Monthly Archives: January 2020

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

(Image credit: Valve)

Developer: ValvePublisher: Sierra StudiosYear: 1998

In the 1990s we were used to being dropped into level one with a melee weapon in our hands. But in Half-Life you don't wake up in a prison cell, or crash land on an alien planet. You finish a commute.

Not that it wasn't impressive, as far as commutes go. I've heard several people say they thought that 10-minute train ride was pure cutscene, not realizing they could walk around to get better views. At the time it was a genuine surprise to see all this being done in-engine.

The commute to the Black Mesa testing facility is more eventful than most train trips, too. You emerge from tunnels into huge open spaces where robots carry crates or assemble machinery, you get your first glimpse of the G-Man in the next train car over, and a military helicopter lands to deliver a payload of foreshadowing. It's more exciting than trying to guess which of the business bros in your carriage just farted, I'll give it that.

It's still a remarkably ordinary way to begin a first-person shooter, but the ordinariness is one of the best things about Half-Life. So many of the rooms in Black Mesa feel like real spaces, whether bathrooms, the locker room, or the break room complete with microwave and a soda machine that doesn't work. ("Must remember to report that fluctuation," mutters one of the staff.) To see these normal places desecrated by zombies and covered in gore is more shocking because of the contrast.

That feeling goes away later on, by the time you're fighting military hardnuts and black-ops ninja (and is a long-gone memory by the time you're up against alien jumping puzzles and a giant gonad), but in Half-Life's early stages when it feels more like a horror game, that sense of mundanity is essential.

When you're staring through a window unable to help as a scientist gets gored or plunging down an elevator shaft with headcrabs pouring in above you like salt from a shaker, it feels like this shouldn't be happening herenot somewhere you arrived via a train ride with a nice lady's voice telling you about the upcoming employee decathlon.

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Great moments in PC gaming: The opening train ride of Half-Life - PC Gamer

Nobody needs to be told that someone like Valve's Gabe Newell is important to PC gaming in 2020. The decisions made by company presidents, CEOs, and hardware manufacturers have effects that travel all the way down the very long ladder from their sky castles to where we sit at home, trying to remember our GeForce Experience passwords. But PC gaming is bigger than any company. It's an entire ecosystemlike the biosphere, except where approximately 80 percent of the Earth's biomass by weight is made up of plants, the PC gameosphere is 80 percent indie games you've never heard of.

The people on this list are not billionaire CEOs, and they're not creative directors or lead designers who've attained celebrity status. But they are shaping the present and future of PC gaming in significant ways. They're changing what we play, how it's made, and how it's talked about.

A Shell in the Pit is a studio that collaborates with indie developers on game audio. It began as the solo project of Gordon McGladdery, now studio director, who lent his audio skills to games like Rogue Legacy before deciding he needed a team.

"Em [Halberstadt] was actually our first hire," McGladdery says, "so she's contributed to almost every game we've worked on which may be too many to list. The most notable games on which she truly led SFX work and direction are Untitled Goose Game, Night in the Woods, and Wandersong."

For Untitled Goose Game the most important sound is of course the honk, which had to be equally obnoxious whether you're holding a harmonica or have your head in a bottle. "If I recall correctly," says McGladdery, "since it was the first thing we tackled, the honk was very carefully curated & layered from library soundsit took a really long time to get dialed in because it had to be perfect!"

The other audio, the normal sounds of an English village, help ground the game's comic sensibility. Much of it was recorded in Halberstadt's backyard, sometimes with her baffled neighbours looking on. For the goose's footsteps she slapped a rubber glove against different surfaces, and each pick-uppable prop had to be recorded being dragged across varied surfaces too, as well as being thrown around. She really did record herself throwing a rake into a lake.

Halberstadt is about to be promoted to the role of Audio Director, McGladdery explains, "so that we can support more junior artists and get further reach with her vision. She is wrapping up on Ikenfell with Rachel & Millie, leading audio on Greg Lobanov's next game Chicory, does most of the design for Colin Northway's interactive VR Art Gallery The MOR (Em even made an exhibit for it!), is Audio Director on Awaceb's Project Caillou as well as on another very ambitious, long-term project we probably won't be able to announce for quite some time."

Sound design is an underappreciated element of videogames, as every article about it is obliged to point out. But high-profile work like Halberstadt's is being recognized, with Untitled Goose Game recently being nominated for an IGF Award for best sound, and deservedly so.

Feng Zhu's concept art has informed the look of plenty of well-known games, including Guild Wars, Prey (2006), Gears of War, Command & Conquer 3, Dead Space, and The Sims 3. That's a pretty diverse portfolio right there. But his influence is set to go further than that, as Zhu runs the FZD School of Design, and has taught a generation of concept artists who are following his footsteps. Artists like John Liew, who worked on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, Natasha Tan, who worked on Rise of the Tomb Raider and The Sims 4, Rowena Wang, who worked on Sekiro, and Dan Iorgelescu, who worked on Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Baldur's Gate 3.

Even those who aren't enrolled in his Singapore school can benefit from his expertise thanks to over a hundred episodes of YouTube tutorials called Design Cinema, which teach everything from sketching and cinematic lighting to building your own visual library.

Zach Barth's early game Infiniminer is now remembered as "that game Notch ripped off to make Minecraft," but don't feel bad for Barth just because somebody else made $1.5 billion off his idea. He's continued making games, often critically acclaimed ones, and also he seems to be happy.

Among Barth's creations are a series of puzzle games dubbed Zach-likes by their fans. Whether they're about chemistry (Spacechem), alchemy (Opus Magnum), or assembly line construction (Infinifactory), they all require a kind of thinking that resembles computer programming. And in the case of TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, and Exapunks, they straight-up are computer programming.

Kevin Simmons, designer/producer at Asymmetric Games (creator of West of Loathing), and a fan of Zach-likes himself, explains their appeal. "I think the common theme through all of them is the way you are presented with a problem and invited to make free-form solutions within constrained spaces," he says. "You're given a small set of tools, a medium-sized area to work, and a goal, and then just set freeit's up to you to figure out how you want to get there."

Zach-like games don't end when you solve the puzzles. They have leaderboards, scoring puzzles across multiple metrics, meaning that it's worth going back to the earlier levels with tricks you discover later to refine your solutions. As Simmons says, something unique to Zach-likes is how easy it is to "lose hours trying to find a more elegant solution to a problem that you have already solved!"

Last year Zachtronics published two games. MOLEK-SYNTEZ is a classic Zach-like in which the aim is "to create small molecules with various pharmacological effects from the comfort of your small Romanian apartment." The other was a visual novel about an AI counseling program called Eliza. Though at first Eliza seems removed from Barth's other projects, his games often have plots running through them as a motivation to push through once the puzzles get hard, and they're better written than most (thanks to his frequent collaborator Matthew Burns).

"Something that I love about most Zachtronics puzzle games is that they have really carefully considered and well-developed stories as a setting to exist within," says Simmons. "There are reasons for the goals you're presented with, and implied stakes for failure or success. The narrative never gets in the way, but provides a texture that makes everything else feel more alive."

Barth's games, whether in the subgenre he's marked out for his own, or the occasional steps he takes outside those bounds, are always standouts.

One of the great successes of the last decade on PC was Terraria, which, since 2011, has outgrown its original dev team, outlived a sequel, and remains omnipresent on Steam's most-played games list. Terraria's developers pay a lot of attention to their community, updating the game to take into account the ways people play it. That includes nerfing anything prominent Terraria streamer Badger (aka William Bishop) relies on. Badger's importance to Terraria is the reason he was put on stage at AGDQ this year to speedrun the nine-year-old game, and his personality is the reason the run was so watchable.

After setting himself the challenge to get to the Moon Lord boss in one hour, Badger started strong but had some bad luck later on. Eventually he failed to defeat three bosses before sun-up, which meant he didn't have the Hallowed Pickaxe later on when he needed it (Terraria is complicated). He stayed positive, however, and the audience loved him for it, cheering him on through further disasters. The donations rolled in, including several $500 and even $1,000 donations, which he was visibly flabbergasted by. In the end the producers had to call time and he never did get to fight the Moon Lord, making it technically a failed run. But during that hour and change he helped raise over $30,000 for charity, which is more important than any boss fight.

Badger says he'll be back with more Terraria speedruns and new tactics, and if they work the game's developers will be sure to nerf those too. It's the circle of life.

David Gaider was a writer and designer at BioWare from 1999 through to 2016, working on Baldur's Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, and all three Dragon Age games. (He also wrote several Dragon Age novels and comics.) After that he was creative director of Beamdog for a couple of years before leaving to found Summerfall Studios, alongside managing director Liam Esler.

Summerfall's first project is Chorus, a videogame musical, complete with branching musical numbers. As Esler explains, "There haven't been many attempts to explore the medium of the musical in videogames, short of smaller indie titles like Dominique Pamplemousse and the occasional song in larger games, so we're excited to see how we can make a musical truly interactive."

It may not seem like an obvious stepfrom fantasy RPGs to an interactive musicalbut Esler points out that Chorus contains a lot of what Gaider brought to games like Dragon Age. "So much of Chorus is directly influenced by David's past work," he says, "from deep and fascinating character design through to complex relationships and a lot of careful worldbuilding. The interactive musical numbers build upon David's work with branching dialog, and of course the game will have plenty of that as well. Plus, of course, romance and big emotional story beats!"

Summerfall plan to continue making games that share these elements, which is good news for those who loved the games BioWare made back when they were focused on dialogue and relationships.

"Right now we're focused on making Chorus the best game it can be," Esler says, "but long-term we want to continue building character-focused games with an emphasis on story. We want to keep pushing the limits beyond where we're comfortable, while making games for those who don't necessarily want to focus on combat and deep strategy."

Sam Barlow's late '90s experiments with interactive fictionthe most fondly remembered of which is IF Award winner Aisle, a one-move game set in a supermarketdon't immediately suggest a future in FMV. But what those early text-based games have in common with his later full-video games, Her Story, #WarGames, and Telling Lies, is a focus on uncovering a story through lateral thinking.

In Aisle you control an ordinary man doing his grocery shopping, wistfully staring at the gnocchi. You have one chance to give him a command before Aisle resets and you're playing a parallel version of the same character, similar but different, whose background and personality will be defined by the next action you choose.

In Her Story there's no suggestion of parallel universes, just a woman sitting at a police database choosing what to search for. Each search term brings up more video evidence, suggesting what to type nextin a way it is like Aisle, all about building up an understanding of events that guides you to the next words you need to type.

It's a different approach to FMV and one that helped revitalize the genre. Without it there's be no Contradiction, or forthcoming games like "dystopian newsroom simulator" Not for Broadcast and rotoscoped road trip Road to Nowhere. As Barlow continues iterating on his formula, so too will other developers.

Kitfox Games are a Montreal indie studio responsible for games like The Shrouded Isle, a management sim about running a Lovecraftian cult, and the forthcoming Boyfriend Dungeon. Tanya X. Short is the studio's co-founder and "captain."

As Kitfox communications director Victoria Tran explains, the reason for that title goes back to their debut game, Shattered Planet, which gave players a spaceship base. "The team decided to give each other pseudo-nautical titles to fit around that theme," she says, "which is how Tanya, as the leader, got the title 'Captain'. As our co-founder Xin Ran Liu puts it, while 'President' or 'CEO' would be more appropriate for Tanya's actual corporate position, it didn't feel like it actually encompassed her fully hands-on role."

Kitfox emphasizes the importance of a healthy work culture, of sensible hours and an absence of crunch. As Tran explains, "Tanya doesn't just implement policies and leave them there. She'll actively promote it, and be one of the first people to notice when someone seems exhausted, stressed, or sick and ask them if they need to go home or take a vacation."

Short's influence is felt not just on the studio culture at Kitfox, but in the games they make. Boyfriend Dungeon is both an action-RPG and a dating sim, where the dates are with magical weapons that transform into romanceable hotties between dungeon crawls. Imagine if that BioWare NPC you had a thing for was also a +3 sword.

Tran says making a game that serves two genres like this can be difficult. "Varied combat styles and ever-changing dungeons is challenging enough, but what sets it apart is that Tanya has lead the team to make it a cozy, warm experience. She writes a lot of the dates in the game, of which people who've played it have said they felt an actual connection with the characters, rather than just as stereotypes of some trope."

Tran summarizes the studio's ethos like this: "In short, if Kitfox were to have any effect on the games industry, it would be this: that we should put people in front of projects, always." And Short's vital to that. She may have been dubbed the Captain as a gag, but it stuck because it proved apt. As Tran says, "Tanya's there steering us in the right path, battering the storms for us, and making sure we as a crew are happy and working together."

On itch.io, where Grace Bruxner's early free games like Alien Caseno and The Fish Market were distributed, her variety of short, low-interaction experiments are not out of the ordinary. But the games in her Frog Detective series, The Haunted Island and The Invisible Wizard, are available on Steam for actual money. That meant putting them in front of an audience who aren't as familiar with the idea that a game you can finish in less than an hour is still valuablewhich is why the words "this is a short game!" appear in wobbling letters on both Steam pages.

The Frog Detective series resembles adventure games, in that it's about talking to weird characters who want things for ridiculous reasons, building up an inventory of stuff, and then distributing it. The games boil that format down to its most basic elements, removing roadblock puzzling and aiming for simplicity.

Her games aren't interested in mechanical innovation, they do not feature permadeath or deckbuilding or "RPG elements" or a way to rewind time. They are just about talking to cute animal people until you unravel a ridiculous mystery. Along the way you watch wonderfully animated bugs and other creatures amble about, laugh at some goofy dialogue, and appreciate the sight of a reindeer chilling in a hot tub. Bruxner's games do not outstay their welcome, do not come back for a fifth encore, do not have "endgames." They do what they do and then let you get on with your life, and that's a a philosophy more videogames should follow.

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8 people shaping PC gaming at the start of the decade - PC Gamer

The Black Shark 2 Pro comes in a vibrant metallic blue and orange color.

In a packed ballroom at the Mirage hotel at CES 2020, a neon green logo beckoned me toward it like a siren calling to sailors in The Iliad. Fortunately for me there were no treacherous rocks waiting to send me to a horrible death. Instead there was just the Black Shark 2 Pro, a gaming phone with a glowing logo on the back.

Gaming phones are right at home in the flashy confines of CES, but they also signal a subtle shift in the phone market toward more niche audiences. TheRazer Phone launched in 2017, bringing with it a new category of phones built with features geared toward gaming. These features included an LCD display with a 120Hz refresh rate (instead of the standard 60Hz), a top-of-the-line Snapdragon processor and a logo on the back that glowed.

In 2020, you can find a dedicated gaming mode on mainstream flagship phones such as the Google Pixel 4 and Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus. The OnePlus 7T and 7 Pro both have 90Hz high refresh rate screens. And there are now three phones that are built from head-to-toe for gamers: The Asus ROG Phone 2, the Nubia Red Magic 3S and the Black Shark 2 Pro.

The Black Shark 2 Pro was originally announced in July 2019, but will beavailable in the US at some point starting at $599(539 or about AU$1,030). Unfortunately Xiaomi, which makes the Black Shark, couldn't say when. The Black Shark 2 Pro is almost identical to the Black Shark 2. The major difference is that the new Pro version has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus processor instead of the regular 855 variant.

The 855 Plus processor features 15% faster graphics and a CPU clock speed of up to 2.96GHz as opposed to the regular 2.84GHz speed of the 855. This means the Black Shark 2 Pro is at the top of the Android performance food chain alongside the ROG Phone 2, Red Magic 3S, OnePlus 7T, Nubia 20 and Meizu 16s Pro.

The beefy processor also means you'll be able to get the absolute best sustained performance out of your phone during long bouts of gaming. And to keep that processor cool, the Black Shark 2 Pro implements a direct touch multilayer liquid cooling system. Xiaomi claims it can reduce the temperature of the CPU by 14 degrees. For comparison, the Red Magic 3 phone has a built-in fan to keep it cool.

The Black Shark 2 Pro has a 6.39-inch AMOLED Samsung screen with a 60Hz refresh rate. By comparison, the refresh rates on the Red Magic 3 is 90Hz and the Asus ROG Phone 2 is 120Hz. But there aren't tons of Android games that take advantage of that rate.

The Black Shark Phone 2 Pro's screen has a 240Hz touch-report rate, however. That refers to the number of times per second the screen updates where you've touched. This could in theory lead to a lower latency rate. In fact Xiaomi says that the Pro has a response speed of 34.7 milliseconds, which would put it ahead of any other gaming phone.

The Black Shark 2 Pro in a Nintendo Switch-style case.

Another unique feature to give mobile gamers more of an edge is a touchscreen feature called Master Touch 2.0, which lets you resize both left and right touch zones and the pressure-sensing value. So you can have a light button touch in one game and pound the crap out of your screen in another.

Like the original Black Shark phone, there's a Sharkspace slider button that will put your phone into a gaming mode that optimizes performance, clears your phone's memory and minimizes outside interruptions.

Another wonderful aspect of the Black Shark 2 Pro is the accessories Xiaomi makes for it.

We're looking forward to testing the Black Shark 2 Pro phone. But for now, here's how its specs stack against other leading gaming phones.

Now playing: Watch this: First look: Black Shark 2 Pro impresses with performance

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We go hands-on with the Black Shark 2 Pro gaming phone and its ridiculous specs - CNET

Microsoft will announce their new Games with Gold February 2020 plans for Xbox One and Xbox 360 in the coming days. The tech giant has only until the end of the week to reveal the news before the latest free games will be launched. For now, there have been no leaks or hints to hint at what might be being planned for Games with Gold next month.

Xbox One gamers are always interested in seeing AAA titles confirmed as part of their Xbox Live Gold subscription, however, there's no guarantee on what might be offered up.

Styx: Shards of Darkness and Dark Knight in Batman: The Telltale Series are the current free games available to download on consoles.

Styx will be replaced on Saturday, February 1, 2020, with something new, while the Dark Knight will remain available until the 16th.

Unlike PS Plus over on the PlayStation 4, Xbox Games with Gold reveals are a little harder to predict.

Despite announcing the January games on December 19, Microsoft is expected to unveil the February 2020 releases a little later.

While it's possible the news could drop today, it's more likely to happen next week, perhaps as late as January 30.

So fans will want to keep an eye on Microsoft's social media feeds every day this week, until we find out what is being planned for February 2020.

When it comes to predicting what new games will be announced, there are far too many titles to pick from to make an educated guess.

Gamers are usually looking to get value for money, a big AAA title, or something that's well-reviewed and not something they've played before.

Last year's Games with Gold selection may have filled the latter requirement, with Microsoft announcing Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and Super Bomberman R.

These came alongside a cracking lineup of Xbox 360 games, including Assassin's Creed Rogue and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy.

Until we hear more, gamers can enjoy a secondary Xbox Live Gold bonuses, courtsey of Microsoft.

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Games with Gold February 2020: Great Xbox Live news before Xbox One free games reveal - Express

February 2020 could see more news released by parent company Take-Two Interactive on the future of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. And while that might not extend directly to GTA 6, it will no doubt provide some clues for PS4 and Xbox One gamers. No set release date has been announced for GTA 6, but it appears the project has been in development for some time.

And next month will see Rockstar Games parent company, Take Two Interactive, report its Fiscal Third Quarter 2020 Results.

This doesnt sound like a super exciting event and it probably wont feature much news directly involving GTA 6.

But it will include an update on GTA 5 and the all-important GTA Online multiplayer mode for PS4, Xbox One and PC.

If Rockstar Games is planning to release more big content drops for GTA Online in 2020, we will get our first hints about it from this report.

Take-Two wont go into great detail about what is being planned for GTA Online, but they will go so far as to say they have new updates planned for this year.

And that should give us a rough idea of whether or not to expect anything big to be announced in 2020.

If Take-Two were to announce its plans to pull back from GTA Online content creation, this would no doubt affect the companys bottom-line.

It would also suggest that something new was being planned for the franchise in the coming months.

There may also be a few hints about what new games are being planned from the likes of Rockstar Games and 2K, although it will only cover the barest of details.

The event is being held on February 6, 2020, meaning gamers wont have to wait long to find out the latest.

A message on the Take-Two website confirms: Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO) today announced that it plans to report financial results for the third quarter of its fiscal year 2020, ended December 31, 2019, after the market close on Thursday, February 6, 2020.

The Company plans to hold a conference call to discuss its results at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time, which can be accessed by dialing (877) 407-0984 or (201) 689-8577. A live, listen-only webcast and a replay of the call will be available.

Heres an example of what was talked about in the companys 2019 report, which states: Nearly six years after their launch, Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online continued to be significant contributors to our results.

Grand Theft Auto V has sold-in almost 110 million units, cementing further its standing as the must-have title of the current console generation. Rockstar Games flagship titles continue to drive exceptional engagement and results.

Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2, including their online games, had almost 90 million unique player accounts in fiscal 2019 alone.

Life to date, more than 200 million unique player accounts have registered in Rockstar Games Social Club platform as having played these games. Rockstar Games will continue to support both immersive online worlds with innovative content to keep players engaged and drive growth over time.

This report also provides a small hint that Take-Two were preparing for a busy period, adding: Looking ahead, we have the strongest development pipeline in our history, including sequels from our biggest franchises as well as new IP.

Importantly, fiscal 2020 will be a year of significant investment in R&D that should enable us to scale further our long-term release slate.

February 2020 is also expected to be a big month for PS5 news, which could also provide some hints on whats coming next from Sony and its third-party partners.

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GTA 6 release update: BIG Grand Theft Auto news for PS4 and Xbox gamers - Express

New York-based venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners has bought a 10% stake in Israeli gaming company Moon Active Ltd. according to a company valuation of $1.25 billion, the companies announced Sunday. Insight bought stock from existing shareholders.

Founded in 2011, Moon Active develops games for iOS, Android, and Facebook. It is the developer of popular mobile game Coin Master, which has been downloaded by tens of millions of users. According to mobile app data and analytics provider Sensor Tower Inc., Coin Master has brought in approximately $700 million in revenue to date, and the company enjoys monthly revenues of about $50 million, mostly from Coin Master.

Moon Active employs some 380 people in offices in Tel Aviv and Ukraine, and intends to recruit between 100-200 additional employees this year. The company has raised $10 million in funding to date.

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Insight Partners Pays $125 Million for a Stake in Gaming Company Moon Active - CTech

Well, this sure would be nice if it turns out to be true. AestheticGamer aka DuskGolem, who previously provided accurate leaks about the Resident Evil 3 remake and Resident Evil 7's Not a Hero DLC, says that Konami reached out to developers to pitch two new Silent Hill games. Konami apparently wanted one to be a soft reboot, and the other an episodic game in the style of Telltale or Until Dawn.

According to AestheticGamer Konami started soliciting pitches for these games "about two years ago" and although he believes they're still in development, as he says in a follow-up tweet, "I don't know where these projects are at now or if they'll come into fruition." The Rely On Horror website suggests that they've heard "from our own independent source that a Silent Hill project is in development." So fingers crossed, I guess.

The last Silent Hill game released on PC was Homecoming back in 2009. In 2014 a playable teaser for a new entry called Silent Hills, being directed by Hideo Kojima, was released on PS4, but a year later was canceled.

Here's Why Silent Hill belongs on PC.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

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Rumor: Two Silent Hill games are currently in development - PC Gamer