It's nearly Halloween, the time of year devoted to spooky stories, scary movies, horror games, and changing your Twitter handle from 'Gary Watkins' to 'Scary Bat Skins' and then forgetting to change it back until at least mid-November. Come on, Gary. Get your shit together.

Come, won't you, and join the writers of PC Gamer as we sit around our virtual campfire, where with flashlights (activated by pressing the F key) pointed at our avatar's faces, we take turns telling our spookiest PC gaming stories. Some involve horror games, some don't. Some took place on a screen, some in real life. All involve games, in some way. 

And all involve... terror. (scarylaugh_6.wav)

James Davenport: GTA Fright City

As most teens do, my friend and I abandoned every responsibility in favor of playing GTA: Vice City on its release day until we could no longer stay awake or drink anymore sugar water. We were at his house, a log home on the edge of a small town in western Montana. It was late fall, which meant snow, and it was coming down in droves that particular night. We cozied up inside and smashed cars into walls for a good while. It was a great time, but I started feeling unnerved for no obvious reason. We kept playing, the nervousness peaked and dissipated without issue.

Three or so hours later, around 2 a.m., the feeling came back. This time, my friend and I made knowing eye contact. You feel like we re being watched? he asked. I nodded. We looked around the room, out the living room window, and the glass pane door behind us. We didn t expect to see anything, considering the tall fence surrounding the backyard was locked. Nothing but the snow coming down in heavy flakes effused by a dim porch light. We returned to the game, but only for twenty or so minutes this time. The feeling came back, more intense than before. My survival instincts were kicking in. Again, we made eye contact and began to scan the room. Framed in the glass pane doorway was a woman in a cream colored nightgown. She looked gaunt and pale, her hair was red and wet. She took another step towards the door. No shoes. We didn t move and just looked at one another for a moment.

She began to scramble with the door handle. We didn t tend to lock our doors in Deer Lodge, so she was able to open it and start her way inside. My friend stood up and threw himself against the door, pushing her out and locking it. As he ran to get his dad, she took off around the corner. The man of the house emerged from upstairs in whitey-tighties cradling a shotgun. We looked for her outside, but she was nowhere to be found. The snow had already covered her footprints, as wet and heavy as it was. We all came down from the adrenaline and considered what had actually happened. So it probably wasn t a ghost, but someone who d locked themselves out in the neighborhood. But who locks their doors here? How and why did she get through the fence to the backyard before ringing the doorbell up front? I still have no idea. But now whenever I stay up late playing a game, I check the windows instinctively every hour or so just in case.

Wes Fenlon: In the woods, everyone can hear you scream

In the winter of 2011, two of my best friends and I took a trip out of town to spend a weekend at my family's lake house in rural Georgia. It was a freezing cold February, so we weren't going for the swimming. We were there for the big TV, the surround sound system, and three days of isolation to play Dead Space 2.

To get in the spirit of things, we decided to play Dead Space 2 from dusk late into the night. Since it was winter, the sun was down by late afternoon, and we took turns guiding Isaac through the necromorphs infesting the seriously messed up space station called The Sprawl. Dead Space 2 was spooky, but veered more towards action than the slower-paced original. We were all on edge: the amazing surround sound design meant we had necromorphs moaning and roaring all around us. It gets really dark in a lake house in the woods in February. After a couple nights of playing, we'd made it through most of the game. And then we got to the eye surgery scene.

The more cavalier of my two friends was in control, and he kept the needle perfectly positioned over Isaac's iris...until the last second when it jerked out of position. The entire needle armature came hurtling down, crushing Isaac's eye socket in a fountain of blood. He laid there writhing on the table with a giant needle jammed clear through his skull. Two days of tension exploded in that moment. The other friend jumped off the couch, howled "What the fuck!" and couldn't stop alternating between nervous laughter and revulsion. It took us a good five minutes to recompose ourselves enough to try the scene again. Thank god I made it through the second try without crushing Isaac's eye. I honestly don't think we could've taken the violence of that scene a second time.

Tim Clark: Peter Molyboo

The earliest I can recall being, well, not so much spooked, but weirded out by a game, was playing Rambo on the Commodore 64. (Which should enable you to brutally pinpoint my age.) I was playing it with my best pal, and it had been a marathon session thanks to some hilariously hands-off parenting. Through bleary eyes, one of us noticed Rambo had developed a doppelganger. Blinking out from behind the bushes was another, greener, Rambo, otherwise going about the same foreigner-killing business. Ghost Hulk Rambo can only have been on screen for a few seconds, but we became with obsessed with him, and spent many hours fruitlessly trying to re-summon him. These days it d barely make for a cool YouTube glitch video, but back then, with no internet to explain otherwise, it felt like some sort of eerie proto-Easter Egg the meaning of which we were compelled to decipher.

My other semi-spooky story is actually purloined from James Davenport, who reminded me about a morbid piece of audio from Black & White that also weirded me out. Whenever a villager died in the fun-but-flawed god game (hey, it was a Peter Molyneux joint), a spectral voice would whisper deeeeeeeeeath . Perhaps because it was barely loud enough to pick out over the regular FX, the sound wormed its way into my brain like the Ceti eel larva which Khan dunked into Chekov s ear (I m going for peak nerd here). The more I played, the more I started hearing deeeeeeeeath elsewhere. In supermarkets. At school. On the shrink s couch.

Well, not quite. But it was creepy. And potentially even creepier, because the game would also, very occasionally, also whisper the player s name, provided it was common enough to be in the selection of audio samples. Quite how it knew what you were called was hotly debated, with this thread suggesting it was actually based off your Windows registration. Haunting stuff, eh Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaames?

Samuel Roberts: Star jumps...from hell!

One of my stranger habits in life—and it s a decent talking point if I m stuck for conversation with someone I don t like—is that my preferred form of exercise during the evenings is going into my spider-infested garage and doing 400 star jumps (or jumping jacks, as they re also known) before returning to my flat, hopefully without my neighbours noticing. The garage contains nothing except the discarded box of a Lego Batman Tumbler and, for some reason, a copy of Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill (long story, but I ended up with that because of BioShock 2 and now it lives in my garage while I read books about Batman instead). One night I d been playing chapter three of The Evil Within, a chapter where you stalk around a horror sandbox in this dark, foggy village, looking for a way to open the gate to progress.

It s not that scary as horror games go, but there was this big bastard chained up in a barn who, once you shoot the chains that free him, chases you around with a chainsaw until you can find a way to kill him. It was touch and go: I made a run for it around the village, avoiding death frequently while dodging the chainsaw swipes. I emptied all my explosive crossbow bolts into the guy, and eventually lured him into a trap where I pulled a trigger and killed him with spikes shooting downwards from the ceiling. Dead! Good job. End of chapter. I saved the game and switched it off, ready to go outside to do my evening routine of star jumps. In the dead of night. In my garage. Outside the safety of my flat.

I creep into my garage and silently shut the door. I turn around and there's a guy there all chained up! Not really, but I do check the cracked walls for spiders before I start to jump. I m about 20 jumps in when I hear someone walk past my garage door. Very closely, by the sounds of it. I pause jumping, wait for the person to go, then carry on jumping.

About 30 seconds later...FOX MATING SCREECH! NOPE I think to myself, running out of the garage and back inside where I watch a disc of The Simpsons to calm down. The Evil Within isn t that scary, but there s just enough grim, real world imagery for my brain to make the connection between it and real life. Enough for me to stop exercising like a complete idiot, anyway.

Tom Marks: We don t go to Ravenholm

I was 13 when I first played Half-Life 2, and I didn t like scary things. I didn t watch horror movies or play scary games, so when I got to Ravenholm I was just as apprehensive as Alyx was. It was a tense experience the whole way through—checking every corner twice, saving all the bullets I could. I couldn t find joy in activating traps or slicing zombies in half with a saw blade because my heart was pounding so loud I could pretty much hear it over the game.

About half way through the town, I finally began to relax a little. I started to understand what was coming and could prepare myself for it. Until, that is, I found myself on top of a building and a drain pipe began to shake. Fast zombies. As they started surrounding me on a Ravenholm rooftop, my conservative attitude towards ammo quickly flew out the window and I started shooting at anything that twitched. Predictably, I ran dry fast.

Everything was dead, my guns were empty, and I was breathing heavy...and then I heard another pipe shake. I grabbed a nearby gas tank and ran into the small room on roof, crouching as I huddled myself into the corner furthest from the door. The pipe continued to shake, before it was replaced with an eerie silence. I had my Gravity Gun trained square on the entrance, and finally a fast zombie burst through the door and made a b-line straight for me. I screamed, jumped, and shot the propane tank at him, which promptly exploded. I had a brief moment of pride, thinking my plan had worked, before a burning zombie emerged from the flames and and continued its pursuit. I pretty much lost my shit and probably died, but I honestly don t remember much after that moment. This was the first moment I was truly terrified in a video game and honestly, I d rather not remember it all so clear.

Chris Livingston: Dead but not deleted

I was playing The Graveyard. Despite the title, it's not a horror game, it's an experimental art game by Tale of Tales. In it, you slowly escort an elderly woman through a cemetery. You listen to a strange little song, and then the woman sits down for a rest on a bench. That's essentially it, at least in the free version. In the paid version, there's a chance that while the old woman is sitting on the bench, she'll die. My morbid curiosity led me to buy the game, and there I was, watching her rest on the bench for several long, uneventful minutes.

At one point my cat jumped onto my desk, and as he was a large and boisterous cat, this led to him knocking a bunch of things over. After a moment spent straightening up, I looked back at the screen. The old woman was dead. I'm not a deep thinker, but this still lead to a few moments of somber reflection on how minor distractions can cause you to miss the most important events in life, and how our lives are fleeting and someday we'll all be passing away on that same metaphorical bench, perhaps while someone important to us is busy attending to something else.

A few weeks later, my morbid curiosity surfaced again. I'd gotten something out of The Graveyard, those few thoughtful moments, but I hadn't actually witnessed that old woman die. I started the game again, determined to see it actually happen. When the game loaded, instead of it beginning with the walk through the cemetery, it simply started at the bench where that old woman WAS STILL SITTING THERE DEAD. 

I was completely shocked and aghast. I freaked out. I think I actually got out of my chair and left the room. I mean, yikes and gross and eww and nope. I had no reflective thoughts on how once we die we're dead for all eternity, or anything like that. Just the thought that there's been an old dead woman on my computer for the past several weeks, just sitting there, dead and alone and dead while I was playing other games. I immediately uninstalled it, and the double-checked to make sure all the files were completely gone. It was just too damn creepy to know she was there, her lifeless virtual body haunting my PC.

Dota IMBA is like normal Dota turned up to 11. In the words of its creators, it s what would happen if Icefrog went mad, and buffed every hero 100 patches in a row . Sniper s ult hits everything in its path. Pugna s ward can steal spells. Techies mines can move.

Discovering new versions of each spell is fun in and of itself: it recaptures the feeling from when you first started playing and it seemed like Dota s box of tricks would never run out. At the same time, because nearly everything is a tweaked version of something from the main game, the experience is rarely overwhelming. The roles of each hero are the same for the most part, and you ve got a rough idea of what each hero is capable of—it s like jumping in after missing a dozen patches. A dozen ridiculous, whimsical patches made in a world where Dota doesn t have to be a serious, ultra-balanced competitive sport and can instead embrace its silly side.

The same philosophy is applied to items: Shadowblade gives you free pathing, Force Staff pushes people twice as far and Magic Wands can gather charges from across the map. Dagons can be upgraded to level ten, and multiple Divine Rapiers get assimilated into each other while increasing all the damage that you do—not just right clicks. As with hero abilities, reading the new item descriptions invokes a similar excitement to going through patch notes, delighting in the myriad of new possibilities on offer. There are a bunch of entirely new late game items too, which combined with all the other changes means you can t rely on your usual builds. (Pro tip: Because Branches only cost 5 gold, it s worth starting with a wand and filling up any gaps in your inventory with branches.) Again, existing knowledge provides a framework to go off on while improvising around and adapting to the new stuff.

Don t get me wrong, Dota IMBA is still a competitive game. Playing well requires using all the same skills as normal Dota. Given just how much more deadly everyone is, I d even say it punishes mistakes more harshly: put a toe out of line in lane and the chances are your opponents will take you apart. The importance of each last hit and deny is increased too, as each creep kill grants a lot more gold. While this is a neat way of adding more tension to otherwise slow parts of the game, it does mean that teams and individual players tend to pull away from each other faster. You can feel the lack of skill-based matchmaking hurting IMBA more than other custom games, with matches often turning into stomps.

Fortunately, the pain of being trampled on—and the boredom of trampling over others—is offset by the host of comeback mechanics IMBA introduces. Killing heroes of a higher level gives you much more gold, increasing dramatically the further they are ahead and the longer their killstreak. Towers get stronger with each one that gets knocked down, firing faster and gaining versions of some hero abilities such as cold snap or fury swipes. I especially like how the ancient itself turns into a boss fight, throwing out ultimates as its health gets whittled down. It gives the defending team something to rally around, potentially tipping the scales back in their favour if the attackers aren t careful. I d say the ancient might actually be a bit too tough to kill, but the devs agree with me a recent patch toned down its abilities so teams don t feel punished for winning too quickly. Even without these changes, the fact that each hero does much more damage means that it s easier to kill opponents when playing from behind, using positioning and teamplay to compensate for the power gulf.

Increasing the power of each hero tends to exaggerate the roles they play. Heroes that traditionally have an early game focus will dominate even more than usual at the start, while hard carries can become unstoppable. Snowball heroes fair particularly well: characters like Templar Assassin and Storm Spirit do better and better the more momentum they manage to gain. I ll cop to being a little biased, given that it s the playstyle I always gravitate towards. Still, I had a lot of fun supporting too Witch Doctor s paralysing cask is one of the most excruciating stuns in the main game, and in IMBA, with the number of jumps doubled, it s obscene. Admittedly, trying to stop an immortal level 35 Anti-Mage later in the same game was less fun.

You could say it would be a bit silly for me to complain about balance problems in a game mode literally called Imbalanced , but look, they walked right into it. All heroes are overpowered, but some heroes are more overpowered than others. Some heroes haven t had their abilities entirely reimagined, though they ll usually have drastically altered cooldowns, damage values or mana costs. Still, the ones with orange text in their descriptions to show that new effects have been added are generally more powerful. Omniknight in particular is a nightmare, with the workshop forum page calling for a much needed nerf.

In fairness, that s all part of the fun. If you ve ever wanted to fulfil your fantasy of stomping around as an Invoker with no cooldown on invoke, or a Pudge with the size and strength of Roshan, then Dota IMBA is a custom game worth checking out.

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Episodic slasher movie cum knockabout sandbox survival game Lakeview Cabin has a new chapter out. It's set in a sleepy suburban neighbourhood, and like all sleepy suburban neighbourhoods worth their salt, it's playing host to an unkillable serial killer.

"This time the Lakeview Cabin series takes a mysterious turn," developer Roope Tamminen reveals in a Steam announcement. "An unkillable evil is stalking the teens in a quiet suburban neighborhood. It is up to you to get rid of the curse and find out what is happening by solving a series of obscure puzzles. Do you have what it takes?"

Well, do you? If you own The Lakeview Cabin Collection, then this new episode is already yours. If you don't, you can buy the collection on Steam and Humble for 25% less than the norm, for the next couple of days.

The thing with old-timey amusement parks is that they all harbor some sort of ancient evil.

In The Park, a short first-person horror game from Funcom, you play as Lorraine, a single mother whose son, Callum, goes missing in one of them. So the setup is pretty cliched. The boy goes bye-bye and you re off to find him. But The Park packs an intense psychological narrative into its rickety haunted house framework, and while it won t do much to trouble hardcore horror heads, it s still a fun, spooky adventure.

I spent my time on a fairly strict, linear path traveling between Atlantic Park s varying rides while Lorraine commented on objects and points of interest. The only way to interact with the environment is through call button, which literally calls for Callum, and highlights written items: mostly letters and diary entries that give insight to the history of the park (spoilers, it s spooky). The way Lorraine s cries change with her demeanor throughout the game ended up being my favorite bit of character development. I liked hearing a person rapidly losing their cool, rather than listening to them painstakingly spell out their emotions in a series of hokey monologues.

The park is integral to a few events in Lorraine s past, so her commentary tends to spin off into heavy exposition dumps. It s unfortunate that most of what she has to say is blunt and overwrought. She s a tragic character, having experienced plenty of hardship prior to the not insignificant mistake of losing her son in a theme park, but when she describes her internal as treachery that lashes like a whip and scars our insides, it becomes that much harder to take her seriously.

The cliches coalesce into a setting that feels like a pleasing horror homage.

The Park tells an interesting story, delving into Lorraine s depression and troubles raising Callum as a single mother, but I m bummed it s delivered pretty clumsily (and felt super familiar). Good thing the game s campy flourishes and atmosphere make the writing easy enough to brush off. I ran into plenty of clown imagery, carnival canvas, and sickly purple-tinted lighting. Set against the backdrop of a forested, mountainous area with an obscene fog afflicion, the cliches coalesce into a setting that feels like a pleasing horror homage rather than a lack of creativity on the developer s part.

Atlantic Park s attractions serve up The Park s best haunted house moments. While it doesn t make sense that Lorraine would halt an urgent nighttime son hunt to hop on the roller coaster (just real quick, Callum, we ll be right there), they re each home to a few silly scares and narrative breadcrumbs. Early on, I hopped on a swan boat ride that didn t take me through a tunnel of love (someday, maybe), but through tunnel of shadow puppets relaying the story of Hansel and Gretel. Meanwhile, the boat gets jostled from time to time without warning, and the ride culminates with the swan boat s head slowly turning around to face you. Now that s an untapped spook mine: swan boats.

During most set pieces I alternated between flinching and laughing, and not because I m impossible to scare, but because most of the scares felt more like a playful rib poke than something meant scramble my nerves. That said, in The Park s final fifteen minutes, it takes a deep dive into emulating P.T. by presenting a familiar setting and slowly chipping away at reality. Without giving away too much, the same series of rooms start looping back into one another, but with slight changes each time. The Park s shift from fun boo factory to self-serious psychological brain blender is jarring, but works as an intense climax and narrative wrap up.

While The Park isn t that terrifying, there are a few fun jump scares and plenty of atmosphere despite the cliched setting. A creepy amusement park provides the perfect backdrop for such a short, entertaining game. Like the rides themselves, the game doesn t let you off the rails, but does provide a short, spooky funhouse experience no matter how cheap the thrills. For those who can t stomach the stress of an Amnesia or Alien: Isolation, The Park is a good way to fill up your seasonal spooks quota without having a full-on panic attack.

The Park is available for $10 on Steam until November 2nd, when the price will settle at $13.

Ahead of The Last Crown: Blackenrock, the ghost-hunting adventure sequel from point and click developer Darkling Room, creator Jonathan Boakes has released a short Halloween tie-in titled Midnight Horror. Nigel Danvers is once again on the case, uncovering some spooky goings on in the mostly colourless town of Saxton. Here's the skinny:

"Halloween: when the veil between our world and the 'other side' is at its weakest. Witches celebrate Samhain, a Celtic festival from the old religion, conjuring the dead and communing with the spirits. Nigel Danvers, ghost-hunter, knows all about the ghosts that dwell in the darkness, he has seen plenty to convince him there are dark forces at work. So, why is Halloween so different? Something is haunting the guest rooms above the local harbour-side pub, The Bear. Who or what hides in the shadowy corners of the old Inn? What is the presence at the end of the Harbour Wall? Dusting down his old ghost-hunting gadgets, Nigel gets to work. He has one night to find out, before the veil returns to full strength, and the Halloween Horror is gone, for another year."

OOooooOOOoooOOOo. (I was being a scary ghost.) You'll be pleased to hear that development of Blackenrock is "wrapping up", and that we can expect a release date soon.

Desync looks beautiful. It s a super-hard, twitch-oriented FPS inspired by classic arena shooters of yore, but it s the chrome-hued 1980s sci-fi inspired art style that stands out the most. Developed by Melbourne indie studio The Foregone Syndicate, Desync focuses on fast movement and precision aiming, while its instant respawn rhythm captures the compulsive spirit of Super Meat Boy or Lovely Planet.

I played part of one zone at PAX Australia yesterday. Armed with a shotgun and pistol, it s important to switch rapidly between the two while fending off waves of fluoroscent green gnats and silver polygonal knights. The former are like facehuggers get too close and they stick to the screen, requiring a vigorous wriggle of the mouse to shake away. Meanwhile, knights are best taken out with the shotgun, preferably up close. Managing the scarce shotgun ammunition, administering rare health buffs and hitting the shift key to dodge enemies is a lot to parse at once, but that s where the appeal of Desync lay: it s relentless.

It s tempting to draw parallels with Hotline Miami: both come coated in a psychedelic 1980s patina (though the studio says they were inspired more by Fract OSC), and both feature encounters that require dozens of attempts to master. While it doesn t have multiplayer, Desync features leaderboards that track progress and performance on a very granular level: mobility, accuracy, the variety of your attacks and situational awareness are all (somehow) monitored and tallied, and then listed on a scorecard after each encounter.

"We track everything you do mouse movement, different events," said lead designer Travis Avery. "If I shoot a rocket at an enemy's feet he'll launch into the air, and that's one event. Then if I kill him in the air, that's another. 

"Tracking everything you do in the game threads into a style system which tells you how you played, how aggressive you were, and all that goes into a leaderboard," he continued. This means you can also track the playstyles of your friends if they beat your score you'll be able to figure out exactly how they did it, and how that differs to your own.

Meanwhile, sidearms can be modded, and the game features a list of combos that are unlocked as they re performed. One required me to finish off an enemy midair, while another involved shaking off a facehugger and then murdering it while it tumbled to the ground. There are also killstreaks and overkills which reward health buffs, but it s difficult to keep track of what the hell is going on in Desync. It s punishingly fast. It releases some time next year through Adult Swim Games.

First things first: Heart of Thorns isn't going to change your mind. If you don't like Guild Wars 2's fast-paced, streamlined combat or distinctive, freeform end-game—some people don't, I have read the internet—this first expansion won't magically make ArenaNet's approach more palatable. If anything, Heart of Thorns reassesses and restructures everything that has come before. It moves Guild Wars 2 into more expansion focused phase. It's new, but also the same.

I do like Guild Wars 2. According to the game, I've spent 728 hours playing it. 30 days. That's a long time. A whole rabbit could gestate in that period. Or 1/9th of an entirely new human. Despite that, I hadn't played much over the last few months—my interest waning due to the lack of new content updates in the lead up to this expansion. Heart of Thorns has, for the most part, rectified that. It's an enjoyable chunk of entertaining new stuff. Some quibbles aside, it makes Guild Wars 2 feel exciting and relevant again.

The expansion introduces four new maps in Magus Falls, the area west of the Asuran capital city of Rata Sum. It's a new, primarily jungle-themed region. Picture the Sylvari home of The Grove and Caledon Forest, but darker, less vibrant and more dangerous. Gnarled trees wind up and around. cliff formations hide labyrinthine, underground warrens. Ancient, golden architecture gleams out of dark, foreboding vegetation.

It's frequently beautiful and occasionally gorgeous. As in Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet's art team has done an exemplary job—taking a basic theme, and filling it with interesting ideas. The initial exploration phase is a joy. Frequently, I'd be heading to a specific point, only to be distracted by an area that looked fresh and intriguing. During my first visit to the Tangled Depths, a crack in an otherwise plain corridor led down to a wondrously surreal underground expanse.

In fact, the Tangled Depths map as a whole is, visually, an absolute treat—a fascinating intersection between lore and design. Winding paths above ground feed down into cavernous passageways, and again down further into much stranger depths. I won't spoil what's down there, but it's a nice surprise for fans of Tyria's history. It's almost a shame that the area looks so good, because in every other respect it's my least favourite part of the expansion. It's confusing to navigate, and filled with enemies that tip past challenging and into infuriating. It was during a fight against one such enemy—a Champion tier bug-thing—that I punched my keyboard in such a way that my computer shut itself down. It was easily my most dramatic accidental ragequit.

These issues will probably be lessened as I grow more familiar with the area, and once I've unlocked all the traversal methods it requires (more on that later). But the other areas feel more instantly and intuitively navigable. Four maps might sound slim for an expansion, but they're big, multi-layered affairs. Verdant Brink, Heart of Thorns' first map, has you move between the canopy, the floor and the jungle's roots. Bits of the roots, at least. The majority of the undergrowth is a pulsating, deadly mass.

As in Guild Wars 2's other level 80 areas, there are no Renown Heart quests—Guild Wars 2's version of, well, quests. Instead, each map is made up of a series of public events that scale based on the number of people who participate. Many are comprised of multiple stages that ultimately build into a map-wide metaevent. In Auric Basin, collaborating to activate multiple pylons in each quarter of the map results, eventually, in a huge boss-fight. In these moments, the entire map must work together to jointly take down their section of the boss—using the map chat to organise, plan and execute on the fly.

It often fails, but sometimes everything comes together and your hard work pays off as the map's population congregates in the centre for their rewards. It's also a clever approach to MMO design in general—highlighting the massively multiplayer aspect in a way that makes other players a welcome sight, rather than an irrelevance or, worse still, a hindrance. Guild Wars 2 has always done this, but Heart of Thorns draws on ArenaNet's experiments across the last few years of updates. The new maps feel like a logical extension of the approaches found in last year's new zone, The Silverwastes, or the time-limited Twisted Marionette and Escape From Lion's Arch events from the season before.

So far in my travels, Auric Basic has been the most consistently successful. Elsewhere, I've had a couple of ultimately doomed attempts on the expansion's final map, Dragon's Stand, and am yet to see anyone even attempt the Tangled Depths. Obviously, it's still early—it will take the community a little while to get into a consistent rhythm with these huge, demanding events. Whether each map's metaevent can stand the test of time is, right now, a question without an answer (although, three years later, people are turning up for Shatterer. And he's pretty boring.)

Unusually for an MMO expansion, Heart of Thorns doesn't raise the level cap. It doesn't add any new tiers of gear, either. If you were level 80 before the expansion, you're still at the maximum level now. If you were fully kitted out in ascended armour before the expansion, you've still got the best equipment now. XP gains instead go towards unlocking bonuses in the new masteries system.

Masteries are a little complex, but they're central to Guild Wars 2's reworked progression. There are four mastery tracks for the Heart of Thorns region, each containing multiple unlocks. By selecting a track, you start earning XP towards it—your progress displayed at the bottom of the screen where the levelling bar used to be. Earn enough XP, and you can purchase the unlock with Mastery Points gained through specific achievements, or collected throughout the new zones.

Heart of Thorns' masteries offer a wide selection of benefits. The gliding track, for instance, enables a hang glider that can be deployed at any time. Later masteries in the track let you ride 'updrafts' found across the new maps, or give unlimited endurance to prevent you from unceremoniously falling out of the air. Other tracks unlock access to specialised merchants, specific daily challenges, warp gates, hidden shortcuts, etc.

The further into a track you get, the more expensive the masteries become. The first unlock on the gliding track requires 508,000 XP—about twice what it takes to level from 79 to 80. The last, that lets you glide along ley line energy, costs 4,318,000. To unlock all of Heart of Thorns' masteries, you'll need to earn 49,530,000 XP, or about ten times the amount required to fully level an alt. In layman's terms, that's a shitload of events. The Guild Wars 2 community is—and I'm being diplomatic here—conflicted about this fact. But there are a few things that lessen what could otherwise be a serious grind.

Firstly, masteries are account bound. Unlock them for one character, and they're unlocked for all. As with many of the systems introduced to Guild Wars 2 over the last couple of years, it's extremely alt-friendly. Secondly, most masteries are pitched as quality-of-life upgrades. Most of the ones that unlock traversal options are lower down their respective tracks. Even now, after a week of play, I can glide, ride updrafts and use bouncing mushrooms. I can happily navigate most of each map.

Despite this, the implementation isn't perfect. In places the balance feels off. As previously mentioned, ley-line riding is the final unlock of the gliding map, and, without it, there are areas locked off to me. I like exploring, so I balk at the idea of missing out on places because of the high cost to reach them. Worse still, it's not clear which masteries are required to unlock specific activities. I'm currently stalled in my personal story because I didn't have the prerequisite mastery. It's not prohibitively expensive, I just didn't know I needed to have it.

These issues aside, I like the system. Guild Wars 2 needed a new form of progression, and, without new tiers of gear, this fits the bill nicely. Part of the reason I stopped playing was that everything I needed to acquire seemed a long way off. I didn't have the materials required to craft ascended armour, or forge a legendary weapon. I was stalled, and facing a long road to any meaningful progress. This reintroduces it, both within the expansion itself and in the main game. There's a separate set of mastery tracks for the base game; including increased Fractal rewards, ways to mentor new players, and—at long last—a guaranteed way to earn the precursors that are required to craft legendary weapons.

More importantly, the new traversal methods feel great. The hang glider is a joy to use, and feels so natural that I miss it outside of the expansion maps. I have, on more than one occasion, come close to hurling myself off a cliff—only remembering at the last second that the glider won't deploy. It's a particular problem on the new World vs World map, which is a clever piece of design that utilises special shrines to encourage teams to defend their territory. It also has lots of massive cliffs, and I desperately want to glide off of them.

The second new progression system in Heart of Thorns unlocks your character's specialisation—a new trait line that lets each profession wield a new weapon type, and utilise a new mechanic. These traits are unlocked by earning Hero Points that are specific to each character. Hero Points are unlocked in bundles of ten by completing specific challenges found throughout the new maps. I /was/ planning to write about the effort required to fully unlock a character's specialisation trait, but the developers, who have been diligently patching and tweaking the expansion throughout the last week, went and reduced the total number of Hero Points needed from 400 to 250. One minute I was facing a long, arduous journey. A patch later, I'd filled it all out.

I'm glad, too, because it's great. I play a Thief, whose specialisation is Daredevil. I can still utilise stealth, but the focus is now on endurance—so much so that I've gained a third consecutive dodge roll. I can also customise my dodge to apply a series of crippling conditions, or grant a selection of handy buffs. I've been playing a glass cannon DPS build since the game launched, and so increased evasion is relevant to my interests. Also, I get to thwack things with a staff. It's all extremely gratifying.

I've heard first-hand accounts of similarly enjoyable specialisations, but also that some are more situational. Take the Druid, the new specialisation for the Ranger. It's closer to a support class, designed to help buff and heal allies. Hopefully it won't result in difficult group content relying on a designated healer to get them through. So far, Guild Wars 2's combat has been predicated on the idea that players must largely look after themselves. I suspect the community at large has been more forgiving and friendly because of that fact.

The other reason the reduction in Hero Point cost was helpful is because getting them was hard. In fact, much of the expansion is. Things that would have been soloable in the base game now encourage the formation of ad-hoc groups, from the event-based map movement to the many Hero Points that spawn Champions. For the most part, I enjoy the difficulty spike—after years of steamrolling through the open world, it's a welcome change to have to call in reinforcements through map chat. But some of the new enemies are better than others.

I love the design of arrowheads—hulking reptiles that can down my squishy Thief in a single, powerful attack. They're bulky, slow, and have an attack pattern that rewards those who can respond to and evade its telegraphs. Some beasts, however, aren't as interesting to fight. Smokescales emit an area-of-effect mist that, as long as it remains in that radius, temporarily causes all attacks to miss. They're not even particularly tough, just an inconvenience.

This review isn't an exhaustive attempt to dissect each of Heart of Thorns' new features. Rather, it's an exploration of what, after a week of play, strikes me as the most notable parts of its design. There's lots more going on: from a storyline that finally adds a little tension to the previously saccharine cooperation between the playable races, to the new Revenant class, who gains versatility by drawing on the aspects of historical legends. There's a new PvP mode, a reworked Fractal system, and 'Adventures'—a series of repeatable, score attack challenges.

Still, it's possible to look at everything Heart of Thorns offers and wonder if it justifies the 35/$50 asking price. I'm not really worried. Guild Wars 2 doesn't have a subscription, and yet it was one of the most generous MMOs around in terms of post-launch content updates. It sounds as if ArenaNet is planning to give Heart of Thorns the same treatment, starting with the game's first raid.

That's an exciting prospect, because it's easy to see how Heart of Thorns restructures Guild Wars 2 towards future expansions. From here, ArenaNet has a way to develop sideways into broader options, and so keep the base progression intact. Put another way, I've already logged over 700 hours with my Thief. Having played Heart of Thorns, I can see myself playing many hundreds more.

THE HIGHS

Phil Savage: Jungle excursionI've taken a quick break from writing up my Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns review to do this, and so I might as well keep writing about Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Spoiler: I like it, a lot, albeit with some reservations. For one thing, it's a beautiful looking expansion. ArenaNet's jungle region is dark, twisted and labyrinthine. It's varied and surprising, too. There's always something cool around the next corner. As an MMO, there's a lot more factors to consider than simply how it looks, but a vast, enchanting world is a definite boon. I've spent a good chunk of the last week wondering around the new zones in first-person view, taking screenshots as players swarm through the gorgeous scenery.

As for the rest, you'll have to wait for the review.

Andy Kelly: Space is the placeThis week I visited the UK studio of Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium. I can t go into what I saw—you ll have to wait for the next issue of PC Gamer to find out—but it was a really good experience. I always love visiting developers and watching them work, because it gives you a more intimate insight into the game than a standalone interview. I watched a lot of very talented people making spaceships and other cool stuff, and it made me appreciate just how much craft and love goes into a game of that scale. You forget that sometimes.

It can also be a bit of a curse, though, because whenever I m reviewing a game, and I don t like it, I imagine the developer s sad face as I slam their work. Obviously I still will, cause that s what a critic does, but being reminded that a real human with real human feelings is behind everything in a game (except procedural generation, I guess) isn t always a good thing.

Tim Clark: Fluffy little cloudsSap Green, Magic White and, of course, Van Dyke Brown. Until yesterday I was entirely unaware that these are the most important colours in the kaleidoscope. Now, thanks to Bob Ross and his gently cradled palette, I know better. Given that we re already a day into Twitch s ambient painting marathon, I ll spare you the full hot take about how soothing watching a man with an astonishing perm dab happy little clouds onto canvas is, but suffice to say half the PC Gamer team spent the small hours of last night chugging audiovisual valium.

Here s what I loved most: Twitch chat, so often a den of scum and villainy, was super sweet and funny pretty much the whole time, reacting to Bob s scrapes and smears as if they were plays in a high level esports match. Bob scrawls an ugly tree trunk over an otherwise pretty landscape? RUINED , CONCEDE , THE CHOKE , NA PLAY . Bob pulls it together late? SAVED , VAC , WIZARD , NERF BOB . Cutest of all, each time Bob wraps up one of his rapidfire oil paintings, chat spams GG WP

Chris Livingston: The coast is mostI can be as cynical as the best of 'em (or maybe the worst of 'em), to the point where I'm actually surprised when I find myself genuinely excited about a game I haven't yet played. One genre never fails to get me worked up and optimistic, though, and that's the weird-ass simulator genre. I am always, always excited to try a new sim, be it one where you cut down trees, or tow cars, or put out fires at an airport, or unload boats with a crane. And I'm always convinced these sims will be great, even when they are, historically, not.

In this case, it's Coast Guard, which I've just acquired a key for. The trailer is weirdly amazingly awesome, so that's part of my excitement. I think the rest of my enthusiasm may stem from the idea of doing something in a game I've never done before. I've driven boats in plenty of games, but I've never driven a boat to—as the trailer says—SAVE LIVES and PROTECT THE WIDE-OPEN SEA. And I'm going to do that. I'm going to save lives and protect the wide-open sea. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be amazing.

Wes Fenlon: Does Tribes have another shot at life?Hi-Rez Studios burned a lot of its fans when it more or less abandoned F2P shooter Tribes Ascend. It's been heartening to see them try to make up for that, even if it's too late for Ascend to be a competitive esport or maintain a thriving community. First Hi-Rez patched Tribes, and said it plans to keep updating the game more. Now they've released every single Tribes game for free, with a nice website showing the history of the series.

I love that those classic shooters are now easily available online, and hopefully will be in perpetuity. It's certainly a smart way for Hi-Rez to build goodwill and raise the profile of Tribes, too. Is it impossible to think that the Tribes Ascend community could actually grow over the next year, as Hi-Rez go back to supporting it? It'd be enough to melt grumpy Tyler Wilde's heart.

Tom Marks: Who watches the Overwatchers?The Overwatch beta began on Tuesday and I ve been playing it at pretty much every opportunity since then. It s incredibly fun and has the same level of polish we ve come to expect from Blizzard games. The guns feel great, and I ve found a few heroes I m really enjoying, though not quite one I want to call my main just yet.

It s really not quite like any other FPS I ve played, but takes bits of inspiration from many. And though it s definitely not a MOBA, the heroes ultimate abilities allow Overwatch to have those big play moments we re familiar with from that genre. So I m excited to see if an esports community rallies around Overwatch. It s kind of hard to imagine it won t.

I am also excited to keep playing. Overwatch is the first game in a while that I really want to learn the little intricacies of. The quickest routes to a point, the sneaky side paths, the ranges and reload times of everybody s weapons and abilities, who can beat who in a duel, etc. The lack of leveling-up or ability points makes figuring all of that out seem so much less daunting. But as much as I m having fun with it, it hasn t all been sunshine and roses… (see: Tom s low)

THE LOWS

Andy Kelly: Break the batOh, Batman. What happened? What should have been a fond farewell to one of the best superhero game series ever has been sullied by a dodgy PC port. My personal low this week was having to review the thing, because while I enjoyed it as a game, I still had to stick the boot in because of the mess they made of the PC version. That s one of the challenges of writing for PC Gamer: having to weigh up a game from a design standpoint, but also as a product that needs to be fit for purpose on multiple systems.

And in this case, the product was, for many, broken. If they d done a better job with it, I might have given it a higher score. Oh well. Will this be a cautionary tale for other AAA developers? I hope so, but I m not holding my breath. Still, if your PC has the muscle to counter-combo those framerate problems, you ll find a pretty damn good Batman game. In a week the world will have forgotten about Arkham Knight, and there ll be another bad port to get angry about. It s the circle of strife. Man, those console guys have it easy, don t they?

Tim Clark: Goofing off to watch the gameDo you watch esports on Twitch? If you don t, there s really no need to explain why in the comments. I know this may seem radical, but it s fine for people to like doing different stuff. But if you do like watching esports, how the hell do you fit it around real life? I ve got a job in which I m unlikely to get canned for having the group stages BlizzCon Hearthstone World Championships running on my second screen, but I still feel an odd sense of guilt about it—even though I know I won t let it affect my scrupulous Protestant work ethic. (My boss sometimes reads this page.) But how do you fit watching tournaments around school, regular jobs and family commitments? Marathon toilet breaks? Frenzied alt tabbing? Phone wedged betwixt thighs technique? I need to know, because my low this week is that I want to find ways to watch even more. Blizzard, nerf real life pls.

Wes Fenlon: Why am I not playing Vermintide......and will I still want to be playing Vermintide a month from now? I'm cheating with my low here, a bit, to talk about how much fun I've had with my few hours with Vermintide, and how much I wish I was playing it right now! Ian has played much more than me, and came away even more positive than I expected in his review, which makes me optimistic about Vermintide as a game I'd want to play through several times.

Longevity's been my big concern, here. I'm okay with Vermintide ditching Left4Dead's Versus mode for a purely PvE experience. The game does PvE with more nuance in combat than Left4Dead, and has a loot system to justify repeat runs through levels. But I don't know how many of its levels I'll enjoy playing multiple times, which makes me hope that Fatshark is able to work mod support into its game. The uncommon engine they used for Vermintide may discourage modding, but if the community was even half as enthusiastic and productive as Left4Dead 2's, we'll have years' worth of awesome custom stages to murder giant ratmen in.

Chris Livingston: NayZThis week marks a weird, stupid anniversary for me. It was a year ago when, on deadline for Rock Paper Shotgun, I decided to play a session of DayZ with the caveat that if I died during it, I'd treat it as perma-permadeath. In other words, if I died a virtual death, I wouldn't ever play DayZ again for the rest of my real, actual life.

Spoiler alert: I died almost immediately in the most bumbling and rookie way possible for someone who had already put 252 hours into the game. And so, I have not played it since. It hasn't really been that difficult: my favorite streamer, Break71, still plays it often (and plays it much better than I ever did) so at least I get to watch. Very rarely do I get the urge go back on my word and fire it up again. Until this week, that is, when I realized it had been a year, a full year since my dumb idea blew up in my stupid face. Now, I pretty much want to do nothing but play DayZ. If I can just hold out a little longer, Fallout 4 will hopefully distract me. November 10 can't get here fast enough.

Tom Marks: Overwatch, againI ve been enjoying Overwatch a lot so far, but I m nervous about how long it will keep me hooked. It s incredibly fun, but I have a few major problems with it. Chris wrote about how the supports didn't have very exciting abilities, which I agree with but think is actually indicative of a bigger problem: most of the abilities in the game aren t very exciting, and supports are just the canary in the coal mine because they, by their nature, have less powerful weapons which makes the unexciting abilities more obvious.

I also think something is a little off with the pacing of matches, but can t quite put my finger on what yet. Gun fights are fast and exciting, but it takes a long time to run back to the action. This means that if you kill the entire defending team on one of the capture point maps, you re pretty much guaranteed to get a cap. This is also the case in Team Fortress 2 s capture point maps (wiping out the enemy team should be rewarded, after all) but there are a few fundamental differences—first and foremost being that there are only ever two points to capture, so winning one big fight means an enormous amount more in Overwatch than in comparable games.

I think regular updates and balance adjustments are going to be key to how much I continue to play Overwatch—and to its credit, Blizzard has already released a patch based on community feedback, teased a new hero, and is hinting at something else only days after the closed beta began. New content will definitely help, but I hope they are willing to make the drastic changes they ve said could potentially come.

Phil Savage: Cause for concernI've had my head in an MMO all week, and all the gaming news I did see seemed absurdly positive. Free Tribes games? Cool. Paradox buying the White Wolf license? Interesting. All the other stuff that happened? Probably fine, I don't know. Instead, I want to highlight a concern from my recent Just Cause 3 impressions. The game is fun, but I'm not sure about the timer attached to its airdrop system. Too often—mainly due to my own incompetence—I destroyed a good vehicle and was forced to wait 30 minutes until I could call in a replacement. That seems such an arbitrary restriction for a game built on freeform chaos. I worry that, as with Just Cause 2, I'll have to wait for modders to unlock the unabashed absurdist carnage that I crave.

If you want to get a peek at the newest addition to the Overwatch lineup, you'll have to have to pop over to the StarCraft 2 World Championship Series website. And I mean the real StarCraft 2 WCS site, because Hana "D.Va" Song is, in game lore, a real StarCraft 2 pro. She's the best in the world, in fact, but she's taking a break from the game so she can serve her homeland.

"At the age of 16, D.Va became the #1 ranked player in the world and proceeded to go undefeated for the next three years in all competitions," her official StarCraft 2 player biography states. "D.Va is an international star, beloved by her fans at home and abroad, and has toured in exhibitions around the world. Recently, she has taken a step back from competition to focus on her commitment to protect the safety of her homeland."

[ESPORTS] Meet MEKA's newest recruit: world champion Hana "D.Va" Song! | https://t.co/tPnACXPZpg pic.twitter.com/MLQTRBsV4L

— Overwatch (@OverwatchEU) October 30, 2015

Because she's not yet listed on the Overwatch website, there's no indication as to what her abilities might be. Her affiliation is also hazy; she was described as "MEKA's newest recruit" on Twitter, but I don't know if that refers to a fictional StarCraft 2 team, or if it's related to Overwatch somehow. Either way, it's a pretty clever way to do tease a new character.

Tom has spent some time with the Overwatch closed beta and wrote a little bit about how fun its physics objects are here. Come for his words, stay for the lovely animated gifs. (Be sure to click 'em to see them in all their glory.)

Kingdom is easy at first. My job is to assign peasants tasks as they stave off waves of monsters, and it s like working on a slow-moving assembly line. But then the conveyor belt starts speeding up. And then I stop recognizing the machinery coming down the line. Imps attack in numbers greater than my army of archers can handle, phantasms appear and fly over my highest walls to chow on my builders—suddenly, I m Lucille Ball shoving candy in my mouth. Kingdom s merciless shift from zen to ten instilled a real sense of dread in me, even during the gentle slope of the early game. It was a nice, calm game at first, but then it robbed me of my peace of mind and made me struggle to reclaim it.

With every new game of Kingdom, you spawn as a king or queen sporting some randomly colored garb atop a horse and canter along a forested 2D plane until you stumble upon a few loose coins. They can be spent on recruiting new villagers, tools, building fortifications, or on mysterious monoliths hidden in the forest. The first required purchase is a campfire. Throw a coin into the empty coin space hovering above it and—fanfare—you ve kicked off your kingdom. Kingdom prompts you to give some wandering peasants a coin, then to drop a few more into bows and hammers. Your new followers will pick up whatever tool is nearest to them, provided they re not already equipped. And so you have your first defenses and your first builder. And that s where Kingdom stops explaining anything.

A midsummer night s scream

Mystery and subtlety are central to Kingdom. Nothing is overtly communicated. Close scrutiny of otherwise simple aspects of the game (animation, musical cues, lighting) is vital in order to achieve the highest build efficiency. For example, I found that if I had tools ready for new villagers back at my hold, when I recruited them at their camps deep in the forest, they would scurry just a little bit faster than normal to join me. With a quick day-night cycle, it s critical that they get back before they re accosted by a monster, robbed of their coin, and sent back to a meaningless pre-currency life. Or, if I let my horse chomp on some green grass—which I just thought was an idle animation—I could actually sprint for longer before fatigue settled in and forced us to a crawl. Time it correctly and I could get more exploration, coin collection, and peasants commanded than before. 

But the motivation to pay attention didn t come without failure, and I failed a lot. Monsters can attack from any side every night, and if they decimate your camp of supplies and coin, they ll go for your crown next which means it s time to start over. In my first hour or so, I didn t mind. Failure was often the result of missing an obvious cue, mechanic, or because I just made a dumb mistake. The curve was fair and rewarded me for paying attention. But once I got a few hours of experience in and figured out how to build more efficiently, a single game could last upwards of 45 minutes. Lessons start to come in smaller doses or not at all. There s too much important mechanical depth hidden in Kingdom s presentation to send the player back half an hour without teaching them something. Failing these long games tested me. At my worst, I yelled at my monitor, slammed the table, and spilled my tea. I really wanted that tea.

Peace of grind

Even after grinding through the late game learning curve to discover a few new nuggets of wisdom, I was still performing rote tasks to get there. A one-life game like Spelunky exercises and rewards advanced play in the early game by letting the player subvert massive chunks of it with feats of well-earned skill. Kingdom s early game is nearly the same every playthrough regardless of player skill. I d rather practice blocking karate chops than licking and sealing envelopes. There s no persistence between games, even though the initial 10 minutes or so of recruiting villagers and building a basic walls really isn t something that s fun to repeat.

Luckily, the music went a long way in keeping me sane. A soft chiptune soundtrack rings in each morning with pleasant harmonics and pulls my patience out of the mud with a gentle tug or two. It s truly beautiful, serving as a lovely backdrop to a nice gallop through the forest. Parallax foreground and background scenery give a sense of depth and lush sprites with faint animations indicate life. Even your monarch s crown hops up and down mid trot. It s a super curious, atmospheric game despite its minimalism, which is why it s so painful to find the game such a frustrating grind.

Kingdom is home to a beautiful, mysterious world I desperately want to explore. There were thrilling moments where a massive army of monsters were throwing themselves against my last defenses and I barely managed to make it to morning—it just takes too long between failures to reach the point where I find opportunity to grow. The moment to moment gameplay is pleasurable in the same way that dragging a rake through a zen garden can be, except the Zen Garden Inspector rolls around later on, kicks dust into your eyes, and tells you to start over without explaining why. There s tons of fun to be had in Kingdom, but the fun ends where your patience does.