The apocalypse was never going to be easy. It's meant to be a desperate and wretched struggle for survival against exhaustion, the decaying world, and probably mutants. But humans aren't the only ones that have to suffer. PCs do too, if these Metro: Last Light system specs are anything to go by. While there's a broad scale of requirements - the minimum being admirably inclusive of older systems - the optimal rendering of the murky, oppressive underground is going to need a seriously robust rig.

Minimum

Windows: XP (32-Bit), Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 2.2 GHz Dual Core e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo
RAM: 2GB
Direct X: 9.0c
Graphics Card: DirectX 9, Shader Model 3 compliant e.g. NVIDIA GTS 250 (or AMD equivalent e.g. HD Radeon 4000 series) or higher

For 3D Vision Support:

NVIDIA GTX 275 or higher
120Hz Monitor
NVIDIA 3D Vision kit for Windows Vista, 7 or 8


Recommended

Windows: Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 2.6 GHz Quad Core e.g. Intel Core i5
RAM: 4GB
Direct X: 11
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 580/660 Ti (or AMD equivalent e.g. 7870) or higher

For 3D Vision Support:

NVIDIA GTX 580/660Ti or higher
120Hz Monitor
NVIDIA 3D Vision kit for Windows Vista, 7 or 8


Optimum

Windows: Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: 3.4 GHz Multi-Core e.g. Intel Core i7
RAM: 8GB
Direct X: 11
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 690 / NVIDIA Titan

For 3D Vision Support:

NVIDIA GTX 690
120Hz Monitor
NVIDIA 3D Vision kit for Windows Vista, 7 or 8


Metro: Last Light is out May 17th.

You too will know the joys of fighting humans and mutants as you vie for control of a doomsday weapon, comrade. 4A Games has released the first survival guide tutorial for its upcoming Metro: Last Light first-person shooter. The video familiarizes would-be Rangers with the inherent dangers you'll face in the Metro itself, the destroyed surface wasteland and the transition tunnels between the two areas.

Based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel "Metro 2033," Metro: Last Light focuses on life within Metro, the last surviving underground city after the nuclear fallout of 2033 as well as the conflicts between the factions vying for resources, power and control of a rumored doomsday device. Running on 4A's proprietary engine, Last Light is set for a May 17th release date on all platforms. The game features the voices of Lance Henriksen, Nolan North, Khary Payton, and Patton Oswalt—at last combining the talents of "Bishop" from "Aliens" and one of the greatest geek comedians to ever live in one video game.

Metro: Last Light system requirements (minimum)
• CPU: 2.0 GHz dual core CPU, Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Phenom X2
• RAM: 1GB
• Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible card with 512 MB RAM. Nvidia 200-series or AMD Radeon 3000 series cards.
• Operating system: Windows XP SP2
• DirectX compatible audio card
• 7.5 GB of hard disk space

Metro: Last Light system requirements (recommended)
• CPU: 2.6 GHz quad core Intel or AMD processor, Intel Core i5, AMD Phenom X4
• RAM: 2GB
• Graphics: DirectX 10 or 11 compatible card with 1GB of video memory, Nvidia 400-series or AMD 5000-series.
• Operating system: Windows 7
• DirectX compatible audio card
• 7.5 GB of hard disk space

Charge!

Update: All 20,000 keys have been distributed. Thanks to everyone who grabbed one—look for more thrilling giveaways from us in the future.

For seven years, the original Company of Heroes has stood as our highest-rated RTS of all time. As its successor marches toward a late June release, we're happy to be able to exclusively offer about a division's worth of Company of Heroes 2 beta keys to you all.

To grab a key, click here to head over to our Facebook page. Once you receive a key, redeem it on Steam. The closed beta is live now, and it includes both multiplayer and skirmish mode against the AI on six maps.

There's a limited supply of keys available. I'll update this post once they've all been drafted (away from their loving parents, you monster). If you miss out on our giveaway, a nuclear option is available: pre-ordering Company of Heroes 2 on Steam grants closed beta access.

One of the big surprises of the THQ fire-sale was that no one stumped up to save Vigil, creators of Darksiders. A sad end to the company though that was, not all of Vigil's staff did so badly, with many of the refugees reforming as Crytek USA. Now their CEO David Adams has announced an ambition to buy back the Darksiders name, tweeting that he'd "put 7 years of heart and soul into that franchise" and that "it belongs at home with its creators."

Good news for undernourished-horse fans everywhere!

Darksiders and its sequel were imperfect games but not unambitious ones, mashing together a Zelda-ish lite-RPG structure with a gratifyingly deep combo-brawler and Prince of Persia-style environmental acrobatics. What appeared initially to be a rather adolescent fiction about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse took some genuinely weird turns, as the roving eye of the developers flitted across styles and settings, all brought into lurid detail by an extremely accomplished art team. Even Jesper Kyd's score for Darksiders 2 is an overlooked gem.

I know the game has carved a little home for itself in the heart of several PCG staffers - and we'd love to see where the Darksiders team's talents take them next.

Thanks, Reddit.

Saints Row 4 debuted last week with all the subtlety one might expect from a game with dubstep guns and rocket-launching guitars, and it's eyeballing an August 20 release. That sets up a scant month-long gap between it and Grand Theft Auto 5's planned September launch, and Rockstar's titan has both years of success and a heavy fanbase to bring to bear. Speaking to Eurogamer, Volition Producer Jim Boone says the team isn't worried in the slightest and feels Saints Row is unique enough to stack up to its giant competitor.

"Obviously, when announced its date and it was so close to us, that was an interesting phenomenon," Boone says. "But the thing we feel good about in general is that we're such a different game to what they are. If we were stylistically similar to the first Saints Row, I'd be horrified right now. Saints Row: The Third came out the same time as Assassin's Creed, but the games are so different in terms of what they do."

Saints Row 4 certainly departs heavily from its original predecessor (remember when you were fighting gangs?), adopting a chaotic grab-bag of wacky antics such as superpowers, alien invasions, and pedestrian-firing cat cannons. Grand Theft Auto 5 is much more narrative-focused by comparison, weaving a more serious tale of crime and redemption connected across multiple main characters.

For Boone, open world games have come along far enough for both styles to co-exist peacefully. "The genre's matured enough where you can have all these different styles and still be an open world game and be different," he states. "So I look at GTA 5 and think there's this massive game coming out, but I don't think that with our superpowers and alien invasions, no one will compare us to them."

After the controlled implosion of THQ, you may have been wondering what would happen to the original Company of Heroes, now that Relic and COH2 have been safely gobbled up by Sega, and its chilli-dog scoffing CEO Mr Hedgehog. The imminent shutdown of Quazal, who handled the game's online, hardly helped matters - but thankfully, Relic have come to a solution. Rather than leaving their six-year-old game to die, they're thoughtfully transferring the original Company of Heroes to Steamworks - you'll be able to 'opt-in' to the new service from April 8th.

Relic have teamed up with Smoking Gun Interactive - a studio made up of former Relic staff who worked on the original game - to bring COH to Steam "with as many of the original online features working on the new platform as possible." That means that the full suite of online options likely won't be available right at the start, but in the blog post Relic talk of a "roadmap" for COH1, so hopefully the game will be back to full strength in the coming months. Heroes' old, Quazal servers are set to close on May 7th.

Sadly, the years of accumulated online data won't carry across to the Steamworks version, but Relic are "investigating the possibility of creating an online archive of all the final data from the leaderboards, statistics, etc, to honor the gamers who have played so much for the last 6 years."

As for the sequel, well that's heading for Steamworks too. Company of Heroes 2 is out June 25th, while the date of its closed beta will be announced early next week.

It isn't often we see the words "Origin" and "sale" next to each other, but this week is the exception: EA is running a week-long Player Appreciation Sale which discounts some pretty hefty games in the publisher's lineup—titans such as Mass Effect 3, Crysis 3, and Battlefield 3.

Here's the full list of games on sale and their prices:

Battlefield 3 Premium—$25
Battlefield 3—$12
Battlefield 3 Premium Edition—$30
Crysis 3—$30
Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe Edition—$40
Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe Upgrade—$10
The Sims 3 Seasons—$20
The Sims 3 University Life—$28
The Sims 3 Supernatural—$15
Dead Space—$6
Dead Space 2—$6
Dead Space 3—$30
Resident Evil 5—$10
Mass Effect 3—$10
The Walking Dead—$10
Batman: Arkham City GOTY Edition—$12
FIFA Soccer 13—$20
Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection—$15
Hitman: Absolution—$15
Saints Row: The Third Full Package—$25
Assassin's Creed 3—$35
Assassin's Creed 3 Deluxe Edition—$56
Darksiders 2—$18
Dead Island GOTY Edition—$10
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City—$25


Normal and special editions on sale? And they're big games? I don't want to spoil this rare opportunity to enjoy a good Origin sale with cynicism, but it's hard not to chortle lightly at the convenient devaluing of nearly half the games EA offered SimCity players for free earlier this week.

The mutants in Metro 2033 were objectionable enough, but the guys that really took the biscuit were those underground Nazis, who appear to have returned in full force for Metro: Last Light. The following trailer shows a terrifyingly well-equipped subterranean army training for war - presumably a war against returning hero Artyom, and his plucky chums from the Metro 2033 station. Last Light, you'll remember, is out this May, so old Arty doesn't have much time to prepare.

Here's the trailer. After you're done, be sure to check out our recent preview.

How silly is Saints Row IV going to be. Well, let's look at what's inside its announcement trailer.

A guitar-shaped rocket launcher. This is quite silly.
Superpowers. This is very silly.
A head-expanding laser beam. Positively batshit.
A skyward launching nutshot. Just... ouch.
A giant, mutated, rampaging mascot. I think I'm becoming desensitised.
An announcement date of August 20th for the US, and August 23rd for the UK. More informative than silly, really.

There's a definite pattern emerging.

Frankly, I'm delighted. Saint Row: The Third was one of those games so unapologetically ridiculous that it snapped back on itself and became a uniquely warped kind of genius. It's nice to see Volition and Deep Silver really test how far they can push that.

4A's Metro: Last Light escaped being lost forever in the murky tunnels of development limbo after Dead Island publisher Deep Silver picked up the game when THQ's light sputtered out. Its original March release date took a bump into May after the sale, but in an interview with VG247, Deep Silver Global Brand Manager Huw Beynon says the delay is purely because of administrative busywork and not a snag in the game's actual formation.

"Obviously the release date has been pushed back a little bit as the studio re-engages with a new publisher and tries to figure out QA, submissions and all the stuff you have to do behind the scenes," he explains. "But we’ve not lost too much time on the development of the game, and it’s essentially going to be the same product we planned to release in March. We’re just really excited it’s not been too traumatic for the studio, and I am confident that when the game comes out it’s going to be great."

That's a relief to hear, especially when Last Light looks poised to bring more of the bleak, atmospheric scurryings and shootings of a ruined Moscow's surviving populace first seen in Metro 2033. Metro: Last Light launches May 14th in America and May 17th through Europe. We'll have more to share soon—a new demo of the game is being brought by the PC Gamer Tower tomorrow.