Each Friday PC Gamer s writers descend into the molten idea core and return with cooling fragments of what they have dubbed opiniononium . They re just like that.

THE HIGHS

Tom Marks: Grand Theft Auto V s PC port won t be a smash and grab What Rockstar is doing with the PC and next-gen versions of Grand Theft Auto V is downright admirable. Sure they are taking their sweet time doing it, but I much prefer a long wait to a slap-dash, press escape to instantly quit, port with more problems than new features. First they told us they are giving previous players a reason to come back, and now they confirm a first person mode and 4k resolution support. First person has been a rumored feature for a while, but the modeled vehicle interiors and suite of new animations are icing on the cake I wasn t expecting. A year after its initial release, Rockstar is still working hard to keep the latest version of GTA V feeling cutting edge, and at this rate the PC will be home to the definitive version.

Samuel Roberts: When systems come together I m late as hell to the Alien: Isolation party, but this week I ve been muddling through the game s colossal 20+ hour storyline in little chunks. I haven t found it especially scary, to be honest—tense, but not scary. In well-lit environments, I have adjusted to the sight and animation of the alien and no longer consider it an unseen threat. Last night, though, the systems of the game came together in a way that I found genuinely unsettling, as I manoeuvred through a strobe-lit environment and saw the alien drop out of nowhere, behind some fellow human survivors. I went straight for a locker and hid, hearing screams as the alien devoured them and then, a silence, until the locker tore open and the alien killed me, too. By itself, the alien s aura becomes undone the more you play, but the systems are smart enough to keep finding ways to make that creature scary. Brilliant game.

Chris Thursten: Endless Legend (and other space wizards) I liked the look of Endless Space more than I really found time to play it, but this week I decided to take a stab at Amplitude s fantasy follow-up: Endless Legend. Having been rather disappointed by Civilization: Beyond Earth, I m taken by just how many things Legend gets right. The combat system is an elegant improvement on Civ; empire development is involved and interesting; the UI is crisp and pleasant to use. The factions are varied, play very differently, and are beautifully presented.

It s the art and music that have really sold the game to me, though. Endless Legend s take on fantasy has a light sci-fi touch and the gentle pastel art reminds me of a Gene Wolfe book cover. This has been something of a trend recently—Destiny shows off many of the same influences. I ve been running a pen and paper campaign in Monte Cook s Numenera, lately, so there really couldn t be a better time to be surrounded by lovely hand-painted space wizards.

Andy Chalk: EFF seeks to legalize online DRM circumvention in abandoned games The EFF recently petitioned to legalize DRM circumvention in "abandoned" games, a move that, if successful, will make life a whole lot easier for retro gamers and preservationists. Older games reliant on matchmaking servers or online DRM checks are pretty much done in when remote servers go offline, and while cracks are always an option, they're often not a realistic choice. The process of legalizing this particular type of DRM circumvention is "burdensome and confusing," but if we're serious about preserving video games, both for posterity and playability, then this is a necessary step and hopefully one that will ultimately prove successful.

Phil Savage: Games for Windows Live is slightly more dead I love seeing bad things happen to bad people. Or in this case, to bad programs. Games for Windows: Live is undoubtedly a bad program, and I smile every time it comes closer to annihilation. This week, Nordic Games patched it out of Red Faction: Guerilla. This is surprising—despite their previous promise that it would happen. It's surprising because Guerilla was made by Volition for THQ—the former now with Deep Silver, the latter sadly deceased. Nordic acquired the rights to much of THQ's catalogue, but they didn't have anything to do with the game's creation; just its current distribution. To then go back in to remove the unwanted GfWL-wrapper is a step worth celebrating. Especially because Guerilla is such a great game.

THE LOWS

Andy Chalk: Dawngate is dead EA pulled the plug on Dawngate at the start of the week, a particularly surprising move given that it's been in one form of beta testing or another for the past year and a half. I suppose this could actually be seen as a "high," since a willingness to shut it down at this stage in development is surely preferable to just shoving it out the door and hoping for the best, but it's unfortunate that something couldn't be done to salvage the game, especially since some players clearly seemed to be enjoying it. It's also obviously not good news for the people at developer Waystone Games, which is reportedly being disbanded.

Samuel Roberts: High prices It s hard to figure out what s happening with Ubisoft s holiday titles vanishing from Steam this week (and not appearing on the UK Steam store at all). While opening two clients to play one game is never ideal with both Steam and uPlay, having the option to buy the game on Steam is ideal for a lot of players, and not selling through Steam is a break of form for Ubisoft. Hopefully they ll return to Valve s service soon.

Phil Savage: Fallout 4 An obvious choice, and not even a particularly notable one. Of course the Fallout 4 trademark was a hoax. This happens constantly, to the point where I've long since stopped paying attention to trademark discoveries. It s always a hoax. And yet, yes, there's still a part of me that wanted it to be true. I'm ready to see what Bethesda will do next. An open-world post-apocalyptic RPG made with current-gen hardware in mind? Yeah, I'd like to see that happen.

Oh well, there's always next year.

Chris Thursten: Oh god where did the year go Endless Legend might be my favourite thing this week, but the circumstances in which I discovered it are quite the opposite. We ll be beginning the process of judging our Game of the Year soon, and that means going back and considering a lot of games that I might have missed when they came out. I ve heard a lot of people say that 2014 was a little weak, release-wise, but the staggering task ahead of me speaks to the opposite. I ve still not started Wasteland 2 and I d like to return to Divinity: Original Sin; I m half-way through my first Shadowrun Returns campaign and don t feel ready to move on to the Director s Cut of Dragonfall yet. That s just RPGs. I still need to finish Alien: Isolation and Shadow of Mordor and, oh wait! There s Legend of Grimrock 2. And Jazzpunk. And The Banner Saga. Maybe I should give Metal Gear Rising a look? What about Luftrausers?

And so on. And so on. And so on.

Tom Marks: The Glove is coming off The Black Glove s kickstarter is finally over, falling woefully short of its $550k target. Even the belated support of big names like Ken Levine couldn t save what looked like a unique and clever concept, striking many of the same chords with me as the first time I saw Psychonauts. Raising the $220k it managed to is an impressive feat in itself, certainly proving there is a not insignificant amount of interest in the game, but setting such a high bar on an all-or-nothing platform is a dangerous game to play with a brand new IP from a team with no stand out names. Their video proved to me that they had the chops to get the job done, and The Black Glove looks like a game I d love to try, so the thought that it may never see the light of day is a discouraging one. 

Amplitude Studios' small stable of interconnected strategy games opened its doors to the public yesterday, with the addition of modding tools for their fantasy 4X Endless Legend. They came as part of the game's Halloween update, which also added a seasonal side quest and a few other small bits and bobs. If you're keen to see what can be done with the game, you'll find a bunch of tutorials here.

That new, Halloweeny side quest unlocks "a new Broken Lords' Hero and a new item" to the game, while bug fixes include tweaks to the AI and solutions for issues related to quest items. It's not a huge patch, other than that modding support, but the ability to add new quests, skills, items, assets and so on, and to change the behaviour of the game's factions and heroes, is always welcome in any strategy game.

Dan liked Endless Legend quite a bit when he reviewed it the other week. (Ta, RPS.)

It's the eighth floor of Dungeon of the Endless, and with a full squad of four, well-equipped, level 6-7 characters, I have everything under control. I set up turrets next to the unpowered rooms where aliens could spawn whenever I open another door, securing a path between the crystal I need to protect and the elevator to the next floor. I send Sara Numas, a katana-wielding bounty hunter and the fastest character in the group, to open doors, then run back to the crystal room to fight off whatever I've unleashed with the rest of the group. By the time the aliens get past the defenses, they're weak, and we take them out easily.

Then, of course, it all goes to hell. In my defense, I had no idea that if I spent enough time on a floor, the aliens will eventually bust through closed doors all by themselves and stream out in great numbers, but Dungeon of the Endless teaches all of its important lessons this way. It's a cruel, but entertaining learning experience.

Its pause-at-any-time combat, desperate race to the finish, and strategies that forced me to cut off a limb to save the body reminded me of FTL, while its character upgrades, inventory, and squad management reminded of XCOM. And then there's the tower defense element, where each room has a set number of nodes where I could place turrets, healing units, and other useful gadgets.

Dungeon of the Endless pulls from many popular games and genres from the last couple of years, but what's wonderful about it is that all these elements come together to create something entirely new.

Hellevator

I start each run in an escape pod that crash lands on an alien planet. The only way out is up through 12 floors of an alien infested dungeon, and I have to bring the crystal with me to power my escape.

Each stage has two phases. First I have to find the elevator to the next floor, opening one door at a time. Each time I open a door there's a chance I'll find aliens that will immediately attack my squad, defenses, or the crystal. If my entire squad or the crystal goes down, it s game over. If I survive whatever happens after opening a door, I have infinite time to plan my next move.

Dust, a resource that makes the crystal more powerful, lets me provide power to rooms, which ensures aliens don't spawn there, and activates the room's major and minor module slots. Major modules are mostly for gathering resources: Industry, which I need to build anything, Science for researching upgrades, and Food to heal and level up heroes. Minor modules house different kinds of turrets.

I've seen all these turret types before in other tower defense games, but having a squad on the ground meaningfully recontextualizes that familiar gameplay. There are many different hero and module combinations to experiment with, and I'm much more invested in the characters I'm tower-defending because I customized them myself.

For example, I gave Elise Ness, a freelance demolitionist in a giant space suit, a big machine gun that deals a lot of damage. With a healing module and another that boosts her attacks, she can protect a room by herself from most threats.

I can heal heroes and activate up to two of their special abilities, but that's the full extent of direct combat controls. The trick is knowing what room to put the heroes in, and how to prepare those rooms in their favor. Once they're in there, they'll take care of the rest automatically.

The only way to get Dust is by finding it in new rooms, but there's always less Dust than there are rooms, ensuring that a wave of aliens can spawn whenever I open a door. After finding the elevator, it's time for the second phase. I need to bring the crystal and the heroes to the elevator, but picking the crystal up will cause large waves of aliens to spawn in every unpowered room, and unlike waves in the first phase, they won't stop coming until we re out of there, or dead. The most interesting choice at that point is what rooms to power up.

My favorite method was to explore a floor until I had enough Dust to power a path between the crystal and next elevator, build as many turrets as I could along the way, and hope they slowed the aliens enough so I could get to the elevator before they caught up with me.

Maximum capacity

It took me a couple of runs to realize that I couldn't just sprint through floors. Dungeon of the Endless' universe, which mixes space marines with walking skeletons and wooden chests, conveys a lot of dread with its dimly-lit but colorful, pixelated artstyle, and there are some really menacing aliens in the upper floors.

Opening a door doesn't only give me a chance to find the loot I need to deal with them, but counts as a turn which collects resources from whatever major modules I've built. Do I make a run for the elevator now, when I know I have a fair shot of getting there, or do I take a chance and open another door? There's a lot of equipment, research, and upgrades to choose from in Dungeon of the Endless, but the game hinges on the decision to open a door, or not, and it was loaded with tension every single time for the eight hours I played it. There's no loading a previous save. It's a commitment.

The other big question that kept me interested was if could make it to the top. It was challenging, and so far I've only been able to do it on the "too easy" mode, but once I did, I was pretty much done.

Floor layouts are randomly generated, and I was always curious to discover all the little visual details in each new room. There are also new heroes to earn, and different escape pods, which tweak some of the basic rules and starting conditions of a run (like ships in FTL). Still, once I've survived one alien-infested, sci-fi/fantasy hybrid space dungeon, I've kind of survived them all. The aliens have a lot of nasty surprises, but they didn't force me to change up my strategy once I found one that works.

It took me at least six tense hours to find that strategy, and for $13/ 10, I can definitely recommend taking a ride on that elevator.