We’re just about halfway through 2018 (which has somehow taken both too long and no time at all). As is tradition, we’ve shaken our our brains around to see which games from the last six months still make our neurons fizzle with delight. Then we wrote about them here, in this big list feature that you’re reading right now this second.
And what games they are! 2018 has been a great year so far, and our top picks run the whole range, from hand drawn oddities made by one person, to big mega-studio blockbusters that took the work of hundreds. And each of them is special to us in some way. Just like you are too. Click through the arrows to see the full spread of our faves so far. Better luck next year to the games that didn’t make the cut this time.
An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC strategy games ever made, now freshened up to include everything from 2017 and 2018. From intricate, global-scale wargames to the tight thrills of guerrilla squads, the broad expanse of the genre contains something for everyone, and we’ve gathered the best of the best.
The vast majority are available to buy digitally, a few are free to download and play forever. They’re all brilliant.
Into the Breach - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)
While we’re all distracted by BattleTech‘s intricate and ponderous mech warfare, the polar opposite, lightning-quick approach to turn-based giant robo-combat has been busy too. Into The Breach‘s latest patch quietly fixes a dozen-odd problems I doubt many of us even noticed this ridiculously slick game ever had, including one that meant getting your whole team killed in the final mission didn’t always mean a game over. Me, I’m happy because this patch marks Into The Breach’s first step into ultimate perfection – becoming a game I can play while lying down. (more…)
Progression is so often an illusion. Many games use the idea of permanent progression as a way of tickling our lizard brains with a growing pile of loot or numbers which constantly tick up, so that we feel like we re achieving something while we sit in front of a computer and repeat the same set of tasks over and over again.
The beauty of permadeath is that it does away with all this. Characters grow and collect things, but then they become permadead, and it s time for a new explorer to begin their adventure. The only thing that progresses is you, the player, slowly learning a set of systems with each failure. At least, that s the theory. We spoke to the designers of Spelunky, Into the Breach, Dead Cells and Rogue Legacy to learn more about persistence within a permadeath mould.
Into the Breach - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Brock Wilbur)
The folks at Subset Games are responsible for the games FTL and its follow-up Into The Breach, which means that they are also responsible for some of the most frustrating yells I’ve done alone on an airplane. I’m sorry to those around me, but I thought I was going to finally complete a run and then everyone I loved exploded or died from lack of oxygen or fell into the ocean. I assume Subset Games has been responsible for similar micro-aggressions against many of you. Which is why Adam Smith from RPS held them to the fire (a pleasant conversation) at Rezzed yesterday.
What's the secret sauce of Into the Breach's incredibly readable UI? How do the Vek decide what to attack? Are they aliens? What percentage of players have managed to clear the game on hard? Justin Ma and Matthew Davis sit down to talk about the long four year development that led to Into the Breach, and Chris Avellone joins to talk about writing one of the best PC games of the year so far.
Into the Breach - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alec Meer)
If there’s one thing that grips me more about Into The Breach than the razor-sharp tactics of its death-chess scenarios, it’s trying to wrap my flabby brain about the dark possibilities and implications of its terse but tantalising plot. I’ve already espoused one possible and particularly fatalistic reading of what’s going on – the idea that every time your team of time-travelling Mechs wins, loses or otherwise begins a new campaign, they spawn a new timeline full of human suffering – but without definitive answers from the game itself, that’s little more than a guilt-stricken guess.
Time to go the source, then, that being Into The Breach writer – and writer, designer or both on a long list of revered games including Planescape: Torment, Fallout: New Vegas, KOTOR 2, Pillars of Eternity, Prey and ITB predecessor FTL – Chris Avellone. Though Into The Breach very much considers brevity to be a virtue when it comes to dialogue, its short lines drip with implication about the rules of time travel, parallel realities and the motivations and peccadilloes of its pilots. It was pretty clear to me that there was a vast spider-web of careful fiction behind the minimalist facade, and Avellone’s expansive answers about where and when the Mechs come from and exactly what happens when they breach only confirm that.
But, for every question they answer, they open up a dozen more. As is only right. (more…)
Into the Breach - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (RPS)
EGX Rezzed is just over a month away, and announcements for things to see and do at the lovely games event are coming thick and fast. For example: this post, in which I let slip that Adam will be on stage during the show to talk to Subset Games’ co-founder Matthew Davis about his work on mech strategy game Into The Breach.
If you’re interested in hearing Davis speak about the game, then I’ve got more news: we’ve got five pairs of super passes to give away. You can enter below for a chance to win. (more…)
Samuel, Pip and Phil are back, and have played some games for once. Phil talks about the comedic warmth of Chuchel, Pip gets annoyed by a disembodied voice in Assassin’s Creed Origin’s new Discovery Tour, and Samuel attempts to make a pork mech in Smoke and Sacrifice. Then we move on to Twitter questions, which may have been a mistake.
The PC Gamer UK Podcast is a weekly podcast about PC gaming. Thoughts? Feedback? Requests? Tweet us @PCGamerPod, or email letters@pcgamer.com. This week’s music is from Botanicula.
It should be easy. You can see exactly what the vek are going to do next turn, and plan accordingly. But then new vek crawl out of the ground and do things you didn't expect, or your perfect set of moves this turn leaves your mechs in a terrible position for the turn after, or you forget someone is standing in front of the train you're supposed to protect and it collides with them because you're a goddamn dingbat.
There are a lot of ways Into the Breach can go wrong. Here are some of the ways it's happened to us.
Jody Macgregor: I'd unlocked the Rusting Hulks squad. Their abilities are focused on using smoke to hinder the vek, which takes some getting used to, and while I was trying to wrap my head around what electric smoke even is, my buildings took some hits. Before I knew it I was down to two power on one of those maps that gets eaten up by a tidal wave turn by turn.
So when a bug was about to slap a building while on a tile that would be flooded the same turn, I ignored it to focus on the others. Natural disasters happen before attacks, I'd be fine. What I forgot is that the bug in question could fly, and flying enemies can't drown for the obvious reason that they can fly.
I don't remember what took my final point of power after that, I was so mad at myself for trusting in the ocean to deal with that hovering wasp bastard I stopped paying attention. Maybe that was the real mistake—giving in to tilt when I could have potentially scraped out a victory. Nah, the real mistake was forgetting that things with wings can fly.
Evan Lahti: Everything was going great. As the Steel Judoka, I'd "perfect"ed my first island, earning a second pilot with an amazing ability—a second reset. Surely this would be the extra margin for error I needed to pull off a four-island win.
Nope; my blessing was a curse. I started playing less cautiously, knowing I could make another major mistake. In a manageable two-objective mission, I managed to screw up and spend both resets in the same round. The next move had to be perfect. Luckily, I was sure I'd cracked it: I could maneuver the map's upper enemies to attack each other, then shift the bottom beetle into the path of another, canceling all four enemies. Perfect.
It looked great on the board. I neglected to notice that these actions would nudge a vek not only into the Robotics Lab I was sent to defend, but also one of the NPC tanks. Witness my dark epiphany in the video above.
Samuel Horti: It was my second ever game, and I was flying. My Rift Walkers had breezed through three islands virtually unscathed, and I'd already conquered my first sector on Detritus Disposal. Next up, the Landfill. It was the last turn and the vek had only taken one shot at my power grid—nothing I couldn’t patch up later.
Plotting my final move was a real tester. I stared at it for 15 minutes, moving units around tentatively and canceling moves when I realized they wouldn't work. Eventually, I cracked it. I could get away—just barely—without taking any more damage.
My artillery mech would fire the last shot, pushing the only remaining Alpha Hornet away from my buildings. I clicked on my mech, ready to move him into position. Nothing happened. He was rooted to the spot. Oh god. Turns out I'd moved him one square earlier in the round when I was fiddling about, and forgot to cancel the move before attacking with my other mechs. I could no longer affect the Alpha Hornet and had to watch, mouth agape, as its attack leveled four skyscrapers. Two thirds of my power grid, gone. My run was as good as over.
Eric Watson: In the penultimate mission on Pinnacle, I had to freeze and defend two renegade sentient robots to earn double Reputation. This proved especially challenging when my ice tank, the one with the freeze attack, got stuck due to webs and ice blocks.Unable to freeze the renegade robot, I sent my trusty charge mech to stand between the robot's laser and a building it was attacking, knowing I didn't want to damage the robot and lose the Reputation bonus. Unfortunately I forgot that you can't actually block lasers, and I watched in dismay as it fired right through my mech and into the building behind it.RNGesus actually smiled on me that day. My pitiful 19% Grid Defense activated, the building resisted the damage, I completed the map, and later earned the Defenders achievement. Sometimes even a screw-up can lead to a happy ending.
Now it's your turn to tell us about the mistakes you've made. Readers, how have you goofed and doomed an entire timeline?
