Every Friday the PC Gamer stares the previous seven days in the face and refuses to blink. Find out what we loved, and what we ve tried (but failed) to blank out

THE HIGHS

Wes Fenlon: About to wade into Witcher lore
The best news of the week, for me, is that The Witcher 3 is coming out in early 2015. Not spring or summer. February 24, 2015. And, no surprise, the game looks stunning. It has an almost impossibly high bar to live up to, at this point: a vast, beautiful open world, 100 hours of story and sidequests, and the Witcher's traditionally excellent morally grey choices. I'm pumped to go after the Wild Hunt, the horsemen of death we've mostly only seen in Witcher backstory. I'm almost excited enough to start reading the Witcher novels. Dangerous territory.

Tim Clark: FIFA finally gets with the programme
It s fashionable to beat up on EA, and this year the company will have been pleased to have avoided completing a hattrick of consecutive worst company in America awards. I ve always thought that level of hatred was ludicrously hyperbolic, though. EA makes some pretty good games and, notable exceptions like the Sim City launch apart, does a decent of bringing them to PC. However The decision last year not to bother using the new Ignite engine for the PC version of FIFA 14 was pretty contemptuous of our audience. So I m delighted that it s now been confirmed that this year s game will be on par with the next-gen consoles. Expect more info very soon, but I m confident you won t be disappointed.



Phil Savage: It's a Wild world
The only thing I've played this week is Wildstar. Sure, I probably had time to squeeze in a quick game of Minesweeper, but why would I want to? It's Minesweeper. At this point, it's a definite high Wildstar, not Minesweeper but I've written loads about it already, so let's pick something else. My other highlight of the week was this Source Filmmaker short. It's the Hotline Miami 2 trailer, only done with the cast of Team Fortress 2. It's everything that's great about the Source Filmmaker's flexibility: exciting, fluid and of an unbelievably professional quality. It's just a shame TF2 isn't really like this.

Cory Banks: The One pad to rule them all?
I love gadgets. I love to hook up a whole mess of peripherals and see how they work with my PC games. Yes, the keyboard and mouse is great, but so are joysticks, keypads, and even controllers. So I m thrilled that Microsoft finally released PC drivers for the Xbox One controller. It feels pretty good in my hands, and the idea that we ll have PC games using the controller s trigger rumble is pretty cool. More gadgets on my PC is a good thing here s hoping Sony releases an official solution for its stellar controller next (though you can make the DualShock 4 work on PC now with some tinkering).



Sam Roberts: Cops and robbers make a comeback
I can t say Battlefield has traditionally captured my imagination, but I ll play the absolute shit outta Hardline, which this week got its first trailer after a number of extraordinary leaks. Say the word heist to me and I think of three things: Heat, Payday and GTA V (still not on PC, boo!). Hardline is the Battlefield interpretation of a multiplayer cops vs robbers game, and it looks like big, stupid fun, and looks like it features the kind of ludicrous crime scenarios that have never been documented in the history of man. Can t wait to learn more about it next week when someone awkwardly plays it on stage at E3.

Tom Senior: I want to hack into a wolf
I was peering over Sam's shoulder as he played through Jordan Thomas and Stephen Alexander's indie project, The Magic Circle. It buries its lede behind a series of in-jokes laser targeted at experienced gamers and game designers, which is all good fun, but I'm really excited to play it for the AI manipulation. You can tunnel into NPCs and objects and give them items or change their behaviour, which lets you roll through the world with a posse of sentient bricks and vicious wolves. There are some very neat moments that take a sledgehammer to the fourth wall, but to mention them would only spoil things. It's clever, it's funny, and worth getting excited about.



Andy Kelly: Vanishing's potential is easy to spot
The first proper trailer for The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was released this week. I ve already seen a bit of the game you can read my preview here but this looks way more polished. Their photogrammetry tech has created some really impressive environments, and I m a sucker for anything set in American forests (Alan Wake, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, etc.) Who could have imagined that the minds behind Bulletstorm, a game whose hero says things like Son of a dick! as he blows peoples heads off, would create something so seemingly subtle and thoughtful.





THE LOWS

Phil Savage: Falling behind in the space race
Star Citizen released its dogfighting module this week, and already I'm worried. I've not played it, but I've seen the response, and it's not been overwhelmingly positive. I have played Elite: Dangerous, and its absurd beta entry price aside it's shaping up to be something extremely special. The look, the feel, and especially the sound all sell the fantasy of an exciting space adventure. It's even exciting when it's boring, as Andy revealed in his trading video.

The difference is that Elite feels like a whole project, while Star Citizen seems fragmented. The Cloud Imperium team are doing amazing things with the small details, but it's hard to discern how it'll all translate into a full project. It's almost like they can't see the universe for the trees, and, even with nearly $45 million raised, I'm yet to be convinced that they can deliver on the big picture.

Wes Fenlon: The past can be an annoying place to visit
The low point of my week was trying to get a 10-year-old game to run on the Large Pixel Collider for my next Pixel Boost. It wouldn't work, and it took me about half an hour of tinkering to discover some old hardware acceleration simply doesn't work with three monitors hooked up via Nvidia Surround. When I was Googling around for a solution, I found lots of doom and gloom message board posts claiming Nvidia had abandoned development of Surround and left it with lots of issues.

Thankfully that's not true, judging by recent Nvidia drivers, but it's still tricky to get running. On the bright side, Nvidia just updated the GeForce Experience to support Shadowplay capture up to 2560x1440. I just used it to capture Watch Dogs footage, and it's so nice not to deal with the framerate hit of FRAPS.



Tim Clark: Craving cards
I m getting pretty antsy waiting for Hearthstone s Curse of Naraxxmus expansion, which has still only got a vague release date of summer . I suppose I should just be grateful the date isn t listed as when the blood moon rises over Blackrock Mountain . And I get that the drip drip of new cards oh hai, Void Caller is designed to build anticipation, (and give deck-building savants a chance to dream up evil new constructions), but look I m ready to go now, Blizzard. You ve already had quite a bit of my money. Prepare to receive some more. Please?

Cory Banks: Doing VR a disservice
It s okay if you don t think the Oculus Rift is a huge deal the first development kit made me actually vomit but it s another thing to think the technology behind it is actually negative. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told Bloomberg this week that the virtual reality headset is anti-social technology, which just feels too dismissive for my taste. Will I want to use the Rift in a crowded room? Probably not, unless my friends are willing to do the same. But virtual reality has the potential to keep people close when they re not in the same place, just like social media does now. Maybe that s why Facebook purchased the company in the first place.



Andy Kelly: All about EVE
CCP losing staff is bad news. They say it s on the publishing side of things, and the games won t be affected, but I wonder if there are deeper problems at the company. World of Darkness being canned must have cost them a pretty penny you can read the details of its demise here and I hope it won t affect their grand vision for the EVE universe, which is the subject of my cover feature in this month s issue of the magazine. Valkyrie is one of the most impressive VR games I ve played, and Project Legion is an intriguing sandbox shooter with elements of Borderlands and DayZ (you can read about all this in the mag).

Sam Roberts: Nah nah nah nah, no BATMAN!
Arkham Knight being delayed until 2015 is pretty disappointing, meaning this year is left a little thin on big games as they all get pushed back to next year (The Witcher 3, The Division). This is a bigger loss for me, though I m a huge fan of the Arkham series and I was looking forward to titting about in a Batmobile that is blatantly too deadly to adhere to the Caped Crusader s moral code about killing people. That still leaves Dragon Age: The Inquisition and Assassin s Creed Unity for this year, along with Battlefield Hardline but not an awful lot else.



Tom Senior: In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only mild disappointment
Every now and then I revisit Relic's Space Marine. It's a simplistic brawler with an essential twist it's set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. An adolescent obsession with that fiction has left me with a vivid impression of the neverending wars of the 41st millennium, and it's something games have never come close to capturing. Take Space Marine: Relic nailed the blood-spattered livery of Ultramarine power armour, and the satisfying squelch of an Ork collapsing under a commander's big blue boot, but missed the dark tone and scale that make the universe compelling.

The first mistake is to think of Space Marines as good guys. They're genetically altered interstellar fascists who worship an emperor entombed inside a Giger-esque machine sarcophagus, tended to day and night by an army of half-man, half-machine fanatics who brand their own flesh with litanies to their possibly-dead ruler. Space Marines are monsters bred by humanity to fight the bigger monsters amassing in the dark corners of the universe. I hope to explore that version of the 40k universe, one rendered with the extremes of the fiction intact. I have visions of fighting on a battlefield with thousands of enemies swarming around the feet of walking war machines the size of skyscrapers. Sadly, Space Marine can't deliver. I live in hope that a game will one day, I just don't want to wait until the 41st millenium to play it.

Space Marine, the ultra-violent close-combat exploration of the grisly Warhammer 40K universe, was a good game that didn't get enough attention. Still, had THQ not completely imploded at the end of 2012, Space Marine’s protagonist Captain Titus was planned to have been at the center of two more games. The game’s director, Raphael van Lierop, is now part of the team that successfully Kickstarted The Long Dark, and he claims to have had big plans for Titus.

“The second part of his story was to focus on a ‘Titus Unleashed’ plot—basically there were forces arrayed against him that would see his loyalty to the Adeptus Astartes pushed to its limit, and his reaction would be to kind of ‘go rogue,’ and we'd see a different Titus, not quite as in control as we saw him in Space Marine,” van Lierop told The PA Report. “He would survive, and come back even stronger in the third game, where other Space Marines still loyal to him would rally around him and he'd return to ‘clean house,’ but as the head of a brand new Chapter that we would build around him.”

I found Space Marine to be a well-made ballet of death and carnage, which is my favorite kind of ballet. For more details on Titus’s cancelled storylines, check out the full interview with van Lierop at PAR.

If you missed out on last year's Humble THQ Bundle or followup Nvidia giveaway, it's time for a threepeat. Amazon saw how all the cool kids were discounting THQ games with great results, and it has followed suit with the Tantalizing THQ Medley, which slices off 91 percent in savings across six games, including Metro 2033, STALKER, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.

Plunking down just $12 also nets you Homefront, Red Faction: Armageddon and Red Faction: Guerrilla. And though this particular bundle's offerings aren't as strong as some in the past (Homefront fared only somewhat average critically), the price is one of the best for what you get.

The evil gods of Chaos tend to use fear and the promise of power immortality to motivate their warriors, but it turns out all they really need is an experience system and a linear series of unlocks. THQ are setting out to prove this with a new lump of paid DLC for Space Marine's recently added co-op survival mode, Exterminatus.

Exterminatus added two survival maps to Space Marine for free recently. Many Orks were slain. Much honour was gained in the eyes of the Emperor. Many badass assault packs were unlocked. The new Chaos Unleashed pack will cast you as the forces of Chaos, and will pit you against waves and waves of Imperial Guardsmen and Orks in new arenas. The pack also includes three multiplayer maps, Habs Ablaze, Station Tertius and Aquila Canyon. The pack will cost 800 Microsoft Points / £7.99 and will arrive in December.

THQ announce that they will also be selling Salamander, Alpha Legion, Legion of the Damned and Blood Angel skins at the hefty price of 240 Microsoft Points / £2.39 each.

If you're not tempted by any of this stuff, THQ say that the update will also add a capture the flag mutliplayer mode to Space Marine for everyone for free. A flag seems a little mundane for the Warhammer universe. Capture the Giant Robot Skull might be better, don't you think?

Space Marine has finally received its four player co-op survival mode, Exterminatus. An automatic Steam update should add the mode to the Online section of the Space Marine main menu, and will offer you and four friends two maps on which to trounce hordes and hordes of Orks. I jumped in for five minutes and killed about 115 with nothing but a Heavy Bolter and a big power-armoured booty. Stomp, stomp! Dakka dakka! Weapon unlocked!

Experience earned popping green monsters in survival mode will also count towards your overall multiplayer rank, giving you new weaponry with which to embarrass your enemies, which acts as an unnecessary extra motivation to team up and make a big gooey mess of a charging Ork Waaaagh!

THQ's executive VP of core games, Danny Bilson has been talking to Joystiq about the possibility of a sequel to Space Marine. His muted reaction isn't good news for those hoping for a bigger and better follow-up. He says he's "not sure if there's room" for Space Marine 2, thanks in part to the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 MMO, Dark Millenium Online.

Bilson points out that THQ have "already annouced the Imperium in the MMO as a class you can play," and notes that it's "very active, as opposed to the more turn-based stuff. I'm not sure there's room for Space Marine." Dark Millenium's estimated 2013 release could put it in competition with a Space Marine sequel.

There is some good news for those who have enjoyed Relic's use of the license so far with the Dawn of War series and Space Marine. "We are heavily invested in the 40K universe, so there's more stuff coming in the 40K universe, absolutely. We extended the deal for quite a while," says Bilson.

Dark Millenium is being developed by Vigil, but recent rumours have suggested that Relic may be helping out a little with development, and the MMO could use a version of the Darksiders Engine, with similar combat to Space Marine. That would fit Bilson's description of the MMO as "very active." The information, mentioned on Strategy Informer, hinted at some of the included classes and characters, namedropping Imperial Assassins, Eldar Farseers and even Tau units. The info-dump mentioned that races would be separated into Order and Disorder factions, with Chaos and Orks on one side, and Imperials and Eldar on the other.

THQ have since responded to say that "at this time THQ has not officially announced a release date and any reported features are pure speculation. THQ will announce confirmed game features and an official release date at a later time." We've assigned our finest Eldar Rangers to the bushes outside Vigil, but they haven't discovered anything yet because Eldar Rangers are a bit rubbish. We'll be sending in the Space Marines as soon as Rich has managed to fit himself into his power armour.

Skyrim. The very name makes all other roleplaying games tremble in fear. But not PC Gamer—we charged into Bethesda's breathtaking new game world without regard for personal safety. We emerged hours later with a sacred tome containing the tales of our adventures therein, which we now present to you in the form of this month's cover story.

Once you've read and reread the Skyrim feature, be sure to check out the 50 things you need to know about the free-to-play MMO shooter Firefall. We've also got a preview on Gearbox's gorgeous-looking Borderlands 2, in-depth insight into PlanetSide 2, and the review of Relic's Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Also, see which mouse tied the highest review score ever. This, fellow PC gamers, is sexy hardware at its best.

The Exterminatus mode for Space Marine will be available as a free download on October 25, Eurogamer report. Exterminatus will add two co-op arenas, Assault on Hab Center Andreas, and Escape from Kalkys Facility. In each of these up to four marines must fend off increasingly brutal waves of enemies made up of Ork and Chaos enemies.

Each member of the squad can choose to be Tactical Marine, a Devastator or an Assault Marine, and will be able to use perks unlocked in multiplayer to gain an advantage over the AI controlled hordes. Kills in Exterminatus will give you experience that will level up your characters in competitive multiplayer, too. Teams will be rated in each round based on their performance. Point multipliers and "dynamic challenges" aim to keep the survival maps fresh.

As for future DLC, Relic tell Eurogamer that "we're working on some other DLC" for Space Marine, and "there will be a free component to them as well as some paid components." Perhaps we'll see new maps and more wargear in future, similar to the DLC packs Relic and THQ released for Dawn of War: Retribution's superb Last Stand mode.

Space Marine has some of the most gristly, crunchy combat we've experience this year. The prospect of stomping on Orks with friends makes us sternly thump our desks in approval. Find out why we enjoyed Space Marine so much in our Space Marine review.

We've gathered together for an extra long PC Gamer podcast to celebrate our return after a bit of a hiatus. We discuss Tom's trip to play Skyrim, get excited about Firefall and Planetside 2, have a think about Space Marine co-op and chat about Diablo 3's spectacular runestones.

Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.

Slowly but surely, the intern takeover/revolution is beginning. Join us as Gavin leads Dan, Evan, Lucas, and newcomer intern Greg into battle, discussing their impressions of Warhammer 40k: Space Marine, Dead Island, Hard Reset, and the trials and tribulations of proximity mines in Goldeneye: Source. We also (attempt to) answer the age-old question: do unlocks in multiplayer FPS games enhance or encumber our experience?

PC Gamer US Podcast 287: SMAZ (Space Marines and Zombies)

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