Rick Lane
Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.
Latest articles by Rick Lane

Battlefield: Bad Company 2's director had big plans for a third entry in the series, with your squad reuniting for an impossible mission amid a war between Russia and the US over Alaska
By Rick Lane published
News "I am freaked out by how much might actually have been accurate."

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 celebrates 7 years of rat bashing with a new versus map and double XP for all players, but its hotly anticipated weapon pack 'won't be coming out this year'
By Rick Lane published
News Event runs until March 16.

One of the best city builders of the last decade is currently 90% off on Steam
By Rick Lane published
News Grab Anno 1800 for a fiver.

Company of Heroes 3 is free to try and 50% off, so it's the best time to check out the beefy 2.0 overhaul
By Rick Lane published
News Also 50% off until Thursday.

This brutalist life sim gave me a free tenement block to renovate, but my mushroom addiction kept getting in the way
By Rick Lane published
Slum lord Welcome to Obenseuer, and yes, that does mean "open sewer".

Planet Coaster 2's spring roadmap splashes down, with 'round-bottomed flumes' coming in March and buildable restaurants arriving in April
By Rick Lane published
News But you can't take them home tonight.

Bandai Namco will celebrate Pac-Man's 45th birthday with museum displays, live experiences, and an official cookbook featuring 'a maze of imaginative recipes'
By Rick Lane published
News "Ever wonder what a Ghost or Power Pellet tastes like?"

Microsoft's Civilization 7 competitor escalates tensions with Firaxis' embattled 4X, announcing that nukes are coming with its impending diplomacy update
By Rick Lane published
News Ara: History Untold enters the atomic age.

Blades of Fire is a God of War-style action game coming to PC from the creators of Metroid Dread, and it's almost definitely a spiritual successor to Severance
By Rick Lane published
News Launches May 22.

An $8 cooperative horror game is rocketing up Steam's top sellers list: 'Never occurred to me Lethal Company was missing physics until I played this'
By Rick Lane published
News REPO tasks you with extracting wobbly items from creepy houses.

Total War: Warhammer 3's next patch will overhaul its Kislev faction, which Creative Assembly has 'identified as the most in need of a deep review and rethink'
By Rick Lane published
News Bear necessities.

Tread carefully, Atomfall's world includes 'exploding sheep' that can 'infect you with spores that creep into your lungs'
By Rick Lane published
News They call me Mister bomb-baa-stic.

I'm so desperate to play Grand Theft Auto 6 that I downloaded this unfinished open-world game set in 1990s Slovakia
By Rick Lane published
Jank Theft Auto Make bank in the murky world of post-Soviet Bratislava.

As it unveils its roadmap, Eternal Strands' dev defends the 'slippery' feeling of its physics-based player character, saying it 'can't be as snappy or reactive as it is in games that rely on animation'
By Rick Lane published
News "Much of how it feels is intended and attributable to how a 100% physics-based sandbox game like Eternal Strands is designed to work."

One of the best Return to Castle Wolfenstein mods just got an update that turns the WW2 FPS into a Killing Floor-style wave shooter
By Rick Lane published
News Take on hordes of enemies in Gray Matter's 2001 gunfest.

Shockingly, nobody bought the $386,000 special edition of Dying Light that came with parkour lessons and a full-size custom zombie survival shelter
By Rick Lane published
News "Nobody purchased it—thankfully, I guess!"

Japanese boffins invent the 'world's smallest shooting game' by using an electron beam to blast particles one billionth of a metre in size
By Rick Lane published
News First-particle shooter.

The Dark Souls 3 seamless co-op mod is here, letting you further hone your teamwork skills before Elden Ring Nightreign launches
By Rick Lane published
News The mod is available now, albeit "in an alpha state".

Following Monolith's shock closure, GOG is offering 90% off its 2005 shooter FEAR and accelerating the game's preservation to recognise its doomed developer's 'contribution to gaming'
By Rick Lane published
News Grab this classic gunfest for less than a quid.

Deadlock gets a massive map overhaul that shrinks its map from four lanes to three: 'This has a large range of accompanying map-wide changes'
By Rick Lane published
News Roadworks.

Excellent throwback mod Team Fortress 2 Classic is coming to Steam later this year
By Rick Lane published
News Hats off.

A month into early access, Hyper Light Breaker has already added a new playable character, with a perk designed for players who like to 'shoot fast and shoot a lot'
By Rick Lane published
News My Ravona.

Portal Randomized mixes up Valve's beloved puzzler by turning the floor into lava and filling chambers with a deadly neurotoxin
By Rick Lane published
News Demo available now.
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