Broken menus, wonky mouse controls, single figure framerates - this is the familiar story of PC gaming prowess held back by consoles. We understand why it happens: console-land was where the majority of sales were, and thus the focus of development. But that reasoning has never seemed, well, reasonable: a trashy console port can knock a chunk off your Metacritic rating, sour a huge potential audience against you forever and lose you loads of sales on a platform that can be extremely lucrative if only you know how to approach it.

It's really not that hard or expensive. After all, a pair of talented modders managed to make Dark Souls' PC version immeasurably better within the space of an evening, and while devs might not want to spend resources making hi-res assets just for PC, there's plenty of really basic stuff that can be done to not totally fuck up a game. Which, given the amount of time, love and money spent on these creations, is surely something that would please the developers and publishers as much as their beleaguered PC audience.

We've thrown together a list of tips, common foibles and fixes - add your own in the comments!

On release, Binary Domain defaulted to gamepad inputs which could only be changed by running a separate settings program. Gnnngggn.

Accessible settings
PC configurations are as many and varied as the gamers that own them. A PC game has to account for this with its range of settings. Have these options accessible in-game, and don't require the player to drop back to the main menu to change them. Definitely don't put them in a separate trainer which forces you to restart the entire damn game. (Hi there, Binary Domain.)

Resolution
For the love of Baal, let us change the resolution. And definitely let us change the resolution before embarking on a lengthy unskippable opening cinematic in enforced default shatto-vision. (I’m looking at you, Max Payne 3 - or trying to, anyway.) Better still, autodetect the native resolution!

Key-bindings
Let us at them. Particularly if, for whatever reason, you've decided to give charge of your keyboard inputs to someone who has never actually seen or used a keyboard before. How do you reach the main menu in Binary Domain? Oh, that’s right, it’s Enter. Of course. Then, when in the menus, you press space to select and F to go back. Obviously, in-game, F is the interact key - except when interact is space. Argh. Incidentally, Enter is not the PC's equivalent of the gamepad's A button - it's the furthest you can get from both hands in normal FPS control mode. So don't make it the compulsory key to dismiss pop-up messages.

Gamepads
Some games are designed for and best suit a gamepad. That's cool. But for games which might easily be controlled by either a gamepad or a traditional PC set-up, please autodetect which system is currently under use. Most games seem pretty good at this now, but there are still some stragglers.

Framerate
Let those framerates soar free into the vast open skies of PC gaming wonderment. Also, let us fiddle with things like V-sync - with the vast array of PC hardware set-ups possible it is unlikely you will have guessed how to best optimise your game's performance for any one PC. Why wreck your hard work with dropped or torn frames when you could just trust players to tweak the game to perfection.

FOV sliders, particularly in singleplayer games, should be a given.

Field of View
PC gamers typically sit closer to their screens than console gamers and this changes the effect of a limited FOV. Unless you are setting out specifically to discomfit and sicken the player, offering the ability to adjust FOV will only make people like you. You do want to be liked, right?

Alt-tab
If your game cannot do this, you are probably going to Hell, where you'll be forced to troubleshoot for irascible Windows ME users for the rest of eternity. Sorry about that.

Menus
PCs typically come equipped with a mouse - the perfect device with which to gaily skip through menus. Please make use of it. Do not make us scroll through a gazillion options when a single click would do. Relatedly, make your menus pay attention to where the cursor actually IS. Console ports, like many carnivorous predators, seem to only sense movement. So you often see the wrong menu option highlighted and have to wiggle the cursor a bit to make it notice where you're actually pointing.

Mouse support
Mice are not thumbsticks. This should be quickly apparent from their different shape. Do not duplicate the analogue stick deadzone with your mouse acceleration. (Got that, Dead Space?) Also do not impose momentum on mouse movements. My world stops spinning when my mouse stops, not a few seconds later, Syndicate. And don't use autotargeting systems based on the assumption that there are 8 degrees in a circle.

Sleeping Dogs was a port done right. It also featured a man urinating into a toilet full of sick. A rare game indeed.

Social media integration
No.

Games for Windows Live
Don’t do it. You may think that we PC gamers object to GfwL because we are a prickly bunch who resent having to install yet another wedge of corporate molestation replete with its own superfluous achievements system, fragmentary friends-lists, cross-promotional guff, easily lost log-in details and so on - particularly when we are already so well served by Steam. All that might be true of Origin or uPlay, but it doesn’t come close to describing the genuine horror of GfwL, which remains one of the most ill-conceived and poorly executed pieces of software it is possible to install on your PC. It’s hideously designed, hugely unergonomic, painfully slow, intrusive and prone to complete failure in every single aspect of its operation. It’s just unbelievably terrible.

DRM
Piracy sucks. We know. However, the solution should never be to periodically lose players' saves, punt them to desktop mid-game or prevent them from playing the game altogether.

Hi-res textures
Now, we’re not asking you to create an entirely new assets pipeline for the PC alone, but in many instances textures are created first at high resolution then scaled down to fit onto the itty-bitty consoles. You can make use of those on PC, you know.

Post-release patches
We salute your ongoing commitment to PC gamers by releasing fixes after launch. But don't leave it until then to make your game playable. Don't leave it until launch day, even. There are good business reasons for this: reviewers will be playing your undercooked code; you'll burn your earliest purchasers and most loyal customers; you'll lose momentum building a community among players (particularly key if your game has an online component); people will be more likely to pirate your game if they think it's not worth the risk of an actual purchase.

Any more? Add them in the comments.

This preview originally appeared in issue 248 of PC Gamer UK.

In space, you’ll remember, no one can hear you scream. But don’t worry, because you won’t be doing much screaming in Dead Space 3. The series once traded on slow-burn body horror and things making wet, meaty bumps in the inky black space-night. Now it prefers hurling gruesome beasts of increasing size at the screen, a psychological warfare of attrition rather than subversion.

The change is debated by developer Visceral Games. Studio vice-president Steve Papoutsis has refuted claims that the game was defanged on the fright front, maintaining that it’s just as scary as previous Dead Spaces. Publishers EA, on the other hand, admitted that they wanted to set a lower fear-barrier for entry, inviting those with lillier livers into the game for the first time.

It’s a confused message, and watching someone else play Dead Space 3 reveals a slightly confused game. Co-op play is the major addition to this third outing. Returning protagonist Isaac Clarke is joined by John Carver, a character more grizzle than man. Carver is the soldier to Isaac’s engineer, removing some of the tension of previous games. Isaac – the shtick went – had to adapt to survive, a nonviolent man by trade. Carver is used to blowing limbs off things though, be those things human or grim megamonsters from beyond the stars.

New enemies include human Unitologist soldiers.

The arsenal has copied that trend. Previously, Isaac would make do with welders and bandsaws, the tools of his trade turned into lethal weapons. Dead Space 3 has standard shotguns and assault rifles – the same kind used by the game’s human enemies, the first of which I spot in a valley on the ice planet of Tau Volantis. Carver and Clarke are picking their way through the world’s snowy wastes when they’re jumped by a group of Unitologist soldiers. They have body armour and wield assault rifles, but they’re quickly jumped in turn by a group of Necromorph ‘twitchers’.

The soldiers are eviscerated before Carver and Clarke can bring their weapons to bear, leaving them with the task of cleaning up the twitchers. The aliens can flick forward at a frightening speed, closing the gap before either of the co-op players I’m watching can draw a bead on them. It’s a mechanically tense section, but it’s not directly unsettling.

Psychological tricks make more concessions to the series’ trademark horror. Playing in co-op, Carver starts to see haunting remnants of his past. They don’t appear on Clarke’s screen, promising some panicky conversations over Ventrilo as one player absorbs his character’s forced madness. Another section that details Carver’s loopiness sends him inside his own mind to fight off his inner demons, in the form of Necromorph enemies. It means the game, for better or worse, doesn’t really cultivate the same oppressive menace as previous Dead Spaces.

It's quite a leap, from third-person horror games to free-to-play MOBA, but recent job ads suggest that's exactly what Dead Space developers Visceral are working on next. As discovered by IGN, the listing for Global Community Manager states that potential candidates are expected to have an "unhealthy passion for MOBA games," plus "significant experience managing online communities." Meanwhile, the character designer listing asks for "Work experience on MOBA, Action RTS, Action RPG, or Related Genres". Piecing all the available evidence together, we reckon Visceral might be making a MOBA.

The clue to the game's free-to-play nature lies in the aforementioned Global Community Manager ad, which mentions that the successful applicant will be acting as part of EA's Play4Free publishing team. Hints at their choice of platform lie within the Character Concept Artist listing, which talks about an "upcoming PC action title". Both positions have since been filled, so whatever Visceral are making, work has presumably already begun.

As to what they're making, the obvious answer would be a Dead Space MOBA, but that sounds so ridiculous I can hardly believe I just typed it. More likely, it's some sort of shooter-MOBA combo, or it's based on a different property entirely. Visceral also made the two Godfather games, so we could equally be in for Defense of the Corleones.

This preview originally appeared in issue 244 of PC Gamer UK.

Three games in and the Dead Space series has got problems. And I’m not referring to the fact that protagonist Isaac Clarke has cleverly managed to crash-land on an inhospitable ice planet that may hold the horrible secret to the entire Necromorph space-zombie menace.

The problem is the Necromorph menace itself. Or rather, the fact that, after all this exposure in the Dead Space games, it isn’t really that menacing any more. The resurrected space-dead are still pretty ghastly, perhaps, with their spider’s legs, collapsed faces and that nasty ability to sprout tangles of gristle from the least likely of places, but we’ve been looking them straight in their oozing dead eyes for a couple of games now, and over time you can become immune to just about anything.

Example? Early on in the latest Dead Space 3 demo, I was wandering around another abandoned space hulk looking for another way to get past another locked door when a Slasher dropped down from the ceiling in front of me, accompanied by a sudden shriek of sound design. I should have leapt from my chair or watched in horror as my beard turned white and fell out, one hair at a time. Instead, I just took aim at a juddering limb and idly wondered how the thing managed to climb all those ladders with talons in place of hands.



Visceral Games have at least one decent solution to the problem of audience complacency, as it happens, but they waited until a fair proportion of the demo had passed before revealing it. For the first ten minutes, it was business as usual – and business as usual is pretty much the kiss of death when it comes to the production of startles and shocks. I was wandering around an empty ship, collecting ammo and health packs, listening to audio logs left by a deceased crew, and besting the odd toggle puzzle, when I found a door that wouldn’t respond to a smart blast of telekinesis. If the team were building up to a big fright, it had better be a belter.

Luckily, it was. It was a new kind of Necromorph called the Swarm Infector, and while it’s a piddling thing on its own, scrabbling across the floor with tiny tendrils flying, it’s capable of pulling an extremely unpleasant trick. Like the much larger Infector from the previous games, it can reanimate any nearby corpses, sending them spasming into epileptic life. They judder around for a few horrible seconds, then the gristle starts to warp outwards and – presto – you’ve got another Slasher on your hands.

It’s standard Dead Space stuff, perhaps, but combining the Infector with the series’ diminutive Swarmers has resulted in a genuinely unnerving combination. Once again, corpses can no longer be treated as mere set dressing, and there’s something new to squash underfoot.

Elsewhere, if the team has to struggle a little harder in order to scare you, the consolation prize is that Dead Space 3 still looks like an atmospheric and fiercely competent action game. Isaac has clearly been having the futuristic equivalent of Hot Yoga sessions, as he’s generally a little quicker on his feet this time around and can now combat-roll away from danger when things get bad. He’s also joined by a brand new co-op partner, in the form of Sergeant John Carver, an EarthGov super-soldier and all-round grumpy hard nut whose family has been wiped out by the Necromorphs.



Co-op play is of the drop-in, drop-out variety, and although it will open new paths through the levels and even unlock the odd additional side mission, it’s entirely optional. Inevitably, it makes the whole thing even less scary than it already is at this point in the series. Down on the frozen surface of the ice planet Tau Volantis, however, there are suggestions that the developers haven’t completely given up on creating an air of prickly tension. Snowstorms reduce visibility, while nearby science installations are covered with flapping cables and guide wires, encouraging us to waste precious ammo shooting at shadows.

Carver’s presence has also enabled the design team to scale up the enemies, chucking the duo against a vast hairy spider known as the Snow Beast, and a huge out-of-control drill. The latter has a glowing core that has to be shot out using well-timed blasts of stasis while your partner keeps you safe from the crowd of Necromorph monsters and Unitologist soldiers now gunning after you as well. The developers have yet to reveal all of the game’s new weapons and enemies, but with the head count steadily increasing in most battles, it wouldn’t be entirely surprising if the firepower starts to escalate too.

If Dead Space 3 can’t always keep you quaking in your spaceboots, it should at least keep you busy. That’s not the ideal path for a survival horror franchise to take, but it’s better than the alternative – which is generally an accidental lunge towards painful self‑parody.

EA have released about fifteen minutes of in-game footage for Dead Space 3 showing a bit of single player, a bit of co-op, a giant angry drill and an even bigger monster. Dead Space 3 has moved out of the tight corridors of the first two games onto the white wastes of an ice planet. But with no close corners or closets for creatures to use as ambush points, where will the scares come from?

Low visibility storms, apparently, but Isaac isn't too fussed. He's a careful man, the kind of man that shields his face from a snowstorm even when he's wearing a full mask, the kind of man who doesn't instantly hurl up is guts right into his own helmet upon being swallowed whole by a disgusting creature. Watch all that drama in the video below.

EA president Frank Gibeau says that Dead Space needs a number of players roughly equivalent to the entire population of Norway to justify its continued existence. "In general, we're thinking about how we make this a more broadly appealing franchise, because ultimately you need to get to audience sizes of around five million to really continue to invest in an IP like Dead Space," he told CVG in a recent interview.

"Anything less than that and it becomes quite difficult financially given how expensive it is to make games and market them," he continued. While firm sales numbers are not readily available, EA did say back in February that Dead Space 2 was selling about twice as well as the franchise's first entry had. Yet, even given that, they feel that Dead Space 3 needs to be more "broadly appealing" without alienating current fans of the series.

Dead Space 3 is set for a 2013 release, and sounds to be leaning toward more toward the action genre than its predecessors. Only time will tell if, and to what extent, that shift compromises the horror elements that current fans of the series enjoy.

If you fancy having your mind somewhat blown, try playing the Mass Effect 2 demo in your browser. Unlike most graphically impressive browser games, this isn't a huge download running via a special plugin: all you need is Flash and Java, which you likely already do, and you'll be playing in a few seconds. The only catch is you need a good connection - about 10Mb/s - and the demo won't appear if you don't.

The service is called Gaikai, and it's live in 12 countries right now. The focus is on letting you into the game with no fuss or sign-up process, so it's perfect for demos. At the end of the Mass Effect 2 or Dead Space 2 demos available now, you get a link to buy the full game.

If the Mass Effect 2 demo link doesn't pop up when you visit the Gaikai site, try the Spore one - it has the same requirements but it'll tell you what's wrong if it doesn't work.



The service has actually been running in a low-profile way for a couple of months. There's a slight lag on interactions when playing on our office connection, but performance is generally very good. Since it's web based, it means you can now play these PC games on a Mac or Linux system. It's set to be demonstrated in full at the Games Developer Conference this week.

Unlike the similar game-streaming service, OnLive, Gaikai doesn't charge for its services and allows users to play in their browser right away. At the moment it only offers some choice selections from EA, but is hoping to move onto including a larger catalogue of blockbuster hits from them and other publishers.

Writing on his blog CEO David Perry explains that he hopes to eventually end up with servers in every major city in the world to stream data from, saying that "if engineers work really hard, they can maybe squeeze out another thousandth of a second from our compression but if we set up in a data center two states closer to your house, we dramatically improve the performance".

The creator of Earthworm Jim hopes to eventually expand the service to allow YouTube-style embedding of demos on websites, and the service will eventually work with Facebook. The aim is to have the embedded demos appear on Facebook, and at the end of reviews, so players can hop straight in and play.

Other demos currently available include Spore, The Sims 3 and, after completing a short survey, Dead Space 2.

Let us know if they work on your connection and, if so, how the performance feels to you.

Gareth Garratt is curled up in his wheelchair, his body secured in a bucket seat while his hands clutch at the side of a desktop. His chin is pressed down onto a Toshiba mouse and he's using that to control a virtual Marty McFly, clambering around the back of a police van. Gareth's chin is the only part of his body that seems to have fine motor control, due to the cerebral palsy he was born with.

Gareth sprang to prominence earlier in the week after a frustrated series of posts on the Overclockers UK forum, as he struggled with EA's Dead Space 2; through this, he's managed to raise the profile of disabled gamers and persuade EA to patch in support to Dead Space 2. We've come to his family home in Leicester, UK to talk to him about the campaign, the difficulties he has with gaming, and the wide variety of support he's received. Due to his palsy it’s very hard for Gareth to talk, so his answers are short and sometimes his mother and full-time carer, Jacqueline Garratt, has to interpret for me.



PC Gamer: The set-up you have here is amazing. There are two huge screens, more DVDs, CDs and hard drives than I’ve ever seen, a good surround sound system, and a top-end custom PC; have you installed this all yourself?

Gareth: “Yes.”
Jacqueline: "I'm his hands. He tells me what to do, and it goes in one ear... he knows what he’s doing though.”

PC Gamer: What games do you play?

Gareth: “I mainly play FPSes and racing games; I’ve been trying to play Dead Space; Dirt 2 was great, and I’ve been trying F1 2010 recently as well. I like Fallout 3 - New Vegas as well. I can play most genres, but it all depends on what options it gives. It's hard. I like to play multiplayer games with friends from Overclockers.”

PC Gamer: You play these with the mouse, and you use your chin to control the mouse. Using custom configurations, you assign walk forward to the right-mouse button, is that correct?

Gareth: Yes, and the fire button on the middle button. I play racing games on the Xbox controller, over there.



PC Gamer: How do you play reaction based games like that?

Gareth: I can use the sticks one at a time. On most driving games there are some buttons that you can’t customise. The Codemasters games are okay. Grand Theft Auto; I can’t change the controls, so it’s impossible to play because you have to use two keys at the same time.

PC Gamer: How did you get into PC Gaming?

Jacqueline: “When he was small, dad started him off on them.
Gareth: “I’ve grown with them; at school, I used a lot of computers there, that's how it started off really.

PC Gamer: What was the first one you played?

Gareth: I think it could have been Sega Rally or something like that. Or perhaps Golden Axe

PC Gamer: That had multiple simultaneous inputs though; is there anything else you’d say, apart from single inputs and key configuration options, that would make it easier for you to play?

Jacqueline: “Add more buttons on the mouse, on the top, not the side”
Gareth: “It's very hard to find a mouse with buttons on the top. All the customisable mice focus on the sides.
Jacqueline: “They’re really for people who can use their hands.”

PC Gamer: Do you have any specialised bits of kit that help you game?

Gareth: Nothing: Everything's off the shelf. We have to fight for it at we get. Nobody helps, or advises us. Since I posted this on Overclockers UKforum, the OCUK community have been giving me good advice and some have offered to help.

PC Gamer: Have you ever tried contacting Special Effect (the UK’s disabled gaming charity)?

Jacqueline: “No, I’ve  never phoned Special Effect.
Gareth: “The things are so expensive; the head-tracking hardware is so expensive. It's hard to afford that kind of money?”

PC Gamer: What do developers do that makes it easier for you to play games?

Gareth: Not much. What annoys me is that they should have it on the back of the box.

PC Gamer: Do you feel that this is something government should be legislating about? A bit like the Age ratings?

Jacqueline: Yes. You pay out for the game, but when you get it back home you can't play it; it's not on the back saying whether it's got customised controls options.
Gareth: And then you can't take it back, because of the no-returns policy. It should be on the back, and it should state if it can be customised or not.

PC Gamer: You’ve paid for all this yourself? If it’s not rude to ask, how much did it cost?

Gareth: Yes. £1,800; no help from government.
Jacqueline: He’s got two monitors. Sky and Freeview. It’s taken a lot of time to get up to this standard. It used to be his dad helped him, but he passed away two years ago and I’m still learning.



PC Gamer: This Dead Space 2 campaign has taken up a lot of your time; were you expecting a response?

Gareth: No. (laughs) I had an email from the Dead Space developers saying they are working on a patch to enable customised controls in the game and they will send me out some goodies. About a year go, I sent an email to Rockstar about GTA IV again; I didn't get any reply back.

PC Gamer: Will you be carrying on your campaign?

Gareth: I’ve only contacted those two before, just those two for now. Yeah, I'll be contacting a lot more people. I’m getting fed up of wasting money every time.

PC Gamer: Do you go to the shops to buy them together? What do you do if you want to return a game?

Jacqueline: Yes, we do, but if you can't play it, you can't take it back. You've wasted the money. Four times we’ve had unplayable games we can do nothing with. It makes you angry, really angry.

PC Gamer: That’s British trading law; who do you blame for this?

Jacqueline: “It's the got to be down to the developer; it's not the shops fault; they're only sellling it. You've got to go to the source of it.

PC Gamer: Do you try before you buy?

Gareth: “A lot of games are not on demos. It's like FIFA 11; I can't play that, but FIFA 10 I can. They removed mouse controls on FIFA 11; I can't understand why they removed it. If it's already in FIFA 10, why take it out? I don't know. It happens frequently. Codemasters is very good at customised controls. EA is reasonably good but just lately they've gone downhill. Rockstar; the second GTA was okay, San Andreas, but GTA IV was bad. Rockstar: Get your arse into gear.   (laughs).

PC Gamer: Do you use remapping programs?

Gareth: People say to you remapping programs and all that, but I shouldn't need to; it should be in the game itself. It would benefit everyone. With remapping programs I can get three buttons working, but I can't get the other buttons working. This Toshiba mouse has two mouse buttons, three extras on the top, and two buttons on the side but I can't use them.

PC Gamer: What would you do without games?

Gareth: I'd be bored out of my head. (laughs)

PC Gamer: Do you get any therapeutic benefits from games?

Gareth: No. It’s purely entertainment.

PC Gamer: Do you think it would be difficult for smaller companies to implement all the different supports needed for all the different types of disabilities?

Gareth: They could include options in the game menu to make it easier for all kinds of disabilities. If the small companies start doing that, then more people will buy their product and then they will grow into bigger companies!

PC Gamer: Have you received any messages of support for the campaign?

Gareth: We’ve been overwhelmed by the support; we’ve had messages from Thailand, Poland, America, and Russia... Lots of people have signed the petition. Another guy (AskACapper - quadraplegic Comedian Chuck Bittner) started the campaign - he did the petition first and then I joined in later. I helped him to get to 40,000 signatures - he’s going to see someone important about it, and now he's got something to take. I think he’s going to meet all of the developers for consoles and PC. At first he was focusing on consoles, at first, now he sees the PC side of it.

PC Gamer: What will you focus on next?

Gareth: I just want all the new releases that are coming out to include the option for customised controls; I'm not asking much. I'm not asking to change the whole game or anything; it's something simple to do, if you do it at an early stage. Everyone will benefit from it instead of using the mapping software.

Turns out the Dead Space 2 DLC, that was supposedly console specific, is available to unlock in the PC build. EA had previously told The Escapist that the DLC would not make it to the PC version, but users are reporting a save file is all that's required to unlock the extra suits and weapons.


There's a lively discussion, and instructions on how to access the content on the official Steam forum for the game.

Dead Space 2 developer, Visceral, recently announced they had started work on the ability to change key bindings in the game, one day after a disabled gamer created a petition for the cause. Fair play. Dan recently reviewed Dead Space 2. Read his opinions here.

(via TECHSpotlight)

Yesterday we mentioned the problems of a disabled gamer with Cerebral Palsy, who couldn't play Dead Space 2 because of a lack of key mapping features. A petition was launched asking Visceral to add key mapping to the game. It got more than 20,000 signatures. Visceral have responded today to say that a PC patch is on the way to fix the problem.

Executive Producer Steve Papoutsis sent confirmation to Joystiq that a fix is incoming. "The Dead Space 2 team is aware of the issue that disabled players are having with Dead Space 2 PC. In fact a number of folks on our team are so passionate about getting this fix done that they are currently working hard to allow players to re-map key bindings to the mouse which should help disabled players enjoy the game." He adds that "in addition to the key binding fix, the patch will include other fixes for PC players."

Hooray! A happy ending for everyone. We don't know exactly when the patch will hit, but it sounds like it's not too far away. For more on Dead Space 2, check out our review, and the official Dead Space 2 site for more information.