Sunless Sea and its expansion Zubmariner make for one of the best Lovecraft-inspired PC games ever, and still contains some of my favorite writing in recent memory. In Sunless Skies, Failbetter Games is taking it's creaky neo-Victorian ships to space, and this time, they're letting players give them a test drive through Early Access on Steam.
Released today, it'll cost you $25 ($22.50 until September 6) to get access to the Reach, a fairly small section of the map meant to represent what the final game will play like. In a Kickstarter update detailing what's in the Early Access launch build and what's still on the way, Failbetter Games state the reason for starting small was "so we could give players a small taste of what the final game will be like rather than a big taste of an emptier, less representational world."
As for what you can do in that small slice, according to the same post:
Explore the Reach in your locomotive
Use your bat to scout for nearby ports
Dock at 11 ports available in the Reach
Interact with stories
Engage in combat with sky-beasts and other locomotives
Experience Terror, Hunger, and Heat mechanics
Even if it's meant to represent how the final game plays, there's still a lot more to come, including character creation and progression, spectacles, discoveries, legacies, trade, and more. If it sounds like mumbo-jumbo, go play Sunless Sea or read the update for details.
If you're set on waiting until the official launch like I am, the estimated release window is currently May 2018. But as is the case with all games, that date can change as swiftly as the solar winds.
"You can't take the AI to school at this point," Harebrained Schemes' co-founder Mitch Gitelman tells me when I ask how Battletech's AI has evolved throughout its beta phase. "Now the AI takes you to school."
Two minutes later and one woefully misjudged siege sees me not only blowing my chance of taking down a hostile Panther PNT-9R, but also has me stranded and outnumbered behind enemy lines. Two minutes after that and my Shadow Hawk, piloted by my interminably reckless and renegade soldier Kraken, has its left arm torn off.
In response, I unleash a volley of close-range rockets and missiles that deal some pretty hefty damage to my aggressor's torso. But, as the setting sun envelopes the sandswept Mars-like 'Red City' battlefield in a fiery orange glow, the enemy's formidable Awesome AWS-8T mech steps in and swats me aside. I'm down and Gitelman is right: I've been schooled.
Battletech, for those uninitiated, is a 33-year-old military strategy tabletop board game that's since been treated to several videogame interpretations in the intervening period. Most of the latter have fallen under MechWarrior's canopy which, despite taking place within the overarching Battletech universe, have historically tended towards action in the face of their source material's turn-based strategy.
Battletech as we know it here pays closer deference to the original tabletop. It was successfully crowdfunded to the tune of $2,785,537 in 2015, having asked for just $250,000.
Gitelman's allusions to educating yourself by way of defeat in Battletech are important. During my brief foray into its single player Skirmish mode, I admittedly leaned on luck as much as I did considered strategy—yet there was always something to be gleaned from failure.
Perhaps I hadn't paid enough attention to my odds of landing a ranged attack, or maybe I hadn't considered pulling out wide so as to take advantage of peripheral cover. Was it the case that sprinting further into the fight would've improved my chances of maintaining line of sight—or should I have hung back and let the enemy come to me? Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and in Battletech understanding where you go wrong, and you will go wrong, is key to improving.
Despite the bout of ill-conceived misadventure outlined above, Gitelman encourages me to throw caution to the wind in Skirmish mode, as this is the safest place to crash and burn, away from the game's less-forgiving multiplayer forums. The margin for error is just as slim here, granted, however losing a pilot, or worse, a mech within the relatively consequence-less confines of single player is far preferable than falling to anonymous fighters online. Gitelman tells me that repairs and pilot reassignment cost money in the game's multiplayer, so I'm relieved to be off the hook scot-free in this instance.
During my second run, I discover that individual positions in my staggered four-slotted attack can be held back so as to leverage certain mechs back-to-back. I find this allows my lighter machine to flank and draw out heavier offenders, in turn leaving them exposed to my harder-hitters. I then charge down the central thoroughfare with flamethrowers, rockets and rail guns as I proceed to throw just about everything I have at my foes. The drawback to my most powerful offence, though, is limited ammo. It's at this point that Gitelman mentions 'Death From Above'.
As Fraser outlined in his impressions earlier this year, Battletech allows players to pit mechs against one another with their fists in close proximity—however, Death From Above lets you leap into the air before crashing down upon nearby enemies below. Beyond the overwhelming damage this causes your adversaries, watching a mech propel itself skyward by virtue of its boosters jets before executing such an overwhelming maneuver is a sight to behold.
The trade off for doing so sees you destabilised and overheated—the latter of which temporarily paralises your mech. Lingering too long in the former status is even more threatening, however, as you then run the risk of being toppled. This in turn allows enemies to "call a shot" on you, which is as devastating in practice as it sounds. Gitelman moreover stresses that Death From Above might be best suited as a last resort, given the fact it damages the internal structure of your mech's legs in the process.
With this, and from what we've seen from its backer beta, Battletech is in great shape. It's come on leaps and bounds since what Fraser reported on in May, and has seen its interface frequently tweaked and adjusted to help players understand the layout of the battlefield along the way. It's also added breathtaking attacks such as Death From Above.
Battletech is still without a hard release date, having been recently delayed into 2018. That said, I'm nevertheless confident Gitelman and his Hairbrained team know what they're doing. With new planets, new weapons, and new mechs planned down the line, fans and newcomers to the series alike have got plenty to look forward to.
I loved the old '60s Batman television series when I was growing up (and hey, I still do). So even though this new "Blitzmensch" teaser for Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is more about setting the stage rather than showing off the game, it does such a great job of nailing the ambiance of its inspiration that it really is worth a watch. (And now I've got that stupid "Bliiiiiiitzmennnnnsch!" song stuck in my head.)
Blitzmensch is in reality Olympic decathlete Dieter Goldblitzer (the spelling may be off a bit), who was struck by lightning while on a "routine transatlantic zeppelin flight." The incident transformed him into Blitzmensch, the super-powered hero of Frau (now General) Engel's favorite television show.
"Blitzmensch and his partner Fräulein Fox save the world from capitalism, communism, and degenerates every day in this amazing show celebrating die Überlegenheit—the superiority—of the Reich and the Aryan race," Bethesda said. "Who will be this week’s baddie? The evil Money Grubber? The notorious Proletariat-Man? The vicious Mr. Yankee Monkey? Don’t miss a single episode of Blitzmensch!"
I won't lie: They may be Nazi assholes but this is definitely a show I would watch. And if gameplay footage is more up your alley, there's a spot of that at the end of the video too. I can't swear that it's new—the specifics of "BJ annihilates Nazis" can be tricky to nail down across multiple brief, smash-cut clips—but I don't recall seeing a giant alligator in the mix previously, so that's an interesting moment.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus comes out on October 27. Developer Machinegames recently explained that it will be a "political" game, but not necessarily a commentary on "current topics."
XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is officially great. Look, our review says so. It adds loads of new systems, classes, abilities and gear to play with. So much that it can be hard to cut through to the good stuff. Which of the new rooms is it best to build first? Which covert actions should you prioritise? Should you hit those guys that explode with a sword, even if you really really want to? Here are a few things I wish I'd known before I started XCOM 2's massive War of the Chosen expansion.
Build the Resistance Ring
There are a bunch of new buildings in War of the Chosen, such as the troop-healing Infirmary and the Training Center which lets you spend the ability points you accrue in combat. The Resistance Ring is the most important initially because it lets you manage covert actions. These missions are the only way to hunt down the Chosen in the long term, but in the medium term as you connect with resistance factions more missions unlock that give you scientists, engineers, supplies and intel. The Resistance Ring is the gateway to a lot of the cool new features in War of the Chosen, so get it built and start sending soldiers on missions.
Look out for the soldier bonuses you can get on these missions too. It's a good way to give a soldier a free promotion, which in turn lets you more quickly unlock the squad size upgrades in the Guerilla Tactics School.
Mo' problems, mo' money
I wish I had worried less about money for the first few hours of my War of the Chosen campaign. You still regularly take a 'wage' from zones you have contacted on the world map, and there are many more ways to generate a payday if you're starting to get low. Supplies seem to be a more regular mission reward, and you can use covert actions to generate some extra green. Plus digging out rooms in the Avenger still gives you materials.
Alternatively, there is still the black market, and you will be harvesting more alien corpses from those extra missions you're taking in War of the Chosen. Likewise, there are plenty of ways to grab intel if you really need it, and I found it easier not to worry too much about those red warnings at the bottom left of my campaign map telling me I'm poor.
You can always bail on minor missions to protect your best
It's tempting to take every single mission in XCOM 2, and you probably should in most cases. However if your roster is short and you know there is a big alien or Chosen counter attack due, it can be smarter to save your powerful soldiers from exertion. Even if they avoid injury, soldiers can get tired in War of the Chosen, which increases the risk of them developing OCD or some other negative condition induced by the stress of constant battle.
The punishment for disregarding an ordinary mission is usually a supply penalty to that mission's region. Not ideal, certainly, but bear in mind the extra opportunities you have to grab supplies in War of the Chosen. The risk/reward calculation can be a little different. Naturally if you have a deep roster and you're looking for promotions, send those rookies out to die. I mean win.
Pursuing 'inspired' research isn't always the best move
Sometimes your scientists get inspired in War of the Chosen, which lets you grab a new technology in a few days. This is a very shiny and tempting option, and useful most of the time. But I had to remind myself that the vital armour upgrade isn't going to research itself, and unless you have a few scientists, that research is going to take a while to come good. The system seems to be designed to give you encouragement to try a piece of tech that you wouldn't normally go for, which is cool, just don't neglect the vital upgrades that keep your heroes alive.
Don't hit Advent flamethrower troops with swords
And be careful when you shoot them too. I lost a good ranger to a close combat attack on these flamethrower experts. Their tanks ignite and everything nearby takes a ton of damage. It's great if you get one near some aliens with a sniper shot, but don't send your ranger in unless you want him to suffer a particularly badass death taking out multiple enemies and Chosen in a suicidal swing of the knife.
Make contact with the resistance groups quickly
You need to use a covert action to discover the third resistance faction in your opening playthrough. Try not to put this off like I did. Making contact with the group grants you one of their warriors, and they are ridiculously good. Likewise, if one happens to get imprisoned, break them out ASAP. I haven't found the breakout missions to be particularly difficult, the main expenditure goes into the covert action you need to find their prison.
These heroes are worth it because they are good at blowing up the Chosen, as well as any other aliens on the battlefield, and you won't be able to recruit more until you've invested a lot in a resistance faction. Until you're at that point, deploy them carefully when you need a power spike. You don't want to lose them.
Ability points can unlock great upgrades for ordinary soldiers
Once you have the Resistance Ring and you have built up a nice cache of ability points for your ordinary XCOM soldiers, consider building the Training Center. This lets you convert ability points into extra skills for XCOM soldiers, but spend them wisely. Ability points bypass the binary ability choices you make when a soldier is promoted, so you can create jack-of-all-trades archetypes.
Alternatively, focus on powerful 25-point abilities such as Serial, which refunds all actions to grenadiers that kill a target with their cannon.
Expect the Chosen to turn up at the worst possible time
Heading into a tough blacksite mission? Expect one of your new Chosen nemeses to turn up. Each has a set of weaknesses and only tends to attack in the area they are patrolling. Use this information to build anti-Chosen elements into your squad. Each Chosen takes extra damage from one of the new resistance heroes, so recruit them all as quickly as you can and deploy the counter hero in situations where the Chosen are likely to appear. Chosen also have weaknesses to certain types of damage, so alter your gear loadouts accordingly. Luckily the Chosen hate each other so you only have to face one at a time.
Those are a few basic pointers. I don't want to get into the mad skills you get at higher levels, or to ruin any of the other enemies you will run into. All these things will kill you in good time. Hopefully we've brought some clarity to your opening hours at least.
Back in June, Dawn of War 3's Annihilation update introduced new multiplayer modes, maps, and doctrines—such was the community's most sought after features at the time.
Now, its latest comprehensive update adds modding tools with Steam Workshop support, balance improvements, and a number of quality of life adjustments as Relic continues its drive for player feedback.
Due yesterday, but subsequently delayed till today, the update also adds autosave features to the game's campaign mode and vehicle health upgrades to player-made structures.
Balance tweaks include turrets for all factions now having their Power cost reduced from 60 to 50, while the slowing effect levied by Devastators, Terminators, Lootas and Dark Reapers is new classed with 'Suppression', a new status effect. "Suppression does not stack with other sources of suppression, so reads this description, "but the highest value of suppression will override the other sources."
A a number of weapon upgrades across a host of classes also befalls the update—the full extent of which can be read over here.
At the time of writing, Relic has not confirmed when the update will roll out however did say this last night on the Dawn of War 3 Facebook page:
"We're still ironing the kinks out of the update, it doesn't look like it will go out today as planned. We apologize for the delay, but we're working to get it bug free for you. As mentioned, you should still be able to play the current version of DOW3 in the meantime. Keep watching here for updates."
For more Dawn of War 3 reading, head in this direction for Leif's review.
Update: We reported a few minutes ago that Ark refunds were being allowed on Steam regardless of how long players had owned the game, or how many hours they had played. That was true for a while today, but Valve has fixed the issue, and the standard refund rules appear to be back in effect. Well, that's what I get for taking the time to test it out myself and attempting to obtain comments from the developers and Valve. I was late to the party with this story. Sorry, everyone!
While the Steam refund policy typically only allows refunds if a game has been bought within the past 14 days and has been played for under two hours, several Redditors chimed in to say that they had received refunds even though they had purchased Ark in Early Access months or even years ago, and had played it for dozens of hours.
I asked another member of PC Gamer to attempt to refund Ark, and sure enough he received one despite having purchased the game in Early Access way back in 2015 and having nearly 30 hours of playtime logged.
Attempts to obtain a refund for the Scorched Earth DLC, according to at least one person on Reddit, were not successful. Refunds also don't appear to work for those who bought Ark as part of a bundle or from other key retailers.
It's currently unknown if the Ark refunds are intended by Studio Wildcard and Valve—a resetting of the refund time-frame window, as it were, since Ark left Early Access today. If intentional, I don't know if this is part of a wider policy to honor refund requests when a game leaves Early Access for full release, regardless of the date of purchase or number of hours played.
It seems a bit ripe for abuse: if someone has played Ark for dozens or hundreds of hours, asking for refund doesn't exactly feel fair at this point, but I don't make the rules, I just spend a lot of time staring at Reddit.
I have asked for more info from Valve and Ark's developers, and will update this post if and when I hear back.
Big games like World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2 helped popularize the practice of idling: logging into a game without playing it in the hope of passively receiving in-game rewards. In these games and others, players would join custom 'idle servers,' or use macros to automate their character movement, allowing them to literally and figuratively sidestep getting kicked for being AFK.
As the best-selling game of 2017 on any single platform, it's not surprising that some of the people in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds aren't playing, but are simply logged in to fall from the sky and accumulate Battle Points, PUBG's in-game currency. Currently you earn BP based on your finishing position within the match. The longer you survive, the more BP you earn to spend on crates that contain cosmetic items.
What has surprised and upset some players, however, is the volume of AFK opponents they're encountering. YouTuber and streamer rivaLxfactor plays plenty of Battlegrounds, and has been logging a lot of hours through the week of the Gamescom Invitational. In a video recorded yesterday (above), rivaLxfactor queues into a particularly bad match. At 0:51, 12 AFK players are visible on the screen.
"I noticed over the past couple of days that people were dying instantly. Lots of people," he comments. "Servers would be down to 70 players within a few minutes … It was getting really bad."
The rarest cosmetic items inside PUBG's Gamescom Invitational Crates are selling for insane prices.
Via Twitter, rivaLxfactor tells me that his matches last evening were "the worst it has ever been," and that today has been just as bad. Although it's impossible to know whether these players are running a third-party service to automatically queue themselves into matches, rivaLxfactor suspects they're bots.
It's not a stretch to think that this could be automated because PUBG itself automates so much of the process of entering the game. Once you're queued, PUBG teleports you into the plane, and even does idlers the favor of dropping them at the 'last stop' of the plane, as it terminates its randomized flightpath across Erangel. It even triggers your parachute automatically. The scale of PUBG also makes it easier for idle players to 'hide among the living' without impacting the experience of the game. And for everyone else, fewer players means less competition for loot and locations.
After some investigation and simple math, rivaLxfactor estimates that it takes about five minutes from queueing into a server to the moment of death, from which a player might earn something like 50 or 70 BP. Uninterrupted, it wouldn't take long to accumulate thousands of BP.
Right now, that currency is valuable. On August 3 ahead of the Gamescom Invitational, PUBG made available premium crates that players could only acquire until the 27th. Although they cost $2.50 to open, the rarest cosmetic items inside these Gamescom Invitational Crates are selling for hundreds of dollars.
Compared to CS:GO or TF2, even PUBG's free crates are fetching good money. At press time, thousands of crates are being sold each hour on the Steam Community Market at these prices:
And naturally, some grey market CS:GO item dealers like OPskins.com will gladly take your money too.
Roll call
RivaLxfactor's account is anecdotal, but there are others that echo what he's experienced. In an August 14 stream, Twitch user ChrisAkira racks up eight kills with his bare hands against AFK players. Another video posted yesterday shows more than a dozen idle characters standing together.
Discussion on various PUBG forums is less unanimous. I didn't spot any highly-upvoted recent threads about the topic on Reddit. However, in an August 28 thread that seems to have it all figured out (title: "Game is full of botters to gain BP to buy chests and sell in steam market"), the top-voted comment writes: "I just queued solo in FPP squads and snagged this screenshot. I count 33 'AFKers,' not including the 4 man squad [that] dove straight for the ground as soon as they dropped and proceeded to kill the AFKs." I get the same count from the image. If genuine, that's one-third of the server that isn't participating.
Lower in the thread, other commenters reject the original poster's claim. "In every game 40 to 50 [idlers]? Exaggerating much? It's probably 4 to 7 like any other game. We all see it," writes tooxie11, with 183 upvotes. "i played 450 hours, never EVER saw more than 8," writes another player. "40-50 in every game? That's crazy! I've been seeing maybe 10 or so in squad fpp," says another. A different thread complaining broadly about "The exaggerations in this subreddit," leads with "No, 50 people per game aren't botting AFK."
Over on the Steam forums, an ex-idler claims that it's no longer a worthwhile technique: "Have you tried even AFK farming recently? So many people found out about it, that the only people at the end of the plane are people pretending to be AFK. They land and try to punch each other to death. It really isn't worth trying it anymore, it can't be that bad of an issue."
The map size, player count, different server regions, and randomized plane trajectory of PUBG makes it difficult to get a bead on exactly how prevalent AFK players are across PUBG's millions of matches. But it's clear that right now this a viable way to earn Battle Points, and it doesn't seem like it'd be a difficult thing to automate.
In my own test, I encountered just two idlers when I queued into a normal squad server. But on a first-person squad server (below), I fell from the plane with 13 or 14 AFK players (two more, AFKing in disguise, peel off to punch us to death). I died quickly, earning 60 BP in 2 minutes and 18 seconds.
We're still a ways out from VR becoming Mancubus-mainstream.
I’m not an athletic man, but in Doom VFR, the upcoming VR version of 2016’s hit reincarnation of id’s classic shooter, I am Death Himself. As a possessed soldier tries to shoot me, I point a teleport marker and watch as everything slows down. I duck his bullets, teleport close, and shoot him in the face with a shotgun.
After a few shots, a Mancubus starts to flash, indicating it's ready to be torn asunder. I point my cursor into the center of the Mancubus and release the trigger, teleporting myself into the center of the obese demon. The Mancubus explodes and his immense body sags to the floor, the corpse so large that I have to step out of the empty shell to move on with the fight. Clearly, VR is cool.
But even for a relatively young technology, there have been very few major game releases for virtual reality headsets. It makes Bethesda’s all-in approach a confounding surprise, but by bringing Skyrim, Fallout, and Doom to VR, the company is in a good position to change the pace. In associating some of the biggest names in gaming to VR, Bethesda is trying to set itself up as a leader in VR development, build its own internal expertise, and help jumpstart a technology that has grown in fits and starts.
“If you believe something is going to be big, you can't just say, ‘oh, this will be big in six or eight years, so let's ignore it until it's big, and then we'll jump on the bandwagon,’” Doom VRF executive producer Marty Stratton tells me at Quakecon this year. “There's so much to be learned, and there's so many opportunities to be leaders. We want to be technical innovators, so when we see something we believe in, we want to be at the forefront.”
Of the three VR prototypes heading for release this fall, Doom is by far the best. The closed-in spaces of the UAC’s corridors look sleek and sci-fi inside a VR headset, and teleporting up and down hallways to blast imps and shotgun cacodemons feels spectacular, fast, and smooth. Time slows for teleportation or switching weapons, so I always felt able to react faster and be more badass than my weak, fleshy mortal body could ever allow. No matter which weapons I used, pulling the trigger of the controller felt as natural as aiming down the sights.
Shooting for the Skyrim
Sadly, all of these reasons are exactly why Skyrim VR, which is coming to PSVR first in November and PC sometime in 2018, is the weakest of the bunch. The wide-open vistas of Skyrim look pixelated and low-res running on the Playstation headset, and the 180-degree motion detection of the PSVR meant that I had to constantly use physical buttons on my controller to rotate myself and change direction.
Descending one of a Skyrim dungeon’s many spiral staircases was dizzying as I used a teleport button to hop down a step or two, then tap-tap-tap-tap-tap to rotate my body, teleport, then rotate again.
Instead of feeling bold as the Dovahkiin, legendary hero of Skyrim, I felt like a child playing Fruit Ninja on a Nintendo Wii.
None of this compares to how disappointed I was when I first heard the call of an enemy bandit. I readied my sword only to find myself waving a wand in space, awkward and unsure if I was even making contact. I wiggled it around a few times and the bad guy fell over. Both of us looked embarrassed about the whole thing. Instead of feeling bold as the Dovahkiin, legendary hero of Skyrim, I felt like a child playing Fruit Ninja on a Nintendo Wii.
“Everybody says that,” says Pete Hines, VP of Marketing for Bethesda, when I complain about how the melee weapons feel. “The problem is that when you do this [he pulls a trigger on a gun], you don't detect the funkiness of the action because it's on a predestined path.” The gun behaves like a gun, in other words, and you’re pulling a trigger just like you’d pull a real-life trigger. “But when the sword swings however you move it, you notice it a lot more, now it does feel more like Fruit Ninja.”
Even though Skyrim will be coming to VR mostly unchanged, with all its quests, dialog, and NPCs in place, Hines expects that players will change how they play the game based on what feels good. In particular, he expects more players to become mages. “Because of the nature of VR and magic, it works exactly like you'd expect it to, because you're not missing the feedback.” Dual-wielding magic, in particular, works better in VR. Being able to move your hands independently gives you the chance to shoot fireballs in two directions at once, or hold a shield against one enemy while you shoot lightning at another.
Waiting for the Fallout
I enjoyed Fallout VR more than Skyrim VR at least, because the world running on a PC looked a lot better and my ability to turn in a full circle was unrestricted. Though I had the option of attacking raiders with a baseball bat, Fruit Ninja Skyrim style, I could easily ignore it since Fallout has a huge array of guns that feel good to use. Launching a mini-nuke at a Deathclaw and watching the blast in VR was every bit as fun as it sounds.
Still, it wasn’t quite right, and I’m not sure if the trade-offs are worth the momentary wow-factor of stepping into VR. Can I explore the Commonwealth Wasteland for hundreds of hours in this gear, or will I always start to feel green like an irradiated ghoul after half an hour?
These are limitations that come with taking an existing game and bringing it into VR. Problems with movement and feedback just aren’t solved yet, and these problems wouldn’t exist if a game was built for VR from the beginning. I can’t help but compare my time with Skyrim VR with Lone Echo, an incredible game that was built to showcase everything VR can do right now, and nothing that it can’t.
But for Bethesda, getting experience is worth it even if the end product isn’t quite perfect. They’ll put out the best version of their games that can exist in VR right now, and they’ll gain valuable internal experience with VR design. I can see how it’s a win-win for Bethesda to take a risk with these experiments, but I’m not as confident that buying these experiments offers much to long-time fans of these games desperate for a familiar experience in their seldom-used VR gear.
Skyrim VR is only scheduled to come to PSVR in November, with a PC release possibly coming in 2018. Fallout VR is coming to PC on December 12, and Doom VFR is coming to both platforms on December 1.
Every year, thousands of PC gamers bring their machines, their monitors, and their largest energy drinks to QuakeCon in Dallas for the largest LAN party around. While there are some basic pixel-crunching workhorses and sturdy laptops around, the vast majority of these PCs are sleek, liquid cooled, and sexy as hell. We round up our favorite rigs from QuakeCon every year, and in the process we walk straight past lovely, high-powered machines that any gamer would be lucky to own.
These few, though, represent works of art, feats of engineering, or staggering wastes of money, and we love them all. These are our 13 favorite rigs from QuakeCon 2017.
Honorable Mention: Best Use of Carbon Fiber
An otherwise ordinary rig, the use of rigid liquid cooling tubes, contrasting tube junctions, and carbon fiber everything made this shiny little fish tank stand out.
Honorable Mention: Best Use of Music and Magnets
This year, the brightest lights on the networking command center belonged to this high-seas PC. A few modifications turned a limited edition boat-shaped case from Lian Li into this orange-lit jewel of the QuakeCon fleet. Plus, if you put a Lego man near the bow, a magnetic trigger starts to play that classic The Lonely Island song, I’m On A Boat.
Honorable Mention: Best Use of Questionable Liquid Coolant Colors
We’re not color scientists, but there’s something magical about this case’s bright purple LED lights bouncing off of the soft pastel blues and greens in twin reservoir tubes. Seriously, what is in those things? They look like tubes of rejected Maalox flavors.
#10 All Blue
There’s no gimmick on this case: it’s just a beast of a machine rigged with efficient liquid cooling lines and enough fans blow Hurricane Harvey back into the Gulf. Getting perfect bends in rigid coolant tubes is not easy, and this case gets every line in precisely the right place. A masterwork of great design and function.
#9: Clear Lego
Lego PCs are actually not that uncommon on the QuakeCon BYOC tables, but they don’t usually look so damn good. They also almost always lay flat for stability and safety. Not satisfied with that, this builder built an entire upright tower out of Legos, including GPU backplates and fittings for the case fans. He even drilled into Lego blocks to screw in the motherboard stand-offs! The entire thing is built with clear bricks and jammed full of RGB LEDs that rotate through a gentle rainbow pattern.
#8: Local Multiplayer
Custom built almost entirely out of acrylic panels, this PC is actually a two-rigs-in-one combo. An extra powerful motherboard and CPU support a second virtual machine that boots with its own dedicated GPU, its own monitor, and half of the machine’s eight CPU cores. Both monitors, themed blue and red for fire and ice, bolt onto the sides of the case itself.
#7: So Small and So Clean
There’s not much to this build, and that’s kind of what I like about it. In a sea of flashy neon reds and garish blues, this Mini ITX stood out like a clean shirt at a gaming convention. Everything, including the coolant, is pure white, then lightly accented with programmable RGB LEDs throughout.
#6: Oh God Run It’s A Dragon
We’ve really enjoyed seeing how 3D printing has changed the game for case-mods, and this build featuring a 3D-printed dragon coiling around a central coolant reservoir is a great example. Everything is flame-red, including the dragon’s light-up eyes. Press a button and the dragon breathes smoke, too, but we’ll bet you $1,000 you can’t manage to get a picture of a wisp of smoke in the dank blackness of the BYOC. Seriously, I tried everything to get that picture and I just couldn’t do it.
#5: The Gift Horse
What do you do when you get sent a promo display box with an AMD Ryzen GPU inside? Most people would take out the GPU and install it in a computer, but not this guy, no sir. Instead he grabbed a whole PC and installed it into the box around the GPU. Laser-cutting the AMD Ryzen logo out of the top of the wooden box took some work, we’d imagine, but the end result is a PC in a convenient, handsome wooden gift box.
#4: Oh God Run It’s A Ghoul
You may remember the incredible Nick Valentine case from last year’s QuakeCon roundup. Well apparently some of you rowdy troublemakers in the comment section (you know who you are, and shame on all of you) gave that PC’s creator a hard time. “Oh, it’s just a mannequin with a PC wired into the chest,” you said. “I could do that,” you lied. This time around, this poor guy sculpted a life-size Feral Ghoul out of clay, made moldings, then recast them in clear resin. He painted it, slaved over it, and then installed a computer into it just to make you monsters happy.
Oh, and there’s a PIPBoy showing that its owner was full crippled, irradiated, and dead by the time the ghoul tore his arm off. Are you not entertained?
#3: The Right Case In the Right Place
Full disclosure: I walked past this damn thing at least 20 times before I realized it was a PC. It’s so massive, I thought it was holding up the ceiling of the convention center. The towering Citadel from Half-Life 2 is at least nine feet tall, with a central spire reinforced by carbon fiber and a ledge cut-out showing off the central GPU. A red-painted valve on the side serves as a power switch, and yes, its creator has already heard every Half Life 3 joke you can think of.
#2: Wood
The internal components of this PC are all bolted to an aluminum chassis. Why? Because the entire exterior is made of gorgeous, painstakingly joined hardwoods. It would be easy to walk past this case as just another retail case, but cases like this can’t be bought. The entire aluminum chassis slides out for easy maintenance.
#1: Tank Mode
The Overwatch hero Bastion is a robot of many talents. Apparently, one of them is running video games. This huge sculpture of Bastion in his Tank configuration features two working tank tracks and remote control hardware that allow it to drive itself around. The entire PC is housed in the right-side track housing, which leaves plenty of room for a gigantic speaker that plays explosion noises through the gun barrell. Tragically, Bastion was driving himself into his place of glory for QuakeCon when someone tripped over him and crushed his gun turret. The creator spent the next two days repairing him in time for the show, because all art is suffering.
I'm not what you'd call a big Tolkien fan. I read The Hobbit in public school, I enjoyed the movie trilogy, I get the references in most of the memes, and that's about as far as it goes. Even so, I can't shake the feeling that this new "Marauder Tribe" trailer for the upcoming Middle-earth: Shadow of War isn't quite what ol' JRR had in mind when he envisioned the fearsome, ferocious Orcs.
Maybe it's the bling. Maybe it's the beat. Maybe it's the way they strike a pose and bust a move as they work to demonstrate their commitment to "power" and "respect." It just feels off somehow—the sort of thing that might fit well with, say, Agents of Mayhem, but comes off as out of place in the world of Tom Bombadil.
Then again, Shelob isn't quite the same as I remember her, either.
The Marauders aren't the only "themed" Orcish tribe on the menu: Previous trailers have introduced the Machine tribe (they make machines) and the Terror tribe (they cause terror). And to be fair to all involved, messing with the source material may not be the worst approach to take. As Joe said in his preview from last week, "When there's this much fun to be had tearing Mordor and beyond apart who's really complaining?"
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is set to come out on October 10.
