The Rise of the Triad announcement teased last week has been revealed, and it's not a sequel: It's a soundtrack! And no, that's not quite as exciting as a new game, but Dave Oshry, Rise of the Triad's principal director and marketing dude, says there's more to come in the future.

"We've got a list of things we want to do, things we're working on and things that may or may not happen," he said. "I don't want to promise anything (because that's never a good idea in game development) but we're 100 percent committed to continuing to add features, content, tweaks and value to the ROTT reboot this year and continuing to reward the people who pre-ordered the game or were there playing with us on day one."

Longer term, he said the studio is aiming to release a "Ludicrous Edition" of the game that will collect everything—the Rise of the Triad remake, the soundtrack, the original 1995 release, the Extreme ROTT map pack, and whatever else it comes up with—into a single package. "And want to give that to people who pre-ordered the game for free, as a reward for being part of the ROTT community," Oshry said. "They've been getting weird with us for two years now and some of them have been fans of all things ROTT for 20 years now. It's a fun IP to be a part of."

As for the soundtrack, it contains 30 tracks composed by Andrew Hulshult, with inspirational titles like "Suck This," "Run Like Smeg," "I Choose the Stairs," "M-M-M-Menu," and, "OWW." Only about 20 of the tracks are actually in Rise of the Triad, but all of them will be remastered and added to the game in a future update. It's available now on Steam and will arrive soon on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and other fine purveyors of digital entertainment.

THE HIGHS

Tim Clark: Quite the Contradiction  Playing Her Story with my other half gave us a thirst for more detective stuff, so, like junkies reduced to shooting baking soda between our toes, we found ourselves solving a murder (or is it!) with Inspector Jenks in Contradiction. Let s be absolutely clear about this: The acting in Contradiction is some of the worst performed in any medium. Jenks—he s the guy in the fedora, of course he is—never uses one facial expression when five could equally suffice. In fact his eyebrows appear to be acting in a different medium altogether, seemingly a 19th century French farce, and the rest of the cast are little better—managing to chew up both the scenery and the .avi files on which its contained.

And yet, despite the whole thing coming on like an explosion at the amateur dramatics society, we found ourselves having fun. The plot, which takes in brainwashing, the occult, and the production of homebrew real ale, is sub-Midsomer Murders stuff (Americans, imagine Murder She Wrote, only even weaker sauce), but ploughing through the clues and witness statements looking for the contradictions that push the story on proved diverting enough for a couple of nights. It s not in the same league as Her Story of course. There s nothing here that will make you think differently about the medium. But I m increasingly convinced there s a police procedural genre to be had here.

Phil Savage: Announcing my excitement It's been a good week for companies announcing their upcoming announcements. Both Mafia 3 and Endless Space 2 are getting full Gamescom reveals next week, as is a new World of Warcraft expansion. The Germany-based convention has always been a good show for PC gaming—more so than E3—and this year is clearly no exception. I'm particularly excited to see what Amplitude are cooking up, as Endless Legend was one of my favourite 4X games of recent years.

I guess that means my high for the week is that next week is going to be really good?

Samuel Roberts: The new Hitman We posted my Hitman piece this week, in which I spoke to IO Interactive about how they re recapturing the spirit of old Hitman; you know, the Blood Money-esque stealth sandbox experience you liked before Absolution came along. Seeing it in action was one of my E3 highlights, just because the environment they showed off—a Parisian palace that s both a fashion show and a secret auction of political secrets—looked exactly like how a modern version of a Hitman environment should. While the Early Access-style release model for Hitman is sort of confusing, I m looking forward to seeing what IO has been working on for three years when Hitman arrives in December.

Tyler Wilde: Rising Thunder rises Rising Thunder, the fighting game I previewed last week, is now in technical alpha—invites are going out in waves to people who register on the official site. Now that it s populated with players, it pretty much stays open in the background whenever I m on my PC. There are plenty of issues, like that it tends to timeout in between games, but free alphas are gonna do free alpha stuff like that. I can forgive it, for now, because it offers me the opportunity to get into a new fighting game without the pain of getting into a new fighting game.

What stops me from getting better at Street Fighter IV is that I don t have 20 people waiting around to play Street Fighter with me all the time—and we all know the online sucks. So either I sit and train by myself all the time, or I just submit to the fact that I m going to get my ass kicked the four times a year that I actually have people over who want to play. Even in this early state, an online PC fighting game that was built to be an online PC fighting game gives me a lot more motivation to get better. I can t wait for a better training mode and private matches. (I also look forward to more tearful rants about how Rising Thunder is destroying the fighting game community, because that s fun too.)

James Davenport: Dad Hunt 2015 Since there are no fun or good games available anywhere, my friend Mat and I decided to binge on whatever free-to-play game had the brightest colors and biggest letters in the Steam store. We witnessed some true horrors, but stumbled into one of the most profound gaming experiences I ve had in recent memory: theHunter, an online, open world, big game hunting sim gave us a father. With no intent to actually play the game as designed, we instead settled on asking if anyone in the global chat would be our honorary dad. I ll never forget Acebomber21 s words of wisdom that day. He imparted genuine advice, like to stop shooting at the sky or to quit running and whistling everywhere we went. In time, Mat and I observed our impromptu pa stalk and bag a buck whitetail. He asked us to stand next to it so he could take a picture using the game s first-person digital camera. Was it pride?

Acebomber21 eventually left us. We didn t listen. We decided to chase the boar and whistle it to death. Dad left the game. However fleeting, our connection was beautiful, and pretty messed up. But that s what video games are all about.

Chris Livingston: Shake-N-Quake I attended my first QuakeCon in Dallas, Texas this past weekend. It's a really neat convention with lots to do and see, from the Bring Your Own Computer room, featuring the biggest LAN in North America, to the tabletop gaming room, to the presentations of Fallout 4 and Doom.

We were all given a cool surprise as well: hands-on with Doom multiplayer. There was a single map, playable in 6v6 team deathmatch sessions for 6 minutes at a time, two sessions going at once, and the winners got to play each other on the main stage.

Doom multiplayer has a real Unreal Tournament vibe to it: fast-paced combat, cool guns, and a well-designed map with great flow that made me feel like I was always moving forward even though I was essentially running in circles. The speed didn't quite match multiplayer of old—I found myself automatically pressing Shift every so often in an attempt to run faster—but it was still a fun and frantic experience. Best news for me personally: the plasma rifle, which I thought looked a little underwhelming in the gameplay footage, felt and sounded great.

The only downside: no chainsaw in that particular version of multiplayer. To which I say: what the hell?

THE LOWS

Phil Savage: Solitary confoundment I'm not entirely convinced that World of Warcraft justifies its subscription, but I understand that developmennt and upkeep is a massive undertaking with a small army of people at the helm. This is definitely not the case for Solitaire, and so why Microsoft feel the need to charge $10 a year for an ad-free version is beyond me. You can argue it's only Solitaire, but—like it or not—it's probably one of the biggest PC games around. You want to talk about gaming obsessions? People have been fired (by a mayor, no less) for playing it at work.

Solitaire is not a service. It doesn't have massive content updates, or balance patches that nerf the red sevens. It shouldn't need ads, and it definitely shouldn't need a recurring charge to get rid of them.

Tyler Wilde: My Rocket League game I suck at Rocket League. I m pretty sure a lot of people suck at Rocket League, and its best quality is that it s fun whether or not you suck. But it s frightfully obvious when you re outmatched. Last night a few fellow PCGers and I played a bit of 4-on-4 and got creamed. It s pretty demoralizing when you re flopping through the air like an injured butterfly while the other team is gracefully flipping and spiraling into a 6-0 win. But, again, Rocket League is special. Getting crushed by another team s aerial wizardry might make me pout in the short term, but in the long term, all I want to do (other than play Rising Thunder) is drill shots and get better. All the little stories during a match—like when I turned a great save into a goal and pretended like it wasn t all an accident—make me crave more stories, and while it can hurt to sit through an opponent's exceptional goal replay, it inspires me to reach for what they have. I wish I could shoot threes like Steph Curry, but I won t ever be able to. But a badass aerial goal, I could do that.

Is this one of those BS lows that s actually something good? Yes, yes it is—with two fun competitive games to obsess over, you can t make me be sad this week.

Chris Livingston: Pause the jaws I was playing another in a long line of Early Access survival crafting games this week, called Better Late Than DEAD (caps theirs). I don't want to pick on it specifically, because there are other games that do this, but there's a certain multiplayer feature that spills over into single-player and I hate it. It's the inability to pause the game when you use the menu.

I'm not talking about pausing when using the crafting menu—it's absolutely fair that crafting takes place in real-time—but I'd hit Escape to go into the settings menu to look at my keybindings. While I was doing this, an alligator (or perhaps a crocodile) waddled over and killed me, because hitting Escape to bring up the menu didn't pause the game.

I'm all for immersion, and I generally like it when games keep you in real-time as much as possible, even when rooting through your inventory, eating, or crafting. If I were really stuck on an island filled with angry croc-o-gators, I couldn't just freeze time and enjoy a leisurely rummage through my backpack. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't need to stop on a beach to adjust the volume of the world or to figure out if I could throw a coconut, either.

Tim Clark: Steamed up over security The password exploit which emerged last weekend that enabled people to access a Steam account with only the username was so serious that most outlets waited until it was fixed before covering it, rather than risk spreading the problem. Now that the hole has been plugged, I m slightly surprised there hasn t been more head shaking about it. I get that we live in a world in which all our data is assumed to be at constant risk of being stolen and sold to war criminals selling bath salts on the darknet, but hoo boy if we can t trust Gaben and the gang to protect us, who can we trust? (AOL, maybe.)

Samuel Roberts: PT on PC PC players who saw the phenomenon of Kojima Productions PT come and go on PS4 last year can finally see what the fuss was about now—well, sort of. Developer Farhan Qureshi has recreated the iconic, creepy-but-familiar corridor environment from PT in full in PuniTy, while replicating the same visual and audio effects, too. You can read a full making of the Unity demo and download it, but the detail is staggering. It unsettled me in exactly the same way the original version did, even if the beats aren t exactly the same (a deliberate decision). It s so good.

So, why is this my low of the week? Well, firstly I wanted to bring it to your attention in case you missed it, but it also underlines what a bizarre decision it was for Konami to kill PT in the first place, as opposed to just extracting the Silent Hills aspects from the demo (like Norman Reedus s likeness) and sticking it on Steam for 3, where the reception to it from a horror-hungry PC audience would ve been extraordinary. Instead, it s no longer available, meaning there s a certain mystique to PT that s leading to projects like PuniTy. Tying to kill PT has only stoked the fascination with it further. The gaming equivalent of the Streisand Effect.

James Davenport: I danced to Panic at the Disco in a F2P game for a few hours I danced to Panic at the Disco in a F2P game for a few hours. It was hell.

I don t know. It s probably not that bad. I just could have been doing almost anything else. I could have read a book. Or actually learned to dance. Maybe, I missed out on meeting a great friend or even The One because I was anime dancing to Panic at the Disco. I ll never know. Instead, all I know is that pressing directions on keyboards is bullshit, and that Schoolboy Q is still really good.

Keiji Inafune's Mighty No. 9, which drew in more than $3.8 million on Kickstarter in 2013, has reportedly been delayed. The game was originally expected this spring but in April got pushed back to September 15. Now Game Informer says it won't actually be out until sometime in 2016.

The Mighty No. 9 release date on Gamestop and Amazon is now listed as 12/31/2016. That's obviously a placeholder, but according to the report, those dates are dropped in when a game is announced or delayed, and more to the point, they originate from the publisher. The obvious implication is that, even if Deep Silver hasn't officially announced it, if it's the source of the new date, then we've got a wait ahead of us.

It's possible that only the console versions have been delayed, since Steam still lists the launch date as September 15. It's also possible that the Gamestop and Amazon listings are incorrect, and that there will be no delay at all. But a postponement doesn't seem entirely unlikely: Backer response to Mighty No. 9, including an opening stage speedrun posted yesterday, hasn't been entirely positive, and developer Comcept is struggling with Red Ash, another Mega Man-inspired project, which was awkwardly "re-purposed" for stretch goals after an external publishing partner was found just a few days prior to the end of the (inevitably failed) Kickstarter. The one project doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other, but it does hint at not-entirely-smooth sailing at the studio.

We've reached out to Deep Silver and Comcept for confirmation of the delay and will update if and when we receive a reply.

Every hero has to start somewhere. Honestly though, I never thought King Graham of Daventry started out as Guybrush Threepwood—a gawkish young man desperate for respect and glory, as fondly remembered by his older self in the form of stories told to his granddaughter Gwendolyn. ("Grandad, tell me the one about how you almost heroically fed Auntie Rosella to a dragon!" "Uh. How about the time I pied a yeti instead?")

This reboot of the venerable King's Quest series has much in common with that young Graham—both well-meaning and full of confidence, yet frustratingly green when it comes to basics. Graham longs to skip straight to being the kind of knight who can cross a chasm by firing a rope arrow across it. King s Quest wants to combine Telltale's current episodic style with a little old-school sensibility. The key difference is that by the end of the episode, Graham has learned to fire a bow, while King s Quest is still struggling with design fundamentals.

Where it succeeds is in being worth rooting for, even during its struggles. New developers The Odd Gentlemen give it their absolute all here, and that includes not relying on nostalgia. Aside from a few references here and there, from specific lines to a very familiar looking tunnel, this King's Quest has basically nothing to do with, cough, 'Master Storyteller' Roberta Williams' rather generously remembered games. It's designed for gamepad instead of mouse, and an adventure that happily wears action's hand-me-downs—though one that never actually goes beyond the most basic QTEs. That means no pointing, no clicking, and not much in the way of puzzles. For a nostalgia driven game, there s little real nostalgia.

Sur Feit of Buffonery

Despite all this though, King's Quest still retains a certain amount of the spirit of the originals, not least in offering a sprawling world that can more or less be explored at will, as well as putting far more focus on character and world design the other games ever did—albeit often undercut by far too many modern jokes that don't fit the fantasy mood at all, and endless crap puns that cry out for a Josh Mandel or similar to come in and show the writers how they're meant to be done. It's not that King's Quest can't be a place to do gags about tourist traps and the like, though it never has been, but that every one makes it more generic rather than more interesting. One of the big reasons that King's Quest VI is the most beloved of the series, aside from the Jane Jensen factor, is that its Land Of The Green Isles setting had a strong sense of place and coherency to it. This new Daventry is a bit too happy to sacrifice that, as well as just preferring to wheel out stock fantasy instead of using folk and fairytales.

What primarily stands out in its favour though is how warm the whole experience is, with a real sense of heart. There's a particularly good moment early on where Graham is trying to cross a river, only for every plan to be rudely stolen by the other knights competing with him for a place in the King's court. Only one of them pauses to realise that without him, none of them would ever have made it across. That sets a good tone for the rest, with Graham slowly earning respect on both sides of the screen and reinforcing that a hero isn't necessarily the strongest or the swiftest or even the bravest. What I particularly liked though is that he also learns from the other side—the chances to steal, to do the wrong thing, that being a hero doesn't always end well. It's not Game Of Thrones or anything, and the lack of a meatier story kicking off by the end doesn't offer much momentum for the next episode to coast on, but it does give Graham a much needed sense of nuance and texture and, crucially, drive.

Once upon a time in the 1980s...

This first episode isn't the most exciting of stories, focusing on Graham's arrival in Daventry and the—oh, what a surprise—three trials he has to perform to become a pirate. Sorry, a knight. There's some interesting elements to this, including puzzles with multiple solutions and a smattering of moral choices that may or may not lead to anything interesting later on, but it's generally by the numbers stuff with a few excellent puzzles and set-pieces and mostly terrible QTE sequences that go on too long and are no fun at all. One involving a rope arrow is particularly clever, as are a couple of sequences involving movement as well as puzzle solving... thankfully, a little more complex than just turning a wheel, as in the deathly boring prologue.

If you've seen or read The Princess Bride, you'll have a good idea of what the challenges entail... and King's Quest isn't subtle about its pilfering, going as far as to hire Wallace Shawn show up to challenge King Graham to a game of wits involving sinister powders and goblet switching. Still, it could be worse! I particularly liked how Graham solved most of his problems here, not simply using wit to compensate for weakness, by doing so without either cheating or casually falling into adventure game sociopathy. It's a small thing, but it helps sell him as the good king he's destined to be, rather than just the most effective bastard around town.

Unfortunately much of the good here is horribly undercut by appalling pacing, the inability to skip dialogue or cutscenes even if you've seen them before and they're only a long-winded way of saying "nope" (an official Adventure Crime punishable by being flogged, flayed, and fired into the sun), and some terrible puzzle structure. The whole point of Three Trials design is that if you get stuck on one thing, you've got other stuff to work on. King's Quest however is linear, pretending that you have choices when you don't, setting tasks you have no way of accomplishing for ages, and often obtuse about what you're supposed to be doing next. Could this be said of the originals? Well, yes, and far, far worse. Still, suffering from the failings of games from an era where 16 colours were impressive is no good thing in 2015.

This kills most of the puzzles dead. Either you have the item you need, in which case it's immediately obvious what to do with it, or you're methodically trudging around endless forest scenes trying to find anything that you can actually do in order to advance. There are some pointers in a few of these cases, but it's so easy to forget a tiny detail on one screen or forget where the path was to a specific place, or accidentally overlook some object. The controls don't help. There s no mouse to sweep the screen for items, fussy interaction icons that often won't pop up or register an item unless you're standing at exactly the right point, no status bar to tell you what you re looking at specifically, and very clunky character movement. Combine that with the unskippable dialogue and you have a recipe for a broken monitor.

This is the kind of thing that really needed polishing further, well before worrying about cute flourishes like whether or not Graham earns a badge for never leaving the town gates open to wolves or has occasional alternative paths. Especially when you only have one (auto)save and so can't go back to explore others. That bizarrely includes when you finish the game, with the mandatory save only letting you replay the ending rather than continue exploring.

It's a testament to the bits that work that its many flaws don't kill the experience—that its clever moments, its bursts of personality, the little zaps of nostalgia in everything from puzzle solutions to music cues manage to prop up the tedious wandering and bland QTEs and the writers tendency to forget this is King's Quest rather than Monkey Island. In just about every case though, it's in ways that are easily forgivable once, in a disposable five hour story that meanders along happily without ever going anywhere of note. Left to be series habits though, they'll quickly become intolerable.

The Silent Hills playable teaser, known colloquially to gamers as PT, was originally released in 2014 as a PS4 freebie on the PlayStation Store. But after the apparent breakdown in relationship with Hideo Kojima the wheels came off Silent Hills, Konami pulled it, and blocked anyone who already had it from re-downloading it. Fortunately for those who missed out on the experience, it's now possible to play a small part of it on the PC thanks to the efforts of Farhan Qureshi, an aspiring game developer who put together an accurate and extremely detailed recreation of the PT hallway in Unity.

"I started this project for a 3D modelling workshop I m planning to teach in September," he explained on The-Outline.com. "Originally I wanted to create an apartment scene for its simplicity, variety, and familiarity, but I wanted something more game-focused as the workshop is being targetted at the Calgary Game Developers. I ended up choosing the PT hallway as it s an interior scene fairly close to an apartment, and the simplicity, variety, and familiarity still exist. Plus it s no longer available to download, but I can make it live on in some fashion by doing this."

Despite being just a small piece of PT, creating the hallway was a major undertaking, although one he clearly enjoyed. "104 hours over 4 weeks. 5 hours of sleep on half those days. 8-hour obsession-infused modelling sessions. Thinking of what I wanted to implement while dishwashing at my job," he wrote. "This was a blast."

PuniTy—that's what he calls it—is available for 32 and 64-bit Windows, as well as Mac and Linux. Grab it from Dropbox or, if that's a bust (as you might imagine, it's getting hit pretty hard right now) from Itch. And take heart: PT may be gone, but it sounds like the collaboration between creators Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima will live on. "I love working with Kojima-san," del Toro said last week. " We are still in touch. We are still friends and working into doing something together, but that s not going to be [Silent Hills]."

UPDATE - Here's the card! The Argent Strider is a neutral 3-Mana common minion, with 2/1 stats, Charge and Divine Shield.

There's probably a place for him in aggro Paladin decks, where he can be buffed with cards like Blessing of Wisdom to become a DIY Argent Commander. Tom thinks the card might also see play as an effective answer to a turn two Knife Juggler. What do you reckon readers? Can you find a home for this mustachioed horseman? 

You can watch the full video of the card reveal, followed by our thoughts on all the cards revealed so far over at our Twitch channel. 

Original story: It's been a little over a week since  Blizzard announced the next expansion for Hearthstone, The Grand Tournament, and we've since fallen into a familiar pattern of scouring the internet daily for new card announcements. In the lead up to Hearthstone's last major expansion, Goblins vs Gnomes, we got to announce a new card here on PC Gamer, and we're pleased as a Hunter with an on-curve Highmane to say we've got another card to announce today for The Grand Tournament. 

Resident Hearthstoners Tim Clark and Tom Marks will be playing some Tavern Brawl during our regular Friday livestream  today from 3-5pm PDT. At around 3.30 PDT they will be joined by Hearthstone's senior game designer Ben Brode for the reveal, and to take a few questions from Twitch chat (if it's not too rowdy). After that Tim and Tom will be discussing all the new cards revealed so far.

You can watch the stream from the embed above, or directly on  our Twitch channel, and we'll be sure to post a full-res image of the card as soon as it's shown.

Corpse of Discovery, as described in the announcement of its existence, "is a thought-provoking game of exploration and adventure spread across a myriad of beautiful, procedurally generated worlds." That sounds quite pleasant, doesn't it? Alas, the teaser trailer, ominously entitled "What Went Wrong?" paints a bit of a different picture.

As a member of the Corps of Discovery—which, by the way, was a real thing in the early 1800s—your job is to explore planets, uncover resources, and survive various sorts of environmental hazards, with the ultimate goal of getting home safely to your family. Creative Director Chip Sineni said his own goal in creating the game is to "dissect and examine the tough balance between work and personal life," something he dealt with on a personal level by incorporating members of his family into the game.

It's an intriguing setup, and I really like the teaser. There's no word on a release date but developer Phosphor Games says it's "coming soon."

Whether you re grinding out levels, trying to score headshots, or macroing while microing a drop, you probably spend a lot of time at your keyboard. Just like your mouse, your keyboard is an integral part to your computer setup. If you re obsessing over your mouse s DPI, you obviously care about what you use. A keyboard deserves the same level of scrutiny. Enter the mechanical keyboard.

Mechanical keyboards have individual keyswitches and metal springs. Rubber dome keyboards—most modern, cheap keyboards—have a sheet of rubber that provides the resistance, tactile feeling, and registers the keypress to the computer. Mechanical keyswitches give an unmistakable, stronger feedback as you type in the form of feeling a bump, hearing a click, and/or feeling a smooth bottom out to the keyboard s base. Not only does it feel more satisfying than a rubber dome keyboard, it can be more precise, too.

But there s a lot more to keyboards than just rubber vs. mechanical. Even if you re familiar with Cherry MX switches, that s just the beginning. We ve researched and tested over 25 switches to help guide you towards your new keyboard.

If you don't care much about the mechanics of mechanical keyboards and just want to know what to use for gaming, here are some of our favorites.

Mechanical switch history

If you know anything about mechanical keyboards, you probably know about Cherry MX switches. Cherry Corporation, a division of ZF Electronics, has been making keyboards since 1967. They patented their popular MX switch in 1983. The MX switch has since become the de-facto standard keyswitch used in mechanical keyboards. Their most common four switches (MX Red, Black, Blue, and Brown) are typically the switches people start out using.

In 2007, the Cherry MX switch patent (US 4467160A) expired. In the wake of the expiration, many MX-mount switches have been created. Kailh, Razer mechanical switches, Gateron, and other derivatives have now hit the market. These switches have slight differences from the Cherry MX.

Outside of the MX-mount switches and Cherry MX switches, there are a few other popular (at least, popular among keyboard enthusiasts) switch types: Topre, Alps-mount and buckling spring. Topre keyboards, made by the Topre Corporation in Japan, utilize a rubber dome sheet with springs underneath the sheet, which signals the controller through capacitance.

Matias of Canada produces three of their own Alps-mount switches and a few keyboards. Matias switches are clones or derivatives of the Alps Electric Corporation switches produced up until around 1996. Alps-mount switches have a high actuation point compared to Cherry MX switches. Matias produces quality keyboards, offers many of their parts for sale, and are involved in the enthusiast DIY community.

Buckling spring switches are the go-to vintage keyswitches. There are a few variants, but the most common version was made by IBM and Lexmark. These keyswitches are a little different from the MX-mount or Alps-mount switches because of how they work, how they feel, and what keycaps they use. They have a larger spring that buckles against the keyswitch barrels when depressed. This creates the unique clicking feeling and is guaranteed to give feedback when actuated.

IBM/Lexmark stopped making their buckling spring keyboards in 1995. In 1996, a few former Lexmark employees bought the equipment to make Lexmark buckling spring keyboards and formed Unicomp. Today, Unicomp continues to make buckling spring keyboards.

The mechanical switches you should know for gaming

No matter which type of switch you pick, mechanical keyboards are well-suited for playing PC games because they offer unmistakable feedback when pressed. That said, part of the fun of mechanical keyboards is getting one that perfectly suits your needs, and for that, you need to find the switches right for you.

With tactile and clicky switches, you have confirmation every single time you type that what you pressed is registering on the computer, with feedback in the form of a click or the feeling of the bump when you hit the actuation point. The actuation point is when the keystroke is registered on the computer. This means that the gamer does not have to press down fully to get the keystroke to register, leading to faster typing. This can be useful in game types such as RTS where your Actions Per Minute can play a factor in winning.

If you re into faster paced game types, for example FPS games, linear switches may give you an edge. Because there is no dome to compress or a click to overcome, you can press the keyswitch faster and register keystrokes faster. Mechanical keyboards are also much more durable than rubber dome keyboards. For example, Cherry MX switches are rated to a lifespan 20-50 million keystrokes depending on the switch type. Rubber domes are rated to last 5 million.

WIth that general overview in mind, here are the specific mechanical switches you should know. All the Cherry MX switch animations below were created by Geekhack user Lethal Squirrel.

Cherry MX Red and Black

Mount Type: original Cherry MX

Feeling: Linear

Actuation Force: MX Red = 45 cN // MX Black = 60 cN

Force Curve: Here

Sound: Quiet at actuation, sound is generated at bottom-out

Best for: Most game types, especially FPS. There is no bump or click to overcome so there is no hysteresis. This means you can press down on the keys and get a keystroke response faster.

Topre

Mount Type: Topre (mount is unique to Topre keyboards)

Feeling: Tactile

Actuation Force: 30, 35, 45, 55 cN

Force Curve: Here, via blogger Silencium

Sound: Quiet

Best for: Topre switches are very versatile and well suited for most game types. They provide excellent tactile bump feedback when pressed and are very quiet. However since you re depressing a dome, there is hysteresis which isn t ideal for FPS games.

Cherry MX Blue and Green

Mount Type: original Cherry MX

Feeling: Clicky

Actuation Force: MX Blue = 50 cN // MX Green = 80 cN

Force Curve: Here

Sound: Second loudest keyswitch family on this list after buckling spring

Best for: Anything with a lot of typing. These switches provide an audible click and a sharp bump when typing; these attributes can lead to a pleasant typing experience. Game types such as RTS, MOBAs, or MMOs all have a lot of typing and can benefit. However, having that sharp bump and click also means there s hysteresis not ideal for FPS games. Also, you may annoy your friends on team chat due to how loud the switches are.

Buckling Spring

Mount Type: Buckling Spring (mount is unique to the buckling spring switches)

Feeling: Clicky

Actuation Force: Model M and Unicomp (over membrane) = 62.5 cN on average // Model F (over capacitive PCB) = 67.5 cN

Force Curve: Here

Sound: Loudest on this list

Best for: Not good for any team based games as the keyboards are very loud and may annoy teammates on voice chat. Unicomp and IBM Model Ms also only have 2KRO so the keyboard will only register two switches pressed at the same time. This means if you re playing something where you have to press multiple keys to get multiple outputs, it won t work correctly. The switches are better suited for slower paced games like single-player RPGs or adventure games. Finally these switches are most affected by hysteresis.

Cherry MX Brown and Clears

Mount Type: original Cherry MX

Feeling: Tactile

Actuation Force: MX Brown = 45 cN // MX Clear = 65 cN

Force Curve: Here

Sound: Quiet

Best for: Like MX Blues and Greens, these switches provide a nice tactile bump as feedback. If you don t bottom out while typing, these are much quieter too. Again, anything with a lot of typing such as MMOs, RTS, MOBAs, or even rhythm games are good with these switches. Both of these switches have a tactile bump which has hysteresis. It s not as bad as MX Blue or Greens but this can mean that these switches aren t ideal for FPS.

Matias Quiet Click

Mount Type: Alps-mount

Stem Color: Grey

Feeling: Tactile

Actuation Force: 60 cN

Force Curve: Here

Sound: Second quietest switch on this list after Topre

Best for: These are tactile switches so a lot of the same ideas from the MX Brown and Clears section can be applied here. These switches have hysteresis just like Browns and Clears too. However, the actuation point on the Matias switches is much higher than MX switches. If you learn a soft touch, you can type and input commands even faster.

Matias Click

Mount Type: Alps-mount

Stem Color: White

Feeling: Click

Actuation Force: 60 cN

Force Curve: Here

Sound: Loud

Best for: These are tactile switches, so a lot of the same ideas from the MX Blue and Green section can be applied here. However, the actuation point on the Matias switches is much higher than MX switches. If you learn to not bottom out, you can type and input commands even faster. These are also quite loud so be careful if you re using these in a team chat.

Matias Linear

Mount Type: Alps-mount

Stem Color: Red

Feeling: Linear

Actuation Force: 35 cN

Force Curve: Here

Sound: Quiet at actuation, sound is generated at bottom-out

Best for: These are linear switches, so a lot of the same ideas from the MX Red and Black section can be applied here. These switches don t have any hysteresis. However, the actuation point on the Matias switches is much higher than MX switches. If you learn to not bottom out, you can type and input commands even faster. These switches are the second lightest switches on the list, meaning the force needed to press down on the keys is very low.

Other Mount Types

Gateron

Gateron is a Chinese manufacturer which makes MX-mount switches. Like Cherry, they have a range of different switch types which are classified by their stem colors. The enthusiast community has recently seen an influx of these switches and some say they favor the Gateron Clear and Black linear switches.

Kailh or Kaihua

Kailh is a Chinese manufacturer who was the first to make MX-mount switches in 2007. Kailh switches are also differentiated by their stem colors. Razer worked with Kaihua to release their own switches, which are Razer Green (Clicky) and Razor Orange (Tactile). These Razer switches are used in their Razer Blackwidow line of keyboards.

SKCL/SKCM Complicated Alps (Alps Electric Corporation)

These switches were made by Alps Electric Corporation from around 1983 until 1996. They are referred to as complicated Alps because they are comprised of 9 different parts. Like the rest of the switches on the list, they are differentiated by their stem color. Complicated Cream Alps serve as the basis for the Matias Quiet Click keyswitch. Like the Matias switches, they have a square stem, instead of a cross shaped stem like the MX-mount. Just like Matias switches, SKCL/SKCM switches also feature a higher actuation point. These switches are found in vintage keyboards.

Final Thoughts

There are few things you ll interact with more than a keyboard while playing computer games. Mechanical keyboards offer a durable product that lasts years longer than a rubber keyboard. The audible and tactile feedback under hand means there's no mistaking when you've pressed a switch and when your finger is hovering at the ready. And it just feels so much better to type on.

Not many PC gamers can, at this moment, play Batman: Arkham Knight because, as we all know by now, it's such a train wreck that Warner had to stop selling it. But if you are playing it, and you're looking for a little variety in your crimefighting career, why not give Batman a break and go bust some faces as Alfred Pennyworth, his loyal butler, instead?

The voice acting doesn't match up—it's still Bruce Wayne uttering the lines—and Alfred doesn't fight on quite the same level as the Caped Crusader. "His moveset is very limited, he cannot perform counter-attacks, environmental takedowns or dual takedowns," the YouTube description explains. "But he can still kick plenty of ass."

No doubt. The whole video is great, but watching Alfred threaten to break every bone in Oswald Cobblepot's body is a highlight-reel moment, especially with the way his fist is cocked menacingly—the fist that has served a thousand teas, now poised to break a thousand faces. That's what I call poetic justice.

The downside to being able to play as The Pummeling Pennyworth is that it's a stark reminder of the disastrous state of the game, which, more than a month after it was removed from Steam, still doesn't have a re-launch date. There's also something ironic about modders being able to make Alfred playable, while Warner and Rocksteady (and Nvidia) can't even make the game work acceptably. Maybe they should hire this guy?