Rick Lane

Contributor

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

Latest articles by Rick Lane

Last Flag screenshot
Last Flag, the multiplayer shooter from the Imagine Dragons guy, is free to play for every weekend until its first update comes out

By Rick Lane Published

News "We wanted to give everyone who hasn't had a chance to check out Last Flag the opportunity to play for free!"

News
Dozens of factory belts feed hundreds of shapes into a glowing blue vortext in Shapez 2.
Shapez 2 leaves early access with a new game mode all about building massive factories: 'This isn't just a game is finished release'

By Rick Lane Published

News Manufacture mode "addresses one of the biggest feedback points we got during early access".

News
Benny Muldoon in Bloodlines 2
Bloodlines 2's first DLC arrives next week, and it'll let you wield guns and melee weapons properly, unlike the base game

By Rick Lane Published

News The DLC will offer a "new take" on the Brujah clan.

News
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As Enter the Gungeon celebrates its 10th anniversary, its creators have some choice words for the modern roguelike: 'We’re seeing it mutate to the version of itself that popularity obfuscates'

By Rick Lane Published

News "So few people are trying to make something that is truly evocative of this experience of playing Rogue".

10 Comments
News
Soldiers lie in wait in the grass.
Menace's first major early access update overhauls its least interesting faction and jettisons its reviled promotion tax system: 'We have done away with it'

By Rick Lane Published

News Who doesn't love a rebate?

News
An upscaled render from Silent Hill 2, showing Maria stroking the cheek of James Sunderland.
With Silent Hill 2's source code still MIA, a dedicated fan has decided to restore the game's CGI renders: 'Takayoshi' Sato's work was incredible for its time'

By Rick Lane Published

Konami lost the game's original code prior to releasing the HD Collection.

7 Comments
Horror
A mech battles a bile titan in Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 is getting a mech-themed Warbond that adds two new exosuits—one of which carries a shield and a flak cannon

By Rick Lane Published

News Exo Experts arrives on April 28.

News
Dave Oshry, CEO of New Blood Interactive, will never uninstall Doom from his PC, and has over 488 hours in Fallout 76: 'It's the best cryptid hunting game'

By Rick Lane Published

Riding shotgun The publisher of DUSK, Ultrakill and Gloomwood gives us the lowdown on the games on his PC.

9 Comments
Riding shotgun
A flying city drifts over a frozen landscape, its floating streets dusted by snowfall.
The sequel to flying city-builder Airborne Kingdom just hit 1.0 with a huge update and a 50% discount

By Rick Lane Published

News Airborne Empire soars out of Steam early access.

News
Dark Souls 2 art
A YouTuber has unearthed Dark Souls 2's enormous cut sewers map, and it's another fascinating insight into the design of FromSoftware's most divisive work

By Rick Lane Published

News The area that became The Gutter was far more elaborate in its initial form.

News
Viewed from below, an airship glides through a valley in Minecraft
This hugely impressive Minecraft mod lets you build all manner of functioning vehicles, including planes, combine harvesters, and even airships

By Rick Lane Published

News Create Aeronautics lets you travel across Minecraft's world in style.

8 Comments
News
Best Marathon guns: A close-up shot of the WSTR Combat Shotgun in a player's hands.
Marathon's most popular shotgun is getting nerfed a second time, as Bungie worries it is 'eclipsing a lot of the other short range options that exist in the game'

By Rick Lane Published

News "We're gonna take a shot at bringing the WSTR more in line."

7 Comments
News
A man fires an AK47-style weapon in the total conversion mod GTA: Carcer City
This wildly ambitious total conversion mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas lets you explore the setting of 2003's Manhunt

By Rick Lane Published

News GTA: Carcer City lets you do crimes in the Rust Belt.

News
A man sits on a sofa as a woman approaches.
Help! The Millennium Bug made all the robots in my mansion go berserk, and only Homer Simpson can save the day

By Rick Lane Published

Bug hunt Is Y2K: The Game a deft exploration of late '90s digital anxiety? No! But is it a fun game anyway? Also no!

Bug hunt
EVE Online
After 23 years, CCP is about to do the unthinkable: add a non-PvP zone to EVE Online

By Rick Lane Published

News "Getting more new players benefits New Eden as a whole."

10 Comments
News
The player squares off against a Wehrmacht soldier in Medal of Honor: Retro Remake
Here's that free fan remake of 1999's PlayStation-exclusive Medal of Honor you were looking for

By Rick Lane Published

News Medal of Honor Retro Remake blends bespoke game logic with assets from 2002's Allied Assault.

7 Comments
News
Last Flag screenshot
Last Flag, the debut game from the studio founded by Imagine Dragons' lead singer, becomes the latest multiplayer shooter struggling to find an audience

By Rick Lane Published

News The capture-the-flag themed shooter attracted fewer than 600 concurrent players on launch, according to SteamDB.

20 Comments
News
Dean Hall and some Kerbals.
DayZ creator Dean 'Rocket' Hall has over 2,000 hours in Kerbal Space Program and played the original XCOM at Mount Everest base camp: 'I think when I die, I will still be playing that game'

By Rick Lane Published

Rocket powered The founder of RocketWerkz talks us through the games on his PC.

Rocket powered
Samson screenshot
Open-world crime game Samson beats up a bunch of bugs in a new patch, as developer admits it 'released a game with flaws'

By Rick Lane Published

News "We are listening to everyone's feedback."

News
A Roman city blazes as an erupting volcano rains down ash and rock in the background.
Anno 117's first DLC will let you disregard history by building your Roman city next to a massive volcano

By Rick Lane Published

News Prophecies of Ash launches on April 23.

News
Looking across a tropical beach biome in The Planet Crafter
Terraforming survival game The Planet Crafter gets a beefy 2.0 update and a 50% discount: 'We wanted to take some time to improve multiple things'

By Rick Lane Published

News The latest patch adds a new biome, a graphics overhaul, and skyboxes that evolve in real-time.

News
Soulmask: Shifting Sands' in-game visuals
Tribal survival game Soulmask leaves early access with a new Egypt-themed DLC that's free for the next month

By Rick Lane Published

News 1.0 launch represents "a complete reinvention of the game".

News
Redfall wallpaper detail - image of a vampire
Revisiting Redfall after its final update reveals the ghost of the game it wanted to be

By Rick Lane Published

Community Patch Arkane Austin's final game is still disappointing, but I'm now convinced that it could have been great.

11 Comments
Community Patch
An image of Duke Nukem: Zero Hour Overclocked
This wildly ambitious modpack transforms the third-person, N64 exclusive Duke Nukem: Zero Hour into a 'jank '90s FPS' for your PC

By Rick Lane Published

News Duke Nukem: Zero Hour Overclocked reinvigorates the console shooter with first-person perspective and mouse and keyboard controls.

News
Alleged in-game images from the cancelled game Agent.
A character model datamined from Grand Theft Auto 5's source code 'could actually be Agent's protagonist', according to online sleuth

By Rick Lane Published

GTAForums user provides compelling evidence that the model is the lead character of Rockstar's cancelled spy game.

Action
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