Features archive

May 2026

Filter

Year
Month

116 articles

May 26
- 'I do think Blow misunderstood what the game is about': Derelict Star made Jonathan Blow rage quit, but it's the most fascinating indie platformer I've played for years
May 25
- One Move Away is a great cosy packing game, even if it had me rage-flinging boxes into the back of a truck
- Paralives has done the one exact thing I was begging life sims for
- I solved the Strait of Hormuz crisis with videogames, simply by creating an even bigger Strait of Hormuz crisis
- 9 cool things about Paralives you won't find in The Sims
- I'm glad they didn't release Subnautica 2 all at once—the episodic early access structure has me even more excited to explore its alien ocean
- Steam Week in Review: Steam is flooded with liminal spaces games and I approve, but I think I've found the best to start with
May 24
- I'm not ashamed to admit that The Sims 2 got me into house music, especially since its devs hired the best DJs in the biz to score it
- Comedian Alasdair Beckett-King was a die-hard adventure gamer until he discovered Morrowind: 'The first time I loaded it up, I walked straight into a little pond and was killed by a fish'
- We live in a world where every single Hatsune Miku is canon, which means that includes Helldivers Miku and Pyramid Head Miku
May 23
- Great moments in PC gaming: Stealing and selling someone else's treasure in Sea of Thieves
- I'll never love another RPG like I loved Neverwinter Nights
- PC Gamer's MMO readers are, according to you, fashion-forward healers who like your keybinds, and I couldn't be more proud
- As the UK plunges once more into political chaos, I’ve found the roguelike deckbuilder that can help me process it
- The Steam Controller's main competition isn't from Microsoft or Sony: It's from third-party vendors
May 22
- Subnautica 2 could become a chilling horror game, if only it would shut up
- Rogue Core proves Deep Rock Galactic is the most malleable game of all time as it continues the dwarves' monopoly of genres (and my obsession)
May 21
- Destiny 2 hasn't been the game I'd loved in years, but it still sucks to know it's ending
- I've been playing games for 40 years, writing about them for 20, and I'm here to say Roblox's microtransactions need drastic government intervention
- I played Boltgun 2 and it's sick
- Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is a textbook remaster
- The new Bubsy is better than I expected, but its hackneyed '90s nostalgia is exhausting
- I've played 1000s of hours of Overwatch but it wasn't until its new Anniversary game mode that I discovered I have no clue what the hell I'm doing
- PC Gamer magazine's new issue is on sale now: Witchfire
- It's my own fault for thinking Warren Spector's new multiplayer stealth game adding singleplayer would make it the Thief successor I was hoping for
May 20
- In the early 1990s, Doom was famously installed on more PCs than Windows itself—but how many was that, actually?
- Paralives is the very definition of early access, but it's already a promising Sims rival
- As a former smoker, I'm asking gamedevs to please make an 'arachnophobia mode' but for cigarettes because I am barely hanging on here
- Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core is a good roguelite shooter, but a little less special than the game that spawned it
- Bhashiva's tiger warriors are an addition to Total War: Warhammer 3 worth the money and the wait
May 19
- Half-Life owes its existence to one of the game industry's most formative figures—no, not Gabe Newell, the other guy
- Troy Baker and Austin Wintory talk becoming Indiana Jones and writing death metal polkas for Counter-Strike
- If you enjoy A Little to the Left then The Sorting Bureau should be the next game you check out
May 18
- Sony retreats from PC gaming, robbing us of maybe 4 games
- The problem with bodycam shooters
- Steam week in review: metroidvanias are still coming thick and fast, but has the world moved on?
May 17
- Directive 8020's new Turning Points system transforms it from a simple sci-fi survival horror into a compelling, gory puzzle
- What would be your go-to gaming soundtrack to recommend to a non-gamer?
- Scott Miller, founder of Apogee, has over 1,000 hours in World of Warcraft and always plays a warrior in any RPG: 'I like to get right in their face and pound away'
- Debate: What truly is the easiest character to cosplay?
May 16
- GTA roleplayers built a secret Boiler Room rave beneath Los Santos, complete with DJs, club photographers, biker security, and a custom party drug
- MMOs are better if classes are imbalanced—you just need to do it on purpose
- This game about being a chaotic mage might be the best indie immersive sim you can play, as I learned after destroying a mime's house with magnetism
- I’m waiting days between attempts to catch one fish in Final Fantasy 14 before it disappears for months, so don’t let anyone tell you raids are the ‘hardcore’ challenge
May 15
- I'm tired of everything getting turned into a roguelite, but I'll make an exception for pinball
- Forza Horizon 6's return to 'wristband progression' isn't the stand-in for a career mode I wanted it to be, but maybe that's for the best
- After close to 140 hours with it, I think Slay the Spire 2 feels more like a sequel than a DLC, even if Megacrit was forced to make it
- I was worried EverQuest Legends making me too OP would ruin the magic of the classic MMO, but crushing hordes of frogloks is incredibly satisfying
- Final Fantasy 14 is promising big changes with Evercold, but I hope it's not a surface-level attempt
- Don't sleep on Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes—it's tricky, tactical and the best FTL-like since, well, FTL
May 14
- It took a while, but Overwatch's iconic heroes have finally been bitten by the collab slop curse
- After all that drama, Subnautica 2 is good
- 'It nearly killed me': Why studio head James Ohlen left sci-fi RPG Exodus mid-development—and why EA crushing his Star Wars: The Old Republic reboot was the 'beginning of the end' at BioWare
- In Subnautica 2, survival is a prison and humanity might be better off becoming something else
- Turn down these five Subnautica 2 settings from Epic to High for a massive frame rate boost
- I've spent over 30 hours in Subnautica 2—here are my top 20 quick tips to get started under the sea
- Forza Horizon 6 PC performance analysis: Heavy on your CPU, with uninspiring ray tracing, but at least it all runs very nicely
- Overwatch's OG mode has made me realise how far this game has come and how good we have it right now
May 13
- This city-smashing monster sim is the first game I've ever played where my reward for beating a level is getting a nuke dropped on my head
- Here's how the Iran war is hitting key supplies for components, according to supply chain experts
- Outbound is an excellent idea but fails to pin down what people love about co-op crafting
- Immersive sim sickos rejoice: the makers of Void Bastards are creating their most choice-driven game to date in Godzone 6
- Sega has canceled its live service 'Super Game' due to 'intensifying market competition,' and I really, really hope it's a sign that the industry is finally correcting itself
May 12
- 20 years later, the world deserves another Sid Meier's Railroads!
- This vampire farm sim has Real Housewives of Stardew energy
- 'We're doing something a bit more interesting': All Will Rise dev says its progressive deck-builder shouldn't be dumped in the 'woke, liberal bucket'
- I've spent 30 years with Microsoft but Linux and Pop! OS might have converted me
- Mixtape is at the center of another tedious culture war discourse, and I think I know why
- The Sinking City 2 shifts the series to survival horror, and manages to be genuinely unsettling
May 11
- Battlefield 6's first truly big map feels like playing a different, much better Battlefield
- Mortal Kombat 2 redeems itself by fixing the worst thing about the first movie
- Drawquarium is one of the most relaxing sandbox games I've played in a hot minute, even if it did remind me I have zero artistic skill
- Steam week in review: Forza Horizon is the last truly mainstream multiplatform racing series
May 10
- What are the best and worst lyrics you've ever heard in a videogame song?
- Bennett Foddy, designer of QWOP and Baby Steps, is obsessed with friendslop games and won't uninstall Baldur's Gate 3, even though he'll probably never finish it: 'It was too big and so I stopped'
- This artist 'brings hair to life' by painting video game scenes on the back of wigs, and yes, it really is as impressive as it sounds
- No, Richard Dawkins, AI is bloody well not conscious
- Stellaris is 10 years old and still getting DLC, which is impressive
May 9
- The great RPG debate: Is turn-based or real-time-with-pause better for CRPGs?
- Discussion time: Are classic tab-target MMOs with loads of keybinds going out of style?
- How a trio of Canadian modders stumbled into making an official Die Hard game: 'I've had projects disappear that had 10 times the promise that this did'
- Gaussian Splatting is my new favourite thing, so I hassled an ex-Epic artist to tell me everything he knows about the low-cost 'photo-real' rendering technique
May 8
- Sony Interactive Entertainment chief says AI will enable 'gaming experiences like never before,' and I wonder: How long are these guys going to talk about it before we actually start seeing it?
- Brigador Killers smacked me in the mouth by making me level a city and kill the protagonists of the first game, and I can't wait for more
- Valve forming an orderly queue for the Steam Controller makes it clear we need the same for the Steam Machine, Frame, and perhaps a lot more in-demand tech too
- 'Pearl Abyss created 5,000,000 amateur ornithologists with one update': Crimson Desert's latest patches have effectively transformed it into a birdwatching simulator
- '90s virtual reality, Battlefield 2142, and Total War: This month in PC Gamer 10, 20, and 30 years ago
May 7
- It's time to set the record straight: Doomguy's armor does not have a tummy window, his shirt just got ripped
- Warhorse's new creative director tells us why the secret sauce for Kingdom Come Deliverance is making things difficult for players: 'The usual answer is OK let's get rid of the friction—We don't work like that'
- Despite Gothic Remake's glow-up, it's still the scrappy eurojank RPG it always was, and that's fine with me
- War Thunder's Ninth Wave update gives classic maps and machines a shiny overhaul
- With a peak player count of 14.2 million, 99 Nights in the Forest has an audience other multiplayer games would kill for: 'To find these behemoth playerbases you need to be on a platform like Roblox'
May 6
- 'I'm bleeding to death:' In 2009, Wurm Online was still the wild frontier of online gaming
- I bought a $5 Steam Controller 7 years ago and forgot it existed. Now it's my new living room sidekick
- Why I love Deadlock's map, which has brought me back to the world of MOBAs long after I swore I'd quit
- In the dark fantasy world of The Blood of Dawnwalker, even the vampires are morally grey: 'They are complex, and they are not one dimensional'
- Neverness to Everness has charmed me with its wacky cast but there's no way it becomes my gacha mainstay
- I spent a full week testing different VPNs and I'm changing my no-VPNs-while-gaming advice
May 5
- From Cyberpunk 2077 to The Witcher 3: Why videogame music matters, told by some of the best composers in the indsutry
- 2 hours with Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight was an uncomplicated burst of joy
May 4
- How a '90s Zelda PC port became a fangame factory, turning one legend into a thousand
- I got to play Dead as Disco early, and it's a vivid, unrestrained romp that lets you brawl through music videos like a kung-fu Baby Driver
- 2017's Ghost Recon Wildlands is a gloriously chaotic shooter that's more than the sum of its parts
- It may have taken almost three years, but Diablo 4 finally feels finished to me
- Playing Deus Ex: Invisible War like it always should have been
- Steam week in review: Another online shooter winds down weeks after launch, as robot cowboys take over
May 3
- Writing one of Final Fantasy 14's sauciest songs required its lyricist to consult the tomes—Wikipedia's incredibly thorough BDSM page
- There's an extreme lack of good quality, easy-to-find videogame figures, and after seeing people make their own I'm tempted to try it myself
May 2
- Loving MMOs in 2026 is an exercise in frustration, grief, and moving on
- I've spent the past month testing Keychron's concrete keeb and it's absolutely brilliant, with one small sticking point
- Marathon (1994) and Marathon (2026) are at opposite ends of FPS history, but playing them at the same time I'm finding they have a lot in common, despite their vast differences
May 1
- I didn't think a 2D platformer could be scary, but oh boy did this game about a forsaken nun in a dead world of demon cockroaches prove me wrong
- Hear me out: What if James Bond just shouldn't be in videogames?
- The new PC games of May 2026: Forza, Subnautica 2, and early access games galore
- The cozy game launches of May are dominated by a bunch of hotly-anticipated sims
- Total War: Warhammer 40k's map reveals fill me with faith that Creative Assembly can handle the setting's absurd scale