Id Software creative director Tim Willits told Polygon today that the upcoming arena shooter Quake Champions, which id and Bethesda have recently been showing off, will offer players both free-to-play and paid options. Access to Ranger, the lead character of the original Quake and a prominent face in Quake 3: Arena, will be free for everyone. With him, you’ll earn the in-game currency called “favor” that can be used to gain access to other Champions for as-yet-undetermined periods of time. If yo

I’ve been taking No Man’s Sky’s new Path Finder update for a spin: it’s another big addition to Hello Games’ sprawling space exploration game. But now we have tires, great big knobby rubber tires, and these tires change everything. But the destruction before Path Finder felt so limited in scope, apart from sometimes mining an entire deposit of copper or heredium. Moving on: base sharing and racing are also new to the update, and I’ve toyed with that as well. Progress isn’t saved while you’re the

Earlier this week Wes spoke to Exzap, developer of the Wii U emulator Cemu, about a video he’d posted to Reddit showing the newly-released Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild running on the software. “There is this common misconception that because the game runs so well already, it will run perfectly equally soon, Exzap said. Exzap released the latest Cemu build which can properly boot Breath of the Wild, and YamGaming has posted an 11-minute video of it rendering at 4K. You can already see that

The search for the mysterious alien race known as the Thargoid in Elite: Dangerous seemed to finally bear fruit back in January, when a pilot encountered a bizarre, flower-like alien ship. Going by the “Unknown” trailer released today at PAX, he was 100 percent right—and it’s time to start splashing. The trailer is unfortunately brief, and to be fair to all involved it may have ended with a handshake and the friendly exchange of information and technology under the shadow of that massive alien s

Its lineage has cross-pollinated to almost every singleplayer open-world game, dotting their landscapes like acne in case, god forbid, I miss something. Yet the irony here is that Breath of the Wild treats its audience with a respect that few open-world games ever do these days. Breath of the Wild treats its audience with a respect that few open-world games ever do these days. To find them, I must observe the environment in a way I haven’t done before in open-world games. Unfortunately, open-wor

What’s this? A bonus episode of The PC Gamer Show? During the Game Developer’s Conference, our weekly livestreamed podcast, we pulled together an all-star group of guests to talk about immersive sims: games like Deus Ex and Dishonored and System Shock. Hear stories from the people who made some of the PC’s best games. This week’s topicsWhat makes an immersive sim, and why they’re greatAnecdotes from the development of Prey, Dishonored, Deus Ex, and Ultima VIWarren Spector talks a tiny bit about

In a livestream from PAX East today, Mass Effect: Andromeda creative director Mac Walters compared Andromeda’s dramatis personae to Mass Effect 3’s. Whereas Mass Effect 3 had “something like 670 unique characters who would speak to you,” according to Walters, Mass Effect: Andromeda contains “over 1,200” speaking characters. “When you look at the dialogue options, we’re basically [at] the equivalent of Mass Effect 2 and 3 put together,” he said. It’s been a big day for Mass Effect news: Earlier t

We put together a roundtable of familiar faces, all of whom have had a major hand in exploring or creating immersive sims. When I look at what games can do that other media can’t, I instantly go right to the immersive sim. Immersive sims often go very fast, and very loud, but generally only if you trigger the right sequence of actions. Because one of the defining characteristics of the immersive sim for me is that it’s about roleplaying not roll-playing. On the next page, our panel share stories

Blizzard has announced that the price of Hearthstone card packs, adventure wings, and arena tickets will be “adjusted” in non-US markets as of March 22, which of course means that they’ll be going up. And as you might expect, an awful lot of people in the Hearthstone subreddit are not happy about it. “The price of the Un’Goro prelaunch bundle offer will not be affected by this change and will remain the same until launch.” EU pricing is jumping by 11 percent across the board, while players in th

In September of last year, Valve made changes to Steam’s user review system in an effort to combat “artificially inflated” review scores. The system was tweaked shortly thereafter so that reviews written by people who received games for free would be visible by default, but the scores themselves would remain locked out of the overall ratings. Yesterday, Valve tweaked the system further by eliminating any form of freely-received game from its total review score, rather than just game keys that we

Update: The Mass Effect portion of the stream is over, but you can watch the VOD above. (If the video doesn’t start at the correct time, the Andromeda stuff begins at around 2:57:10 with the launch trailer.) I’ve broken down some of what was discussed, namely the number of characters, in another story. From right this moment until 2 pm Eastern, when the livestream switches to Prey, you can watch some unedited Mass Effect: Andromeda gameplay on Twitch’s own Twitch channel. What’s more, Tom is on

Case in point, MSI’s Radeon RX 480 with 4GB of GDDR5 memory is on sale for $174 at Newegg. There’s also a $30 mail-in-rebate available that brings the cost down to $144. The card that’s on sale sticks closely to AMD’s reference blueprint. That is why MSI only uses MIL-STD-810G certified components for Radeon RX 480 cards. These components have proven durable enough to withstand the torturous circumstances of extreme gaming and overclocking for extended usage,” MSI says.

The first thing I did at PAX East this year was jump into Mass Effect Andromeda’s multiplayer horde mode. The mode I played pit us against seven waves of enemies attacking the small outpost we were held up in. Like Mass Effect 3, the final wave had us fight our way to an extraction point until escape arrived. The other part of Andromeda’s multiplayer I’m hoping will add depth is the customization, which we didn’t get to see. If nothing else, Mass Effect Andromeda’s multiplayer has gotten me more

Just over a month ago we posted a deal for Dell’s 27-inch S2716DGR gaming monitor with G-Sync support and a fast 144Hz refresh rate. Using a coupon code, you can snag this monitor $410 and change direct from Dell. By applying a coupon we previously shared, EXCLUSIVE10, you’ll save another 10 percent bringing the price down to $410.39. Dell’s S2716DGR is a monitor that is built for fast action gaming. Other features include:2560×1440 refresh rate at 144Hz350 nits brightness1,000:1 contrast ratio

Following its original four game-spanning run which concluded in 2005, Oddworld Inhabitants revived its flagship Abe’s Odyssey series in 2014. Announced last year, Oddworld: Soulstorm marks the series’ next instalment, which promises an “all-new” Abe and a darker, more mature narrative. Oddworld Inhabitants Oddworld Inhabitants was formed in 1994 by special effects and computer animation specialists Lorne Lanning and Sherry McKenna. Its first game Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee came in ’97 and marked t

And that does appear to be the case: Less than two weeks after revealing its plan to start selling games, Twitch has announced that Curse will be enhanced, rebranded, and relaunched as the Twitch Desktop App. “The Twitch Desktop App—which features all of the elements people love about the Curse app, such as screen sharing, voice and video calling, and community server creation—is now bolstered by Twitch features. This includes Friends, Whispers, activity sharing, and will soon serve as a game li

Despite being over a week away from release, the Mass Effect: Andromeda launch trailer has joined EA and Bioware’s final marketing sprint. There have been a lot of trailers, but this could be the last. Also, we get a glimpse of a planetary shield I don’t think we’ve seen before. We recently got some new info on the Mass Effect: Andromeda system requirements, and our own Tom Marks is on the ground in Boston today to play the co-op multiplayer for the first time—he’ll have thoughts on that soon. M

In a Steam sale long ago, on a whim, Samuel picked up the sandbox and construction game Space Engineers. To the moonPhil Savage Veteran of Kerbal Space Program, so knows about pretend space. On the down side, getting to the Moon would mean doing the entire journey looking 90 degrees away from the Moon. Phil: I suspect that Space Engineers doesn’t model most of the forces that would prevent our ship from getting off the ground. If the other bits of the ship are space Lego, this is space Duplo.

Mordhau bills itself as a “multiplayer medieval melee game featuring large open battles, siege engines, and mounted combat”. We want fights to looks like fights without the endless spinning and back twisting that are common in some games of this genre.” It’s early days yet, but if Mordhau can build upon what’s already there, and deliver on what it’s now promising, it could be onto something special. And with For Honor out now, and Kingdom Come Deliverance and Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord due this

League of Legends: 2017 EU LCS Spring SplitMisfits have continued to impress fans as they proved that they could even rival the best teams. Meanwhile, Team SoloMid was back to their dominant selves after they beat both their former rivals Counter Logic Gaming and Team Dignitas. In Europe, Elements Pro Gaming, Team Secret, Ninjas in Pyjamas, B)ears, ALTERNATE aTTaX, Cloud9 and Alliance will battle it out. In North America Team Freedom, NP, Onyx, Complexity Gaming, Wheel Whreck While Whistling wil