Campo Santo, a small San Francisco game studio composed of former Telltale, 2K Marin, and Double Fine developers, announced its first project: a first-person, single-player game called Firewatch. According to Camp Santo s announcement, you ll play as a man named Henry and explore the Wyoming wilderness after taking a summer job as a fire lookout.

What is supposed to be a peaceful respite from your complicated life takes a turn when you start to question some of the things that are happening to you, Campo Santo says. Your only human connection is over a handheld radio, which you ll use to speak with Delilah, your boss, about the things both of you are experiencing.

That s very little information, but I m already intrigued, especially because Campo Santo s founder Sean Vanaman is from Wyoming, meaning we might get a more personal, Gone Home-type of story.

Firewatch will be published by Panic Inc. on PC, Mac, and Linux. Campo Santo says it would love for it to come out in 2015.

You can keep up with the Firewatch s development on the company s blog. You can also order a nifty poster for the game designed by Olly Moss, who s also a member of Campo Santo.

Illustrations by Marsh Davies

All week long, we're peering ahead to what the future holds for the PC gaming industry. Not just the hardware and software in our rigs, but how and where we use them, and how they impact the games we play. Here's part four of our five-part series; stay tuned all week for more from the future of PC gaming.

We dream of futuristic graphics cards with chrome Hot Rod piping and names as cool as The Pixelator. In reality, future graphics cards won't be human-sized or be styled after 1950s automobiles, but they will be faster than what we're running today. More importantly, APIs like AMD's Mantle will let our computers talk directly to our graphics cards, delivering better performance through more efficient coding. And we're going to need that performance, since 4K monitors are already on the horizon. Here's our look at the 2014 GPU landscape and the future of (entirely too expensive) 4K displays.
The GPU landscape in 2014
By Josh Norem

As we head into 2014, the GPU landscape looks a bit like the beaches of Normandy post-invasion. Nvidia has launched all of its 700-series cards, including the reigning champion GPU, the GTX 780 Ti. AMD is seemingly finished launching its Titan killer Radeon R9 290 cards, which posed a serious challenge to Nvidia s supremacy. The company has also finally released its Mantle API update for its R9/R7 series cards in beta driver form, which promises better performance in select games like Star Swarm and Battlefield 4. Where do we go from here?

Nvidia has now launched its all-new line of Maxwell GPUs featuring a totally redesigned architecture. Though Maxwell uses the same 28nm lithography process as Kepler, Nvidia s goal was to increase performance by 25 percent while cutting power consumption in half, and it s largely achieved it. Oddly, Nvidia is launching Maxwell with entry-level GPUs priced at between $120 and $150 instead of a flagship board, and both models, the GTX 750 Ti and the GTX 750, consume an unbelievably low amount of power at just 60w and 55w. For comparison, the $150 AMD R7 265 consumes 150w, so Nvidia has a major advantage over AMD at 28nm when it comes to power consumption. Nvidia has stated that it plans to bring a flagship Maxwell board to market at some point, but we have no idea what the time frame for it is.

Meanwhile, Nvidia is strengthening its grip on the high-end of the market with the recently released GTX Titan Black GPU. This is truly Big Kepler in that it is the ultimate Kepler card, and represents that architecture s final form. Compared to the OG Titan it has one more SMX unit, higher clock speeds, and faster memory, but the same $1,000 price tag.



AMD s upcoming plans are more mysterious. There are rumors that its R9 290X has a couple hundred unlocked streaming processors, so it s possible AMD will uncork the board s potential. It s also possible that it will release a Hawaii-based dual-GPU board, code-named Vesuvius. Such a card would likely throw down some serious firepower, and require cooling beyond what we would consider possible with a reference design. It might even be water-cooled right out of the box, like the Asus Ares II. It s also possible that AMD could abandon the high-end market altogether in favor of its GPU/CPU hybrid chips, dubbed APUs. These APU are in both the Xbox One and the PS4, and the market is clearly heading in the direction of low-power chips that can power tablets, laptops, and smartphones.

Beyond the cards themselves, both companies will be pushing hard in 2014 for adoption of 4K resolution and vertical sync technologies. 4K requires a beefy setup (think dual GTX 780s or R9 290X boards), but with the recent introduction of sub-$1,000 4K panels, the market could be ready. Nvidia has also announced its G-Sync technology, which eliminates tearing in games by sycing the monitor s refresh rate with the output of the GPU. AMD s version, FreeSync, works by telling the GPU to vary the refresh rate. Of course, existing monitors can t change their refresh rate, but if this technology catches on perhaps display manufacturers will add this feature to its products. It s too early to tell which of these technologies will win, but they could have a huge impact on the future of video.


4K monitors: big resolution, big worries
By Gordon Ung

Hardware vendors are ready to sell you the next big thing: 4K, or Ultra HD. If you don t keep up on current events, 4K monitors can display around 8.3 million pixels. To put that in perspective, a typical 23-inch 1920x1080 panel is about 2 million pixels and a 27-inch 2560x1440 is about 3.7 million pixels.

Increasing the resolution of a monitor offers some very real perks. The first is increased pixel density. Anyone who has picked up a 5-inch smartphone with a 1080p screen knows how wonderful a high dot per inch screen can look. With monitors, you get the same exquisite pixel-packed screen. These high PPI screens simply make high-resolution images sing like they can t on a low PPI panel. A high PPI panel also gives you increased desktop space to work on.

That s all great, but what about PC gamers? That s where it gets tricky. Certainly the increased PPI helps with visuals. There s an argument that 4K televisions are pointless because you sit so far from the television that the increased resolution doesn t give you much. You d have to sit right up on the television for the 4K to matter. If you re eyeball-to-eyeball with a 32-inch 4K panel, you ll notice the higher DPI during gaming sessions, especially if you re coming off of a lower resolution, lower PPI 1080p panel. If, however, you re thinking about moving from a higher resolution 27-inch 2560x1440 panel though, it won t rock your world the same way.

PC gamers don t suffer from a dearth of content like TV manufacturers the vast majority of today s games should support 4K. The bad news is that there s still a lot in the negative column. The most obvious is that you ll need a bigger, badder graphics card. If you can comfortably play games with your current GPU on a 1080p monitor, you ll probably find your system gasping for air when you almost quadruple the amount of pixels the graphics card has to push out to hit reasonable frame rates.

Games less sensitive to framerate, such as driving or flying simulations, won t be as bad as twitch shooters that demand 60 fps or higher. Even with today s extremely powerful graphics cards, we d recommend a dual-card setup to run 4K gaming at a solid 60 fps without turning down graphics settings. There's no reason to buy an expensive 4K panel, only to bottom out all the graphics settings to play.

That wallet-busting, ultra-expensive Asus PQ321Q

There s also technical nitty gritty such as how you hook up a 4K panel to your monitor. You ll need DisplayPort 1.2 to support 60Hz gaming at 4K or HDMI 2.0 but no GPU we know of supports HDMI 2.0 today.

And then there's the price of the glass. The exquisite Asus 31.5-inch PQ321Q pushes $3,000 and was $3,500 this summer. The eye opener this year was the Asus PB287Q and Dell P2815Q. Both slightly smaller monitors offer 4K resolution for an amazing price of $699 and $799 respectively. The catch is that both panels aren t great for gaming with refresh rates of 30Hz at native resolution. A 30Hz refresh rate is so low, it s noticeable just moving windows around the desktop. That s a a deal breaker for any PC gamer.

The best compromise may be panels such as Asus ROG Swift PG278Q with its combination of relatively high resolution (2560x1440), big enough 27-inch panel to fill your vision and its wickedly high refresh rate of 120Hz. The panel also packs Nvidia s G-sync inside, so even if your weak GPU can t push frame rates beyond 40 fps, it will hardly be noticeable.

4K is clearly still in the early adopter phase too expensive, and with too many drawbacks, for us to recommend. But in two years, we may all have 30-inch 4K monstrosities sitting on our desks.

As an old C&C fan, I do sympathise with Pocketwatch Games's micro frustration. Whatever happened to the days when speed and skill were less important than the ability to build 50 Mammoth tanks? I'm only slightly joking. It does increasingly seem that the economic-based macro game is taking a back seat, in favour of the very different excitement and strategy that is high-level soldier manipulation. As an alternative, the Monaco makers are designing , a game so opposed to APM that it's being designed primarily for the controller.

"Maybe it s just nostalgia speaking, but I want to play an RTS game that feels like a battle of wits, not a battle of clicks," writes Pocketwatch's Andy Schatz, over at their development blog. "I want to compete at a high level, but I also want to be able to introduce the RTS genre to my friends at a party. I want an RTS where the strategy is creative and complex and the micro is accessible and fun."

To address the obvious concern: Schatz realises that, to date, nobody has made a good controller-friendly RTS.

Explaining how the team plan to achieve this seemingly impossible feat, Schatz has laid out some of 's differences. The most obvious is through unit orders, which will be handled entirely through the player-controlled commander. "In the player controls a Champion who can build structures," Schatz writes, "lead forces into battle, scout, and fight for herself. Your troops are autonomous but governed by AI that is determined by the unit class. Some troops will be defenders, hanging out near their spawn point. Some troops harvest resources. Some troops are attackers, seeking out the nearest enemy. Most troops will also follow the Champion into battle, allowing you to have a large force of mixed units."

For more head over to the Pocketwatch Games blog. is still in early development, and its release date is TBA.

This week we've reviewed Titanfall, evaluated Titanfall's server status, snapped some Titanfall GIFs, and complained about Titanfall's absurd hard drive footprint. Now we turn our attention to the game's 15 maps, rendered at high-res on the LPC.

Three Lane Highway is Chris' sometimes earnest, sometimes silly column about Dota 2. Previously a Tumblr blog, it now runs every week on PC Gamer.

Introducing somebody to Dota 2 is hard, and gets harder as your own skills improve. I was lucky to start playing with a group of people who all had exactly the same amount of prior experience - zero - and who were relaxed enough in each other's company to dodge the bickering and gamesmanship that skill imbalances can provoke. Most of the time.

I've seen the other side too. It's difficult to introduce somebody new to a group of knowledgeable players in a way that doesn't potentially ruin the game for everybody. Matchmaking will try to balance the average skill level of each team, but it's too hit and miss - and Dota is too complex - to guarantee actual parity. If you're trying to teach a friend to play, you're probably going to lose a bunch of games. Nobody likes to lose, and few newcomers are likely to be happy about the fact that they're (a) creating issues for their friends and (b) getting seven shades kicked out of them.

This problem has been on my mind. The last couple of patches made sweeping changes to how Dota 2 functions, and while the most dramatic upsets are felt at the professional level they have also had an impact on how new players are best introduced to the game. It is now, I'd argue, easier to win a game with a newbie in your team than has been for a long time - but to do so, certain attitudes need to change.

When I was starting out, being new meant playing support. There are a bunch of reasons for this. Warding and stacking are relatively easily-taught techniques that provide a general benefit to the team. Reliable stuns and easy-to-land teamfight ultis allow new players to be useful even if they're only capable of mashing all of the buttons and hoping for the the best. Nudging somebody into the support role also allows more senior players to reserve mid and carry for themselves, and this is sometimes symptomatic of a trend towards perceiving support as a subservient role. It's wrong, but it happens.

Problems arise when this creates an underclass of players who never get to play anything but support. If they take to the role and enjoy it, great - but there's an equal danger that somebody's entire experience of Dota will be warding the runes and bashing out stuns. These are players who won't be encouraged to master last-hitting, learn about stats, or to buy items that aren't arcane boots, pipe, and mekansm. This line of thinking is grounded in the idea that games will necessarily run long - that the game will be decided on a teamfight at the thirty minute mark when carries have had time to farm. The message it sends to your newbie friends is "don't touch anything and I'll win this for you in half an hour."

These are the players who will struggle most in the current meta. As IceFrog has worked to speed up the early game, on-point support play is becoming more and more important in intermediate pub matches. That means smoke ganks and early rotations. It means understanding fog of war, being able to anticipate enemy laning decisions, and knowing how to execute strategies with minimal farm. It means knowing what a push strat is, and how to see it coming. It's becoming less and less useful for a support to get their wards down and babysit the safelane, and as such it's no longer a good way for somebody to learn Dota - if it ever was.

Similarly, experienced players who lock the safelane carry role for themselves are missing out on what is arguably the most enjoyable phase of the game. Farming and rat Dota still win games, but just as many are won - and won more entertainingly - by teams that can pull off a gamechanging strat in the first five minutes. Na'Vi ran an offensive quadlane this week, for heaven's sake. I'm not saying you should try it in your next pub match, but you should be trying to figure out why it worked.

For these reasons, I'm starting to see the safelane carry role as the best way for somebody new to be introduced to the game. Rather than recruiting your inexperienced friends as ward mules, think about putting them in a position where you don't need them to secure the early game for you. What's more, the role provides a grounding in crucial skills: last hitting and finding farm, awareness of enemy rotations, and adaptive item builds. Whereas most new support players eventually find themselves needing to unlearn their early passivity, new carry players pick up skills that will remain relevant whatever role they subsequently settle on. In order for this to work, however, their experienced friends need to give up their claim to Void, Sven, Luna, Gyrocopter et al.

If you have a friend who is looking to get into Dota, then, try placing them on the safelane as a farming hero. Then, focus on executing strategies that give your team the advantage by the ten minute mark. Make it as easy as possible for your newbie friend to do well, and they'll have more fun - and you'll be playing more modern Dota into the bargain. Everybody wins! Except fifty percent of the time. Fifty percent of the time, you'll probably still lose.

Like a fine HBO drama, this trailer for Total War: Rome 2's upcoming Hannibal at the Gates DLC is deceptive about its charms. Sure, it looks like you'll be watching for the rousing rhetoric of arch-enemies Scipio and Hannibal. In reality, there are more carnal pleasures buried within. No, not naked people - you really have been watching too much HBO - but elephants! For a glorious few seconds you can watch them bash up soldiers like the armoured meat-sacks they are.



Hannibal at the Gates features a new campaign map, which focuses on the Western Mediterranean during the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. The two main sides will be expanded through a diplomacy-focused civil tech tree, and they'll be joined by three new playable factions: Syacuse, the Arevaci and the Lusitani.

The Hannibal at the Gates campaign pack will be released March 27th, and will cost 10/$15. In addition, a new free content patch is planned, with details of that coming soon.

War, diplomacy and elephants? It all sounds rather dramatic. How dramatic?



This dramatic.

Look out monsters, Geralt's on the way! He might be a little later than originally planned, but, when he does arrive, he'll be carrying dual-swords, decisive decision making, and the massive, sprawling open world of CD Projekt's most ambitious RPG. To celebrate his eventual appearance, we tasked Sam with bringing us the heads of the game's development team. Instead, he came back with an exhaustive series of interviews. If you think about it, that's even better.

That's not all. Alongside the many features, reviews and previews sandwiched inside, we're also giving away a bundle of exclusive items for Planetside 2. Not only will you get the fearsome NS-44 Commissioner pistol and a 1-day experience booster, but also our personal PC Gamer decal. The issue, which is in shops now, can be ordered through My Favourite Magazines. Digitally, you'll find it on the App Store, Google Play, and Zinio, and you can subscribe to get issues delivered directly to your door. Read on for a look at the subs cover, and a round-up of the features in issue 264.



This month we...

Find out how, with The Witcher 3, CD Projekt plan to make an RPG with 36 endings
Don a fake beard and infiltrate the murky political world of Tropico 5
Go to Infinity and beyond with Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity
Preview Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Elder Scrolls Online, Bound by Flame, Sniper Elite 3, Wargame: Red Dragon, Elite: Dangerous, Blood Bowl 2, World of Speed, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Hearts of Iron 4, Warlock 2, Loading Human and Chaos Reborn
Turn Review-Bot 3000 toward Thief, Castlevania: LoS2, Octodad, The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2, Humans Must Answer, Paper Sorcerer, Hearthstone, Strike Vector, The Novelist, Jazzpunk, The Castle Doctrine, Saturday Morning RPG, Blackguards, The Lego Movie Videogame, LocoCycle and Resident Evil 4: Ultra HD
Judge the alpha builds of Rust, Next Car Game, Pixel Piracy, Divinity: Original Sin, 7 Days to Die and Secrets of Raetikon
Supertest the market-leading CPUs
Become a true detective in The Shivah
Catch up with the recent changes to Dota 2
Return to a life of crime with Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven
Round up the month's best free games and mods

All that and more besides.

Transformers Universe is about to go into its first public beta this weekend. In the run up to that, we ve got two exclusive new reveal trailers of transformers created especially for the game.

First up is Front-Line, an aggressively-sized Autobot specialising in heavy attacks, wielding a minigun, axe and hammer in battle. Take a look:



Conduit, meanwhile, is a Decepticon with a dual persona of healing his allies in battle while still functioning as a deadly killer. Check him out below:



The beta for Transformers Universe is happening this weekend, where you can get hands-on with both Front-Line and Conduit. You can sign up for a place at www.transformersuniverse.com/signup.

It used to be that wars were only fought on land, and that made everybody very sad. A full 70% of the Earth's surface is water, meaning that we just weren't making full use of the space provided to us. Luckily, boats were invented, meaning wars could spill out onto the sea. Now Eugen Systems, makers of the Cold War RTS series Wargame, have caught up to this amazingly buoyant technology. The upcoming Wargame: Red Dragon will be the first game in the series to feature naval combat. A new trailer gives a brief glimpse of how it will look.



Okay, so that's how it technically could looks, although most players seem more at home when fully zoomed out to the strategic layer.

Pre-orders are now live for the game, with early buyers promised beta access a month before the game's launch. If you already own Wargame: AirLand Battle, you can also get a 25% discount off the full price of the game.

I'm not going to sugar-coat this for you: last night's BAFTA Game Awards didn't end with the PC hunched under an unbearable weight of face gold. The platform struggled against heavy hitting console match-three games, like The Last of Us, and Grand Theft Auto 5. Even so, there were awards for indie gems Papers, Please and Gone Home, and multi-platform titles like Bioshock Infinite. In addition, the reclusive Rockstar heads showed up in person to accept their BAFTA fellowship. You can find that video, and a full list of winners, below.

Also, before the big list, be sure to check out the BAFTA Steam sale that's running until later today. There are some particularly great deals in there, like the excellent XCOM: Enemy Within for a ridiculously low 5/$7.50.

BAFTA FELLOWSHIP
- Winner: Rockstar Games



BEST GAME
- Winner: The Last of Us
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Papers, Please
- Super Mario 3D World
- Tearaway

ACTION AND ADVENTURE
- Winner: The Last of Us
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- BADLAND
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
- Tomb Raider

STRATEGY AND SIMULATION
- Winner: Papers, Please
- Civilization 5: Brave New World
- Democracy 3
- Forza Motorsport 5
- Surgeon Simulator 2013
- XCOM: Enemy Within

MULTIPLAYER
- Winner: Grand Theft Auto 5
- Battlefield 4
- Dota 2
- Super Mario 3D World
- The Last of Us
- World of Tanks

SPORTS
- Winner: Fifa 14
- F1 2013
- Football Manager 2014
- Forza Motorsport 5
- Grid 2
- NBA 2K14

FAMILY
- Winner: Tearaway
- Animal Crossing: New Leaf
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Rayman Legends
- Skylanders SWAP Force
- Super Mario 3D World

STORY
- Winner: The Last of Us
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Gone Home
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
- The Stanley Parable

GAME DESIGN
- Winner: Grand Theft Auto 5
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Papers, Please
- Tearaway
- The Last of Us
- Tomb Raider

DEBUT GAME
- Gone Home
- BADLAND
- Castles in the Sky
- Gunpoint
- Remember Me
- The Stanley Parable

ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT
- Winner: Tearaway
- Beyond: Two Souls
- BioShock Infinite
- DEVICE 6
- Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
- The Last of Us

GAME INNOVATION
- Winner: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Papers, Please
- Tearaway
- The Stanley Parable
- Year Walk

AUDIO ACHIEVEMENT
- Winner: The Last of Us
- Battlefield 4
- BioShock Infinite
- DEVICE 6
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Tomb Raider

ORIGINAL MUSIC
- Winner: Bioshock Infinite
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Beyond: Two Souls
- Super Mario 3D World
- Tearaway
- The Last of Us

MOBILE AND HANDHELD
- Winner: Tearaway
- BADLAND
- DEVICE 6
- Plants vs. Zombies 2
- Ridiculous Fishing
- The Room Two

BRITISH GAME
- Winner: Grand Theft Auto 5
- Tearaway
- The Room Two
- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
- Gunpoint
- DmC Devil May Cry

PERFORMER
- Winner: Ashley Johnson (Ellie - The Last of Us)
- Courtnee Draper (Elizabeth - BioShock Infinite)
- Ellen Page (Jodie - Beyond: Two Souls)
- Kevan Brighting (The Narrator - The Stanley Parable)
- Steven Ogg (Trevor Phillips - Grand Theft Auto 5)
- Troy Baker (Joel - The Last of Us)

BAFTA ONES TO WATCH AWARD
- Winner: Size Does Matter
- Project Heera: Diamond Heist
- The Unknown