PC Gamer (US Edition)

PC Gamer brings you in-depth previews, exclusive feature stories, and the most hard-hitting reviews every month in the world’s best-selling PC games magazine! Every month you’ll get the inside scoop on the most exciting games in every genre from first-person shooters to MMORPGs and cutting-edge games from independent developers, along with detailed strategy guides, how-tos, and the latest news on mods and PC gaming hardware from the best-known authorities in PC gaming. PC Gamer helps you get the most out of the most powerful gaming platform in the world.

WELCOME

A GHOST OF ITSELF • The once-legendary BIOWARE has lost at least half its staff

Highs & Lows

HALF-LIGHT • A VALVE engineer had to tell the GPU companies they were wrong

KUNITSU-GAMI: PATH OF THE GODDESS • Capcom’s masterpiece now playable on PC Game Pass

NINJA GAIDEN 2 BLACK • Ninja Gaiden 2 strikes back in Unreal Engine 5

SUIKODEN I & II HD REMASTER • The iconic JRPG saga from Konami finally arrives on PC

LIKE A DRAGON: PIRATE YAKUZA IN HAWAII • Shiver me timbers!

DOOM: THE DARK AGES • Eternal was all about acrobatics, this wants you to stand and fight

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN • Three hours with this helped me accept it’s not co-op Elden Ring

ASSASSIN’S CREED SHADOWS • Ubisoft’s latest adventure is making a great first impression

GRAVELORD • Riiiiiiise from your grave. And hit things with a shovel

UNNATURAL WORLDS • A game that lives up to its name

FARAWAY • Quite a long way over the hills

SLIPGATE • We’re all doomed, Mr Freeman

PRISMA • Say cheese

WANDERSTOP • Make tea, not war

Life Swap • inZOI is readying up in all its ultra-realistic glory to be the first true rival The Sims series has ever had.

LOVE’S LABORS LIBRARY PART TWO • Building a library with BALDUR’S GATE III’s foremost librarian

SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE UP TO 79% • NEW! full digital access to 120+ back issues when you subscribe!*

THE BEST GAME DESIGN PROGRAMS RANKED BY THE PRINCETON REVIEW 2025 • No matter what aspect of game development you’re interested in, the Princeton Review has worked to find the best school for you.

THE TOP 50 GAME DESIGN UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS • Whether you’re just getting into game design or honing existing skills, the perfect game design program for you is out there. Read up on the 50 best undergraduate and 25 best graduate programs in the country and beyond.

Setting the tone and telling stories with level design • Level designers are the unsung heroes of game development, building the spaces that test the player’s reflexes, perception, and problem solving skills in ways that often go unnoticed. A grotesque comer of Hell in Doom Eternal, the isometric dungeons of Diablo 4, a test chamber in Portal 2—level designers are as responsible for establishing a game’s look, flow, and fun as the artists who paint the world and the programmers who bring mechanics online.

Competitive communication • At some point in the development of a team-based shooter, game developers have to contend with a common conundrum: Team shooters are at their most fun when players are communicating, but most people choose to play without a microphone or text chat. This problem is exacerbated on consoles, where the lack of keyboards make text chat uncommon. Some studios, like Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward, design around the problem by giving players strong individual incentives besides winning the match, such as unlocking weapons or attachments just for playing. But when core competition is integral to the experience and nobody’s speaking up. how do you get players on the same page?

Bringing videogames to life with beautiful animation • Animation is one aspect of...