Features archive
December 2023
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221 articles
- December 31
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- The PC Gamer Needlessly Terrible Hardware Naming Awards 2023: Our favourite awful names for otherwise reasonable products
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards 2023: The winners
- 2023 was a decade-defining year for game releases, but so brutal for the industry it's hard to imagine another one like it happening for a long time
- Forget alignment: Here's where Baldur's Gate 3's companions fall on the real-life political compass
- December 30
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- You know M.2 SSDs suck, right?
- I've reviewed a ton of PC components over the past 12 months but AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D is my pick of the year
- What we want to see from PC gaming tech in 2024
- Forget The War Within, I'm excited to return to the home of the elves in World of Warcraft: Midnight
- Even beyond the smash hits, 2023 was one of the best years ever for RPGs
- Game of the Year 2023: Baldur's Gate 3
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best gaming keyboards of 2023
- We expected Baldur's Gate 3 to be good, but who knew it'd be such a huge hit?
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best gaming mouse of 2023
- December 29
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- There's plenty FromSoftware could learn from this year's crop of inventive Soulslikes—here are 7 ideas I'd love to see in one of their games
- All the big games that shut down in 2023
- I feel this tube amp + DAC lends me some imagined audiophile credence but it's also the best thing I added to my desk this year
- I played 20 city builders in 2023, and these are the 4 I loved most
- 8 underappreciated games of 2023 that we think deserve way more players
- PC Gamer's top hardware review scores of 2023, plus the five lowest we've issued
- Reasons why I love Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun—you are Space Marine, Space Marine go stomp, chaos men explode
- Anime finance sim Stonks-9800 is the best game you didn't play this year
- Best Expansion 2023: Cyberpunk 2077 – Phantom Liberty
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best microphone of 2023
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best gaming headsets of 2023
- December 28
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- Forget your fancy monitors and GPUs. The best hardware released this year is a mid range laptop CPU and I'll fight anyone who disagrees
- 45 things that made us say 'holy sh*t!' in 2023
- PC Gamer's biggest hardware stories of 2023: AI wars, quantum lies, ray tracing magic, storage matters, and more
- Best Story 2023: Alan Wake 2
- Counter-Strike 2 just remade my favourite game from the ground-up for free and let me keep my fancy AK-47, so of course it's the true GOTY
- 2023's second-best RPG about people who are too horny for their own good was Thirsty Suitors
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best motherboard of 2023
- 2023 in crypto and web3: Scams, collapses, and finally some consequences
- After 2023, I've had my fill of 100+ hour sprawling mega-games for a while
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best SSDs of 2023
- December 27
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- Our most-read news stories of 2023
- The AMD RX 7800 XT might not have set the world on fire this year, but for me it's been nothing but a pleasure
- We've only just recovered from 2023's wild release schedule, and now the first few weeks of 2024 are going to hit us in the face with even more games
- If successful, Intel's next generation Battlemage graphics cards will benefit all gamers
- Best Adventure 2023: Star Wars Jedi – Survivor
- In the year Doom turned 30, nothing better captured the endless imagination and creativity of its mod scene than Myhouse.wad
- Hang on, because the cozy games trend hasn't even peaked yet
- If you've been enjoying Fortnite Festival—or even if you hate it—you should try my favourite rhythm game to release this year
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best graphics card of 2023
- Long games were totally back this year, baby
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best CPUs of 2023
- December 26
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- 2023 was the year I got fed up with seeing those 'early access' deluxe editions where you pay more to play the game a few days early
- Samsung's dual-4K monster is way too big, too expensive, and still my favourite gaming monitor of 2023
- It was another great year for boomer shooters, but can we call them something else now?
- Why Rivington is my favourite area in Baldur's Gate 3
- If Alan Wake 2 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora are a glimpse of what games will look like in 2024, sign me up
- Survival colony sim Stranded: Alien Dawn has all the personal drama of The Sims, plus robots, mechs, and giant bug invasions
- Best Shooter 2023: Remnant 2
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best gaming monitors of 2023
- If you liked 2023's soulslikes, you should go play Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice—because they're all great tutorials for its unrivalled combat
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best gaming laptops of 2023
- December 25
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- The biggest hardware surprise of 2023 for me was how damned good Lenovo Legion laptops are now
- Live service gaming's best new trend is actually an old one: letting players decide how to have fun
- The biggest gaming controversies of 2023, part 2
- Ever wondered what your gaming PC is telling the world about you? Here's why your privacy matters and what you can do to protect it
- I played 40 hours of Sons of the Forest without the killer cannibals, and it was a blast
- Best Design 2023: Dave the Diver
- Lethal Company is a viral hit in no small part thanks to all the intense shouting
- 6 game genre trends that we think are going to define 2024
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best of the rest of 2023
- PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best handheld gaming PC of 2023
- Steam keeps on winning
- December 24
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- The biggest gaming controversies of 2023, part 1
- 2024 could be the year the PC finally dumps x86 for Arm, all thanks to Windows 12 and Qualcomm's new chip
- Best Setting 2023: Dredge
- Hi-Fi Rush is a tubular action game that turns the rhythm up to 11, and I couldn't let 2023 go by without singing its praises
- 2023 was so incredible for games that you might have missed these 12 must-plays from the first half of the year
- Here's how to turn Skyrim into the year's 3 biggest games with the power of mods to beat inflation and save money
- December 23
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- I'm officially exhausted by all the live service games and I want to see way less next year
- I must've played at least 100 retro games this year—these are the 5 I'd still recommend to everyone today
- Are the best GPUs really more expensive than they were when I was young, or am I remembering a past that never was?
- The 6 best Steam Deck games to get you through the holidays
- Sigil 2, original Doom's brand new sixth episode, is the most visceral, adrenaline-inducing and brutal PC gaming experience I've had in 2023
- Wait, was Cyberpunk 2077 just quietly in early access for three years?
- Best Open World 2023: Tchia
- Atomic Heart's Major Nechaev may be the most 'cranky dad' videogame hero of all time, and I love him for it
- For years I believed Windows to be making up problems with my removable drives. Turns out I'm the problem
- Forget complaining about big game installs: Just the updates are over 30GB now
- December 22
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- Where to find all 7 presents in Palia's Winterlights event
- The 10 most important strategy games to look out for in 2024
- Best Action 2023: Armored Core 6
- I was so wrong to sleep on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, because it's Ubisoft's best open world game in years
- This year's Dead Space Remake sets a bold new precedent for the future of my favourite sci-fi horror series
- 2024 is going to be a defining year for Final Fantasy 14, and maybe Square Enix's last chance to tackle its stagnating formula
- My PC is a mess. Is anyone else finding it difficult to manage all their files nowadays?
- December 21
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- I was so determined to get into Street Fighter 6 this year I built my own hitbox (but I still didn't get into Street Fighter)
- How Bobby Kotick became 'the most hated man in videogames'
- This year Baldur's Gate 3 finally reawakened the RPG fandom freaks I'd dearly missed
- After struggling to finish Divinity: Original Sin 2 the first time, I've fallen in love with Larian's previous hit RPG—and it isn't just the Baldur's Gate 3 afterglow
- The surprise return of a legendary Mountain Dew flavor made me very happy this year
- Where the heck is Hodari in Palia?
- Check out these great deals on NVIDIA RTX 40-series laptops
- I tried to melt AMD's top GPU with Avatar: Frontier of Pandora's unobtanium graphics mode
- Best Fighting Game 2023: Street Fighter 6
- Amnesia: The Bunker is the scariest game I've ever played, and also practically a videogame adaptation of Tom and Jerry
- Guild Wars 2 took a risk on a new type of expansion this year, but so far it seems to be working
- Fallout 4's intro is both the most ambitious and the most flawed of any Bethesda game—and it feels like Starfield learned all the wrong lessons from it
- December 20
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- Cut down on cables with Corsair iCUE LINK
- In an amazing year for PC gaming, too many games launched with major issues
- The unique challenge of directing actors in an open ended masterpiece like Baldur's Gate 3: 'Potentially your brother died; potentially he was rescued... we're going to do all those options. It's a lot!'
- Bethesda needs a change after Starfield's middling release, just not the one you're thinking of
- Having watched it try to speed run all the troubles of a live service game, I didn't expect Diablo 4 to come back this hard and fast
- Chants of Sennaar made me feel like a child in a school computer lab again in the best way
- Best Remake 2023: System Shock
- How to get Wish-Keeper and its catalysts in Destiny 2
- I tried to be awful in Baldur's Gate 3, but my character had other plans
- December 19
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- Here are 6 Palia tips for getting started in the life sim MMO
- It's much easier than you think to become a Dungeon Master for D&D and other tabletop RPGs—and have a blast doing it
- I played my favourite PC game of the year almost entirely on mobile and I have zero regrets
- 3 fascinating Elden Ring DLC theories to dream about as we count the days until its release
- Age of Wonders 4 reignited my love of 4Xs by letting me become Frankenstein
- Best Stealth 2023: Shadow Gambit – The Cursed Crew
- Undisputed is an uncompromising boxing game that's as likely to be boring as it is exciting, and that's what makes it cool
- December 18
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- Co-op survival games are great, but don't forget the intense joys of surviving solo
- Baldur's Gate 3's color filters are a sore reminder that most color-blind accessibility options are still a total mess in games
- What the hell Harmonix, you definitely could have done something better than Fortnite Festival
- Best Ongoing Game 2023: Warhammer 40,000 – Darktide
- 2023's best puzzle game is a delightful box of magic tricks and optical illusions
- PC Gamer's Game of the Year Awards 2023
- No game captured what it's like being online in 2023 like Honkai: Star Rail
- Five new Steam games you probably missed (December 18, 2023)
- December 17
- December 16
- December 15
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- Beating Baldur's Gate's new hardest difficulty took me on a tactical and emotional rollercoaster
- Inside Homeworld 3: How Blackbird Interactive aims to make you feel attached to your fleet as you 'see the history of battles through the whole campaign'
- I played over 30 new cozy games this year and these are the 4 must plays
- Looking back on Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker—two years of frustration for a game I still love
- PC gaming's biggest disappointments of 2023
- Starfield's biggest issues can't be solved with patches, mods, or expansions
- In less than a year, Blizzard transformed Diablo 4 into an action RPG worth grinding for
- Attic find! 13 years later I see just how far this former world champion graphics card can go in delivering a good PC gaming experience in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, GTA 5, Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield, and other top games today in 2023
- MOZA's racing sim equipment sale is now on
- 2023's rise of AI doesn't just risk making games worse, it turns criticising them into an existential nightmare
- December 14
- December 13
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- This chill Windows 95 relic is more toy than game, but reinstalling it every winter has become one of my favorite holiday rituals
- With Grand Theft Auto 6's Lucia being the series' first proper leading lady, I'm hoping she doesn't become another caricature or stereotype
- I've never wanted anything more than for Larian to make a Star Wars RPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate 3
- Rust turns 10, and you can grab some goodies to celebrate
- 2023 was a year of AI hype, but don't let them convince you it's inevitable
- Here's every new car in the GTA Online Chop Shop update
- December 12
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- Here's what it's actually like to play The Day Before, the zombie survival game whose developer folded days after it launched
- The 20 best Minecraft build ideas to inspire your next world
- 2023 has been an amazing year for roguelike deckbuilders—but the best one is this free demo about shamelessly cheating at poker
- We'll never get another big blockbuster MMO while the industry's still drooling over live service games
- How to get Wool Fabric in Lego Fortnite
- Tekken 8 should absolutely be the fighting game you play in 2024
- The GTA 6 trailer is packed with little details: here are some of the most promising
- The Day Before saga, explained: From Steam's most wishlisted game to the end of a studio
- December 11
- December 10
- December 8
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- As a Rocket League purist with over 1,300 hours, I didn't expect to like its Fortnite racing spin-off so much
- 5 things left over from the Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks we haven't seen yet
- It's not just you: we were sure there'd be an Elden Ring DLC trailer at The Game Awards, so when the heck will we see one?
- The 7 most exciting PC games revealed at The Game Awards
- For a cute and cheery little survival game, Lego Fortnite goes pretty hard
- How to get Flexwood in Lego Fortnite
- Most RPGs are getting character creation wrong
- Where to find Knotroot in Lego Fortnite
- With its new game, Hello Games is literally promising the world. Is the developer of No Man's Sky about to make the same disastrous mistakes all over again?
- The creators of Persona 5 are venturing into sword and sorcery, and it could be what gets me finally playing an Atlus RPG
- Disney Dreamlight multiplayer: how to unlock valley visits
- Where to find a roller in Lego Fortnite and how to defeat it
- How to get Fertilizer in Lego Fortnite
- Every trailer and announcement from The Game Awards 2023
- December 7
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- From Coquette to the Cheetah Classic, here are all the GTA 6 cars we've spotted
- How to beat the Gormgant boss in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Zombies
- How to use the Locked Diary in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Zombies
- How in Avernus did I totally miss this secret treasure-stuffed shortcut to the Underdark in Act 1 of Baldur's Gate 3 no less than seven times?
- Corsair launches its first gaming desk, and it's a beauty
- The Day Before launch time: when you can play the open world survival MMO
- December 6
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- A timeline of PC Gamer's favourite Baldur's Gate 3 secrets and rare dialogues—from bad tattoos to vampire tantrums
- You can play 11 nominees for The Game Awards for only $1 with PC Game Pass
- How to get a Bloodforged Sigil and complete the Abattoir of Zir in Diablo 4
- Baldur's Gate 3 has already consumed 500 hours of my life, and I'm just getting started
- How to solve the Electrodynamic Cenobium riddle in Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader
- Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader companions and where to recruit each
- How to solve the Eurac V laboratory puzzle in Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader
- How to solve the Unidentified Ruins puzzle in Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader
- Where to find spare parts in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
- How to find Nor in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
- Where to find a Dapophet Pod in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Ancestor Skills list
- The PC game releases we're most excited about in December
- December 5
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- 6 burning questions we have after seeing the GTA 6 trailer
- So we're not getting GTA 6 on PC until 2026 at the very earliest, right?
- If GTA 6 isn't coming to PC until 2026 this is what a top-end gaming rig should look like when it does
- Should you stand or sit at your PC? The difficult questions of a gaming desk makeover
- While we wait on a GTA 6 PC release, these are the PC-specific features we want to see when it does finally appear
- Here's when Modern Warfare 3 Season 1 releases in your timezone
- There's no technical reason Rockstar can give for why a PC version of GTA 6 isn't arriving with the console release
- Cut down on cables in your car with the Motorola MA1 Android Auto Adapter
- GTA 6 reveal trailer scene-by-scene breakdown: dogs, dadbods and social agitation
- GTA 6 reactions: Florida Men, car-top twerking, face tattoos, bikinis, and life behind bars
- December 4
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- Cross Blitz delivers charming Hearthstone-lite fun for the single-player crowd
- Halo Infinite Firefight is the cherry on top of its best season yet
- I've played more than 100 indie games this year—these are my top 3 hidden gems
- 12 tips for surviving Baldur's Gate 3's Honour Mode
- Elgato's range of Stream Decks is handy for more than just streaming
- Five new Steam games you probably missed (December 4, 2023)
- December 3
- December 2
- December 1
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- Place your bets: Will GTA 6 release on PC on the same day it does on consoles?
- I wanted to enjoy this Vampire Survivors-like about killer slime, but its gooey destruction just felt ho-hum
- 'Escape Town' co-op horror Sanguivore: Twenty Below creeps into Early Access
- Baldur's Gate 3's new Legendary Actions just made its honour mode bosses way harder than you think, and I can prove it with D&D science
- My Baldur's Gate 3 character creation just leveled up thanks to these three great cosmetic mod upgrades
