There are more wonderful games being released on PC each month than ever before. In such a time of plenty, it’s important that you spend your time as wisely as possible. Thankfully, we’re here to help. What follows are our picks for the best PC games ever made. (more…)

I’ve recently started playing with a new Dungeons & Dragons group, drafted in after one of their numbers upped and left town. It’s my second time playing table-top D&D, after a splendid stint a couple of years back with Jim Rossignol (late of this parish) DMing, and it’s a properly good time. And what I’ve learned is that it becomes a much better time the more flaws you introduce to your character. Which got me thinking: wow, do PC RPGs not follow that rule at all.

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Kickstarter’s been pretty good for RPGs. We may not have seen the next big leap yet – Divinity: Original Sin 2 is looking pretty damn special, mind – but it’s certainly breathed new life into the classics. Wasteland and Pillars of Eternity are both returning. Numenera went down well, despite a little over-promising. Divinity was superb.

Have I left anyone out? (Oh yeah, don’t forget Taz.)

Oh. Yes. Tyranny. If you thought that game kinda landed and faded quickly, you’re not alone. Despite being a very solid half of a game, even Obsidian/Paradox have admitted that when it came to it, “everyone was hoping that it would do better.” I think it deserved to. The thing is, I’m not sure this should have been a huge surprise.

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Feels like it’s far too soon to be remaking Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic but a) they’ve rebooted the Spider-Man movies 48 times in 18 months and b) KOTOR is, in fact, 13 years old oh god I’m so ancient how did this happen help help. So maybe the time isn’t too un-wrong for someone to take a crack at making one of the most beloved 3D-accelerated Star Wars games look a whole lot more modern. Waitaminnit: isn’t this just like George Lucas and his bloody Special Editions? SHUT IT DOWN SHUT IT DOWN SHUT IT DOWN.

The fans making Apeiron carefully classify it as a mod rather than a standalone project, in the hope that Ian Disney won’t force-choke it to death. It’s a remake of KOTOR in the Unreal 4 engine, and while it’s a million parsecs away from completion, or even from showing how it will function as a game (including an apparent move from third- to first-person blasting), we do get a look at some extremely pretty and really quite Star Warsy environments.

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There’s no shortage of ‘best Star Wars games’ features across this nerdly old internet of ours, but the majority focus on console games which don’t often stray from the action/shooting category. On PC, we’ve had so much more variety over the years: sometimes for better, sometimes for very much worse. With the warm reception to the The Force Awakens meaning we no longer need to hate ourselves for retaining an innocent love of Long Time Ago, let’s mix nostalgia and contemporary game design values into a big, colourful ball and determine which PC titles are the least unwise ways to indulge that love.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Dark Forces was the first of the Star Wars FPS shooters and one I always felt was unfairly eclipsed by the (admittedly superior) Jedi Knight. Dark Forces bucked a lot of the trends that came before and a lot that would follow: it’s huge, sprawling levels seemed more life-like and realistic than what we’d seen in run-and-gun games like Doom and its imitators. … [visit site to read more]

Gathering together the best shooters is no easy task, but if you’re looking for a new PC FPS to play, look no further.

Your favourite game is at number 51.

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Star Wars started as cinema and ended up as something else – lots of things, from pillow cases to theme park rides. But chief among them, the form that best captures the core of Star Wars now, is games. The last Star Wars I enjoyed watching was released two years after I was born, in 1983, but since then games have given me dozens of dogfights, blaster battles and lightspeed adventures layered with the nostalgia, hope and acceleration that is essentially Star Wars.

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Hey cats, it’s hip to like Star Wars again rather than feeling dirty every time it’s mentioned. Of course, once JJ Abrams releases two hours of lens flare and nonsensical deus ex machinas it will be deeply uncool to like Star Wars again, so make hay while the sun shines. Star Wars videogames certainly are: first we get GoG re-releasing a bunch of previously out-of-print titles, and how the latest Humble Bundle is all about games from A Long Time Ago. For whatever you want to pay, you get KOTOR, Jedi Knight 3 and Dark Forces, which ain’t a bad set. There are more games if you want to pay more, but Republic credits are no good out here. … [visit site to read more]

Here is a question: do you like Star Wars? My mate Ian says it’s really good, so I should probably watch it sometime. Then again he also said Mad Men was good and that was just people in old suits frowning at each other. Apparently there are some videogames based on this ‘Star Wars’ too. Given it’s such an obscure movie I guess they’re boring art games in which all you can do is like walk and think and rubbish stuff like that? I bet there are no laser guns or evil cyborgs at all, so I won’t bother playing them. I mean, listen to the names: ‘X-Wing Versus TIE Fighter’, ‘The Old Republic II’. The first one sounds like it’s something to with equations, the second one sounds like it’s an Antiques Roadshow spin-off. Honestly, why do they even bother making these not-games for people who don’t like fun?

Anyway, like six of these old hipster indie games have just been re-released on ‘Good Old Games.’ I guess that’s an ironic title or something? They are old though – in fact, three of them are so old that they’ve never been released for download before. I guess the hipsters won’t like them now they’ve gone mainstream. … [visit site to read more]