The holidays are getting nearer, but shopping for friends and family isn t getting any easier. What do you buy for the gamer who has a massive Steam library? What cool stuff are you missing out on, yourself?

If you love games—or you re shopping for someone who does—point your wallet at this, our 2015 Holiday Gift Guide. We publish one every year, but this year s list is bigger and more thought-out than ever. We've tried to avoid the most obvious suggestions like Fallout 4; chances are, if you or a friend want it, you're already 30 hours deep. Instead, you ll find all the stuff we love to give and get: affordable games to play alone or co-op with friends, books and board games, great PC hardware and accessories. And, somewhere near the middle, even a table lamp. It's a really cool lamp.

HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset

Who will love it: Anyone with ears, basically

Every PC gamer needs a good headset. Having great sound that doesn t rattle the windows and annoy the neighbors is part of it, but even more important is a high-quality, built-in microphone. Many of our favorite games these days are played online with friends, and nothing brings a party down like pausing to type messages to a chat box.

The Kingston HyperX Cloud headset sounds great, feels comfy, and is less expensive than many of its competitors. Our go-to recommendation for more than a year now, and still the headset to beat.

MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G graphics card

Who will love it: any PC gamer who doesn't own a GTX 980 or better

Treat yourself, or a friend with an outdated rig, to the best price/performance graphics card around. The GTX 970 is our favorite go-to graphics card right now, prized for its mix of power and affordability. There are bigger, more powerful cards, sure, but the GTX 970 beats everything else in its price range. It's also massively overclockable, keeping it relevant for a few years to come.

You can find a slightly cheaper GTX 970 than this MSI model, but it has great power circuitry and cooling to support an overclock that will rival the performance of a GTX 980.

Crucial BX100 SSD (250GB)

Who will love it: PC gamers who don't already have multiple SSDs in their PC.

Solid State Disks, or SSDs, aren t exactly hot new tech anymore, but it s amazing how many PC gamers haven t made this simple upgrade yet. SSDs are a huge speed improvement over conventional hard drives, but two things hold them back: speed doesn t matter much with documents and music files, and they re too expensive to store terabytes of family photos on them.

That s where the cheap, fast, powerful Crucial BX100 SSD comes in. For just $85, you can get a 250GB drive big enough to hold an entire Steam library. The speed improvement makes a big difference in graphics-intensive games, and this will cost way less than a brand new graphics card. Give someone the gift of dramatically shortened load times this holiday.

Xbox Wireless Controller Receiver

Who will love it: Xbox One owners

Mouse and keyboard will always rule our hearts, but some games do work better on a controller. Our favorite controller for PC play is actually a PlayStation controller (or an Xbox 360 controller), but Xbox One owners can now use a wireless controller they already own with their PC, thanks to this adapter. Of course, you could plug in a USB cable and save the money, but going cable-free is just the kind of luxury that makes for a nice gift.

Note: the adapter does only work with Windows 10, so take that into consideration. It also unfortunately doesn't support Xbox 360 controllers, but it can connect to up to eight Xbox One controllers wirelessly.

Wooden Omega Headphone Stand

Who will love it: Audiophiles, clumsy folks

You've seen it happen: a great pair of headphones left on a messy desk will inevitably get knocked to the floor or yanked by its cable. Help someone take care of their headphones (and look classy in the process) by giving their cans a proper home.

The Omega headphone stand curves in ways that wood probably wasn t meant to, but it has a handsome walnut finish that looks great and should limit the wear and tear on a nice headset. 

For those without a bit of desk space to spare, there's a creative alternative. Give them the Hengja headphone desk hanger which can clamp onto the edge of the desk and let their headphones hang somewhere out of the way.

Subscription to PC Gamer Magazine

Who will love it: Everyone. C'mon!

Did you know we make a magazine? It's pretty cool! Not only does it crinkle and fold just like real paper, but you can roll it up and swat spiders with it. Burning it could even keep you alive if you survive a plane crash in remote Alaska during the winter and have to hold out for rescue. It may be ineffective against wolves.

Some of our best features show up in the magazine first, and they're stylishly laid out with real professional graphic design. The less-burnable digital edition still looks great on a tablet, but the print edition really says "I like you enough to give you a physical thing, rather than the ethereal experience of digital goods."

Displate Metal Posters

Who will love it: people who aced shop class, metal bands?

Posters are great, but an un-framed bit of shiny paper on the wall feels bit weak outside of a college dorm room. Solution: slice it out of steel.

Displate makes lovely game character posters featuring Gordon Freeman, GlaDOS, Geralt, and others. They re colorful, nicely designed, and, once again, etched into a giant sheet of metal.

The posters are a fairly small 12.6x17.7 inches, so a couple would look excellent paired together. Bonus: you don't need to spend extra money on a frame, really, because they're made of metal. Everyone's going to want to touch them, and they come with a magnetic mounting solution.

Stackable Tetris LED Desk Lamp

Who will love it: People who cannot see in the dark

A bit of gaming history can also tastefully light up a small room with this Tetris lamp, and it's hard to find anyone who doesn't like Tetris. And even if they don't like Tetris, they probably like cool lamps.

Through some dark sorcery, each puzzle piece can be moved and rearranged. Once connected to the overall structure, the pieces light back up. Striking!

The lamp includes seven total pieces, but you can combine multiple lamp sets if you want to get crazy or play actual Tetris. We hear the I Block is always in demand.

Team Fortress 2 Chess Set

Who will love it: Intellectuals who can still appreciate a good uber

Sometimes—very occasionally, mind you—we play things other than video games around here. Don t freak out! We found a chess set that still smells strongly of video games: the Team Fortress 2 chess set from Valve.

Red and Blue continue to face off, but it s 90% less likely that a child will scream at you while you play.*

*Not valid if you play the game with your spoiled, 12-year-old cousin

Starcraft Protoss Pylon USB Charger

Who will love it: YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL

Bask in it. Bask in the pretty lights as you annoy your friends and spouse with a large, unwieldy USB charger. Tiny, form-fitting USB plugs popped into a run-of-the-mill power strip? Bah! Who needs it. You re a gamer, damn it, and you ll charge your phone on Protoss Pylon and laugh while you do it.

Or, you know, give it to your friend or loved one who plays Starcraft. It's not always about you, you know. So selfish. Give your Protoss friend a real gift this holiday: don't Zerg rush them. You know it's annoying.

We recognize this is a completely unnecessary accessory and everyone already owns a million USB charging cables. But it lights up, which means it could also double as a supremely rad night light. That's just too cool.

Hearthstone Cupcake Tee

Who will love it: Hearthstone fans, anyone who is hungry

Sometimes there s no helping it: you ve got to put on clothing and leave the house. Give a Hearthstone lover in your life this t-shirt featuring the Hearthstone cupcake to cover their mortal husk for those trying outdoor excursions. Warning: do not try to eat it. This is for wearing only.

Also available as a Men's Tee, for all you brothers out there.

Tempo Storm Zip Up Hoodie

Who will love it: Mark Zuckerberg

Does your family watch big sporting events during the holidays? Show up sporting the Tempo Storm team colors and go on and on about druids and monks to add some new flavor to the holiday small talk.

If Blizzard gear is what you're looking for, in general, there's a ton more on Blizzard's store.

Klei Entertainment Figures

Who will love it: There's something for everyone here

Klei has made a number of great games, including Mark of the Ninja, Don't Starve, and Invisible, Inc. But they also sell some figures and plushies that are so adorable, they're hard to resist even if you've never played the games they come from.

Don't miss the Beefalo plush, for example. It is devilishly cute. What's a beefalo? Who cares? Look at it!

Ahem.

The figures are, of course, very cool too. Anyone who's as big a Klei fan as we are will like having some of their characters as little figures on your desk. My favorite touch is the Mark of the Ninja figure, which features different masks based on the changing masks in the game. Marketing!

Pandemic Legacy

Who will love it: You. Trust us.

One of our favorite new board games, Pandemic Legacy is the story of a disease control team keeping hideous viruses from making humanity extinct. It s gross, fun, and a little bit horrible, with a great twist: the game evolves as you play it, much like the fantastic Risk Legacy.

Pandemic Legacy is currently one of the top 10 best-rated board games of all time on Board Game Geek, and its predecessor was a popular choice for the board game of 2012. 

Pour some drinks, gather some friends around, and have a good time without looking at screens and chat windows. It ll do you good.

XCOM The Board Game

Who will love it: Strategy fans and those who thrive under pressure.

The XCOM board game is every bit as brutal as its inspiration: XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which continues to top our lists of best games years after release. Every bit of drama you from the game is here as well: the long-shot miracle, the crushing permadeath, the devastation of utter defeat.

But this time, you get to do it with your friends.

It's a neat mix of digital and physical with a companion smartphone app, but our favorite thing about the X-COM board game is its cooperative nature. Each player takes on a distinct role (each of which plays differently) and does their part to combat the alien threat.

Bitmap Books: visual compendiums of PC history

Who will love it: Anyone who loved games in the 80s.

Readers with more advanced levels of chronological experience will appreciate Bitmap s lovely art books. They cover the art of games found on the proto-PCs: Commodore 64, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, and others, with a bit of history mixed in. Can't ask for a better coffee table book.

If you're stuck trying to choose just one, might as well start with Bitmap's first production, the Commodore 64 compendium. Bitmap describes it thusly: "Celebrating one the most popular home computers of all time, the first in the Bitmap Books Visual Compendium series takes you on a journey through the C64 s varied and colourful gaming library."

Not only do they look great, but the site describes them as sumptuous, which is very bold. Self-confidence looks great on you, Bitmap.

Embed with Games by Cara Ellison

Who will love it: Anyone with a heart.

Cara Ellison, one of the finest games writers out there, spent a year crashing on the couch with game developers to tell their stories. She blogged about it along the way, and the final product has turned into this excellent book, a mix of gonzo diary and insight into the lives and passions of game developers across the world.

People who care about game developers, tech culture, and great writing will be happy to spot it in a suspiciously book-shaped package this winter.

From near the end of Ellison's journey, via the Embed blog: "It seems only fair that here comes the rush of adrenaline now that I know what I m doing. The destination is Australia: I m stuck in LAX, the world s second worst airport, Christmas is coming, a woman has been taken off the plane with an allergic reaction to something she ate in the tinsel-draped choo-choo train lined terminal. I am flung into my final month to a burst of sugary pop music.

I look down at my hands and they are shaking with anticipation."

Minecraft: Blockopedia

Who will love it: This kid.

An extensive guide to Minecraft doesn t have to reside on wiki pages alone: why not a book? Alex Wiltshire has poured a ton of knowledge into the Blockopedia, and new players and die-hard fans will find a lot of great details inside. Best of all, with advanced Book technology you can move it from shelf to shelf without taking an axe and destroying the entire piece of furniture.

As some reviewers point out, despite the density of information online, a book can still be the handiest resource. It's easy to flip to the page you want and get exactly the information you need in a glance. Plus it's shaped like a block!

If there's no Minecraft mega-fan in your life, gift this book to a random 14-year-old. They'll probably appreciate it.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

Who will love it: The scholarly, the curious, the budding programmers and entrepreneurs.

This new book is actually an old book. The 25th anniversary re-release of Levy s book has added chapters on greats like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Hackers is a history of the birth of the computer systems we use everyday. It takes us back to a time when someone had to pop the case open, break something in half, and put it back together to make something new.

A great way to learn about the history of your favorite hobby. Pairs well with David Kushner's Masters of Doom, which tells the story of John Carmack, John Romero, and the glory days of id.

80 Days

Release date: 2015 | Review score: 91%

Who will love it: Readers, history lovers, romantics

80 Days is the story of an English gentleman and a wager. As the gentleman s valet, you must help your employer circumnavigate the world before 80 days is up. It's a digital choose-your-own adventure that you'll spend most of your time reading, but every line of text is a delight, not a chore. It's easy to fall in love with 80 Days' alternate history of the 19th century, which has a sci-fi flavor befitting Jules Verne.

This is the type of game that can be played casually with a loved one or family looking on, or you can dive into the details and travel the globe over and over. Easy to play on a laptop or on a long flight.

FTL: Faster Than Light

Release date: 2012 | Review score: 89%

Who will love it: Sci-fi and strategy fans, anyone who gets hooked on "just one more"

If you re buying for a fan of Star Trek or Firefly and they somehow don t already have this classic, it s a sure thing. Command a scout ship through dangerous territory, controlling and upgrading ship systems and praying for a kind hand from Lady Fate. FTL consistently lands near the top of our Top 100 lists, and it features one of our favorite soundtracks ever.

Since 2012 FTL has gotten a big free update with new gameplay systems and stories, and it's regularly discounted in sales down to $5 or less. Buy a few copies and give them out like gaming candy.

Rocket League

Release date: 2015 | Review score: 87%

Who will love it: Anyone with a competitive bone in their body

Here s the short version: rocket cars play football. You are a rocket car. It's a blast. Some sports games have impenetrable rules and weird meta-fiction, but Rocket League sidesteps all that.

Based on the world s most popular sport (but with flying cars), Rocket League is instantly understandable by anyone. It s fast, dramatic, and a lot of fun to play with friends. It even allows for local multiplayer, which makes it perfect for playing with family.

Prison Architect

Release date: 2015 | Review score: 87%

Who will love it: Strategy fiends, sim players. Dad?

Playing Prison Architect is a bit like deciding that all of your Playmobil toys have been very, very naughty. This simulation lets you build and manage a modern-day, maximum security prison for little sim people. Give it to someone who loves fully immersing themselves in the depth of a PC game with complex systems to learn and master. Keep the peace, stay under budget, and prevent escapes.

Their first prison will be small and humble; their last will be a monstrously sprawling and ruthlessly efficient machine. And when they get bored, they can take the role of a prisoner and try to break out of their own creation.

Dungeon of the Endless

Release date: 2014 | Review score: 77%

Who will love it: Your co-op buddies. Tower defense, roguelike and RPG fans.

There s a lot going on in this engaging, budget roguelike. There s a mix of tower defense, XCOM squad management and FTL brutality, all stirred up in a top-down, pixel-graphics cocktail. All the pieces here may be familiar, but the game itself is something special.

It really shines as a cooperative game: adding more people cranks up the complexity as you work together to fight through endless waves of aliens and balance building towers, exploring, and upgrading your own character's abilities and equipment.

Her Story

Release date: 2015 | Review score: 90%

Who will love it: Serial podcast fans, mystery lovers, whoever you play it with.

This one s a little bit different. Combing through police records, you re challenged to piece together the story of a woman in trouble. Dozens of chunks of interviews are all jumbled up, some are missing, and over the course of the game you wonder: did she do it? 

A must-have for fans of the podcast Serial, this murder mystery pushes all the same buttons. If you don't buy it as a gift, consider bringing it to a gathering or family or friends and playing through it together, unraveling the mystery as a team.

That's it for our 2015 holiday gift guide

If you need more ideas, be sure to check out the rest of our hardware buying guides. You can find more advice from our reviews section, and for more general tech advice, check out our sister site TechRadar's holiday buying guide.

Time to take a break from hyper-expensive, lavish games, and come back down to earth. No, further than that. We're going down under the earth, deep into a seemingly impenetrable nuclear bunker. Okay, we should be safe here. Except, do we have enough food? Are those air filtration systems on the blink? Oh gods, there's someone outside! Do we shoot them in the face?

These questions and more form the basis of Sheltered, a new project that combines FTL-like disaster management with a post-apocalyptic twist. It's on Kickstarter now.

For a look at the project, check out the developers' quick and to-the-point Kickstarter video.



The concept holds some fantastic potential for recreating apocalyptic despair. There's always a moment in such fictions, when the gnarled hero, while travelling the wasteland, comes across the tale of a family driven desperate by fear, paranoia and tragedy. It'll be nice to see their story for a change.

The developers are looking for 15,000 to make this project a reality, and still have 23 days to raise the remainder of that total.

For more info, check out the Sheltered Kickstarter page.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Composer Ben Prunty created the soundtrack to FTL: Faster Than Light (and the new music in FTL: Advanced Edition). He worked on music for Gravity Ghost and StarCrawlers, too. He's also a PC gamer, which means he has to maintain both a music rig and a gaming rig two very different beasts. So I asked him to show us both setups, and tell us how he approaches PC gaming in the living room and what his favorite games are.

I also asked him to teach me how to play the banjo, but he didn't respond to that part.



What's in your PC?
Both my work PC and my gaming PC are custom built by me. I love building my own rig. The two machines have a lot of the same hardware, because I built them around the same time:

Motherboard Asus Sabertooth z77
CPU 3.4Ghz Intel Core i7
Heatsink Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus
HDD Two 1TB Seagate Barracudas
Memory 16Gb G.Skill Ripjaws X Series
Video Gaming rig: GeForce GTX560 (it's about time to upgrade!) Music rig: MSI Radeon HD 6570 (nothing fancy.)
Power Supply PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II
Case Gaming rig: Cooler Master HAF 912, Music Rig: Fractal Design R4. This case has foam padding to keep it quiet. Perfect for a studio environment.

The music rig has a Komplete Audio 6 audio interface hooked up to it, along with those big studio speakers and a Novation Launchkey 49 MIDI controller. For more information on my music hardware, check out my blog.



What's the most interesting part of your setup?
Possibly that I have two rigs! This helps keep work separated from play; it's very hard for me to get distracted when I'm in the studio. The PCs themselves are pretty straightforward. I have my gaming rig hooked up to my TV and stereo so I can switch to couch gaming seamlessly, which I take advantage of often.



What's on your desk?
My banjo picks and tuner tend to always be at my gaming desk. You never know when you're going to spontaneously play the banjo. You can see I have a couple Mario figures on my speakers, but in general I hate having stuff on my desk.



What are you playing right now?
Right now my time is divided between Titanfall, Nuclear Throne and the first Dark Souls. Life is good.

What's your favorite game and why?
My favorite PC game is possibly System Shock 2, though the original DOOM or Half-Life 2 is pretty close. System Shock 2 was just a mesmerizing and deep experience, filled with tough decisions and free form exploration. I think it has more in common with the classic Ultima Underworld than most people realize. Plus I just love space horror.

FTL: Advanced Edition is free. The goodwill of that gesture to fans, to expand the hit space sim's feature set and narrative possibilities for nothing, is a neat way to get people talking about the game just as it emerges on iPad. For me, FTL has been a go-to game, something I've played every day for as long as I can remember. The additions to the combat feel generous, and certainly justify picking up the game again even if you've logged tens of hours with it previously.

The basic principle of crossing the game's eight sectors is unchanged. One nerdy tweak to the interface I quite like is a heavier use of symbols in dialogue boxes, so you're not always staring at white text on a beige background. But why am I talking about UI and not the new space combat bits, which are clearly the more interesting addition?

The biggest additions are the Clone Bay, Mind Control, Backup Battery and Hacking systems. Hacking mucks up one of the opponent ship's systems, Mind Control grants a temporary ally among the enemy crew and Backup Battery offers a finite power boost.

The Clone Bay is the one I'm most engaged with, a system that removes the Med Bay from your ship but replaces crew members who die in battle, providing the bay itself isn't damaged. I can't really work out if it makes FTL easier or not it certainly lowers the stakes in those scenarios where you send someone to a burning ship or dangerous planet, only to have them die, but it's a very small price to pay for something that considerably expands your tactical repertoire.



My proudest moment so far in using the Clone Bay came when three rooms in the middle part of my ship - including weapons - were on fire, and my remaining crew struggling to fight the flames. With their health bars on the blink and the Clone Bay itself about to be destroyed by the inferno, I opened all the airlocks, draining the atmosphere and consequently stopping the fire immediately. I purposefully murdered my entire crew as a strategic manoeuvre, but I minimised damage to the ship and 15 seconds later they started reappearing, minus their experience stats. Tactical firefighting.

This is just one way to use the Clone Bay. Clones also make it a lot easier to deal with enemies boarding your ship or you boarding theirs, since you can throw waves of less experienced crew at them without any long-term consequences. That kind of option makes the Advanced Edition an essential add-on to FTL for me, and there are still loads of possibilities I'm sure I haven't come across, roughly eleven games later.

Advanced completely opens up your strategic options by adding just a few features. I've only just got to grips with mind control, which temporarily turns one member of the enemy crew against the others. You can turn boarding soldiers against each other, or even have them help repair parts of your ship temporarily.

The changes aren't limited to the make-up of your ship, either - there's a conscious effort to expand FTL's fiction, as well. A new alien race comes in the form of the Lanius, who suck oxygen from wherever they're positioned and have their own type of starship. Their presence adds variety to the kinds of foes and potential crew mates you'll meet out there, which only helps when you've spent countless hours among engi and slugs.

Helping to mitigate repetition are the new story scenarios, thrown into the pot with the existing ones in Advanced. Obsidian's Chris Avellone has written some of them alongside narrative designer Tom Jubert, and when you've dealt with slaver ships and Tuco the pirate countless times before, having that fiction expanded makes FTL feel more complete.



Easy mode feels a bit softer now, too. Every time I do an easy run through I've breezed to the last sector in the Kestrel without taking more than half hull damage, and that's rarely avoiding conflict. With a newly added hard mode, it's tough to work out if Normal has changed or not discussing it with PC Gamer's Chris Thursten, he's found a couple of games to be fairly easy until he hits an enemy ship with a hacking drone, when the journey comes to abrupt end. I've had the same issue, and it seems to always come down to hacking drones putting you at an immediate disadvantage by targeting a vital room on your ship. They've got access to the same new toys as you, of course maybe this is just a balance check I have to be better prepared for.

Yet I'm pleased that almost two years on, FTL has given its fans a load more outcomes to be wary of as they crawl to sector eight. This is surely the best kind of expansion, one built without a business model in mind that only enhances the original game and rewards long-term players. With Subset Games having now created a basically definitive version of FTL, minus maybe a couple of possible tweaks in future, I can't wait to see what they move onto next.

Welcome to the After Action Report, an account from one of PC gaming's varied, exciting battlefields.

FTL's creators wanted to make a brilliant Captain Picard sim, but Picard doesn't tend to die in a fire half-way through an episode of The Next Generation. Instead they've created a terrific roguelike that almost always ends in horrible death, but always spawns a neat little story every time you play. You control the crew of a spaceship as it zips across the galaxy trying to escape the laser beams of a pursuing rebel fleet. You meet pirates, recruit strange aliens and upgrade your ship to match increasingly deadly enemies. A juicy free update is about to add a load of new features, so I paid one last visit to the original version, to rediscover its brilliance, and try to reach the final boss.

First I need a ship. I choose the default layout, which I'm quite familiar with, and name it the Vagrant Badger, the ragged successor to previous vessels, which included the noble Space Badger (my most successful run), and the PCG Party Bus, among others. Next, I need to pick a crew an easy task. At the helm, captain Samuel Roberts, editor of PC Gamer UK. On shield-management duty, dutiful section editor, Andy Kelly. Finally, on weapons, deputy editor Chris Thursten. Who will die first?

You have to move from left to right in each sector, hopping from beacon to beacon to reach the exit point. I spy a useful route across the top of the sector, which ought to take me through numerous planets before the red wave of the rebel fleet starts advancing from the left edge of the map.

Jump one. I fly into an automated ship flying patrols around a long-range sensor station. I attack it immediately, disabling its shields with a rocket and a triple-blast from my laser cannon. I salvage the machine's guts for ten scrap FTL's currency and discover a map of the system in the sensor station. I learn that the system is full of alarming yellow triangle icons, each indicating a potential combat encounter. One is positioned right next to a huge sun. That could be trouble.

Jump two. An Energy Bomber tries to charge me a fee to use the beacon. They want 15 of my 20 scrap. I respond with a polite missile to their shield generator, and follow up with a courteous triple-tap from my trusty laser. They respond with surprising rudeness, destroying my engine and setting fire to the ass-end of my ship. I open the rearmost doors and vent the flames into space, performing a petulant cosmic fart as my foe explodes. More scrap for me, and an extra missile. Onwards.

Jump three. "This beacon has been placed too close to a super-giant class M star!" Apparently the searing pain and massive doses of gamma radiation failed to deter the determined and insensible builders in this corner of space. The same poverty of self-preservation applies to the pirate ship that lies in wait near the beacon. It rakes my hull with a pair of sustained laser attacks, setting fire to my shield generator, taking out my oxygen supply and damaging my engine. I take the pirate's shields down moments before a solar flare tears through both craft. The pirate ship explodes and the Vagrant Badger massively catches fire. Chris repairs the oxygen supply and the engine, Andy repairs the shields and Sam stares vacantly out of the window, because I forget to give him orders. I jump out to avoid another flare as soon as the engine is repaired.



Jump four. The Badger is still quite on fire. I open all of the ship's side-doors and starve the flames of oxygen. Meanwhile a merchant is hailing us with a mission, apparently unperturbed by the panicked screams and sirens he must be hearing over comms. He wants us to take some drone parts to another part of the system. I accept with the imagined scream of "AAAaargh yeswhatever nyaaaarggh".

Jump five. Ship repaired, I sail to the next beacon and receive a distress signal from the heart of an asteroid field. I can try to help, or abandon them to certain death. I select the "try to shield their ship with yours" option, but they die horribly anyway. At least this way I get to loot the corpse. The Vagrant Badger hungers for sweet scrap.

Jump six. I've reached the nebula. Sensors are affected by the environment, which means I lose visibility of any part of the Badger not occupied by a crew member. I encounter another automated scout, who I dispatch easily after a brief laser exchange. After the fight Andy starts repairing some minor damage to the shield generator and I take a quick look at everyone's stats. Your crew gain experience in the systems they use, unless you're Andy, who has refused to learn anything about managing shields despite being in the same room as the shield generator for the entire adventure thus far. I start to see his refusal to learn as a form of passive-aggressive mutiny, but find myself distracted by the co-pilot section of the cockpit, which has miraculously caught fire.

While Sam flaps at the flames I send Andy into the dark area of the ship to investigate, and he almost dies in a hidden inferno in the neck of the ship. Both sections of the cockpit are now on fire, and Sam is not having a nice time. Andy and Chris do their best to stamp out the blaze, and eventually succeed, but the Badger is a wreck. The hull only has six points of health left.



Jump seven. An "especially well-armed pirate ship" approaches. They're slavers. They want one member of my crew, randomly selected, or they'll blast me apart. My mouse lingers over the "we will never surrender one of our crew to slavers!" option, and then look again at my ship's miserable health bar. Sorry, crew. It's time to roll the dice.

And so it came to pass that Andy Kelly, former officer and shield-managing-dude of the Vagrant Badger, entered a life of ruinous servitude. Sam and Chris live on, but what kind of life will it be without Andy's dry wit and giant hands, so useful for putting out fires?

Jump eight. There's an asteroid field near this beacon which I choose not to explore because, knowing my luck, there's a giant fire-breathing magma worm in there waiting to turn the Vagrant Badger into a funeral pyre.

Jump nine. There's a space station, mysteriously silent. Do I explore? I estimate that my odds of catching fire during this exchange are probably lower than the asteroid field, so I dock. There I see a "frantic person banging on the airlock door." He enters my ship and says "My... friends... They've gone insane... They're coming!" Then the rear of the ship is invaded by three foes with pistols. I think I'm outnumbered, but suddenly realise that the "frantic person" has joined my crew, and isn't a person at all. It's a Mantis warrior, a fast green alien that's excellent at fighting. I get everyone to hide in the medbay together and open all other doors on the ship. The invaders respond by taking out my O2 supplies, and then nearly asphyxiate to death reaching the only safe room on the ship. There Chris, Sam and the Mantis man called Dengler bond over a brief combat that eliminates all attackers.





Jump ten. I have FINALLY reached the exit to the sector. I wait for my FTL drive to spool up and dive into a Zoltan sector. I'm told the Zoltan are busy bracing the region for the coming war. I can expect to face tougher ships soon.

Jump eleven. I encounter a planet populated by "small, brightly colored, six-legged, horse-like animals". I could take them aboard the ship and sell them off to slavers, but I still feel a bit guilty about letting Andy go. I choose to "communicate peacefully." One of them responds by nudging me towards a crashed ship, where I gain some much-needed fuel, a missile, more scrap and an Engi crewmember. Yes! The Engi are cybernetic beings that are rubbish at fighting, but excellent at repairing things. Let it never be said that the tiny horse dudes of Random Backwater Planet 28A aren't a gentle and honourable folk.

Jump twelve. For the love of all things flame-retardant, I have found a shop. I blow all of my scrap on repairs and then feel sad that I'm 150 scrap short of a useful cloaking module, and 75 short of the crew teleporter. I'm not in bad shape, exactly, but I should really have more weapons, and perhaps an extra shield segment by now. If I hadn't spent 90% of my time on fire, things might be different.

Jump thirteen. Ugh, an asteroid field. Here constant pebble bombardments whittle down shields in seconds, and can take out vital systems if you suffer an unlucky hit. "A pirate ship hiding behind one of the larger asteroids attacks you!" Of course it does. I lose a few points of hull health defeating the pirate scum, and suck up more scrap from the wreckage. I'm still poor, and the game seems to be taunting me by placing two stores right next to one another. If only I could raid them. Instead, I must move on.



Jump fourteen. I detect a lone life form in a recently attacked colony. Magma worm? No, it's a lone survivor. I invite them to join my crew, and they gladly accept. I now have a crew of five. Not bad at all. Looking back, everything seems to have gotten better since Andy left. Sorry, Andy.

Jump fifteen. A slaver ship offers me the same choice as the one I encountered in sector one. Give up my crew, or be attacked. This time I have most of my health, four missiles, and five kick-ass crew members. I obliterate their weaponry with missiles and take them down to a sliver of health. They attempt to surrender, offering me a crew member for a moment of mercy. Instead I pick the "Surrender is not an option" option, and enjoy watching the slaver ship explode.

Jumps sixteen, seventeen and eighteen. A string of similar encounters follow. A rebel fighter confronts me, dealing a little damage to my hull. They try to surrender on the verge of destruction, but I say NOT TODAY, and destroy them for the extra scrap. Next, a rebel scout attempts to flee, but I missile his engine, then his shield generator, and dispatch him with a laser volley. On the third jump, I reach the exit, and plot a course into new a new sector, also owned by the mysterious Zoltan.



Jump nineteen. I'm desperately underpowered. The Vagrant Badger has been brawling beyond its means for the past few fights. Missiles have sustained me until now, but that surely can't continue. I need to kill as manty things as I can before the difficulty curve escapes me.

Jump twenty. My ship is swamped by ads offering fuel for missiles. I pass, and jump on.

Jump twenty-one. I find a refuelling station offering fuel for scrap. I'm running low, so I buy some up. I jump on.

Jump twenty-two. I find a Zoltan shipyard and "admire the display of hundreds of glowing Zoltan performing delicate exterior work on a massive transport ship." There's nothing else to do here. I jump on.

Jump twenty-two. "There is nothing here, save for vast swirls of gas reflecting rays from a distant sun." What is going on? I seem to have found the most peaceful sector in all of FTL. It's a sector of beautiful views and merchants, and no evil bastards at all. I need conflict. I need scrap. I need weapons and more shields and a teleporter. I curse the beautiful reflective gas-ray things. I curse them and jump on.



Jump twenty-three. I find a secret planet in a nebula. The surface boasts a "huge monolith visible even to the naked eye." This is weird. A Zoltan elder hails. "Through luck or intent, you have discovered the Great Eye. Look into its depths and receive your just dessert". This is really weird. I pull the ship in closer and a ship approaches. "And in the coming times, when the monolith speaks not with a man he has no future and must be left wanting." I have no idea what that means, but the ship has turned hostile. I fire off a few blasts at their shields, but they're an Energy Fighter. They have two barriers and a third shield with a bar that I have to whittle down before I can attack the hull. Before I even get started they disable my shields with an Ion blast, and then hammer me with the one thing I feared most: a really massive laser.

Things are on fire again. It's been a while since things were on fire, but my crew seem to know what to do. Sam battles the flames in the cockpit. Dengler does his part in the shield room. Chris and Charlie start mending the weapons bay. My shields are down. I can't shoot. I order Sam to the back of the ship to help out, but the neck of the ship is completely ablaze, and he dies on the journey. Editor down! Chris, Dengler, Charlie and my Engi repair as fast as their tiny forms allow, but it's too late. My hull is breached and the Vagrant Badger cracks apart. The voyage is over. It occurs to me that somewhere in this godforsaken galaxy Andy Kelly is probably still alive. Perhaps he is the real winner.

Bum. That's two losses from two After Action Reports so far. Maybe I'll have more luck with FTL Advanced goes live shortly.

Subset Games has announced on Twitter that FTL: Advanced Edition will release on April 3. The new edition of the game will release on iPad for $10 on the same day, but will be offered as a free upgrade to those who already own the original game on PC. As you should.
FTL: Advanced Edition adds new ships, weapons, event and environments. Some of the new additions include a cloning room, which, in exchange for your medbay, will allow you to create clones of dead crew members at a cost to their skills. Another addition, a mind control system, will force enemies to sabotage their own ships.
The update will also include new music by composer Ben Prunty, and new sectors and events written by FTL writer Tom Jubert and Wasteland 2 scribe Chris Avellone.
As you can imagine, we love FTL already. These additions will give us yet another reason to jump back into the cockpit.

Subset Games have revealed some more information about their upcoming free update for FTL. In a new blog post, the team run through some of the subsystems that the Advanced Edition will bring. The expansion - due early this year - will introduce the ability to clone crew members, hack enemy ships, and use mind control. This will basically make the game 30% more sci-fi - a figure that will rise dramatically should they announce a constantly malfunctioning holodeck room.

The cloning room is a medbay that, as the name suggests, provides clones of dead crew members at a cost to their skills. The downside, rather obviously, is that you don't have that medbay, although the clone room does slightly heal all crew with each jump.

"The goal of the Clone Bay was to really disrupt the core way you play the game," write Subset. "You ll be able to send crew off into dangerous situations without fear of death. Giant alien spiders will no longer be the terrifying, unstoppable force that you re used to, since the system can simply revive your crew after the event. But, if a stray missile takes out the system mid-clone, you ll find death can still be quite permanent."

For hacking, players can fire a drone that attaches to an enemy system. Each system will produce a different event, for instance hacked Teleporters will instantly recall boarding invaders - giving players another option against invaders.

Head over to the full post to learn about the self-explanatory mind control, and the backup battery - designed to provide a short burst of extra power at crucial moments.

By Chris Kinniburgh.

It was supposed to be a short break. I told myself Civilization V wouldn't suck me in when I began playing on the big screen. The game will be too tedious. The text will be too small. I was wrong.

I've spent the past couple days going through every game I thought would be interesting to play, and Civilization V on a couch, staring at a big screen TV is among most engaging, relaxing gaming experiences I've ever had with a game.

There were a few hurdles to jump before I began. I chose to decrease the resolution to 1360x768, giving me a 16:9 resolution that looks fine on the big screen while giving me slightly larger text than 1920x1080.

There are two comfortable configurations for the trackpads. First, you can set the left trackpad to control moving the map while the right trackpad controls the mouse. Alternatively, you may choose to use both trackpads to control the mouse (as shown in Valve s Steam Controller demonstration of Paper's Please).

My preferred setup has the left trackpad move the camera while the right controls the mouse. Left and right triggers correspond to right and left clicks respectively. The flipped mouse buttons feel intuitive while playing, though causes a bit of cognitive dissonance whenever a game directs me to click with the left mouse button and I use my right hand. I'll report back in a few months if I've completely lost my sense of direction.



Using the dual mouse method feels quick, but the trackpad allows me to move fast enough through the screen that I only need to lift my thumb once to get from the top left corner to the bottom right. While that 10th of a second speed increase is nice, it's outweighed by the speed gained through quick control over the map.

Moving through Civ V's menu screens is effortless. The Advisor Counsel, Overview Screens, Social Policies, and Era Map are all bound to keys, and there are a few left over to handle zooming in and out, and Next Turn. With these bound, I found myself more quickly navigating the Civilization user interface than I had in my previous couple hundred hours with a mouse and keyboard.

It's also surprisingly easy to move the cursor quickly with precision. While I don't expect to be effectively splitting my Marines in StarCraft any time soon, I can certainly play a turn-based game without frustration.

Sitting 17 feet away from a 50-inch television, the relatively small text is easily parsed. With responsive controls, a comfortable seat, and a large television, I found myself able to quickly enter the flow state that Civ V does so dangerously well.

Along with Civilization V, I've spent a bit of time trying out FTL, which was similarly simple and easy to enjoy. While you won't be able to bind every hotkey available in the game, the overall experience of boxing and moving your crew feels natural and quick. The ability to pause the game while playing also enables players to slowly familiarize themselves with the controls.



I also decided to try my hand at StarCraft II. After taking some time to think through any reasonable hotkey layout and determining there was none, I proceeded by playing with the controller's default keybindings when plugged into a PC: the mouse controlled by the right trackpad, map with the left trackpad, and mouse buttons mapped to the triggers. The games were difficult. I eventually mapped the attack-move command to the right bumper, and S and D to the left and right half of the trackpad. With these commands, I was slightly more able to macro while playing. The game was still tedious. I considered investing another hour into coming up with a way of mapping a couple control groups and re-working StarCraft s grid system to use fewer keys, but I thought better of it.

While the steam controller has the ability to control most games, the effort required to enjoy real time strategy games is great. First you have to spend time finding a comfortable mapping of controls. Next, the effort required to relearn a new control scheme, a process made more difficult by the lack of onscreen button prompts and reminders. Only then can you forget about the controller and just enjoy the game. Increasingly I'm finding myself more and more interested in playing games that quickly move over those first two steps. Platformers are easy to map to a controller, and have generally felt great while playing. Slow paced games like Civ V, FTL, or Hearthstone are relatively easy to map and their slow pace allows for the time needed to come to grips with a new control scheme.

Chris' Steam Controller tests continue, what would you like us to take a look at next? Let us know in the comments.

Before running away for a few days to visit family and then de-stress in DayZ, Evan, Cory, and Tyler gathered to reflect on the biggest surprises of 2013. Watch the whole five-video series on the PC Gamer YouTube channel, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more regular content, gameplay footage, and conversations.

For all its infinite wonder, space is kind of a jerk. It would be bad enough if FTL was about navigating its various deadly pitfalls, but the game goes one further - pitting you against a selection of deadly alien races and their many weapons. Despite all this, and as good as the space roguelike was, I always felt that it could use more variety and options to support the need for repeat playthroughs. Step forward FTL: Advanced Edition, which will be made available as a free upgrade to the base game next year. Along with the already detailed ships, weapons and events, its developers have now announced another race of murderous foe. It looks like space is being upgraded to an ultrajerk.

The new race is The Lanius: metallic scavengers who absorb materials to survive. If that sounds like bad news, their other quirk is their relationship to oxygen. They don't require life support to survive, and, more than that, will actually drain the oxygen of any room they're in. Oh dear.

In the Lanius's announcement post, the game's makers also round up some of the other upgrades planned for the update:


"Lanius Ship: New player ship with its own achievements and alternate layout.
"Type C Ship Layouts: 8 of the original ships will have a third layout that capitalizes on the new content. With the Lanius ship, that makes for a total of ten new starting ship designs.
"Backup Battery Subsystem: Subsystem that can provide temporary reactor power in a pinch.
"New Drones: Expanded drone options includes: the Shield Drone that generates a green super shield for your ship, the Anti-Combat Drone that shoots down enemy combat drones, and the Ion Intruder that blasts into the enemy ship and randomly ionizes systems while stunning and distracting crew.
"Gameplay Refinements: Doors and Sensors can be manned to increase effectiveness; you can now rename crew mid-game; each race has a small variety of colors which allows for easier visual recognition;
"And more to come: We re still balancing and polishing the features that are being added. Be sure to keep an eye out for additional content announcements!"


Subset have also announced that players will be able to toggle the Advanced Edition's bigger changes, for those who want to re-experience the classic brutality of the current version's violent men, rocks and mantises.