Crate Entertainment has been working its way through some very 'PC gaming' game genres: First it made an action RPG, Grim Dawn, then it made town builder Farthest Frontier (which is scheduled to leave early access sometime this year), and now it's also working on a real-time strategy game. Unlike some of its contemporaries, however, Crate isn't trying to crack the code to making a mainstream RTS hit: Real-time strategy is a "nerd genre," Crate Entertainment CEO Arthur Bruno joked in a recent interview with PC Gamer, and he accepts the limited audience that implies. The idea that classic-style ..read more

I'm a simple man. You put a physics-based vehicle destruction game in front of me and I'm likely to gobble it up. Such was my reaction to Instruments of Destruction when it came to early access back in 2022, but I held back my hunger for destruction, instead opting to wait for its beautiful demolition tech to gain some structure. That day has arrived: Instruments of Destruction, from one-person studio Radiangames, hit 1.0 today after two years in the oven, and the work shows. New to 1.0 is a full 50+ mission campaign that asks you to tactically destroy, avoid, or gingerly toss structures in 1 ..read more

Last year's Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is getting story-focused DLC in the form of Stray Gods: Orpheus, which will star the titular mythical bard rather than base game protagonist Grace. Coming back to earth for a new story, Orpheus will once again be played by Anthony Rapp, the American actor and singer best known for his performance in the original run of the musical Rent, the film version of the same show, and most recently (and to most of you, my fellow nerds) in Star Trek: Discovery. Stray Gods: Orpheus will focus on the "finished" story of Orpheus after the original game, as He ..read more

Bungie's first real shooter hit, Marathon, has been released on Steam for modern hardware as Classic Marathon, a fan-led port that has Bungie's blessing to release. Classic Marathon is completely free, letting you have the rare experience of playing a classic game not only easily but with zero time spent hunting down an old copy and fighting with compatibility. Marathon is a sci-fi FPS where your character is in charge of fighting alien forces that have boarded a human colony ship in the distant Tau Ceti system. Your job is to defend the ship and the crow of the Marathon, but discord among the ..read more

Even with its shortcomings at launch, I was always strongly affected by Cyberpunk 2077's portrayal of living on borrowed time. The denial, the bargaining, the pills you're prescribed that barely seem to do anything: it's all cut from a very real cloth, one I know well after a half year of preparing for something only marginally better than my central nervous system getting slow-cooked by a neuro-degenerative terrorist. Thankfully, my prognosis looks less grim now, but I'll never forget experiencing the two side by side. Indeed, Cyberpunk 2077 "is about terminal illness, and it's about coping w ..read more

OpenAI is a company built on the work of others. Techbros may hail CEO Sam Altman as some sort of digital messiah but, with apologies to Monty Python, really he's just a very naughty boy, who understands that if OpenAI hoovers up as much content as it can to train its models, then all we can do is close the stable door long after the horse is bolted. OpenAI trains ChatGPT on copyrighted content by design, and dares society to try and stop it (on which note, good luck to the New York Times with its lawsuit).  One of the advantages of all that lovely venture capital flowing in is that OpenA ..read more

A few weeks ago, Super Earth offered Helldivers 2 players two new stratagems and let them decide which one to unlock by voting with their guns. The winner was the Airburst Rocket Launcher, beating out the less flashy Anti-Tank Mines by a super mile. It was the correct choice, given how satisfying the Airburst's scattershot explosions are, but Super Earth has granted us another opportunity to complete the pair. "Following the tragic, unavoidable loss of MD-17 Anti-Tank Mines on Choohe to the Automatons, and the civilians too, production began elsewhere immediately," reads a new in-game dispatch ..read more

Veteran PC game creator Warren Spector is credited with working on 46 games on Mobygames, though that may not be a perfectly comprehensive list for a designer and director who's been making games since the 1980s. Actually, it's definitely not a perfectly comprehensive list—while Mobygames has Spector's credits on the likes of Deus Ex (producer and project director), Ultima 6 (writing), and Epic Mickey (creative director), there's no way for the Mobygames database to include projects he wasn't credited on to begin with. As Spector revealed in PC Gamer's roundtable interview with other longtime ..read more

After more than two decades of waiting, Homeworld 3 is almost upon us. You'll just need a bit more patience—unless you shelled out for one of the special editions—but after waiting for this long, I'm sure you can handle it.  In the meantime, you can check out our Homeworld 3 review. After such a long wait I wish it could have inspired a slightly more glowing critique—I didn't really gel with the War Games mode or some of the other changes—but the campaign missions are fantastic and the busy maps are a lot of fun to fight over. It's a good sequel, even if it's not my favourite Homeworld. H ..read more

Need to know What is it? The third game in the legendary space RTS series. Release date May 13, 2024 Expect to pay £50/$60 Developer Blackbird Interactive Publisher Gearbox Publishing Reviewed on RTX 4090, Intel i9-13900k, 32GB RAM Steam Deck Playable Link Official site The sight of Homeworld 3's sleek, indomitable mothership preparing to jet off into the unknown, accompanied by radio chatter and a moody score, feels like a homecoming. For newcomers, it's a striking scene; for veterans, it calls to mind the original mothership getting ready to leave ..read more