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League of Legends Classic, the new mode which remixes the MOBA by deleting most of the roster and restoring all sorts of old builds and character kits from 2013 and prior, has hit Riot's public test environment. It's been met with mixed reception since then, in part due to its approach to old visuals—when the PBE version launched, players had modern character models, voice work, and spell effects by default, with "classic skins" unlockable with earned tokens or real money. A thread from user pri

LawBreakers was, by many accounts, a great game. But the 2017 shooter was a commercial failure, and developer Boss Key shut it down just a year after release. There's been much speculation about why it stumbled, including from Boss Key co-founder and Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski himself. In a new interview with 80.lv, he offered his latest theories.For one, a desire for Boss Key to be 'his' studio cost him an opportunity to work with Rod Fergusson, who he worked with on Gears of War. "I

Summer is officially here, and as a British person it is the law of this nation for me to say it's a bit hot, init? My AC-less apartment is being held together by a box fan and a dream. I haven't had a proper night's sleep in weeks, and I fear I've forgotten how it feels to be cold.Critical Hit(Image credit: Future)Welcome to Critical Hit, where I (or someone else on the PC Gamer team) celebrate and lament all things videogame music, audio design, and the ways our favourite games make our ears t

Disk Cleanup(Image credit: Future)Welcome to Disk Cleanup, our regular weekend feature delving into the PCs of PC gaming luminaries. Come back every weekend to read a new interview, digging into the important questions, like "How tidy is your desktop?" and "What game will you never uninstall?"David Szymanski, creator of Dusk and one of the chief architects of the retro FPS revival, grew up playing games like Lemmings and Oil's Well on the family PC. Among these family favourites was a formative

In a depressingly predictable turn of events, the reveal God of War Laufey came under fire from certain corners of the Internet, as it centres around a female protagonist rather than mad lad turned sad dad Kratos.Much of this negative reaction has centred around Laufey's actor Deborah Ann Woll, who also played Laufey in the 2018 reboot. But Woll, who also plays Karen Page in Marvel's Daredevil and its reboot Daredevil: Born Again, isn't phased by the impotent rage of misogynistic online trolls:W

Eight years after leaving the games industry, Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski is considering a full-time return to game development.Bleszinski left the games industry in 2018 after the closure of his studio Boss Key Productions, caused by the commercial failure of its two games—the multiplayer arena shooter LawBreakers, and the '80s-themed Battle Royale game Radical Heights. At the time, Bleszinski swore off making games forever.Yet now, in a wide-ranging interview with 80 Level, Bleszinsk

I still remember cursing aloud when I was first sent to prison in GTA 5 roleplay. You see, unlike in regular Grand Theft Auto—story mode or Online—getting arrested in RP has consequences. Sure, you face the same trigger-happy cops when you fall foul of the law, where you're pursued until either dead or in cuffs, and are then hit with the same 'Wasted' or 'Busted' mandates depending on the outcome of the chase. Assuming the latter transpires, however, you don't simply receive a fine and a reset w

hen I played 007: First Light earlier this year, one element of it stood out to me as unusual—and that is the arc relating to Bond's fellow 00 trainees, Cressida Bright and Lennox Monroe. IO Interactive puts a huge amount of work into building these characters, successfully selling you on the inherently bizarre concept of James Bond having flatmates.Yet just as you warm to these characters, they vanish from the story, and after MI6's failed operation to eliminate the rogue 009 in Slovakia, Bond

The Palworld 1.0 update adds 72 new pals—most of which you can catch, while the remainder at least adds an updated entry to your Palpedia. That's a big undertaking with the expanded Palpagos map and the new World Tree region to explore, and referencing the in-game map can be a real pain, but that's where I come in to hopefully make the process a bit easier. How to catch every new pal in Palworld 1.0This list was made to highlight where you're most likely to encounter the new 1.0 pals for the fir

The limited releases of cards for Magic: The Gathering that are mostly reskins of existing cards with new art are called Secret Lair drops. They're infamous for selling out fast and being hard to get hold of at normal prices, and they're also infamous for having unusual themes. There's been a Monty Python one, a Dwarf Fortress one, and even a Garfield one. Next? Stardew Valley. ConcernedApe's quirky farm-life sim has a legion of dedicated fans who have built their own mimetic lore on top of the

In 2021, when The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante came out on Steam, our Shaun Prescott called it "a text heavy narrative RPG with a huge emphasis on gruelling decision making." Think of those decision-heavy simulations like Princess Maker, only in a grim-and-gritty fantasy setting that cranks up the George R. R. Martin dial to max."Step into the harsh world of the Blessed Arknian Empire and experience the life of Sir Brante," as the announcement puts it, "a man born into a rigid society where

Remember that photo which stirred all sorts of talk about Amazon's upcoming God of War TV series? Well, the show won't look like that anymore—the role of Kratos is set to be recast since actor Ryan Hurst tore a bicep on set, according to Deadline. Anonymous sources in that story claim Hurst has had surgery and is recovering.As Deadline points out, this comes after Hurst "underwent a physical transformation" and put on 40 pounds of muscle specifically to play Kratos. But for such a physical role

If hell is other people, heaven might just be Erenshor—assuming you like old-school MMOs in the style of EverQuest, anyway. It's very much that style of game, but in a simulated solo world where other 'players' are just computer-controlled NPCs called simplayers. You can even party up and form a guild with them, which will come in handy now that raids are live.They arrived last Monday in the Planar March patch, and solo developer Brian of Burgee Media called it "the biggest day for Erenshor sinc

The country I lead is in uproar. My approval ratings have to be measured on entirely new axes to capture popular upset. The streets throng with rebels and malcontents. The only reason I have not been assassinated is that the sheer number of people who want to murder me cannot fit through the door at the same time.The election takes place tomorrow. The situation is excellent.(Image credit: Positech Games)The United Kingdom is in a parlous state (I'm talking about real life now). The current Labou

Dungeon Master(Image credit: Future)Welcome to Dungeon Master, PC Gamer's regular RPG column, where Online Editor Fraser Brown delves into PC gaming's most beloved and enduring genre. Grab a seat in our badly-lit tavern and please ignore the goblin puke.I have occasionally been accused of cynicism. And by occasionally, I mean every damn day of my life. For this week's Dungeon Master column, however, I am choosing the path of optimism. Specifically, when it comes to Obsidian and its ability to ma

PC games have been foisting tricky decisions on players since back in 1985 when Ultima 4 made us navigate a moral compass with eight different spokes to prove we were Britannia's best boy. But the Big Decision Era really kicked off in 2003 when Knights of the Old Republic made us pick between the light side and the dark, and every videogame was stuffed with choices people could fill their blogs arguing about. (We all had a blog in 2003. It was the law.)Those obligatory Big Decisions didn't alway

Terminally Online(Image credit: Future)This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer's very own MMO column. Every other week, I'll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we've all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice.One prevailing bit of industry wisdom about MMOs is the idea that they're a little grey in the beard—and so are their players, too. We can see a little of that i

Survival games are obsessed with the grind. Need a better axe? You've got to spend an hour collecting stone. Want to build a bigger base? Time to manually ferry hundreds of logs from one storage chest to another. Somewhere along the line, the genre started confusing friction with depth. Play This Right NowWelcome to Play This Right Now, the site version of our weekly newsletter in which we celebrate a new game, update, or DLC that we think is well worth checking out. You can subscribe to the new

I'd completely forgotten Valve is working on an update for Team Fortress 2's cooperative Mann vs. Machine mode, though in my defence, it's been a long time since we last heard about it. The prospective patch was announced in June last year, via a blog post on TF2's official website that requested map and mission submissions from the community in time for this update—with a "fictional deadline" of August 27.After that deadline passed, a brief progress report was provided in September. But for the

Jacob Fox, hardware writer(Image credit: Future)This week I've been: Trying out a new mouse (a Superlight clone) and finally sacking off CS2's cheater-ridden Premier matchmaking for FaceIt.I'm known around the PC Gamer streets as a bit of a mouse pad nerd. Though that's just because I take the surface my little rodent skates across seriously, as you should. If you're playing a game that requires good aim, a good pad can be just as important for your gameplay experience as high fps, up to a certa