This week's highs and lows in PC gaming

The lows

 Bo Moore: Sombre

Sombra! She's finally here! And man do I suck with her. If you haven't been following along, I've been pretty hyped about the introduction of Overwatch's 23rd hero, Sombra. So when Blizzard finally made the purple-haired hacker available to play on the PTR earlier this week, I quickly jumped at the opportunity. Only one problem, I suck with her.

Sombra's kit is an exciting cross between damage-dealer and support, mixing high mobility with a disruptive silence (the aforementioned hacking) and a quick-firing submachine gun. But coming from Tank heroes like Reinhardt and Zarya, I haven't spent a lot of time zipping around the map and am lacking in what you might call "relative work experience." 

Samuel Roberts: COD4 blues

I was a little sad to hear that Modern Warfare's remaster—gated behind a deluxe edition purchase of the apparently not-very-good Infinite Warfare—is a bit of washout on PC, with no server browser and low player population. I'm curious about playing a nicer-looking version of the campaign, but not curious enough to drop the necessary £60/$80 to play it. 

Modern Warfare is one of the most influential games of the modern age, and to repeat it now would simply be retracing the same linear path through levels I feel like I know inside and out. That's probably an enjoyable way to spend a weekend, but it's a real indulgence in this form.

 Phil Savage: To the player who kept killing me in Titanfall 2

Look, player whose name I can't remember, I don't blame you. Yes, you were responsible for a particularly bad night in a game I otherwise enjoy, but it wasn't your fault. You didn't cause Titanfall 2's low server population, resulting in the matchmaking struggling to find suitable opponents outside of peak hours. It's not your fault that you were 15 levels higher than me, with a whole arsenal of loadout options I could only dream of wielding. (Some would argue it's my fault for not having played it more, but that's neither here nor there.) You shouldn't be held to account for the fact that we met on opposing teams for five different games in a row, where your team's experience, tools and skill would ensure that my team would lose each time, usually by 200 points or more.

It's just a shame, is all. I want to be able to recommend Titanfall 2. I certainly don't want to put people off with stories of low server populations and uneven matchmaking—that's the kind of talk that ensures low server populations and uneven matchmaking. The problem is, this is £50 of game, and that's a lot of money for a five-hour campaign—even one as amazing as Titanfall 2's.

James Davenport: Dishonored blue

Holy cow, do I love Dishonored 2 so far. It’s such a richly detailed setting, probably. I wouldn’t know, since anytime a whale pops up in fiction or pop culture I lose myself completely. Moby Dick is my jam. Let’s philosophize about whale tails over some cheap beer and lose track of time. 

Anyway, Dishonored 2! It’s good. The differences between Emily and Corvo are pretty substantial and make the big, varied environments feel like new spaces entirely, and the world-building and overall story have me hooked—not unlike a freshly captured whale. But damn, it runs like a dead whale on my home PC. I can’t run it on anything higher than medium settings in most cases, and I have a pretty powerful computer. Users are reporting all sorts of problems, and in my experience, the frame rate oscillates wildly when looking between indoor and outdoor environments. Patches are surely on the way, but in a game about being a lithe assassin, performance matters. 

Chris Livingston: Jilt-A-Whirl

I know it's a game-eat-game world out there, and publishers do what they need to do to survive, but this feels like an especially cheap shot from Atari. They've announced the release date for RollerCoaster Tycoon World, which has been in Early Access since the beginning of the year. That date is November 16, just one day before Planet Coaster's launch on the 17th.

I know there's an obvious benefit in being the first to market, but aim for the month before your competitor, or even the week before. The day before? Feels a wee bit desperate, and more than a little rude.

Andy Kelly: Virtual insanity

MSI is releasing a high-tech backpack designed for virtual reality headsets later this month. The idea is that you can play VR games without being tethered to a load of cables. Anyone who's transformed their tiny living room into a Vive holodeck will know the peril of wires trailing everywhere. So yeah, cool idea, I guess. It's basically a gaming PC in a bag, and will cost you two entire grand to strap to your back, offering 1.5 hours of battery life.

I don't really have a problem with VR in general, or this backpack, but the barrier to entry for the tech is still so ridiculously high. And mad stuff like this typifies the fact that the 'VR revolution' is largely taking place in the lavish loft apartments of moneyed tech enthusiasts. I'm sure headsets will get smaller and cheaper, but the idea that that virtual reality is 'here' is misleading. It's here, sure, but for people who dive into big piles of coins every night like Scrooge McDuck.