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

Marathon Cryo Archive Compiler
Marathon's most powerful gun gets a major nerf, as Bungie seeks to 'curb a little bit of its dominion in the game'

By Rick Lane Published

News Biotoxic Disinjector gets a big damage reduction.

News
Tarn Adams sitting in front of a laptop, edited with a screen from Factorio
Tarn Adams, co-creator of Dwarf Fortress, has over 1,400 hours in Factorio and is currently obsessed with terraforming games: 'Dwarf Fortress just doesn't accommodate a full-on sci-fi thing'

By Rick Lane Published

Deep dive Bay 12 Games' co-founder talks playing The Planet Crafter, Beast, and more than 40 years of saved desktops.

9 Comments
Deep dive
PO'ed remaster
This Nightdive-remastered 3DO shooter shows why it took Halo to break PC gaming's FPS hegemony

By Rick Lane Published

Kitchen nightmares Playing PO'ed will make you feel exactly like that.

11 Comments
Kitchen nightmares
A player reclines on a deckchair while another players runs in a giant hamster wheel in Rust.
Rust is getting hydro power through water wheels that can also be powered by humans: 'Before you ask, yes, you can force handcuffed players into them'

By Rick Lane Published

News Facepunch's latest update also adds armoured ladder hatches, coloured buttons, and Easter-themed bunny costumes

News
Raven Software lobby
After 36 years at the legendary FPS studio, Raven Software co-founder Brian Raffel is retiring

By Rick Lane Published

News Raffel has led the Heretic and Call of Duty developer since its foundation.

10 Comments
News
Marathon Cutthroat Competition: A side-on view of two Runners aiming as they walk through a garage.
Bungie provides details on Marathon's imminent Recon buff 'by popular demand', revealing an improved Echo Pulse and a 'more aggressive' tracker drone

By Rick Lane Published

Recon's area scanning ability will soon distinguish between AI and human enemies.

FPS
An image of the Take-Two Interactive logo on an abstract blue-glass background.
Take-Two has seemingly laid off an unspecified portion of its AI team, including its head of AI

By Rick Lane Published

News Luke Dicken, who previously spent a decade with Zynga, says his time with the company "has come to an end".

10 Comments
News
Tales of Kenzara: Zau screenshot - Zau with magical symbols over his shoulders
The director of Tales of Kenzera: Zau learned his most important game development lesson while working with Ridley Scott: 'That's why we're able to make games faster'

By Rick Lane Published

Resurgent "You have to do the work in order to find that voice, or find that thing that makes you kind of stick out and stand out."

15 Comments
Resurgent
Xalavier Nelson Jr in front of a Warframe backdrop
Xalavier Nelson Jr, director of Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator, will never uninstall Warframe and would love to see an Outriders 2: 'I think that game would have been really special'

By Rick Lane Published

Full nelson The founder of Strange Scaffold gives us the lowdown on his PC gaming habits.

Full nelson
A penguin aiming down the reflex sight on his helmet to shoot a man, as another penguin does the same to one side. Yes this is a weird screenshot.
Altera is a hardcore, realistic, unforgiving military survival sandbox, so of course it features penguin soldiers with reflex sights on their heads

By Rick Lane Published

News Finally, someone invented the Humboldt-action rifle.

News
A red-skinned lizard person looks across a purple alien landscape in Vaunted.
XCOM meets Rashomon in Vaunted, a tactical RPG where your characters can rewrite history from their perspective

By Rick Lane Published

News The debut title from Lost Lake Games also lets you switch between turn-based combat and real-time action.

News
An android detective attacks a large blue robot with a massive drill.
I'm unsure how much of a detective game Artificial Detective will be, but I enjoyed the bit in the trailer when your character attacks a robot with a massive drill

By Rick Lane Published

News Former Dead Space and Control developers are involved in the project.

News
A sneaky spec-ops dude crouch-walks past a guard wearing high-vis gear in what looks like a sewer.
If you're sick of waiting for Ubisoft to make a new Splinter Cell, this newly announced indie stealth game might fill the Sam Fisher-shaped hole in your life

By Rick Lane Published

News Lizard State is inspired by "classic PS2-era games".

News
The Marauder M-11E Babar mech poses for a photo in Starship Troopers: Extermination
Starship Troopers: Extermination's latest update adds a big stompy mech, ideal for squashing the shooter's newly polished bug holes

By Rick Lane Published

News Patch 1.10 also adds a new location and improved arachnid ambushes.

News
Four naked Gales. That's it. That's the screenshot.
Baldur's Gate 3 YouTuber discovers 'time travel' glitch that also reveals 4 nude Gales hanging out in your camp for some reason

By Rick Lane Published

News Maybe the real Baldur's Gate 3 is the four naked Gales we met along the way.

News
Sintopia city building game
Sintopia, the management sim that smashes together Dungeon Keeper and Black & White, will stand before Steam's pearly gates for judgment in April

By Rick Lane Published

News Team 17's Bullfrog-like strategy game releases next month.

News
Corvus shoots a fire arrow in Heretic 2
Forgotten FPS sequel Heretic 2 gets a 'reverse-engineered sourceport' that fixes bugs, improves the framerate and adds 'lots of cosmetic improvements'

By Rick Lane Published

News "The game plays as you remember it."

News
A shot of a partially cut lawn in Lawn Mowing Simulator 2, showing a clear division between the neatly trimmed blades and the still wild lawn in an American suburban front yard.
Lawn Mowing Simulator 2 takes to Kickstarter with the lushest virtual grass I've ever seen

By Rick Lane Published

News Seriously, look at it.

News
Keene in front of a PUBG backdrop
Geoff 'Zag' Keene, design director of Abiotic Factor, has 1,160 hours in PUBG and de-stresses using a Blizzard classic: 'Instead of going to therapy, guys will literally boot up Warcraft 2'

By Rick Lane Published

Keene player The founder of Deep Field Games talks Arc Raiders, PUBG, and his love of jank in games.

Keene player
Medieval combat
With Steam reviews at 'Mixed', the developer of Half Sword addresses differences between the early access game and its hugely popular tech demo: 'The final version of the game will differ from what has been shown previously'

By Rick Lane Published

News The tech demo "was not intended to represent the final version of the game".

News
Peglin
Nearly 2 years after hitting 1.0, goblin pachinko roguelike Peglin adds a fourth act and a final boss: 'It's been a long time coming'

By Rick Lane Published

News "Here's Peglin 2.0".

News
The Wheel of Time key art
The Wheel of Time is getting an animated show and a PC/mobile game, which is different from the open-world action RPG already in development

By Rick Lane Published

News Wheels within wheels.

News
An image of a top-down strategy map in Heroes of Science and Fiction, showing units navigating through a green and purple forest environment.
If you simply cannot wait for the new Heroes of Might and Magic, this sci-fi take on HoMM just launched from Steam early access

By Rick Lane Published

News Heroes of Science and Fiction is Might and Magic, but in space!

News
A waterfall cuts through a network of subterranean crimson caverns in Death Wish 2.0
After one of Blood's best mods added a new episode in January, another brilliant spin on Monolith's shooter just got an even bigger overhaul

By Rick Lane Published

News Death Wish 2.0 available on ModDB or in Nightdive's recent remaster.

News
A robot wearing an orange scarf stares out of the screen with wide blue and black eyes.
The Last Caretaker's latest update embraces its inner Dr Evil by adding sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads

By Rick Lane Published

News The Curiosity Wakes update also adds spiderbot companions and player customisation.

News
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