focus—glorious digital horizons stretching out before you. And just to make our lives as difficult as possible, we also decided it had to be a split run, showing off these four different worlds. 

Huge credit to my art editor John Strike for his design work on these—seeing them again now they feel like a bit of a magic trick, to me. It's lovely to be able to look back on something from that pretty miserable point of the pandemic and feel proud of what we made happen. 

Now, if the rest of you don't choose issues I edited too, I'm never going to talk to you ever again. 

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor: Flicking back through the library of past PC Gamer covers brings back so many memories of reading gaming mags in the school yard while I was a little kid, thinking one day I'd be so lucky to play games for work.

That said, I'm actually going to have to pick the December 2020 issue (#350) as my favourite. That was my first cover story; I even have it framed hanging on the wall in my house. I think younger me would be pretty proud of that.

Mollie Taylor, News Writer: I have a bit of a soft spot for the May 2021 issue, since it's the first issue where I got to write something! It also happens to be the issue that has Genshin Impact on the cover, quite possibly one of the least PC Gamer covers I've ever seen. As an anime and Genshin Impact lover though, it is very Mollie. 

The team is always harping on about the Planet Zoo cover as well, which I'm sure will end up making an appearance in someone's answer. It is very cool, another one that feels a little less on-brand. Any covers that subvert the stereotypical PC Gamer aesthetic I'm totally here for.

Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK: Issue 310 was my first full issue as magazine editor—my first issue deciding the game that would grace the cover. I wanted to use the magazine as a vehicle to celebrate the breadth of the PC as a platform, and so I decided to take a chance. My first cover game was going to be a mod.

The thing about mods is they don't necessarily have slick concept art to use. Luckily, Black Mesa was a remake of Half-Life, a game with some of the most recognisable iconography in PC gaming. John Strike, our art editor and the secret hero of PC Gamer magazine, created the beautifully textured background, and we spent a little extra to pay for a fluorescent Pantone for the lambda symbol. As good as it looks on screen, the physical copy is so much more vibrant.

We paired the Black Mesa feature with a huge, multi-part retrospective on Half-Life 2—celebrating the fact that the issue came out during the 10th anniversary of Episode 2. The whole thing came together brilliantly, both artistically and conceptually. It remains one of the best issues I've worked on.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I'm going to have to go with the Game Gods, November 2000, though maybe not for the cover itself, but what it represents. I was about five years old when this issue came out, and I'm not sure if it ever passed through my hands via my older brother. It crops up on Twitter here and there and I always smile when I see it. 

This is such a lovely piece of turn-of-the-millennium fun, from the outfits on display to the titular "Game Gods" themselves and the projects they worked on. Alice, Daikatana, Sigma, and Unreal Tournament are such a perfect sampling of gaming 22 years ago, not necessarily in terms of quality in Daikatana's case, but it definitely brings the vibes. The cover as a whole represents a time in PC gaming I never actually experienced for myself, yet largely informs my taste to this day.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I wasn't much of a magazine reader growing up, but I knew I'd find a winner if I looked for magazines older than me. My vote is March 1995, issue 16. 

It's hard to beat a cover that enthusiastically tells readers to "GET HIGH!" before introducing a review for a flight sim. The red plane against the blue sea is striking and almost distracts from the awkward "It's showtime" text over a wavy American flag. Not to mention the banger of a demo disc included here: an early slice of Full Throttle and Mortal Kombat 2? Sick. 

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I have to go with issue 186 of PC Gamer's US edition, April 2009, featuring FEAR 2: Project Origin, and more to the point a large, stark image of an oddly attractive (and entirely unclothed) Alma. This is not at all what you'd call an accurate representation of the character, and yet somebody decided that the thing to do would be to take this insane, murderous, absolutely terrifying woman—an embodiment of supernatural horror, really—and make her hot. Really hot. And also naked. And then use lines like "Alma wants you (to die)" and "Everything is exposed in our final verdict!" 

I mean, what were they thinking here? FEAR 2 is a very different sort of shooter than its predecessor (and not nearly in the same league) but there's absolutely nothing about it that makes me think, "Yeah baby, it's sexy Alma time!" It's such a bizarre choice, I can't help but find it intriguing. Or maybe baffling is a better word for it. Either way, that's a hell of a cover.

Oh, and by the way, Metacritic says we "exposed" FEAR 2 as a 72% shooter: "FEAR 2 fails to innovate, which would make it merely a respectable but forgettable shooter if not for some good scares." I'd say that's pretty much spot-on.

Stevie Ward, Community Manager: It's amazing how the covers really do capture a time in gaming... going back into the archive and I can really feel how it felt sometimes, some of them just kickstart a bunch of memories of events and releases around that time. 

It's like... old family photos but for gamers... does that make sense?

I'm also biased but because I was the community manager for this, it always gives me the feels:

From our forum

mainer: I envy you that you still have room to keep your PCG Magazine collection. Back in the '90s I used to save all my monthly copies (and they had many more pages back them), as well as those of Computer Gaming World & Computer Games & Strategy Plus. But I eventually ran out of room to store them, somewhere in the middle 2010's (I think). So, I took them all to my local Salvation Army Store (they actually took them back then). I still wish I had them.

I can't remember any of the images, but from the ones in your link, it would have to be the June 2011 issue, with Commander Shepard on the cover for Mass Effect 3. I've spent literally hundreds of hours in the ME games over the years, and I was so excited for ME3. There were a lot of PCG articles after that because of the controversial ending, but it was still a great game.

Frindis: I got some prints water-sealed and stored in a safe secure location to use a little James Pond jargon. Diablo 2, Quake, and System Shock 2 are some of my favorite editions. Why? Well, not juuust because of the games, but because they were a few of the magazines I used to read whenever I took a train from my hometown to the capital of Norway: Oslo. The ride took about two hours or so, so I just had enough time to read through the whole magazine, not to mention the return ticket to get excited about playing the demo discs.

Volley: It was the June 1996 Cover that got me my first PC gamer magazine purchase, still my favorite.

Mknott: This is literally the same or at least very similar to one I was thinking of, I played so much X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter back in the day and was playing Jedi Knight a few weeks back multiplayer in 2022.

Brian Boru: The most iconic of those is undoubtedly 2011-09.

The rest are largely forgettable in a mass of similar covers on any newsagent magazine racks. I assume there are loads of sales data to support cramming as much 'content' as possible onto a cover, cos that seems to be the overwhelming design choice across all sorts of mags.

Honorable mentions: 2011-03 Total War Shogun 2, 2017-11 Half Life, 2013-09 The Indie issue, 2018-10 Metro Exodus, 2012-12 The Future of Minecraft, 2018-05 Jurassic World.

theMediaman: As a '90s gamer, I'm partial to the early issues.

Thank Gordon we're past the days of needing boot disks and understanding conventional memory and how to free up more of it just to play games on PC. That doesn't mean it's always easy to get games running nowadays, whether because your hardware is south of the minimum requirements, or you want to play an older game that'll only run in a virtual machine or emulator. Maybe you've used a VPN to play an online game that's not available in your territory, or had to revert to a previous that was compatible with your setup. Heck, maybe you rebuilt a 1998 PC just to play Half-Life, or built a tiny PC for playing classic console games.

What's the greatest length you've gone to just to run a game?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Christopher Livingston, Features Producer: Does buying a whole new PC count? When I started playing The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, it was on a PC that was already several years old in 2006. Oblivion ran and looked great and I was happy as a mudcrab in mud until I made the unfortunate decision to go to my friend's house where he had it on his Xbox 360 and hooked up to his TV. That's when I realized my PC was a potato, my monitor was a postage stamp, and my view distance in the game was maybe 15 feet from my character's face.

I bought a new PC and monitor and it was like playing an entirely different game. Textures had... texture! I could see the spire of Imperial City from anywhere on the map! Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Like Chris, I've purchased entire PCs (yes, plural) for individual games. It's been a very long time since I last bought a fully prebuilt system, but I sprung for a 486 DX4/100 for Doom, which replaced a 386 SX/25 setup I'd purchased for BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge. Hell, I bought my very first PC to play games on.

The greatest non-financial length I ever went to for a game had to be setting up a network to play multiplayer Doom way back when. I cannot overstate what an absolute pain in the ass it was—buying network cards and cabling that we were never going to use for anything else, crash-coursing IPX network setups, hauling my PC to a friend's place 30 minutes away (don't forget, monitors were a LOT heavier back then), blowing half the night trying to figure out config files and scripts and why this sonofabitch won't work, all so four of us could sit around the kitchen table, get ripped, and blast each other to smithereens until dawn. (It was totally worth it.)

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Discworld Noir came out in 1999 and does not play nice with modern operating systems. I had to emulate Windows 95 with PCem to get it working. It wasn't really worth it in the end, and I wish I'd known Pratchett was less involved with each game as the Discworld series went on before I went to the bother.

But, and I can't believe I'm admitting this, the game I actually jumped through the most hoops to get running is Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation. When I found out the Steam version of this beach volleyball jiggle physics showcase wasn't available outside Asia, the same self-righteous indignation I feel when yet another game is refused classification in Australia made me think finding a way around the restriction was some kind of moral obligation.

Even though I'd never played a Dead or Alive game before, I downloaded a VPN to convince Steam I was in Singapore. That wasn't enough though, and I also had to go into Windows' region settings to change that to Singapore, and then dig down into the system locale settings to change that to English (Singapore) as well so Steam would finally show me the English-language version of this horndog free-to-play gacha nonsense.

In the end I got bored before I even finished all the tutorials. There are so many badly translated menus and explanations of deliberately confusing currencies and tokens to click through, and way easier ways to see boobs. But at least I didn't let the man tell me what to do.

From our forum

Zimbaly: Oh god. I could mention getting an Ageia PhysX card to run some stuff, but I'll have to go with what I did to run MechWarrior 2 on what originally was a 486 33mhz computer with 8 megs of ram and a 1 meg SVGA card. If you are old and are a nerd you'd know how huge that was when my dad got the pc in 1992.

Anyways it just wasn't powerful enough to run MechWarrior 2 and there was no way my dad was gonna get a new mobo and chip to run it. So some time later my dad bought me a computer magazine and inside it there was something about the Evergreen Upgrade chip. It could make your old 486's run at Pentium speeds allowing you to play Quake and..... MechWarrior.

Well I was sold and thankfully I was lucky enough that the local Future Shop had a few. That was the fastest chip install cause I wanted me some MechWarrior goodness.

Sadly it didn't work without a good old boot disk. So I grabbed my glorious boot disk the was created with my X-Wing game *best boot disk auto setup ever btw* and I enter the line for the CD-ROM to work. I booted it up and my god it was heaven...

Sarafan: It took me many hours of tries to get running Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun properly on modern hardware. In theory it's as simple as installing the community patch. It should eliminate any difficulties on Windows 10. In practice the community patch introduces very long loading times on many hardware configurations. They're so ridiculous that the game is almost unplayable. Especially on high difficulty level, where you must load your saved games a lot.

So I scrapped the community patch and decided to try dgVoodoo2. It worked but... the wrapper introduced another problem: terrible lags appearing randomly during gameplay. And when I mean terrible, I mean terrible. Basically everything slows down and even the cursor gets serious input lag. So the result was once again unplayable.

The next few hours I spent tackling with all available settings in dgVoodoo2 and trying other versions of the game. All this to no avail. I was determined to get the game running on my hardware though, so I didn't give up. I used the compatibility mode in combination with many different dgVoodoo2 settings. It didn't help. I even tried mixing some files from dgVoodoo2 and unofficial patch. The result was even promising. No long loading times and no lags, but then... crash! The game started crashing every few minutes.

When I was desperate to even try older dgVoodoo2 versions, one last idea came to my mind. The game worked suspiciously good in windowed mode. Yep! Full screen optimizations! That was the key. After disabling them (in the Properties after right-clicking the shortcut to the game) and using standard dgVoodoo2 the game finally started running on modern hardware without meaningful problems!

This finding was occupied by long hours of try, so if you want to play the game and the unofficial patch doesn't do its job, try the above. There are still some quirks, but nothing you can't live with.

Brian Boru: Joel Lee of MUO issued a challenge one time on WhatNerd re getting Command and Conquer running on Win10. Was simple enough, standard stuff you try—took me about 45 minutes, incl completing the first GDI mission!

Pifanjr: I can't remember specific examples, but I know I've spend many hours messing around with (community) patches, editing ini files and changing graphics options. Getting multiplayer to work was sometimes also a real challenge and necessitated learning about port forwarding or trying 3rd party programs like Hamachi or Tunngle to trick the game into thinking you were on the same network.
Though when I was about 13 and made friends with the kid who moved in next door to us, we ended up just getting a really long ethernet cable and directly connecting our computers, running the cable over our balconies. Until the neighbours had their balcony renovated a few years later and the cable was cut during, but by then I think most games just worked fine over the internet.

ZedClampet: I don't guess I've gone to really any extraordinary lengths. The one that comes immediately to mind is when I bought the original Fallout 3 many years later and it took me about half-an-hour to get it sorted. Had I spent $10 more and bought the Game of the Year version I wouldn't have had to do anything. To add insult to injury, I then bought a DLC with an improved ending that would have been included with the GOTY version.

Ryzengang: This isn't for a single game per se, but my old gaming laptop that I gave to my brother was really limping along. It had a Nvidia GT 555M and a Intel sandy bridge i5 (I think it's the i5-2430M, but I can't recall precisely) with 2 cores and 4 threads. This thing is firmly in the "struggle bus" category. We took the entire thing apart (which was a giant pain in the ass. That thing is a monstrosity) to replace the thermal paste on the CPU+GPU. It did legitimately help to a decent extent, since the CPU had been throttling constantly and tanking it's clocks to reduce temps. In Borderlands 2 (my brother's most played game) it definitely provided some extra stability to the frame rate as the throttling had been dealt with. Still, at the end of the day a potato is a potato. You can only do so much with these old systems.

Slasken: I bought a new computer to play The Witcher 3 in 2015. It got me back into PC gaming. The GPU still works today. Use it in my daughter's PC. It's a GTX 970. I give the parts to my kids or wife when I upgrade. Trickle down PC-part economy. I rarely sell computer parts I don't use.

Colif: I used 32bit windows for way longer than I would have had it not been for a game that didn't like 64bit windows. Its since been converted to play nice with 64bit. Oh the restrictions of 32bit were fun, 3.5gb of ram max regardless of how much you put in, and hope your GPU doesn't have too much vram (makes me wonder how you install a 8gb gpu on a 32bit machine).

Alm: I spent some of my student loan in 2001 to buy a gaming PC that I could use in halls. Not just for Counter Strike 1.6, though that is mainly what I used it for.

mainer: I replay a lot of older games, so getting them to run on modern PCs and at higher resolutions efficiently is always a concern. But since Windows 10 became the standard OS, I haven't had any major issues with installation or running an older game. Plus, there are many "enhanced" versions and remasters available that make installing and playing an older game a better experience.

The one game that I couldn't get to even run initially was Sacred 2 Gold (Steam version). Sacred 2 is a great and often underappreciated ARPG from 2008, and the Gold version includes the one expansion pack (yes, expansion and not just DLC) Ice and Blood. But it wouldn't run. Opening Task Manager shows it's running, but it's certainly not playable. So I had to manually shut it down.

Doing a quick Google search, I found that it needed the Legacy PhysX driver to launch, available on the Nvidia web site. I installed that (and it runs alongside the current PhysX driver) and the game launched perfectly. To keep it running without any CTDs, the current community patch (available from a fan site called Dark Matters) needs to be installed (which also fixes several hundred bugs and adds some QOL improvements).

Pretty easy fix and not very extreme, took me maybe 30-40 minutes for the entire process. One of the great things about the global PC gaming fan base is the dedicated modding community. Want to run an older game? Chances are that there's a community patch, unofficial patch, or a mod that will get that game up and running without crashing.

Over on the Patient Gamers subreddit they only talk about games at least six months old. I just looked, they're happily chatting about Halo 3, Psychonauts, and 2020 indie game Call of the Sea. One of the best things about playing games when they come out is getting to be part of the conversation surrounding them, and though it may not give you the same sense of cultural moment at least there's one place just for talking about games that aren't brand new. As for why you'd wait? The obvious reasons. Patches and updates, complete editions with all the DLC, discounted prices. The longer you wait the more likely there are to be mods, ray-tracing, and guides for when you get stuck. Wait long enough and a flat game might get a VR mode, or a VR game might get flattened. Maybe you'll get spoiled on part of it, or miss out on the multiplayer being populated, but patience can pay off.

What game are you glad you waited to play?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Unintentionally, I feel like I play almost everything in the Patient Gamer way—I feel like I'm always a few years behind on actually getting around to games I've been interested in. But I don't think it's ever enriched the experience more than it did when I played the Enhanced Editions of the first two Witcher games. I played The Witcher in 2011, I think, four years after the original release and three years after the Enhanced Edition, which fixed approximately one billion bugs, improved the translation, reworked the inventory and more. Even when I played it on a fairly new gaming PC (I'm pretty sure I had my i5-2500K overclocked well over 4GHz) performance wasn't great; I can't imagine how bad it would've been if I'd played it in 2008.

I wasn't as late to The Witcher 2. I think I played it shortly after the Enhanced Edition came out, in 2012. The Witcher 2 was in much better shape at launch relative to the first game, but the Enhanced Edition still made some major additions, including new quests and a pretty rad introductory cutscene. Most important was the tutorial: The Witcher 2 was freaking hard for its first few hours until you unlocked some better dodge moves for combat, and I can't imagine how much rougher it would've been for me if I'd played the base game, which just threw you right into things. Enhanced Edition added a tutorial that at least gave you a crash course. Oh, and there were new recaps after each chapter voiced by Dandelion. Imagine missing out on those! Would've been a tragedy.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: Usually I'm the first one to dive into a new Early Access survival game, but for some reason I steered clear of Raft until it reached 1.0, which took about five years. I'm glad I did because a lot has been hammered onto it since it first appeared in 2016 on Itch as a sort of prototype, and even more after it bobbed up on Steam in 2018. 

I think if I played it before it was finished I might have bailed early, but the game it grew into is really good (except for the choppy opening hours). It's a really compelling survival adventure that I've sunk lots of time into. As a bonus for reading this, feel free to read it again and count up all the terrible Raft puns I just made.

Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: I waited until the remaster of Nier Replicant to finally play it. I wasn't as hot on Nier Automata as a lot of other people, but liked a lot of small things about it. Although it's deeply interested in the same things as Automata, Replicant is a much more honest game. I don't think I would have appreciated it as much without having played Automata first, though. It's a messy, dour game that has the bouts of absurdity that you'd expect from a Yoko Taro-led story.

Before playing Replicant, Nier fans were alien to me and, frankly, kind of annoying about the series. It put me off because nobody could ever actually sell me on what made them so unique. I'm glad I was able to play Replicant on my own terms and with some distance away from all of the praise and people spouting "I told you so" when Automata came out. It's a wonderful game, and definitely enhanced by not having to expect it to be transcendent.

Andy Chalk, News Lead: The Witcher 3 came out in May 2015, and I started playing it in July 2020. My reasons for waiting so long are varied and weird, but it proved to be absolutely the right thing to do. The game I played was virtual perfection, with all the bugs ironed out, all the bonus content available right from the start, all the DLC integrated seamlessly into the story, and all of it running at a flawless 60 fps at 4K.

I've never been one to charge into new games the moment they're released, but the Witcher 3 taught me that giving games time to age properly really is worthwhile. Yes, I missed out on the discourse when it was new, but who cares? In exchange for not being part of the cool crowd I got the best Witcher 3 experience possible: A masterful grand finale to one of the best RPG trilogies ever made, properly finished, complete, and done. More than a fair trade-off, and more than enough to convince me that slow gaming is the way to go.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I waited six years to play Assassin's Creed Unity, which meant I didn't see a single missing face, have it crash from the main menu, or experience any of the other problems Unity had at launch. I did see a couple of people floating above the street, and I fell through the ground into an endless gray void one time, but that's happened to me in every single 3D Grand Theft Auto so I can't hold that against it. 

I got to ramble around a lively recreation of Paris where thousands of people jostled each other on the boulevards, meet Napoleon and the Marquis de Sade, climb a cathedral, dangle from a hot-air balloon, and basically have a jolly time in Revolutionary France (and a few other eras). Then I got to plow through the Dead Kings expansion immediately afterward.

Unity turned out to be one of my favorite Assassin's Creed games: the kind you can mainline in 30 or so hours of daft popcorn history tourism, and then be done with.

From our forum

Pifanjr: I started playing Total War: Warhammer II about 3 years after it launched when one of my friends shared his game library with me. From what I've read the game had quite a lot of issues when it released, but after three years almost all of those had been fixed, plus all the DLC except for the last one is half off multiple times a year.

Brian Boru: Almost everything I've bought for the past ~decade, but Civilization 6 is a good ambassador for them all. I waited for 5-6 years, because Civ's track record is significant improvement via the 2 major expansions in the first 3 years. They do some patches on the final one, and then the fabulous community produce an unofficial final patch, and the best mods get updated or created at that stage.

There were loads of quality comments about the game on CivFanatics, so I knew what I was getting—ie I was neither delighted or disappointed. Anything which puzzled me when playing was just a search away.

We the playing community are in a fortunate place today that there are loads of older games which are still fine plays today. So far this year I've had my usual good fun with games from 2005, 2007, 2010, 2013…

ZedClampet: Total War Troy. This is the one they gave away for free at launch on Epic, but it was pretty far from being a complete game at the time. Later when they came to Steam, they added a huge update that basically finished the game. Creative Assembly has become really bad for this. Warhammer 3 launched in what should have been considered an early access state.

McStabStab: At the top of that list is No Man's Sky. It didn't interest me at launch and with the wave of backlash Hello Games was facing I figured I would never touch the game. Then the "Next" update came out two years later and people started talking about how amazing the game had become. I grabbed it for 50% off and it was one of the best gaming purchases I've ever made.

mainer: Many times I'm just too impatient to wait to purchase a game that I'm looking forward to, like an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game, even knowing that there will be bugs and limited mod support at release. But there are also a few games that I've waited on purchasing and been happier for that decision.

I think the most notable of those games would be waiting on the purchase (and playing) of the first Witcher game, which was first released in 2007. I was really interested, but hesitated because it was from a developer I'd never heard of before and it was a "game world" that I never knew of, having not read the Andrezj Sapkowski novels. But in 2008 the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher was released, and that was the one that I bought and played. It had numerous bug fixes, better animations, translation corrections, re-recorded voices, and reduced load times (which were reportedly as much as 80% faster).

It was a great game, and still is, but I think my experience with it was more enjoyable because I waited for that Enhanced Edition.

WoodenSaucer: Skyrim. I didn't get into it until the Special Edition came out, which I believe made it a better experience.

Arkham Knight. I didn't play it until they patched it and it wasn't crap anymore.

No Man's Sky. I didn't play it until this year, so I didn't have to go through years of disappointed expectations. It was already a robust game when I got to it.

Zloth: I do most games late now. It paid off well in Just Cause 3. Not only did I get the game and all DLC for cheap, not only did I get the benefit of patches, but I also had the ghosts of some friends' past play-throughs to try and match! Fun stuff!

Kaamos_Llama: Waited about a year for Cyberpunk 2077. By the time I played it, there were still some bugs but it was perfectly playable and I guess working mostly as intended. I played it mostly as a stealthy hacker, and it worked well that way. I didn't have that much hype for the game in the first place, but I thought it was a pretty solid 7/10 game by the time I played it, had fun all the way. Honestly I could have done with less Keanu in the story if anything. Normally I'm happy to wait for a discount on most things anyway though.

Sarafan: I would want to say that I waited until Cyberpunk 2077 received all those patches, but unfortunately I played it on release date.  I'm glad that I waited until the complete edition of Skyrim was released however. The game was known for being very buggy. When I played Skyrim most of these bugs were non-existent. Also the DLCs influenced the gameplay in a meaningful way. House building, the option to become a vampire and the possibility to visit Solstheim once again are all very interesting features.

I'm not a huge fan of the further re-releases of the game, but it's hard to deny that this is one of the best games in history of the industry. Even the unpatched version was unmatched in its time when it comes to open world design. The complete (or special, or whatever it's called right now) edition improves it even further and I'm glad that I didn't play the game right after it was released.

Slasken: Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the games that comes to mind. I played it after the DLC, Frozen Wilds, came out, so I could play through both the main game and DLC at once.

Zimbaly: Oh man that's a tough one. A few games I've really wanted and I'd just suck it up and pre order or buy close to release. Most thankfully I haven't regretted.... most.... As for ones where I waited, I'm glad I waited for Cyberpunk, but that was cause I didn't have a pc to run it either. So that was a win win. I don't think it would of ran on a A10 5800k with a geforce 1050.

Starcraft 2. I bought the "first one" and came close to beating it. I got bored though and put it on the back burner. Well now it looks like they gave the other two away after so long???? I just restarted it and it looks like I have the other two parts. WIN!!!

The early Souls games. I never got into them like others did. I never bought the systems they were on either until they were starting to die out. Glad I waited so I could just dive head first into those games. They are both utter garbage and amazing at the same time and by being late to the party, there was less invasions and pvp and more people leaving symbols to help. Made things so much more enjoyable.

I still have my copy of bloodborne and the last guardian so if I ever get a ps4 *as in my kid gives me his, even though he won't and has a ps5* I can enjoy those games long after everyone else had..... oh it shall be great....

On a side note. I put off ARAM and TFT in LoL and I just got into aram over the past year "hardcore" and have been hooked on TFT the past month after hating it the first few times I tried it. It just sucks ya get no exp for TFT.

Every RPG has to have an inn or tavern, and mystery games usually involve a trip to a dive bar. They're a mainstay of adventure games and open-world crime games too. Like bars in real life they might have minigames to play, like darts or pool or finding a local for Geralt to beat up, but they're also places where you can get to know the locals, whether you're scrounging for clues or recruiting new party members. And, of course, you can just get blitzed and watch the graphics go blurry.

Which videogame bar do you wish you could visit?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Christopher Livingston, Features Producer: Being a Blade Runner fan, and with the (apparently very bad) remaster of the Blade Runner game so recently out, I guess Taffey Lewis' bar, the Snake Pit, immediately leaps to mind. It's a crowded, smoky joint where you can enjoy a drink, see a lady dance with a snake, make an expensive local phone call, and watch the worst stand-up act in history before getting clubbed over the head by a cop. (Worth noting that the game also misspells Taffey as Taffy.)

I guess that doesn't really sound much like a cool place to hang out, but it has historical value. It's the spot where crack detective Rick Deckard interrogated Lewis by asking him two whole questions before getting drunk off free drinks and then shooting a woman in the back. Wait... am I a Blade Runner fan? That all sounds terrible!

Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: Definitely Afterlife from Mass Effect 2. OK, technically it's a nightclub, but I would be there every weekend. 

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Driftwood's Black Bull Tavern in Divinity: Original Sin 2. I just really enjoy game tavern songs and the lively tune playing in Driftwood's bar over its crowd ambience is a personal favorite. Oh, there's a haunted ship captain hanging out there too and people-watching is another good tavern activity. There are also great songs in The Witcher's taverns but you could not toss me enough coins to hang out in one, thanks.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Vampire: the Masquerade—Bloodlines has some great bars: weird little raver clubs full of absurdly dressed NPCs dancing like cybergoths. Santa Monica's The Asylum, run by vampire scions Jeanette and Therese Voerman, is great, but if I could only visit one it'd be Confession in downtown LA. This nightclub in a spooky gothic church is, bizarrely, the least vampire-connected business in the game until you come along and take joint ownership. The vibes are impeccable and I'd just love to go there and party like it's 2004.

Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: I just want to hang out with a skeleton in Grim Fandango's Calavera Café. It's technically not a bar by name and it's also full of snotty rich people and rigged roulette tables, but it would be rad to sit down and see what unfolds. The weirdos in Rubacava surely pass in and out of there and they've surely got stories to tell. I want to sit down in one of those fancy booths, sip on something smooth, and hear what they have to say.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: This is a tough decision. I am top of the darts leaderboard at Seventh Heaven in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which I can't say about pubs like STIJL from Yakuza, despite the hours I spent there. I'm terrible at Yakuza's version of pool as well.

I hear there are hotels in Baldur's Gate as clean as an elven arse, which seems like a solid recommendation—even more so in editions of D&D where all high elves know at least one cantrip, presumably prestidigitation, which lets you magically clean "an object no larger than 1 cubic foot".  D&D's rules remain oddly silent on the size of elven buttocks, however. 

Instead, I'll go with the Abyss Bar from Deep Rock Galactic. It's got a killer jukebox, a friendly robotic bartender, is well-stocked with Skull Crusher Ale, and you can play Barrel Hoop. That's a game where you kick barrels into a hoop, which makes them explode.

From our forum

WoodenSaucer: Definitely The Ragged Flagon on Skyrim.

Slasken: I'd go to The New Port in Skellige from Witcher 3. Seems like a nice place.

Brian Boru: Not many bars in games I play, so I guess the Spread Eagle in the town of Fall's End in Far Cry 5. Once liberated, the town is a safe haven, so it'd be nice to have a cold one and catch up with Mary Mae.

mainer: Chora's Den on the Citadel in Mass Effect 1, so I could watch the Asari dancers.

Frindis: I would be visiting The Prancing Pony in The Lord of the Rings Online. There I would have tried to get some latest rumors out of Mr. Butterbur, while at least having a couple of ales and perhaps even getting to bump into Strider or Gandalf.

Zloth: Tron 2.0's "The Progress Bar"! Programmers are treated as gods there. I'm in!!

ZedClampet: I don't know the name of it, but there was a bar in Fallout 3 with a friendly ghoul as a bartender. He always called me "drunky". As long as I didn't have to stick around in the Fallout 3 world, I'd go to that bar and hang out with the bartender.

When a game lets you maintain separate save files, how many is enough? Do you keep as many profiles as you're allowed, just in case you ever want to go and undo some mistake you didn't even realize you were making back in act one? Do you save over the same file each time for the sake of simplicity and to heck with the consequences? Do you rely purely on autosave like some kind of maniac?

How many save files do you keep per game?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Sarah James, Guides Writer: Three, rotating through them each time I save. Occasionally though, I like to really push the boat out and add a fourth slot, especially if I feel like I'm about to do something risky that I might regret. I think this stemmed from accidentally overwriting a save file years ago, messing up, and not being able to go back. Whatever the reason, it's become a habit I can't break.

Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: I keep two "big" saves, a quick save and an autosave. I've fallen victim to autosave too many times, much like writing in the CMS.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I'll take as many save files as it'll give me, rotating through them for maximum safety. I've played enough sprawling RPGs with hard choices and game-breaking bugs to know that you never know when you're going to want to go back to a specific spot an hour, two hours, five hours, whatever ago. I'll take 100 save slots if you've got 'em. I've never really understood why most games are so stingy with them—they barely take up any space, and it's not exactly hard to fit a scrolling list into a UI. 

I never trust an autosave if I can avoid it—I've been stung too many times. Even if it's just flashed up the icon, I'll still do a manual or a quicksave before something important. 

Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: Depends on the game mostly, but I like to go for a rule of two minimum. One for the BIG save and then another for the small. The first is for when I'm putting the game away for the evening or completing large chunks of story. The second save file is for smaller chunks that I wouldn't want to have to go through again. I understand this sounds entirely arbitrary when you can have more than two saves, but hey, it's not failed me yet. 

In the few cases that I use more than two, I'll go all out and use all slots available but one. That one is for emergencies. No I don't know what emergencies might need an empty save slot but it feels like the sensible, mature thing to do to the 10-year-old in my brain. 

Mollie Taylor, News Writer: It is I, the dirty one-slot saver. I've gone all these years saving my grand JRPG adventures with hundreds of hours into a single save without any consequences. I have learned no lessons here, therefore I will not change. People who need multiple save slots are cowards!

Christopher Livingston, Features Producer: If a game gives me a thousand save slots, I'll eventually use them all. I'd prefer two thousand, though, because when I save and then quit, and the game asks me if I'm sure I want to quit because any unsaved progress will be lost, I save again. Just to be sure. And always in a new slot.

I'm mostly talking about games like Skyrim, partly because I use mods and it's a bit risky using a single save slot because something could very easily be broken. I also test a lot of mods, meaning it's helpful to have a bunch of clean saves I can try them in without worrying about mod conflicts in other saves. Mostly, though, why not use a bunch of save slots? There's no benefit to limiting myself to a single save, and plenty of benefits to having a bunch, even if I never touch them.

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor: The cascading save file strategy for me, starting from the top and using them all up in descending order until I run out. Though this works best when the save files automatically rearrange themselves based on how recent they are, that way you don't have to remember where you are each time. If they're manual save slots, it can become a bit of a mess, though I'll never be like these one-savers. Truly abhorrent behaviour.

Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK: Yup, like all people with a sensible approach to risk management, I will use a new slot every time I save. We're not in the PS2 era any more, trying to eek out as much room as possible on an 8MB plastic card. Hard drives are big, save files are small, why would you not? What possible thrill are you receiving from the vague possibility of having to play 100s of hours of an RPG again?

Mollie Taylor: I need something to feel alive, Phil.

From our forum

Brian Boru: When it's a free save system, I typically keep 3 saves, with filenames a, b, c. 'a' is typically the start situation in case I want to start over, while 'b' and 'c' are alternate saves later in game, usually for when I quit that session. If a game has auto saves and/or quick saves, I leave those on too, since it can't hurt.

If it's a stupid console port with only one hidden save slot—eg Ghost Recon Wildlands—then I play until the devs' arrogance annoys me some other way, and stop playing the game.

Pifanjr: It primarily depends on which is faster: overwriting the last save or creating a new one. Some games automatically fill in the name for a new save, while others automatically select your last save to overwrite. In the first case, I probably have a hundred saves until I get around to deleting some, which might only happen when my drive gets too full. In the latter case, I'll probably have 3 of them: one primary one, one secondary one I made before a big decision and a third one when there was another big decision but I didn't feel comfortable overwriting the other save for that yet.

DXCHASE: I create a new save every time because I'm evil.

mainer: I have to admit that I'm an obsessive-compulsive game saver, save-scummer to some, or maybe I'm just evil like DXCHASE. But my save strategy varies depending upon the game I'm playing.

In games that I mod heavily, like Skyrim or Fallout 4, I make hard saves at least every hour, before and after important events or combat, and absolutely turn off all the autosave options as I've had more game freezes or CTDs from that feature than anything else. I will use quick saves at times, but I don't really depend on them. I also backup my save files to a separated storage drive by moving the older saves and keeping my current save folder smallish, as save file sizes tend to bloat the further you get in the game, with that folder becoming several Gigs in size if I'm not careful. I also never, ever, overwrite hard saves, as I've read too much about getting corrupted saves from overwriting.

Other games that I don't mod, I'm not quite as picky, and will use all the saving options, though I still do hard saves frequently, and backup those save files to a separate drive as well. But I do appreciate it when a game has multiple save slots. The exception to that are ARPGs like Diablo 2 or Grim Dawn, where you get one "save on exit" save slot. I can live with that for those types of games, but I absolute hate games that use a "check point save" system.

Sarafan: My approach differed in the past. During the first few years of gaming I usually used one or two save files. I wasn't even a fan of quick saves. Relied mostly on manual ones. This changed in time. At first I increased the number of save files to four or five and finally reached a point in which I am in the present day. Right now I rarely overwrite saves. I just decide to make new files almost every time I save manually and, what more, I'm a quick save maniac.

As for the reasons of change... I don't know! It just happened! I rarely load anything older than two most recent save files, so I really don't need so many saves. It has become my habit to create them however. The problem with it is that there's no room in the cloud for bigger ones. So unfortunately I have to delete the older saves in these cases...

WoodenSaucer: I do whatever takes the least effort. If the game automatically puts me on a new save, and I have to scroll up to get to a previous save, I'm not going to scroll up. I'll just keep saving new saves. If it automatically puts me on the last save, then I'll save over it and only have one save for the entire game. I've been sorry about that a couple of times, but I've never changed my ways. It's just whatever takes the least effort.

I will say that I do save my game pretty frequently, though.

Alm: I used to just keep creating new saves but I normally keep it to 3 these days. 1 for the latest checkpoint which I save to quite often and 2 previous at last 2 eventful moments. If I come to a change in story I'll switch to overwriting the oldest save.

Zloth: It's tough to say a number, but I keep saves back roughly to the point where, if I have to go back any further, I'll just quit playing completely. If a game is particularly pretty, I might keep more saves so I can go back and take more screenshots later, but that's pretty rare.

ZedClampet: I generally will keep 3 saves. One is called "Temp", and I scum save to that. The other two saves are for when something important has happened or I'm about to log out. These are called just One and Two. For instance, in Xcom, I might save in either One or Two before a mission. During the mission, if I choose to save, I will do it in Temp. Once the mission is over, I save to either One or Two, just depending on whichever one has the oldest data.

While some series pop out a new entry with clockwork regularity every 12 months, others keep us hanging on. Poor old Psychonauts-likers had to wait 16 years for Psychonauts 2. Return to Monkey Island is due out later in 2022, 13 years after Tales of Monkey Island—though technically it's continuing on from the ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, which would put the gap closer to 26 years. Wasteland 2 has it equalled without need for a technicality, coming out a full 26 years and eight months after Wasteland. That's a long time between drinks in the irradiated desert.

What's the longest you've had to wait for a sequel?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 (2004) ➡ RollerCoaster Tycoon World (2016). I absolutely loved RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, which came out in 2002, and mostly liked RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, which dropped in 2004. And then... there was a great void.

That void got bigger. RollerCoaster Tycoon World was supposed to launch in 2015, making it an 11-year wait for the sequel, but it got pushed back into 2016, flopped into Early Access with a 'Mostly Negative' rating, then tried to shrug it off by launching the finished game... just one day before rival Planet Coaster's scheduled release. Classy! It didn't help, and that was pretty much the funeral for the series. 

At least Planet Coaster turned out great.

Evan Lahti, Global Editior-in-Chief: X-COM: UFO Defense (1994) ➡ XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012). In my early years at PC Gamer, editor Dan Stapleton (now IGN's reviews editor) would rave about X-COM as an underappreciated classic, a brutal animal of a strategy game of the kind we hadn't seen since the days of Doom. I hadn't owned it when I was younger, but I'd played enough after that to know what it was like to lose a unit on the Skyranger ramp. 

I knew how hard the game was, and how impenetrable and dated its interface was. The amount of clicking you had to do just to organize your forces back at base added yet more pain. But you could see the spirit of something incredible there, yes: permadeath, wrapped in the timeless theme of alien invasion.

X-COM had sequels, including two that didn't reach completion around 2001. MicroProse's X-COM: Genesis and X-COM: Alliance, the latter being a first-person shooter. But it wasn't until Firaxis (formed by Sid Meier and other MicroProse refugees) resurrected the turn-based format of X-COM almost 20 years later that we learned how eternal its original ideas were.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: NieR (2010) ➡ NieR: Automata (2017). The wait between NieR and its sequel, NieR: Automata wasn't the biggest (seven years) but it sure felt like the longest shot, the most "really, this game is getting a sequel?" With the success of Automata and Replicant v.I'm-not-going-to-do-the-numbers-bit-here, it can be hard to remember just how much of an afterthought the original NieR was before Automata's breakout success. 

I tried out the first game in 2015 because of the strong word-of-mouth and fell absolutely in love with its hauntingly bleak future and incredible characters, but I'd just resigned myself to never seeing anything like it again. Its developer, Cavia, had shut down quickly after NieR's release, and its follow up of sorts in Drakengard 3 didn't make much of a splash. Automata is a games industry come-from-behind tales for the ages, putting creator Yoko Taro on the map extremely late into his career, and I find it to be a heartening reminder that there are no foregone conclusions in this world—sometimes it'll deliver you a pleasant surprise like no other.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (2011) ➡  Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (announced in 2022) I'd given up hope of ever seeing a resolution to the cliffhanger ending of Relic's Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, yet a decade later Space Marine 2 was announced by Saber Interactive out of the blue. (Get it? Because Ultramarines are blue.) It's apparently coming "soon". I'll happily keep waiting as long as it takes.

From our forum

Colif: 12 years? Diablo 2 - 29 June, 2000. Diablo 3 - 15 May, 2012. Problem waiting that long is the chance of the next one being as good as the previous one starts to enter DNF territory. Its a shame the initials don't really stand for Did Not Finish.

Frindis: The most I have ever waited was roughly 1.5 years. After playing GTA 3 back in the good old days, I had a loooooooong spring waiting for GTA Vice City to release on PC in the spring of '03. I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the game, which obviously did not help ease the pain. Best GTA game in my eyes, so well worth the wait.

WoodenSaucer: It's been almost 11 years since Skyrim released, and it will probably be another 25-30 years before TES VI comes out. I may still be alive at the time. In the meantime, they've released about 10-15 re-releases of Skyrim to hold us over.

mainer: Well, I don't have an exact number of years, as the sequels I want the most haven't been released yet, though all of them are presumably in some form of development. Listed by number of years that I've been waiting so far:

1- Elder Scrolls 6; last game was ES5 Skyrim released in 2011. Wait time 11 years & counting.

2- Dragon Age 4; last game DA3 Inquisition released in 2014. Wait time 8 years & counting.

3-Fallout 5; last game Fallout 4 released in 2015 (I don't consider FO76 a continuation of the series, as it was Bethesda's attempt at an MMO-style Fallout, not a single player game). Wait time 7 years & counting.

4- Mass Effect 4; last game in series was ME Andromeda released in 2017. Wait time 5 years & counting.

I imagine Fallout 5 will be the eventual winner in terms of time waited between sequels, but there's too many variables that could occur in the coming years of production for any of these games. It feels like I've been waiting half my life for these sequels.

Brian Boru: Will this thread still be open when Half Life 3 and C&C Generals 2 come out? If so, I reserve my choices now! HL3—18 years and counting; C&C G2—19 years and counting.

Of games which actually have released, that would be Age of Empires 4, 16 years after AoE 3.

Zloth: Alternate Reality: The Palace - still waiting after 25 years. But you said "kept" me waiting. Past tense. I guess that means the sequel must have shown up. AND I actually played it (so no Duke Nukem or Baldur's Gate). Let's see... Doom 3 to Doom 2016 was 12 years.

McStabStab: XCOM: Enemy Unknown came 11 years after the previous installment in the series, but I would say the only other games that were comparable to it were X-Com: UFO Defense and X-Com: Terror From the Deep. If we leave out the games that strayed from the original gameplay format the gap is 17 years. It was worth the wait!

Sarafan: Hard to believe, but it's almost 22 years and... I'm still waiting! Baldur's Gate 2 was released on September 2000 and although the sequel was announced by Larian (and they released the Early Access version), they're still working on the game. Full game is supposed to be released sometime in 2023, so we'll probably get closer to 23 years. 

It's still not as much as in the Wasteland 2 case, but in gaming it's a whole era. This reminds me how far ahead of its time was Baldur's Gate 2. While the graphics are not that impressive anymore (although handmade backgrounds age very slowly), the gameplay is still on top. I wish that I can say something similar about BG3 after the next 22 years.

technomadic_rony: Mass Effect 4. I've been waiting for a good Mass Effect game since 2013. There's a rumor that the new Mass Effect game will be released next year, eagerly waiting for that.

Mass Effect: Andromeda left such a bad taste in my mouth that I almost gave up on this series. But last year got a chance to play through the original trilogy in the Legendary Edition and I fell in love again. This series really deserves a good follow up. Please don't mess it up, Bioware.

Todd Howard says Fallout 5 is coming after The Elder Scrolls 6, if we all live that long. And with those words, the speculation engines began turning. Sure, we'll probably be a decade older by the time Fallout 5 comes out—assuming someone doesn't drop the bombs for real by then. Distant as it may be, it's still fun to start wondering what shape the next Fallout game could be. Like war, should Fallout never change, or will it finally be time for a radical redesign? What technological advancements would fit a post-nuclear RPG? What Bethesda clichés should it avoid, or embrace?

What do we want from Fallout 5?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Nat Clayton, Features Producer: Literally anything else. Fallout 5 might have only been recently confirmed, but its existence was always a certainty. But with Starfield comes a realisation that Bethesda has been doing the same thing for a long, long time; an Elder Scrolls, a Fallout, an Elder Scrolls, a Fallout, over and over until the heat death of the universe.

The Elder Scrolls being fantasy means there's a little more room to imagine what could be next, but Fallout's aesthetic is set in stone. You'll walk around an irradiated wasteland, popping super mutants with laser blasters while the Ink Spots play over trinkets of nuclear-age Americana. Fallout 4 and 76 proved that Bethesda has burned what interest could lie in that setting down to motifs and brand elements, a world of Funko Pop Vault-Boys paid for in bottle caps, and I'm tired of it.

Starfield might have divided the team, but it excited me to see that studio shoot in literally any other direction. 

Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: More tunes. When wandering the wasteland in Fallout 4, the radio got old really quickly. I want a more expansive radio with proper retro beats and some new additions mixed in too. Perhaps explore more genres to jam out to while getting shot and drinking radioactive soda. 'I don't want to set the world on fire' is a must, of course, I wouldn't want the originals to go anywhere, but please, if you've got a game that lasts dozens of hours, give us some more variety in music won't you? Or maybe just picking up the odd cassette tape as a collectable would be a nice touch. 

Sean Martin, Guides Writer: Expansions that explore the world rather than trying to sell crafting. Building a sentry bot that fires nukes is fun, don't get me wrong, but it felt like a wasted opportunity that Fallout 4's DLC focused more on introducing craftable elements than it did on taking us to the far flung reaches of the Commonwealth.

To me, the DLC for Fallout: New Vegas remains some of the best ever made. It explores new regions and factions, introduces toys to play with, but most importantly, it tells a chaptered, self-contained story that also complements the main game and the choices you have to make in it. With Fallout 4, Far Harbor was the only expansion that really tried to do that, with its story of synths and humans learning to live together.

Why would you want a new type of wall panel when you could have weird stuff straight from the world? The ghoul survival game in Point Lookout; the toaster in Old World Blues; going to space in Mothership Zeta; or anything that feels as impactful as chasing Ulysses through The Divide in Lonesome Road.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I have to agree with Nat. I really enjoyed Fallout 3 when it came out, but the more time that passes, and the more Fallout games they put out, the clearer it becomes that Bethesda just fundamentally doesn't have an interesting vision for the series. 

Artistically, they're stuck in a retro-future rut, with increasingly nonsensical world-building and tired environmental design. Mechanically, they keep pushing in the most exhausting directions possible: more crafting, more base-building, more boring repeatable activities. Meanwhile, the actual roleplaying—the kind of character-building, NPC interaction, and interactive storytelling we saw in the pre-Bethesda Fallouts and in New Vegas—is increasingly sidelined. 

At this point, what I want to see from Fallout is a setting starting to grow past its roots. Centuries after the bombs, why do we not get to see people genuinely building something new and hopeful in the ashes, rather than squatting in 250-year-old houses, wearing filthy but miraculously intact '50s clothes, eating ancient tinned food? Fundamentally I don't see Bethesda being interested in actual forward motion for the series.

All of which is to say: if I find one more grubby skeleton perfectly arranged in the pose it was in when it died, holding a letter explaining its backstory in one bony hand, I'm going to scream. 

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I'd say give it to Obsidian, but does Obsidian even want Fallout? Do we even want more Fallout?

There's some gamer Avengers team-up logic I've seen spreading around that, now that Obsidian and Bethesda share a parent company, the barriers are lower than ever for making a Fallout: New Vegas 2 or Fallout 2: 3 or whatever you wanted to call it. Thing is, I don't know if anyone at either company wants that. I think the popular reappraisal of New Vegas from critics and fans has left Bethesda more determined than ever to make the series its own. At Obsidian, 2/3s of the original Fallout's leadership team, Tim Cain and Leondard Boyarsky, have been reunited, but they're currently working on the sequel to the Outer Worlds and building out that setting seems like a dream project they wouldn't want to get pulled away from. New Vegas project director Josh Sawyer is currently heading up the development of Pentiment, and has expressed a greater interest in smaller projects with smaller teams. The big, public-facing names aren't everything, but I think it's worth it to note that these series veterans are all focused elsewhere.

And, at the end of the day, that's probably for the best. I'm with Nat here: put it on ice. I love the isometric games and New Vegas, I like Fallout 3 and 4, but the series seems to have entered a zombified state, shuffling along with no verve or direction. The most exciting Fallout-y things kicking around are all outside the usual channels: Adam Lacko's Project Van Buren to revive Black Isle's Fallout 3 and New Blood's retro-futurist Fallout send-up.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I want Fallout 5 to go back to California. And also have a motorbike to ride around on. With Dogmeat sitting beside me in a side-cart wearing a little pair of goggles.

From our forum

DXCHASE: Less bugs.

Frag Maniac: Hopefully building will be a bit more user friendly, with more things to build. Starfield seems to show that. However they also need to focus on better voice and model diversity in their games. Seeing the same old faces and hearing the same old voices over and over again can really break immersion. Other than that, their game endings are often lackluster, and they need to reflect character choices better.

What Fallout 4 had going for it mostly was the spontaneity of what happened just traveling through the game world, so I certainly wouldn't want to lose that if the story and choices are more structured and tangible. I have high hopes for Starfield, unlike many whom seem overly critical and skeptical, but after the disastrous launch of Fallout 76, I worry Fallout 5 will be burdened with more problems.

I just hope they've learned their lesson that you can't have a massively larger game world and still use the same old tired engine tech. Engines need to be updated regularly to account for new effects and features and keep the rendering as efficient as possible when game worlds expand. I think the response to Starfield once it releases will give them a lot to learn regarding the next Fallout.

If Starfield ends up having a lot of obvious cookie cutter copied and pasted structures on those 1000 planets they've made, that will no doubt be a main source of criticism.

Colif: Fallout New Vegas part 2. Since I can't have what I want and Bethesda will make it... I don't know. I don't enjoy their takes on Fallout. F4 turned me off by giving a suit within 10 minutes of leaving the vault, whereas in NV it was one of last things you get. I know there were other aspects they expanded on instead. 

No shop but I know that won't happen.

Frindis: I think the majority would like a good game, myself included, even though I don't necessarily have the highest of hopes. I loved the exploration in Fallout 4, it was just as with the other Fallout games (not played the first one though) amazing! The feel of the world is something that has for me always been a landmark for the Fallout world. You know where you are, there is something cozy about feeling at home again. That is why I hope they do not change up the formula when it comes to the whole post-apocalyptic theme at least.

I want it to stay "Falloutie" with sand, rocks, radiation, pills, Nuca-cola, deathclaws, abandoned buildings with skeletons in them smoking a cigarette, and so on. Maybe one thing would have been cool though: Perhaps Fallout 5 could have an even deeper subterranean system with its own kind of species growing. Having a deeper system, perhaps with semi-radiated sulfuric water, could have been interesting to explore as creatures would not have been fully mutated and for example, if they were also living in pitch black they could have been given some unique and terrifying looks.

I would have loved the see some of the creatures being a bit more intelligent and harder to kill. Perhaps the Deathclaws could mutate a little more into really terrifying creatures, not as brainy as the Xenomorph from the Alien movie, but more of a dangerous adversary, a thing you have to be very careful off, maybe even throughout the game. It would be a big step from one-shotting them with the Abilene Kid LE BB gun in Fallout: New Vegas with a few perk skills in crit and stealth.

What they really need to do is to bring back much, MUCH better dialogue options. Dialogue options in Fallout 4 were really bad and if the developers don't believe we are moving into an idiocracy, it's pretty safe to say that a few more dialogue options would not make our brain collapse on itself. The base building and weapons customizations I would love with much more in-depth design, I think they got a lot to go on there. Overall, staying Fallout would be the best thing. Not trying to reinvent the wheel too much and not repeating mistakes from the past.

mainer: I hope I'll be alive and healthy by the time of FO5 releases, but I think we're looking at a minimum of it being eight years away. A lot of what happens with FO5 will depend upon the success and reception of both Starfield and the next Elder Scrolls game.

I think we can safely assume that it will be a first-person perspective game and not a return to the isometric style, though I love both styles of gameplay. What I mainly want is a return to FO5 being a real RPG with an in-depth conversation system, real consequences from your character's choices and actions, as well as a reputation system as it relates to the people and factions. A more detailed leveling up system (as well as character creation) that is more than just selecting a single perk each time, like in FO4.

All the Fallout games that I've played, FO1-4 as well as FONV, had their own merits and that post-apocalyptic atmosphere, which still remains unique to me, and I wouldn't want to lose that element of immersion. I don't really have a preference as to where the next location that FO5 is set, but it would be a dream if Bethesda could take all (or most) of the positive elements of those games and incorporate them into Fallout 5.

Shodan_: I'd like to not be looking for a relative while fixing up a giant robot. These Bethesda storylines are getting old. I really don't mind coming out of a vault for the millionth time though, that experience can be updated with each gen and still amaze me, it's the going downhill after that turns the games into a slog.

If they can make the rest of the game as engaging as the early game I'll be happy.

flashn00b: Rather than a proper Fallout 5, I can't help but wanna see a spinoff series that might not even use the Fallout brand name. Rather, I think it'd be worth it to have a new IP that takes place in the Fallout universe, but focuses on Europe rather than the United States.

Reason being is that the Great War in the Fallout universe was mostly focused around America vs China, and I imagine that most of the nuclear exchanges were isolated to that conflict. Obviously, said exchange would've affected life in Europe for the worse, though I imagine that since they were well away from the blast radii of America's nukes, I imagine the countries of Europe would've more or less rebuilt itself by the time Fallout 3 and 4 happens, albeit with a significant societal regression, although at a much more backwater state compared to modern Europe.

Basically, I think "Europe in the Fallout universe" would be a nice way to introduce people to a medieval schizo-tech world that is a mix of medieval "fantasy" (air quotes cuz the medieval stuff still needs to be grounded in realism), the familiar early modern architecture of Fallout, and the 60s sci-fi that RobCo has brought to the world.

Sarafan: Back to isometric perspective? I guess that's not an option. Then they should focus on the story because Fallout 4 had some serious holes (it's a good game though!). F4 also had problems with evil path. It was practically non-existent until Nuka-World DLC was released. There's no karma system, you can steal all you want without consequences (unless someone sees you that is). Proper evil path would be awesome.

I would also like to see choices that bear consequences, even in side quests. Wasteland 2 and 3 show how this should be done and although I'm aware that it's harder to implement it in an open world, I don't think it's impossible. To sum up, I want a smaller open world, but with more interactivity based on quests built on the rule of branching trees.

I can't be the only person who, after finding out that unlocking the true ending of Arkham Knight required completing every single Riddler challenge, just watched the bloody thing on YouTube instead. More recently, after hours fighting through corridors in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, I relied on YouTube to tell me why Jack was so adamant Chaos was a person he could find and kill and not, like, an abstract concept. Turns out the answer's halfway interesting, though still daft as a brush. Maybe in a few years we'll find out what went on behind the scenes of that game to leave it in the weirdly gutted state it released in, with arbitrary leaps in quest level-requirements that other activities were presumably meant to fill, and townsfolk conversations accessed from a menu because the city hub was clearly cut late in development.

What's a game you watched on YouTube instead of finishing?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Sean Martin, Guides Writer: Red Dead Redemption 2. Though I love the first game and the level of detail that went into the second, I personally found the narrative was overblown, and the idea of questioning whether Arthur is a good man after brutally murdering hundreds of people is totally laughable. It's a real disconnect. 

It's also a story about decline, which grates against the usual rags to riches Rockstar narrative I like (as with GTA 4). In the end I just watched the ending on YouTube and pivoted to Red Dead Online for the wild west roleplay of trading, hunting, and fishing that I was craving. Just a shame Rockstar stopped adding stuff really.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: To beat-beat Spelunky 2 it took me about 250 hours. I wrote about the 15-step process to reach the game's grueling final area back in March, something that puts me among 4.8% of players on Steam. To make it to the Cosmic Ocean, you have to run a gauntlet of procedurally generated things that want to kill you and complete a few burdensome quests along the way, like safely escorting a magical bow and arrow all the way to the final boss. It's hard as hell.

Mostly I learned how to do it by dying 2,917 times (I am not a patient platformer), but I also learned a ton from watching the spectacular runs of folks like Twiggle, whose techniques and attempts to beat Spelunky in every conceivable way helped me establish personal goals rather than play Spelunky like a conventional game with a finish line. I lost out on discovering some of Spelunky's plentiful mystery organically, but I wouldn't say I gave up—it just sort of changed my experience into something more like training for a marathon. 

Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: It's a hard one to admit, but for me, it was Bloodborne. The year 2015 was ages ago, so I don't really remember the exact reason why I couldn't quite finish the game, but at some point I decided it would be much easier to watch the last few hours of it on YouTube instead of finishing it myself. It's my one shameful Souls secret that I'd like to fix with a PC release or some sort of remaster. The strange thing is that I don't remember not liking the game; I think I was super into it. I got all the way to the Mergo's Wet Nurse boss and quit.

I have watched tons of YouTube playthroughs of other Souls games. I watched a Dark Souls 2 let's play alongside playing the game myself, so I'm going to assume I was doing that with Bloodborne too. At some point, I picked up a PlayStation 4 Pro and and now a PlayStation 5 and I'm pretty sure that original save is lost to time. Oh, well. One day I will return to Yharnam

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I'm not sure if I've ever seen anyone describe Ark: Survival Evolved as a cozy and relaxing game, but that's how I played it. I had a little base near a tiny lake filled with giant beavers on a private server and all I did was log in for an hour every night, feed my pet dinos, use their poop for farming, and tinker around with the various workbenches and crafting stations. Occasionally some big angry dino would crash the party but it was usually a chill, peaceful experience.

As a result I never progressed to the highest tech trees or did any boss missions or figure out anything about the story or endings of the various expansions, so I watched all of that on YouTube. I was just too happy with my little lakeside cabin to do anything really dangerous so I watched braver and more dedicated players do it for me.

From our forum

Zloth: It's pretty rare for me (if I'm not interested enough to keep playing, I probably won't bother to look up the ending, either) but I just did that with NieR Replicant. I was bothered by all the repetition the first time I played the game to get ending A. No way was I going to go back to that Junk Yard section! So, I watched endings B through E on YouTube. Then watched a video covering everything that happened before NieR. Then everything that happened between NieR and Automata. Wow!

ZedClampet: The only time I've ever done this (sort of) was with Doki Doki Literature Club. I knew what was going to happen, and I didn't want to experience it, so I just read a plot summary of the game. 

Part of the reason I'll quit, but not look up the ending is because I'm always stupidly optimistic that I'm actually just taking a break and will come back to the game later.

SleepingDog: Never. The only time I use YouTube is when I am stuck and need some help. I reckon most games don't make decent "movies".

Pifanjr: I don't think I've ever looked up the story of a game I stopped playing, but I have used cheats to get the story without having to bother with the gameplay. Notably, I played all of the first Witcher game with god mode on and I used god mode for the final fight of Dragon Age: Origins.

DXCHASE: Sekiro Shadows Die Twice. Was getting sick of the whole soulslike endeavor and I knew I was close to the end, then other games had come out that I'd rather play so I just watched the ending scenes with youtube. Haven't played it since.

WoodenSaucer: I remember getting to the end of a game and dying, and then having to restart far enough back that I just watched it on YouTube because I didn't want to go through all of that again. The problem is that I can't remember what game it was! 

Ryzengang: Sometimes I will, but the more likely scenario is that I will intend to watch it on YouTube and simply never get to it. For story-driven games with annoying gameplay (or if I get sick of it for one reason or another) it can be an ideal strategy, but I usually will never end up watching it. I did this for Middle-Earth: Shadow of War and it has been on my "watch later" list for months.

mainer: I've never done that. If I loose interest in a game, I just don't care what happens in the end, whether it be from combat difficulty or just a lack of immersion. I've looked at videos on YouTube for strategies on how to complete a specific "boss" battle at times, but other than that, no.

JC.Denton: Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. Anyone who's watched this game will know that it's only 2 minutes long. Anyone who's tried to beat the game in 2 minutes will tell you that it takes hours of practice. A game I both hate to play but love to watch.

Frindis: Still feel bad for doing this, but after not being able to play The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings on my old PC, I turned to the tube to watch the different boss fights. Thankfully this was some years back, so I just vaguely remember the last boss fight, which I can live with. This also reminds me that The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition is -85% off on GOG, so now would be a great time to grab it.

Obvious answer: Skyrim. How can you enjoy replaying Skyrim without being able to bypass the intro, sort your inventory by weight or value, or fly the paraglider from Breath of the Wild? OK, the last one is optional, but Skyrim is the number one game I would only suggest playing unmodded your first time through. (The number two game is every other Bethesda open-world RPG.) I guess if you count unofficial patches as mods the same goes for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, but I'm thinking more of full-blown modifications rather than fixes.

What game would you never play without mods?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. Somewhere in the pages of PC Gamer I'm pretty sure I've called KotOR 2 the buggiest game I've ever beaten. I made it to the end, surviving a healthy scoop of bugs, outright crashes, and even a corrupted save file. And that was all with the vital TSLRCM, aka The Sith Lords Restored Content Modification, installed. TSLRCM is an essential add-on that restores chunks of KotOR2 that developer Obsidian didn't have time to finish, and also fixes bugs that made some stuff that actually was in the game inaccessible. Considering how buggy The Sith Lords still was when I played it in 2013, I can't imagine how bad it was before fans swooped in to fix it up.

TSLRCM debuted in 2009 and was most recently updated in December 2020, so maybe all the problems I ran into in 2013 have since been ironed out. I sure hope so, because this is my pick for the best Star Wars game. Just... use a lot of save slots.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl is one of my favorite games of all time, but gosh. It has bugs. To be fair, some of them are pretty darn amusing and only deepen my affection for the game, but I don't imagine I'd ever play it unmodded again. It's been ages since I've revisited it so I'm not sure what the best mods are for it these days, but I recall the Zone Reclamation Project did a good job of squashing bugs, improving stability, and adding some new optional features without feeling like an altogether different experience.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I have practically sworn off mods that aren't reconstructive or standalone because of my experience with Oblivion and Fallout 3 in the eighth grade. I was blown away by the possibilities, and loaded up a ludicrous amount of mods on our family PC: Midas Magic for Oblivion, tacticool Call of Duty stuff in Fallout. I picked up NPCs from other gaming franchises, a custom race of weird anime elves, mods to expand cities and settlements and bring them into the same loading zone as the overworld, and I brought that computer to its knees. 

After a certain point, something broke and the ground texture on the overworld in Oblivion was just a repeating pattern of a map of the Imperial City for some reason, and I couldn't pinpoint what did it. The problem somehow even persisted on a fresh install (I'm sure there was something I could have figured out, but I was 13). I'd loaded that PC up with so many weird, tasteless mods that it was permanently haunted, and I didn't play Oblivion again for over 10 years. These days, I try to "respect the developers' vision."

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I don't usually play with mods, and I generally don't replay games once I've finished with them. But if I ever succumb to the temptation to return to Morrowind, I will absolutely not do so without the Passive Cliff Racers mod, or something like it. It might seem like a minor thing but man, those birds are just a non-stop pain in the ass. The Nerevarine don't need that.

WAIT

I am changing my answer, because I completely forgot about this. One game I have replayed (and may replay again) is System Shock 2. It's brilliant, but graphically very dated. (Frankly, it was graphically dated when it was new.) There are two mods essential to addressing that shortcoming: System Shock 2 Rebirth and SHTUP, the Shock Texture Upgrade Project. They're a bit of a hassle to use, but collectively they give the game a serious and much-needed visual upgrade. It's been a long time since I played SS2 so there may be other options out there now, but Rebirth and SHTUP have always been the "big ones," and they're the two I would not go without.

(You shouldn't, either.)

From our forum

Brian Boru: Far Cry 5. Another of Ubisoft's drawn-out boring FC intros, which I only want to see once. Then there are the hated-by-many capture sequences which made me stop playing for nearly a year until the excellent Resistance mod took care of both of those problems.

Civilization. I played Civ4 for ~a year vanilla—wonderful game, but the UI tedium eventually got to me. BUG/BAT mod made it playable again, to the extent I play it every year. Started Civ6 recently and went straight for mods, have ~30 installed—no point suffering UI deficiencies when I don't have to.

With games good enough to warrant replaying, I'll usually look for an 'unlock' mod, so I can have access to most of the good stuff from the get-go.

ZedClampet: Welp, I have 285 mods currently going in Farming Simulator 22 (by the time I finished playing Farming Simulator 19 I had over 800 mods), but this would only be a close second to Satisfactory, where I only have 48 mods, but they are incredibly significant to how I want to play the game; for instance, the mod that makes the game peaceful, removing all enemies, both plants and animals, and the mods that allow access to vehicles earlier in the game. 

I've played this game over and over. Unlocking trains, drones and jetpacks later was cool the first couple of times. Now I just want them as soon as possible. Same goes for enemies. They were fun at first, but now they are just a nuisance. Also, the mods that replace the highly annoying bio-energy in the early game are a must have. So, yeah, it's Satisfactory for me.

mainer: Outside of the obvious answer that you already listed, my next most modded game would be Fallout 4. I'd never play that game without mods (outside of the first playthrough when it released). Make your settlements bigger and fancier, make your settlers smarter, improve the factions, additional quests, additional crafting options, and there's even a FallUI mod now that's based on the SkyUI, and a Photo Mode mod that's the best Photo Mode I've ever used. Your choices in mods are nearly as endless as they are for Skyrim.

DXCHASE: None, I play games mostly vanilla and if there's some feature I want, I'll go download it.

Frindis: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Don't get me wrong, the game is absolutely amazing with some of the coolest side quests, classes, and skills. It is a fantastic game from the get-go, but it also has one of the most heartbreaking moments in video game history: The god damn Elizabeth Dane quest where you have to use a boat which is for the majority of the time: bugged! Bugged you say, YES! It means you can't move on with the main story because you can't get the prompt that says you can enter the god damn boat! It was insanely frustrating if you did not back your saves, managed to get a save from a friend, OR got the unofficial patch that fixed this.

Zloth: Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. The game is certainly playable with no mods at all, but, assuming you've got the PC to power to spare, why would you? Some graphics mods to make the explosions look fierier, leave smoke trails behind the missiles, and maybe give yourself some cockpit glass makes the game look better. TTRulez's AI mod makes allies and enemies act smarter. The Pilot Overhaul makes your mechwarriors more interesting and lets you edit their portraits and voices (very handy for avoiding duplicates in your lance), and vonBiomes add some interesting new places to do battle.

Slasken: I would never play Cities Skylines without mods. Thankfully, the game has had great mod support since the beginning. I don't use only a assets, as it really halts the performance, but I do use a lot of other mods for traffic and other QOL mods. I went crazy with assets before, and it halts the performance down to single digit fps when you get a big city.

Sarafan: It will be a little controversial, but I can't imagine myself returning to Deus Ex without the Revision mod. It fixes some bugs that were left in the original game and this alone is very good, but its main advantage is the new content. A lot of the locations underwent a major overhaul and the new areas are hardly distinguishable in quality from the original content. They fit ideally.

What more the mod improves graphics in a meaningful way, proposes a remixed version of the soundtrack and a new approach to skill points and augmentations (there are few options of this feature to choose from). The big advantage is that all of these changes are optional and you can disable certain parts of the mod in the menu. You don't like the new soundtrack? No problem, you can use the original one. Don't like the skill-tree changes? Pick the standard one. Same goes for new character models and some other aspects of the mod.

Revision is highly configurable. I can only recommend to try it. Not everyone likes it, but there are chances that you'll never return to the original game without this mod.

Think of the hardy videogame perennials you keep installed to pop back into when the mood strikes you, or replay every year or two like a personal ritual. Which one of them dates back the furthest? I've got Pool of Radiance, a downright ancient D&D RPG from 1988, on the go at the moment—a game I restart on the regular without ever finishing it as I try again and again to find the perfect party balance of elven fighter/thief and elven fighter/mages.

What's the oldest game you still play?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: We have Halo Hogmanay, where we play coop Halo 2. Have done for 6 years now, v fun way to spend it. XCOM 2 and The Witcher 3 will also never be uninstalled, alongside Oblivion. A nice eclectic mix to remind me why I love games.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Confession: I didn't play Quake when it was new,  back in 1996. Heck, I didn't even play it when it was old in 2006, or 2016. I really dug into it for the first time in 2020, and damn did it hold up well. I've kept it installed since then and go back to play something new every few months. First it was the two original expansions, and next up is MachineGames' anniversary episode from last year, which I'm very excited to play. 

At some point later this year I expect I'll get the urge for more, and I'll probably play The Forgotten Sepulcher. I can't claim to have kept Quake installed for years and years like Jody has with Pool of Radiance, but I have a feeling it's going to be on this SSD until it turns to dust.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: At this point it's mainly due to trying out mods, but I still occasionally jump into The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. And once I'm done with whatever mod I'm checking out, I usually stay a while. It's definitely long in the tooth when it comes to looks and it feels weirdly empty (unless the mod I'm trying adds extra NPCs) but it's such a comfortable world to revisit having spent roughly 400 hours in it all those years ago. 

From our forum

ZedClampet: Every now and then I'll play an older game, but the only older games that I repeatedly return to are RE4 and the Roller Coaster Tycoon games. However, all of these have had new editions released since the original games. I think the oldest one is RE4 HD from 2014.

Colif: Torchlight 2: 2012 - although I do play a modded version now, as I have gone back to it on 2 newer computers now and stock game gets predictable after a while.

I recall Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 broke my mouse once (that or mouse died while playing game which made it hard to exit game since its all run from mouse (and/or I didn't know hot keys).

Brian Boru: Are remasters allowed? If yes, then the Command & Conquer remaster of the 1995-97 games + expansions will be an annual replay for me. If not, Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour from 2003 is the oldest I have installed. Other regulars from the 00s are Civ4 and the original Crysis pair.

Alm: Apparently Hearthstone is a 2014 game. That's the oldest game I still regularly play.

Frindis: Lotro online. At least once a year I go back to it so I can experience Bree and Shire. Maybe I'll pop inside the housing area and see if there are some lovely house decorations or run one of the race tracks. Last time I played it I took my nephew on a journey to a faraway land. We never did manage to get to that land, but we had fun trying while aggroing just about anything we ran past. It's just a great world to visit. Me on my horse at Bree:

Ryzengang: Hmm, I'm not totally sure, but I think it's probably Oblivion and Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, which are both 2006 games. I had the physical version of Dark Crusade back in the day, and I played it a ton both solo and with my (still) good friend. I still return to it every now and again, it has the additional benefit of being able to run on a toaster, so I can play it on my laptop as well. As for Oblivion, it is my favorite Bethesda game and one that I have a lot of good memories with. For this question it might be a slight stretch, though, because I don't return to it super often.

DXCHASE: I have emulators that are ready to go, I have arcade 1ups in the house with classics ready to go, but as for PC, the oldest game I play/installed is original Doom and other originals like that (Quake, Serious Sam, Hexen etc.)

mainer: I play more older games that new every year, so my library of older games is fairly large. Many of those are re-purchases of older "boxed" versions in digital format, so if I want to play them, they're much easier to install. A lot of those I haven't played in well over 10 years (but, hey, they're there if I want to!). There's also a select group that I go back and play consistently.

As to your question, much would depend upon whether you're accepting remasters or enhanced editions. If yes, then it would be Baldur's Gate 1 (1998 release), but I actually play the enhanced version released in 2013. Same game, but slightly better graphics as well as many other improvements.

If no, then the oldest game that I keep installed and play occasionally would be Half-Life 2 (2002). There's just something about the atmosphere and flow that I've never seen or felt in any other games, regardless of genre. HL2 was way ahead of its time.

WoodenSaucer: I don't play old games very often. Technically, the oldest for me right now would be some old arcade classics. I build my own arcade cabinet (from a nice kit) a while back and fitted it with a Raspberry Pi with RetroPie on it. It runs a lot of the really old arcade games. I don't play on it much, though.

Frag Maniac: Regarding remasters, well, technically a remake in this one, I played Mafia Definitive Edition not too long ago. At first it brought back that good old feeling from the original, with much better graphics, but when I got to the hardest mode, it was a bit of a let down. The enemies are not nearly as hard to kill on the hardest mode in the remake, and they cannot kill you as easily either. So I never went through panicked moments like I did in the original worrying about dying or running out of ammo. It just wasn't as immersive a game as the original.

ZER0: I have a good amount of retro fps games that I re-play every few years or so (Half Life, Duke Nukem 3d, Unreal Tournament, Quake etc) but the oldest one I return to has to be the original Doom. It's still such a great game in its vanilla state, nevermind the infinite amount of mods and user content that's been produced over the years. It's a classic for a reason.

Johnway: I still very much play retro games on my raspberry pi. Just today I finished the legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the Snes. But the oldest game I play with any consistency is Doom 2, or the community wads to be exact. The work that comes from the modding community is truly outstanding and kept me entertained every weekend when I play for an hour or 2.

Even before Kickstarter announced it was hopping on the blockchain bandwagon, people seemed to have fallen out of love with the crowdfunding platform. Videogame projects have been hitting lower targets in recent times, with all the biggest earners (like the Ouya, Shenmue 3, and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night) now seven or more years behind us.

Meanwhile, Kickstarters for tabletop game continue to do well, raising $272 million in 2021, versus the more modest $24 million raised by videogames according to consultant Thomas Bidaux's study. Yet more and more of those board games are projects that probably didn't need to come round with their hands out—the Marvel Zombies board game, which raised $9,032,583, for instance.

And among both groups of backers, there's a lot of cynicism. If you've ever made the mistake of reading the comments on a Kickstarter's updates page, you'll have seen people start to complain about having to wait for their rewards approximately five minutes after the pledging period ended.

Still, hundreds of games are funded on Kickstarter each year (the number of annual funded videogame projects has been hovering around 400 since 2013, according to the study referenced above), and it remains the place to go for interesting hardware like XR glasses you can plug into a Steam Deck.

When's the last time you were excited about a Kickstarter?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Nat Clayton, Features Producer: I tend to only back Kickstarters when it was games my friends made (Jack King-Spooner's Sluggish Morss: Pattern Circus, Humble Grove's No Longer Home, etc), the reasoning being that even if they pull a Kickstarter and fizzled into nothing, at least I was supporting people I care about.

The one exception to the rule was last year's Unbeatable, the coolest goddamn thing I've seen in my life. Unbeatable's Kickstarter trailer is a masterclass in telling me what the hell your game is about—no dry developer commentary or elaborate backstory, just heavy guitar riffs and a no-frills explainer on why you should give a shit about this sun-bleached adrenaline rush.

It helps that Unbeatable's Kickstarter launched with a free Arcade Mix demo, with the promise of a bigger, better White Label demo soon to come. White Label took a hot minute to finally arrive, but when it did it put Kickstarter demos everywhere to shame—a full game in its own right, updating with new tracks and new features months after the campaign ended. When I say the coolest game of 2021 was a Kickstarter demo, I goddamn meant it.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Like Nat, I'm most psyched for Kickstarters by friends, but that's for lovely enamel pins, not games. I haven't actually backed a game Kickstarter in a long time, but I've kept an eye on plenty over the years. I think the last time I was excited for a Kickstarter was in my early days as a freelance writer, back when PC Gamer's Indie channel existed (rest in pixels), when I wanted to add My Time at Portia to our list of games like Stardew Valley. 

Wes rightfully cautioned to the effect of "it's still mid-Kickstarter, so let's see if it actually launches". To which I said OK, but if it succeeds, I'm going to gloat by pitching Jody to write about it. So I backed it. And it did manage to clear its $100,000 funding goal. And Jody did let me write about it. And now I've finally bragged about it.

Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: The most excited I've been about a Kickstarter in recent memory was for the second edition of A Profound Waste of Time. There are now two editions of the videogame magazine and I own the standard and special edition copies of both. It's a videogame magazine like no other, in that you don't find screenshots of games within its pages. Art from a variety of creators, words from a variety of backgrounds in between delicious covers. I keep them on my shelves looking pretty, taking one down occasionally to take to a park or quiet corner of a pub to indulge in. And look cool. The 'look cool' part is important.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: When it comes to videogames, I feel like I got burned on almost every game I backed during the heyday of it all. Either the game came out and just wasn't good or as advertised (I still nurse a grudge about Broken Age), or it was fine but just took so long to arrive that I'd lost interest by the time it did (Wasteland 2, Defence Grid). I made myself a rule to stop backing them, though they don't seem to really happen much these days anyway.

I do still back quite a lot of tabletop stuff. I'm pretty cynical about where it is these days as a business practice—especially for massive companies like CMON, who are behind the aforementioned Marvel Zombies—but the reality is if you're into tabletop games, it's hard to avoid it, particularly when it comes to board games. 

As much as possible I like to at least avoid big corporate Kickstarters, and primarily take chances on cool little things from smaller teams. A lot of the time it ends up being like a little gift for myself. I don't really follow the progress of a lot of things I back, so when they arrive out of the blue it's a nice surprise. Forgotten Depths is my most recent example. Just look at that lovely art!

But that delay between essentially preordering and finally getting the product does still bite me in the ass a lot. When a huge box arrives full of stuff I no longer care about, it's a burden rather than a gift given the limited storage space of my flat. Anyone want to buy the Hellboy RPG off me? 

I have been a bit exhausted as well by the huge rise in Kickstarter drama. Thanks to the global shipping crisis, Brexit, and other factors, a lot of projects have suffered disruption and extra costs, which just leads to, as you say, these incredibly toxic communities that just endlessly rage about not getting what they ordered. It's a big disincentive to get more involved in projects, for me. 

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Never. There are games I've been excited about that have had Kickstarters, but that's despite the Kickstarters. I appreciate that I've enjoyed quite a lot of games that may not have existed without crowdfunding, but I find the whole process unappealing. The pitches are often a jumble, I hate how stretch goals have become the norm, and the whole thing is just a weird gamble. I wince whenever I hear about a new game and find out it's going down the Kickstarter route. Given this, I've never pledged any cash to any game crowdfunding campaign. I don't prepurchase games either. If I'm going to put some cash up for something, it'll be for something people can actually play, not promises and concept art. 

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Double Fine Adventure. The gaming project that put Kickstarter on the map was Double Fine's historic (at the time) $3 million campaign for what eventually became Broken Age. I was excited and intrigued that it was apparently possible for devs to self-fund cool games. Then a few years in, Double Fine realized the Kickstarter money wouldn't actually cover the bill and decided to release it in two parts instead. That campaign was illustrative of how impossibly expensive it can be to make a relatively small game and a reminder that there are no promises on Kickstarter. 

After the initial wave of gaming Kickstarters in 2012, the shine definitely wore off a bit. There were enough stories of cancelled projects or underwhelming finished products that I adopted the common attitude of waiting until a project was actually out before getting excited. 

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: Very recently. This isn't Kickstarter but another crowdfunding platform called Kiss Kiss Bank Bank (which I'd never heard of before). But an adorable-looking game called Aka where you play as a red panda was crowdfunding there in April (and reached its goal) and I was very excited to see that. 

I mean, just take a look at Aka's Steam page. You're a red panda. You take naps. You feed baby dragons. You take more naps. You farm. You explore. You nap. Sometimes you take a nap on top of a giant capybara that is also taking a nap. It's the cutest. It's due out this year and I am going to play it and take naps in it. I have some experience with red pandas, you know, and plenty with napping.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I've backed a dozen or so Kickstarters since 2012, but it's been a couple years since the most recent one, and the "magic" was gone long before that. I think the last must-have Kickstarter I backed was the System Shock reboot in 2016; there have been some since, but only a couple I feel any real enthusiasm for. 

I think Kickstarter became a victim of its own success: Instead of genuinely interesting projects that needed support from a dedicated fan base to come to fruition, suddenly everyone was doing them, from enthusiastic fans with no idea how much game development actually costs to major studios launching new projects in well-established game series, and yeah, I'm looking at you, CD Projekt. I'd faded on Kickstarter long before that happened, but it was still a bummer to see. An uncurated preorder channel is pretty much what Kickstarter is now, though.

I used and enjoyed Kickstarter for a long time, and every project but one that I backed delivered in spades. I got great games and sweet collector boxes that never would have seen the light of day without crowdfunding. And I'd happily back projects on it again, if I ever ran across any that were sufficiently interesting and from a reasonably reputable developer. But that just doesn't seem to happen anymore.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: The only videogame I ever backed was pick-a-path card game/Arkham brawler Hand of Fate, which turned out quite well. Though I didn't put money on them, I guess I have ended up playing a lot of games that were funded or at least helped over the finish line by Kickstarter. The last decade's worth of retro CRPGs, for instance. 

There are now so many revivalist games that exist because of crowdfunding I don't have time to try all of the interesting ones. Still haven't got round to Battletech, Phoenix Point, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, or a bunch of others. I'll definitely make time for the System Shock remake, though. Which is, at long last, nearly finished.

From our forum

Pifanjr: I'm excited for Frosthaven, the sequel to Gloomhaven. The Kickstarter ended 2 years ago (I think?), but because of Covid it has taken a lot longer to get the game on the shelves. One of my friends actually asked if I wanted it as a birthday present, but I assume he was joking because it's €200 and we probably have at least a year of content in Gloomhaven left.

Ryzengang: Somewhat recently I backed Monomyth which looks quite interesting (Monomyth has a steam page as well if you're interested). The Kickstarter has been over for a bit now, and I've been getting consistent updates about the development via email. It looks like its coming along well and could be a really cool dungeon crawler. I'll get a copy of the game when it releases since I backed it, so I'm looking forward to checking it out. But this is a fairly isolated case, and I don't really frequent Kickstarter.

WoodenSaucer: About 6 years ago, the original devs that created Giants: Citizen Kabuto were working on a spiritual successor, called First Wonder. I was a huge fan of Giants, so I was really stoked about it. I backed the Kickstarter, and even did a little promotion for them. Unfortunately, they didn't reach their goal and had to abandon the project. It was looking like it was going to be awesome, too.

Frindis: Funny you mentioned Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Jody, because that is the last Kickstarter I was really excited for. I've never been a big fan of platforming games, but this just had the charm to suck me in. Beautiful scenery, insane level layout with tons of hidden items to find, and the best: Cool weapons, skills, and for the most parts unique and fun bosses. Honorable mention to Michiru Yamane who was the lead composer for the awesome soundtrack.

Here is the review from PC Gamer for anyone interested.

mainer: The last one I can remember is the Kickstarter campaign for the System Shock Remake, and that was back in 2016 I believe. And it still hasn't released. It's gone through a protracted development hell that includes one complete scrapping of all work and starting over as well as several release time frames getting bumped, the last being summer of 2021. It's now got the dreaded "coming soon" tag on Steam, which could mean anything.

Back in the 1990s, the original System Shock was one of the most immersive games I'd ever played, so I'm still hopeful that the developer, Nightdive Studios, will be able to finish development. The demo that was released was pretty good, so that's a positive, but Nightdive hasn't done themselves any favors by maintaining radio silence for months at a time.

Sarafan: I have to point two examples. The most recent one was Crossroads Inn Kickstarter campaign. There's a fantastic and very original idea behind the game and I absolutely loved the whole concept. Decided to back the game almost right away. It turned out to be good, but not fantastic. I don't regret the money I've spent on it however. It's satisfying to know that I helped to make the game possible.

Even more excitement brought me crowdfunding of Pillars of Eternity. I still remember like it was yesterday. One of the brightest moments in PC gaming. Great comeback of isometric RPG's and a great comeback of Obsidian. The atmosphere of the Kickstarter campaign was marvelous. Counting the numbers of players that backed the game, counting the Endless Paths dungeon levels (their number was proportional to the number of backers!), watching developer updates, sharing all this with friends... It was a true festivity in gaming and I'm afraid that we won't get anything that's even close to this event in the near future.

DXCHASE: The last and only one I ever invested in was for Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem but back then it was called "Umbra". It looked promising at one point and then completely changed gears and came out a mediocre hack and slash imo.

Zloth: For games? Battletech! I had 400 tons of fun with it, too!

ZedClampet: The last game I was excited about from Kickstarter was Agony, and that ended up a cluster f***. But, then again, there were so many clusters on Kickstarter that I quit backing games.

I was designated a "Super Backer" and had a special symbol by my name. I tossed my support to about 100 different games. Out of those games, only about 35 met their goal. Out of those 35, 10 have never released, and it's been over 5 years for all of them. That's a horrible track record, and I'm just not dealing with it anymore. If one or two games had failed, I would have shrugged it off.

The average response of these developers is "I'm having real life problems and have had to take a break from development." Bullshit. You made a commitment and people gave you money. Get your **** together or get a second job and give the money back.

There are now 10 videogames based on the Evil Dead series, not counting games Ash has cameos in like Dead By Daylight and Poker Night 2. That's a decent number, although the Alien series has it beat, especially counting the various Alien vs. Predator games. There have been four Blair Witch games, each developed by a different studio, and even Texas Chainsaw Massacre was made into an Atari 2600 game back in 1983. Meanwhile, multiple attempts to make Hellraiser games have been canceled before release, including one in Duke Nukem's Build Engine and one in the same engine as Wolfenstein-3D. It hardly seems fair.

Which horror movie would make a great videogame?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: It Follows. Imagine a sort of life sim game like Bully. You're a teenager, you go to school, you choose whether your character studies in the evening or goes on dates in the retro town square. But at any time, an NPC could actually be a horrifying unkillable force of nature out to rip your fucking head off. You can stave off death by romancing and sleeping with other people around town, but when you hear about their grisly murders on the news you'll know your number's coming up. 

This game would probably be terrible. Great movie, though.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: March of the Penguins. Let me finish. Yes, it's a beautiful film about the triumph of life in extremely adverse conditions, ending with the heartwarming sight of all those adorable little baby penguins whose parents fought like hell to protect and provide for. But then you just think... wait, those baby penguins are gonna grow up and have to endure everything we just saw their parents endure: months of starvation, nearly freezing to death, whale attacks, losing a bunch of their children, and the sheer agony and unrelenting misery of trying to survive in the coldest place on earth. That's not uplifting. That's a goddamn horror story! Those penguins' lives are nightmarish.

But there should be a game about penguins, because they're cute.

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: Host. A pandemic horror movie in which scary stuff happens on a video call was guaranteed to happen, but was not guaranteed to be good or even watchable, so I think we made out pretty well with Host. It's an energetic 57 minutes, and does all the stuff you expect a Zoom horror story to do. (There's good use of automatic face detection, as seen in the trailer.) 

A game would work, I think. Mock computer interfaces are hip (Her Story, Emily is Away, Duskers, Pony Island, etc), and Five Nights at Freddy's proved that a game mostly about watching scary things on monitors is viable. You'd want excellent spatial sound so that the video call sounds like a video call, but the footsteps sound like they're behind you.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Is A Quiet Place a horror movie? I'm never sure about these things, but let's say it is. I think you could make a pretty good third-person survival game out of the first movie if it really leaned into the whole "don't make a sound" thing. I'm imagining tense moments of looting a grocery store while trying not to step on shattered glass or knock over a tin can. It'd probably have to be a road trip story so you don't spend 10 hours cooped up on the same farm like Jim Halpert's family. Ideally, it'd be more stealth than action, sorta like the original Splinter Cell series.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I mentioned the multiple Hellraiser games that have been started but never came out in the intro because that's what I'd like to see finally realized. Solve puzzle boxes, get chased by extra-dimensional BDSM demons, take a trip to the labyrinthian hell they call home. What's not to like?

From our forum

DXCHASE: The Human Centipede. You have to lure people into your lab and then sew them together and then send them out to fight for you.

Sarafan: The Underworld series deserve a solid game adaptation. Maybe it isn't a pure horror, but definitely has many elements of it. The first movie received an adaptation on PS2, but you don't want to play it... The series has a huge potential in many different genres, be it RPG, FPS and even a strategy. It's strange that no one decided to deliver a good game set in this universe. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines would finally have a solid competitor.

Brian Boru: I'm not a horror guy, but has anyone made a Frankenstein game for PC? I'm only aware of some console fighter from ~30 years ago. You get to build your monster using a finite number of parts, eg 20—with a certain few required, like head & 2 legs. Rest is up to you—want 8 arms, go for it!

Once you've got your blueprint, you have to stalk and murder people in the locality, bring 'em back to the dungeon you won in a PC Gamer competition, and pull out your trusty and rusty hacksaw to acquire their contribution to le grande project.

The various quests you send your monster on will need very different layouts—cutouts?—so there'll be lots of reconfiguring and adjusting required.

flashn00b: Does The Purge count as a horror movie? I guess if you don't count second and fourth movies, then maybe?

I feel like for a game based on The Purge to work, it'd need to be a life sim, base builder, open world survival craft, and third person shooter rolled into one. Life sim because the key to a successful Purge is to earn the trust of the right people, base builder because you're gonna have a home and neighborhood to defend, open world survival craft because you're gonna need to leave the safety of your home to scavenge a city-turned-warzone, and third person shooter because ALL CRIME WILL BE LEGAL FOR THE NEXT 12 HOURS.

I guess if risk/reward needs to be a thing for the life sim portion of a Purge game, they could also offer the option to commit off-Purge crimes, though the New Founding Fathers of America will take even the most petty offenses quite seriously.

Do you match appropriate drinks to games like you're pairing them with wines? (When playing Gears of War you want a tannic wine, something astringent to help you break down all the solids in those beefy boys. You're welcome.) Does anyone actually drink the cliché gamer juice, Mountain Dew—Flamin' Hot or otherwise? How about pixel-flavored Coca-Cola? Maybe we should all calm down and have some refreshing water. Or stop risking spills on our keyboards.

What do you drink while gaming?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Nat Clayton, Features Producer: I've been the craven Dr Pepper fiend, and spent countless uni nights rendered sleepless by Monster binges. But I'm old now, and so, so tired, so my gaming tends to be accompanied by a nice cuppa tea, a home-brewed coffee (I've become a snob after my partner gifted me an Aeropress, ordering grind by the kilo from a lovely wee place down Portobello), or a hot choc for some chill late night gaming sessions. 

Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: I once had a Chinese and champagne when playing Halo 3, but really it depends on the game. Usually a cool pint from my PerfectDraft machine or some wine, but if it's during the day then endless cups of tea.

Tim Clark, Brand Director: In the day: Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke for caffeine, various flavours of La Croix (but not the Limoncello, which is trash.) After hours: Good single malt whiskey.

Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: Depends on the game. If it's something I'm savouring with a good story or adventure, a lager, IPA, or a glass of wine (probably red). But if I'm playing Valorant, as I have been a lot recently, alcohol slows reactions so I keep off the bevs and go for orange juice, water, or black Aeropress coffee. Nothing worse than losing MMR to pinot noir. 

Mollie Taylor, Trainee News Writer: I gotta admit, I'm terrible at staying hydrated. I'm trying to be one of those put-together adults who drinks a ton of water, but instead I'm probably quickly grabbing a can of Coke Zero before I do some raiding in Final Fantasy 14. Sometimes I'll treat myself to a nice cider, but I don't tend to drink much inside the house.

As a side note, I drank an absolute butt ton of elderflower cordial and lemonade when I played the Kingdom Hearts series as a kid. Whenever I go back to those games, I always get the urge to drink that. Weird how we associate the daftest things with our favourite games, huh?

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: As the guy who doesn't drink alcohol, caffeine, or fizzy drinks, my answer to this is very boring. I usually just have a glass of fruit squash (does that have a US equivalent?) or a bottle of water next to me, and I can't say I've ever tailored my beverage to the game I was playing. 

Tim: Squash basically doesn't exist in the US. You can imagine how I feel about this.

Robin: Barbaric country.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: The celestial light of Whirlyball may one day touch your grey island, and on that day you will be enlightened.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I don't know what the heck Aeropress coffee is (sounds like it involves jet propulsion), but I can't imagine sipping something hot while playing a game. You'll often find me with two drinks on the desk: one can of some sort of energy drink (I really like NOS because it tastes like orange juice) and a tall cup of ice water in an insulated bottle because un-iced water is tragic. I try to drink both equally so I'm never dehydrated. If it's too late to caffeinate I'll dip into some Crystal Light lemonade mix and make a pitcher.

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: How much trouble am I going to get in for admitting that I drink coffee from 8am until 11pm, regardless of the game?

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: Lauren, I feel like I've just learned that you're a novelty character build in an MMO. And Morgan's observation that he'll "dip into" his Crystal Light stash is so astute: I also treat powdered drinks as if they're non-renewable stores of value. I love to sneak a packet of generic red electrolyte dust now and then. I used to drink alcohol, but my relationship with it wasn't working out for anyone except Suntory Holdings, so the most potent beverage I drink these days is tea made from Douglas fir spring tips (it's slightly sweet, and all tree-flavored). Morgan is right, though: Hot beverages are inconvenient while playing games. Forget to keep sipping for 15 minutes and you've got lukewarm spring tips—a risk I don't take lightly.

Sarah James, Guides Writer: I'm with Lauren on this. It's coffee for me, regardless of the time of day (or night). Occasionally I'll switch things up with squash, but yeah, mostly just coffee.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I'm mostly a water guzzler, but in the evenings or on weekends if I'm hopping onto a game with my Discord friends, I'll often have a beer. Whatever I have on hand, but my go-to grocery store picks are Modelo Negra and Blue Moon. Both are fairly light and refreshing which is nice for a chill hangout sesh. Now that I think about it, I could really go for some Hefeweizen...

Jorge Jimenez, Hardware Writer: I'm a Red Bull poured into a frozen beer mug type of guy. I'm the worst. Maybe water at some point. 

Morgan: That sounds divine, Jorge.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Monday to Thursday, it's water. Fridays are all beer, generally cheap German or UK imports as they're available and on sale (Pißwasser ahoy!), but I'll occasionally indulge in overpriced local microbrews. They're not worth the extra cost (and really, there's only so much you can do with an IPA before you start to look silly) but I like to think they lend me a certain air of sophistication as I sit alone in the basement playing Shadow Warrior 3 and yelling at my cats.

Alan Dexter, Senior Hardware Editor: My drinking habits are chaotic evil: red wine, homebrewed beer, quality single-malt whisky, tea, water, coffee, anything goes really and at any time of the day—unless you're asking my boss, in which case I definitely don't start the serious drinking until my working day is done. I won't touch so-called energy drinks though, because my body is a temple. Obviously.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I drink tea when I play videogames, but I also drink tea when I read books, watch TV shows, and work. I'm drinking tea right now. The only time I don't is when I play board games or roleplay, when I switch to beer or cider because I like to get loose when the dice come out and also whenever I'm expected to talk to people for any length of time. 

There's an apple cider called Golden Axe brewed by Kaiju Beer that I drink both because it's tasty and because it's got the same name as an arcade game I played a lot of as a kid.

From our forum

Slasken: I drink Coca Cola Zero, no ice cubes. If I am playing racing games, maybe a beer.

Withywarlock: Mostly Diet Coke, but water is my preferred energy drink.

Frindis: I always have a bottle of Diamond Water on the desk. Filtrated through real diamonds it cleanses my corrupt soul and sharpens my gamer senses. Jokes aside, I drink either water, cider, or beer. On rare occasions, I buy a nice bottle of wine or whisky.

Pifanjr: I usually forget to drink while gaming. I might notice every once in a while that I'm thirsty and decide to get up after finishing just this one thing. And this one other thing. And then when I finally stop playing I chug half a litre of water in one go.

Vikash Pradhan01: Enervy drinks as they are very good for health

Kaamos_Llama: Kombucha. It's like soda but its not quite as terrible for you, or coconut water. Can't drink alcohol even a little and play anything.

I think it had aliens in it. And the theme tune was unforgettable. It went, "da DA da," or something like that. Is there a game locked away in your memories, something from the distant past, that you can't remember the name of and nobody else ever mentions? In the foggy soup of edu-games and random things that came packaged with the family PC, is there something you wish you could recall? Maybe someone else will know what you're talking about. Now that I think about it, they probably weren't aliens. They might have just been weird fish.

Is there a game only you seem to remember?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: Definitely "Rock Manager", I honestly thought I'd dreamt it up because nobody ever knew what I was talking about. Finally found out its name the other day and I can finally rest easy.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: There's a game I was trying to figure out the name of just yesterday. I remember playing it at my cousin's house one day. It involved trying to survive on a fairly barren alien planet by splicing together the DNA of a handful of different creatures. You could combine a horse-like creature with a bird, for example, to get a new animal with the endurance of the former and the flight of the latter. In my memory it's isometric, and the creatures were little more than green silhouettes. This would probably have been mid to late '90s, though the game might've been older. And no, it wasn't Impossible Creatures. What is impossible is trying to google all that.

Nat Clayton, Features Producer: Like Robin said, we were all sort of scouring our brains for oldies in Slack the other day, and I got stuck in a hole trying to remember one CD from a pile of dozens my dad used to keep in an old box next to our beige TIME PC. In a complete moment of obsessive panic I even googled, and I quote, "what's that 90s PC dogfighting game where you shoot UFOs and Old Macdonald sometimes plays", trying to cast back to a single vague memory of being 7 years old. Turns out, at least some combination of those works landed me on a Reddit page from someone asking a similar question, revealing the game to be 1998's Incoming by Rage Software—a game so unashamedly generic it coulda been plucked off the set of an NCIS murder scene.

That's one childhood gaming mystery solved. Now, if only I could ever get closure on that game about being a wee haggis cutting across the ugliest hills y'ever saw, running away from a giant man. I swear to god it's real.

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: It was a platformer with vertical levels. I think you moved from the top of the screen to the bottom, and the character was a penguin. I would've played it on a home computer in the late '80s or early '90s. For whatever reason, penguins were popular characters in the '80s and '90s, so there are lots of things it could be. There's Penguin Land, but that was a Sega Master System game, and I'm certain we didn't have a Master System. The first game Hideo Kojima worked on as a professional designer was also a Master System penguin game called Penguin Adventure. But it's not that. It's not Atari 2600 game Pengo, and it's not Ice Block, Petch, Snokie, or Mr Frosty and the Killer Penguins. The likeliest candidate is 1988 Amiga game Aunt Arctic Adventure, which almost slipped by me because the penguin only appears as the second player, and player one is a monkey. It feels very familiar, but still not quite like the penguin game I remember, which was simpler. Granted, I was like five years old. It's possible I just remember seeing a penguin character and then made up a whole game that doesn't exist. I'll probably never know unless I can find it in a box somewhere.

Robin, it sounds like you're describing SimLife. If it wasn't that, I have no idea.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I've had good success posting vague descriptions of half-forgotten things from my childhood on forums over the years and other people miraculously figuring them out. It's probably the single best use for internet forums, to be honest, behind troubleshooting whatever's wrong with a particular model of washing machine from 1993 or whatever. People once helped me rediscover Budokan, a DOS game we had on our family PC that was either so bad, or I was so bad at it, that I probably never got more than 10 minutes in.

A couple memorable non-game eurekas:

Gallavants, a bizarre children's cartoon about fantasy ants who go on some kind of quest. The main character is ashamed he hasn't gone through ant puberty yet and gotten his butt hump, so in the most memorable scene he cuts a fruit that looks like a watermelon in half and sticks it on his ass. It almost works.

Samson & Sally, another '80s cartoon about a young whale who believes in the legend of Moby Dick. Eventually he finds Moby Dick and, spoiler, the great whale is now extremely old and decrepit and it's a major bummer.

As for games, there's one I used to play that I haven't gone hunting too deeply for, but do want to know what it was. It was a cave exploration game, kind of an early '90s Spelunky, with lots of traps and things that would instantly kill you. I remember there being boulders (I think with faces on them, like thwomp blocks?) that would fall on your head and crack your skull when you walked under them. I remember it using quite small pixel graphics. I think there were a lot of grass tiles that looked like wheat? The more I type the more I want to know what it was.

(10 minutes later, I figured it out: Herman and the Falling Rocks). 

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I can't recall any games that only I remember, but since everyone has their thinking caps on help me out with a children's book. It was about a friendly giant (not the BFG) who lived near a village but everyone hated him even though he was nice. There was an evil wizard, I think, and the wizard shot a magic beam at the town and the giant jumped in front of it and everyone thought he was dead. But the beam bounced off the shaving mirror the giant was wearing around his neck so he was fine (spoilers). And the villagers liked him after that, because all you really have to do to make people stop hating you for no reason is attempt to sacrifice your life for them.

Anyone know what this book was called?

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: This is such a fun question. I'm still trying to track down the names of games from the '90s I brushed up against, like an edu-adventure game that had something to do with meteorology and storm chasing. The piles of demos and shareware circulating made it easy for ephemeral games to appear and vanish.

Virus deserves a mention here, a game with a premise guaranteed to frighten your parents in the age of the Family Computer. In Virus, your PC's actual files became the structure and window dressing for a Descent-style spaceship shooter where you hunted down malicious programs. Don't worry dad, it's just a game! None of your precious files were in actual jeopardy, but the game's publisher didn't help things by pulling a marketing stunt on filesharing websites that resembled an actual virus but disguised itself as a keygen. Helluva way to promote a game—imagine the furore today on social media if a Steam demo walked and talked like malware. Its publisher, Sir-Tech, is better remembered for creating Wizardry and Jagged Alliance.

From our forum

Zloth: Eamon Adventures was like that for me for a long time but, obviously, I did eventually re-discover the name. I can always find them now, with a little googling.

DXCHASE: Timelapse, I wish it would get a remastered version like Myst. I loved that game and the 7 discs it came with.

FreezerBurn: Legend of the Red Dragon. It was a game we played on bulletin boards that you had to dial into... pre internet.

Pifanjr: There's one game I remember seeing at an acquaintance's house when I was a kid, probably around 8-10 years old. I think something went wrong with starting it up or something, because I don't think we played any of it. I just remember it having a lot of brown and I'm pretty sure the name started with a D. I've never heard anyone mention anything about a game that reminded me of that game since then.

WoodenSaucer: A really great game that I'm the only one who remembers is Giants: Citizen Kabuto. And I'm not sure why nobody remembers it. It seemed like a cutting edge AAA game back in 2000 when it came out, but maybe it didn't do as well as I thought it did. It was an amazing game, though.

Kaamos_Llama: Remember the combat in the original Witcher? It was kind of like a rhythm challenge with mouse clicks. There was an RPG game for the PS2 a few years before that had a similar system except you had to press the correct face button in order or you lost rhythm and missed an attack leaving you open. Top down view like a Cannon Fodder or Commandos, might be that you could zoom in and it became more 3d but I preferred to be further out.

I always thought it was called Summoner, apparently that was something else.

mainer: Almost 20 years ago (2003) there was an isometric RPG called LionHeart: Legacy of the Crusader, developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay. It was sort of a supernatural take of the Medieval Period on Earth, and you (the player) were a descendant of King Richard the Lionheart. You journeyed through an alternate Europe, dealing with various factions, people & enemies. From what little I can remember, it played very similar to the Baldur's Gate games. But instead of D&D rules, it used a modified SPECIAL system, which was the system used in Fallout 1 & 2.

I don't think it was very popular or successful for some reason, and no one I've mentioned it to has any memory of it.

Brian Boru: Ah, just thought of one: Dark Reign 1 & 2 were pretty decent RTS games which nobody seems to remember in the last decade. They came out in the golden RTS era, and so got buried under all the AAA RTSs of the time.

I rate the DRs AA. Both are available on GOG—read the first few reviews, you will need to grab a community patch for DR1.

Sarafan: It's Submarine Titans in my case. The game is an old RTS that draws the best characteristics from Starcraft and blends it with an underwater setting. I remember that when the game was released some reviewers announced it as a Starcraft successor. Even the three fractions resemble heavily those from Starcraft. Time showed however that the game didn't gain the popularity it deserved. It's mostly forgotten now, but you can actually buy it on digital distribution platforms. I would highly recommend it to every strategy fan.

flashn00b: Operation: Inner Space. The people who made the game are currently MIA, and the last time we've seen them, they've shown no interest in porting the game to 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems, which really kills the appeal of the game if you can only run it on a virtual machine or DOSBOX Win3.1 folder. Basically, it's a top-down shooter in a similar vain to Asteroids, though the game world's currency are icons represented by .exe or .dll files present in your actual computer, and icons are used to repair/upgrade your ship along with purchasing new weapons to use other than your basic machinegun.

Where the fun really happens with Inner Space however, are the NPC ships that spawn in after clearing the first few folders that introduce players to what's probably the first implementation AI faction wars in a singleplayer action game, along with a basic law and order system that the player is seemingly encouraged to throw out the window, though if you are found stealing the spoils of war or destroy one too many donut launchers, the Enforcers will eventually give up on arresting you and try and kill you outright.

It sucks that we'll never see another game like Inner Space, because the concept of your computer's contents being a means of level generation is a pretty novel concept especially when the point of the game is that it takes place inside your computer.

"I can never go back to seeing 60 images per second", a member of the PC Gamer staff who shall remain nameless recently said. "From here on over 100 images must be shot at my face each second or I will whine and complain. In 10 years I will refuse to use anything less than 1000Hz." While that was said with tongue in cheek, the sentiment is relatable. It's hard to go back after an upgrade. There are some conveniences you get so used to that a step backward seems unthinkable, like cleaning plates with your actual human hands after owning a dishwasher, or seeing a mere 1080p after you've upgraded to 1440, or 4K, or something well out of my price range.

Have you ever had to downgrade after an upgrade?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I've been a wireless mouse promoter for a good number of years now: they no longer have the performance issues they did a decade ago, and battery life has gotten much better. I'm still using the faithful Logitech G900 I got in 2016, and I maintain it's the best gaming mouse ever designed. But for the past six months I've shamefully been using it plugged in all the time, because I misplaced the wireless receiver. After years of flying free, I've shackled myself to the earth once again.

It's fine, you know. Nothing really wrong for a wired mouse. It's just nice not to have to ever worry about the cable getting snagged or collecting a whole bunch of dust or getting in the way of the knick-knacks on my desk. It hasn't quite bothered me enough to figure out what the hell I did with that receiver or order a replacement, but the thought does sit in the back of my head and occasionally surface when I'm playing games: I could have it better. I did have it better. Someday I'll upgrade to Logitech's wireless charging mousepad and neve have to worry about plugging my mouse in ever again.

Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK: I played Destiny 2 on PS4 for years—shackled to the platform despite the PC launch, because I didn't want to lose my progress to that point. When cross-save was finally introduced, I was finally free to upgrade. Except cross save was introduced in 2019 and full crossplay wouldn't arrive until 2021. That meant for almost two years, I regularly had to dip back into the PS4 version to play with friends who didn't make the jump to PC—and it sucked. On PC, I'm running the game at 144 fps, on a 1440p monitor. On PS4, there's a 30 fps cap. Before I upgraded, it felt bearable. It wasn't as smooth as the shooters I was playing on PC, sure, but I didn't have a direct 1:1 comparison of how much better it could be. After I found out, I couldn't go back: it felt like a lurching, ugly mess. It was an unpleasant space to be in.

Compounding the problem, once I'd got used to playing the game on mouse and keyboard, my abilities with the controller—honed over years across both Destiny 1 and 2—completely disappeared. I was playing worse in a game that looked worse. In the end, I just stopped going back altogether, friends be damned.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I've bought a couple different pairs of quality gaming headsets over the past few years, but I always go back to just using cheap old wired earbuds. I just don't like having giant cans clamped over my ears, and while blotting out the noise of everything but the game is nice, I don't really like being shut off from important sounds happening in my house (when you have pets, it's useful to know when they're destroying something or trying to kill each other). And I don't play competitive multiplayer games where I need crystal clear sound to hear enemy footsteps. I'm usually doing stuff like baking cookies in a city builder or baking cakes in a farming simulator or deep-frying everything in a restaurant game. Earbuds are just fine for that.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: When I switched to an ultrawide 3440x1440 display a year or two ago, I shelved my 16:9 TN panel gaming monitor. First-world PC gamer problems, I know.

But as an FPS player, leaving behind the TN panel did have a noticeable impact—as we explain in this guide to monitor tech, VAs aren't as fast as TNs, and ghosting can be an issue. Still, the bigger real estate has been worth it, and I much prefer running one big desktop canvas over staring down a Dell double-barrel every day.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I decided some years ago that I wanted a "better" mouse. Something with angles and buttons and funky lights that would set me apart as a True Gamer. I tried a few different models—the Razer Deathadder, a Logitech G-something, one from Steelseries I think—and they were good! They were nice. Perfectly fine. And as each eventually gave up the ghost in one way or another, I'd think about my old, timeless Logitech MX518, the mouse that for awhile I thought might even outlive me: Simple, unassuming, utterly reliable.

I eventually decided to pick up one of the new MX-518s—Logitech brought them back in 2019—and stepping back from those swanky gamer mice to this much more "basic" unit has only deepened my appreciation for it. It fits right, it feels good, it's got enough buttons, and the black-on-black colour scheme is perfectly unobtrusive—I can barely see it when I'm not using it. Less is more, as the saying goes. I still feel an urge to try something fancy every now and then, but I think that this is probably it for me.

From our forum

Colif: I intentionally downgraded from a 4k monitor to 2k, as well... desktop icons are really hard to read at 4k so even windows defaulted scaling to 150%. I have a 2k monitor now so at least games don't ignore Windows scaling and load in 4k native.

I think using a HDD now would drive me mad. Start PC, walk away for a few minutes while it loads desktop, compared to NVMe where it's start PC... wait a few seconds and then logon.

Refresh rate is silly, I expect people will still imagine they can see flicker at 1000mhz or more. Much of it's in their head, and if displays with 2000mhz show up and they wonder, would that be better. People probably still see flicker at infinite refresh rates.

Brian Boru: A few short spells while traveling, I had to make do with one monitor—oh the horror! On a similar note, I still chafe at the lack of dual monitor support in almost all games—I so enjoyed that in Supreme Commander.

WoodenSaucer: I think people probably downgrade their expectations more than their hardware. Like people spouting off about high frame rates and resolutions, and then RTX comes out and throws a wrench in that. New, cutting-edge effects tend to keep us held back all of the time in the resolution and frame rate departments. Rather than getting games to run at beastly speeds on modest hardware, they want to keep giving us new eye candy, and keep us crippled.

DXCHASE: I upgraded my GPU (3070ti) but my GPU went into a system that's roughly 7 years old. And I know I get crazy bottleneck in some games (Far Cry 6), Does that count?

Zloth: I never had to do that—but I can see how I could. If my video card died right now, I would need to get a new one fast. If the stores didn't have a comparable one, I would need to get something cheaper to keep using until I could get a good one. Quite a bit cheaper, given that I wouldn't be using it for long.

Pifanjr: I've been making due with one monitor (a laptop one even!) since I started working from home. It hasn't bothered me much, though once I return to two monitors I'll probably enjoy all the extra room.

We do have a desk, but it was buried under stuff upstairs in our old apartment and is buried now in the living room in our new apartment. That should be temporary until we can get some more cabinets to put stuff in though.

ZedClampet: The closest I've come to this is dropping the resolution to 720p on an old laptop to get a game running acceptably, but I've never actually gone backward in hardware. I tend to keep my hardware far longer than your average PC gamer, so when I need something new, it usually isn't even possible to downgrade. Well, anything is possible these days with people selling 20 year old computer parts on Ebay, but I've never purchased used hardware, either.

Sarafan: While I didn't have the occasion to downgrade in terms of hardware thankfully, I often play older games. My PC is quite capable, but it doesn't stop me from returning to titles that were released many years ago. So basically I'm a witness of graphical downgrade on daily basis. One day I can play marvelous looking Cyberpunk 2077, while the other enjoy pixelated Quake 1. And I don't have a problem with that. I can switch at every moment from a stunning visually game to some old gem that was released before 3D accelerators became a thing. I adapt to the situation in a matter of minutes. Switching from 60 fps to 30 fps is a little more painful, but it's only a matter of time to get used to it. I even don't mind the blurry image caused by running the game in a resolution lower than the native resolution of my monitor. Looks like I'm bulletproof when it comes to graphical downgrade...

It's been over a month since Elden Ring came out, so it's time for our collective eye to roam around and redirect its gaze onto the next big thing, like Sauron scouring the hills for hobbits. One quarter of the year has been and gone, but there's still a lot of games left on the calendar. We've got a list of the games of 2022 to remind you what's coming up. Which one are you planning to make room in your schedule for next?

What's the next game you're looking forward to?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: Xenonauts 2. I like to call the first game "XCOM grad school"—it's a more ruthless experience that strips any remaining Saturday morning cartoon-ness from Firaxis' reboot, a strategy game that cares even less about stacking the odds against you. It's more of a sim, especially within Xenonauts' strategic "global" layer, which resurrects stuff like air combat and a more complicated tech tree from olde X-COM.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: Midnight Suns. I guess I'm looking in the opposite direction from Evan—at an XCOM-like that's way more Saturday morning cartoon. Going back to Chimera Squad recently, I think despite some flaws it was trying for something really interesting with its rapid-fire, bite-size version of XCOM's strategy, and I suspect it was a stepping stone to the superheroic battles of Midnight Suns. Combine that with some interesting RPG twists, and I'm really fascinated to see how Firaxis' latest shakes out.

Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: Starfield because I need some new Bethesda in my life but also Star Trek: Resurgence because yes.

Nat Clayton, Features Producer: In my heart of hearts, it's Splatoon 3. Sorry, PC gamers. I often worry I've become jaded about games, questioning whether I even still enjoy this medium, but that February 2021 Nintendo Direct reveal was an explosive reminder that videogames absolutely bang. I was also late to the last game's party, only coming in after the updates and splatfests stopped, and I'm pumped to be getting in on the ground floor this time around. Now, I'm not sure if I have it in me to go full competitive and burn through another season of LUTI, but Splatoon 3 is absolutely the only game I care about for the rest of the year.

Unless you really, really need me to pick a PC game, in which case, uhh... Darktide? Homeworld 3? 

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Now that Weird West is out—and based on the few hours I've played so far, is excellent—the next thing on my list is Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, which comes out in May. Along with Xenonauts 2 and Midnight Suns, there sure is a lot of turn-based tactics representation on our lists and I'm OK with that. 

Though I'll be keeping an eye on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga as well. I've got a soft spot for the Lego games.

From our forum

Pifanjr: Definitely Starfield. My wife and I both played a ton of Skyrim and will probably get hooked on Starfield for several hundred hours as well. It's going to be a challenge to figure out who can play when, as we only have one computer available, assuming the game even runs on it at all.

Colif: Well, Starfield is only one on list that isn't a safe sequel or name we already know. I don't have an answer to the question as I don't know . Nothing so far.

Brian Boru: Ones I'll have a close look at:

Company of Heroes 3
Old World
Sniper Elite 5
Stalker 2
Stray
The Settlers
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

Of those, the clear #1 is Stalker 2. If they can come close to the original trilogy, it should be a great game.

DXCHASE: There's a bunch, but to keep it simple, Diablo 4 and the Gothic Remake.

Kaamos_Llama: If I had to pick one it would be Baldurs Gate 3 right now. Going to need a nice turn based change of pace after all this Elden Ring.

WoodenSaucer: I'm looking forward to Breath of the Wild 2, but it just got delayed to 2023. I'm also looking forward to The Elder Scrolls VI, but I'm not sure it's coming out in my lifetime. I might go into cryogenic stasis and have them wake me up when it comes out.

Alm: Like others, I'm looking forward to Starfield coming out. I think Forspoken comes out before that and I'm looking forward to that one. Also, the controversial Hogwarts Legacy.

flashn00ob: Darktide's probably the biggest game I'm looking forward to. I've tried to get into Vermintide in the past and while I do like all the gameplay elements attached to them, I can't really see myself growing fond of the Warhammer Fantasy setting. In fact, I think everything unique about Warhammer is mostly relegated to the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, and having that dark fantasy setting be brought up to a spacefaring tech level while retaining most of the fantastical elements appeals to me a hell of a lot more.

McStabStab: I've been excited for STALKER 2, but with the invasion of Ukraine I understand that the project will be likely severely delayed or may not happen at all. In the end if the game never happens it's such a small inconvenience compared to the tragedy that continues to unfold in the region.

ZedClampet: I was disappointed that Darktide was delayed, but I'm looking forward to getting it in September. Was hoping to have something to play during the summer, though. Other than that, I'm looking forward to Starfield and The Quarry. Was looking forward to Stalker 2, but that's obviously not going to happen any time soon.

mainer: Above and beyond any other game, the one that I'm looking forward to the most is Starfield (like several other members have mentioned). There are other games I want to get to this year, but nothing comes close to anticipation and desire I have for Starfield. A new single player, open world(s) RPG from Bethesda, as well as being a whole new IP for them; I've been starving for one since Fallout Four. It's not even Summer yet, and I'm looking forward to November.

Frindis: With the exception of Stalker 2 and System Shock: Remastered Edition both of which I don't think will release this year, there is not much I'm looking forward to. The main reason is that my backlog is so full now that I could only dare put in one or two solid games or it will all just burst like a wafer-thin mint.

Sarafan: If I have to pick only one, then it's Baldur's Gate 3 for sure. It's the next installment in my favorite series, so the game is a must play for me. It looks like we'll get fantastic story and characters. These are core elements of good RPGs and Larian is already well-known for keeping the quality of these aspects. I also love D&D mechanics and although the biggest boom for computer games using this system is long gone, it may be one of the announcements of a big come back. I hope there will be other RPGs that follow the D&D path.

There are also some thing that bother me. One of them is the turn-based combat system which isn't in line with the original two games. Of course it catches the spirit of real-life RPG sessions, so this doesn't disqualify the game in my eyes in any way. It even gives me a feeling of slight excitement to finally see this system in action, but... it's just not the same as the original.

I also have a problem with the atmosphere of the game. It feels more like another Divinity: Original Sin rather than Baldur's Gate 3. I hope the final release will immerse me deep enough to forget about this.

These two downsides won't keep me from enjoying the game however. I doubt Larian won't be able to release a quality product. I expect entertainment that will last for several dozens of hours with a potential for subsequent playthroughs. Too bad that we'll have to wait until 2023 to see the full version of the game.

We're calling the recently announced and currently unnamed Witcher sequel The Witcher 4 since calling it Untitled Geralt Game would be funny, but less accurate. It's probably not going to be a game about Geralt, given how neatly his story was tied up in The Witcher 3, and the fact this sequel has been described as "kicking off a new saga for the franchise." So who do you want to play next? Another existing character, like current frontrunner Ciri? Would you rather play a game where you build your own witcher from scratch? Or someone surprising, completely out of left-field?

Who do you want to play in the next Witcher game?

Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I usually like RPGs where I get to invent my own character instead of playing someone specific, so I'd have thought I'd go with a 'create-your-own-witcher' approach. Thing is, I played Cyberpunk 2077 and I don't think CD Projekt is very good at that. I certainly never felt like I was inhabiting my own personal version of V. To me, V just wound up being a pair of mantis blades with some irritating dialogue, not a person who felt real to me.

So maybe the next witcher game should go with an existing character. Unfortunately, I have played very little of the witcher games and never watched the show, so I don't know who to pick. Looking over a list of characters, I see there's one called Mousesack? Perfect. I like that name. Let's play as Mousesack.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Mousesack was renamed Ermion in The Witcher 3. He's called Mousesack in the books and TV show (and a passing reference in the first game that CD Projekt hoped everyone would forget). It's a Jaskier/Dandelion situation.

My choice would be Ciri. The Witcher 3 set up a sequel where you play as Geralt and Yennefer's adopted daughter finding her own way, and though I always like when a game lets you play as a secondary character for a quest here and there, I'd want the next Witcher game to follow up on that. Sure, it would invalidate the bad ending, but if you got the bad ending of The Witcher 3 that's on you. I mean, I romanced Triss but I don't expect that to be treated as canon.

Lauren Aitken, Deputy Guides Editor: Someone completely new, preferably a female witcher of any race. Maybe a sorceress/witcher hybrid, or a dwarf. I will play any damn Witcher game, though.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: No one, really. The more I think about it, the less interested I am in going back. The story is complete, Geralt had a happy ending, and he should be left to enjoy it. But the series is so completely about him that I really can't work up any interest in returning to that world as someone else. So, let it go.

The gun-to-my-head answer would probably be Iorveth. Not a Witcher, but a fighter of comparable abilities in a world that takes an even dimmer view of elves than it does of Witchers. He's a darker, bloodier character than Geralt, true, but a Iorveth-Roche teamup segment has some serious buddy cop potential. "What happens when a Temerian special forces hardass teams up with a Scoia'tael renegade who doesn't play by the rules? Find out in The Witcher: Redanian Heat—coming soon!"

Yeah, I'd play that.

Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I do think it's time for a clean slate. Geralt's story is over, signed off with a perfect epilogue in Blood and Wine, so it's a great point to kick off a whole new cast. 

Part of me likes the idea of being able to create your own witcher, but at the same time one of the things I really loved about The Witcher 3 was the fact that you played such a well-defined character, instead of the usual blank slate. So I think I would rather it was a preset hero, or perhaps at a push one where you can choose their gender and appearance, but they have a very definite history and personality beyond that. 

A big time skip would make sense to me—go forward 50 years or even more, and put us in the shoes of a new generation. Maybe they aren't even a witcher, but instead some new kind of monster hunter that's come to fill that role. Geralt's kind did seem to be dying out by the end of the trilogy. 

As tempting as it is to say Ciri should be the new protagonist of the series, I don't think that's the right call. A female lead makes perfect sense, but Ciri herself is too larger-than-life, too powerful, and too closely linked to previous characters and storylines to be a good main hero for a new game. I wouldn't mind her turning up—perhaps even being a mentor or teacher to the new lead—but on the whole she should be off living out her own epilogue. She's had her story, and making her the focus again will only bog the game down. 

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Roach.

From our forum

Zloth: Build my own character, but design the game around mages. Less hand-to-hand combat, more raining fire on armies and predicting the future by the patterns made when melting cheeses together. Or raining melted cheese on armies and predicting the future from the patterns/colors of flames!

Ryzengang: This is a surprisingly difficult question. I'm as massive fan of the Witcher universe, and it is one of my favorite fantasy universe's ever. The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games of all time, and I've read all the book, played all the games, and watched all of the Netflix show. Still, even as a huge fan, I really don't know where I want them to go with. Geralt is an amazing character, but I agree that his saga should be over with the third game. The safe bet is on Ciri, and I wouldn't be unhappy with that outcome. I don't know who else would warrant a new saga in the series. Ultimately, I think it's between Ciri or building your own character and choosing your path as a Witcher for me.

McStabStab: I’m not sure it would be necessarily a good idea for a main character, but I think playing as one of the sorcerers or sorceresses would be a lot of fun. Maybe if they did it like when you’d gain control of Ciri for a short while. You’d get the power of her teleportation, and playing as someone like Yennifer maybe you could have other powers available.

For a main character I think a build your own character may be cool in theory, but Geralt’s personality and background were so interwoven with the story beats that I don’t think they could pull off the same feeling without him or another important character as the lead.

ZedClampet: Ciri was extremely fun to play in The Witcher 3, but she isn't really a witcher, so I'm guessing we'll play as someone completely new who isn't a part of the official story. If they are starting from scratch, there's no reason why they can't let you create your own character, so I'm guessing this is the route they will go, which is fine with me. I'll create a character named Geralt. I can already picture him in my head...long white hair...

Zloth: Maybe they'll surprise us all. You'll play as Ciri, empress of Nilfguard, in CDProjekt's first grand strategy game!

flashn00b: Letho of Gulet. His introduction as an antagonist in The Witcher 2 along with his motivations for killing kings has me thinking that we could do with a game that focuses on his life well before the events of the first Witcher game

DXCHASE: Roach, why not

Sarafan: Definitely not Geralt. This chapter in The Witcher series appears to be closed. I also wouldn't want Ciri as the main protagonist. Although there's a potential in this character, she's greatly overpowered and any explanation of nerfing her would be a standard cliche which I have enough. I would prefer to create my own Witcher and choose his school, set of skills, appearance etc. I'm quite pessimistic when it comes to realization of this idea however. The teaser image clearly points that the main character school will be predefined. I hope that I'm wrong, because I expect more freedom in terms of what character I want to role-play.