PC Gamer - UK (2022-06)

THE SPY

The Spy knew this
would happen.

he Spy has spent decades

watching the industry – observing

the full domain of videogames

and the people who make them.

At times, The Spy has been

tempted to step in; to lead

confused and frightened

executives away from their

undoing and towards their

salvation. Duke Nukem Forever? Aliens: Colonial

Marines? Anthem? The Spy could have helped, could

have prevented disaster. But doing so would break the

covenant of The Spy – the very thing that gives The

Spy purpose, maybe even power. The Spy can only

watch, never touch. The vigil must continue.

The Spy would like you to know that this is very

frustrating. “You fools,” The Spy will shout, unheard, “You

can’t just throw every shooter trope into a game like an

algorithm spitting out keywords. Either be a MOBA or be

a battle royale. Don’t try to be both and a dozen other

things besides.” And yet despite The Spy’s protests,

Amazon still released Crucible, and it tanked so hard that

you had forgotten it existed. The Spy

remembers. The Spy is similarly

concerned about Ubisoft. This is the

studio that – with Far Cry 3 – turned

“the definition of insanity” into a

meme. And yet it’s also a studio that

seems content with doing the same

thing over and over again, hoping for

a different result.

HYPER ACTIVE?

So then: in the same month that Ubisoft’s battle royale

Hyper Scape is closing, rumours surfaced about a new

battle royale in development. According to Exputer’s Tom

Henderson – whose multiple anonymous sources were

verified by Kotaku’s anonymous source – this new game is

codenamed Pathfinder. In it, teams of four players drop

onto the map and must find their way to the centre to

fight an AI boss. Based on the description, the map

contains two large walls, each with a series of gates. Each

game, you’ll need to find which of the gates can be

breached to make your way forward. Essentially, then, the

game is to find a path. The Spy gets it now.

Here is the crucial question, though: do players even

want a new battle royale, even one that is mixing things

up? As Ubisoft has already learned, it’s incredibly tough to

break the stranglehold of the few big names in the genre

• your Apexes and Fornites and Warzones. There are only
  so many human beings, and even the ones that really love
  having a big fight on an island only have a finite amount of
  time on this Earth. Some could say it’s admirable that
  Ubisoft is taking another swing at the genre, but there
  are other words for it too.
  Another example of Ubisoft’s persistence came just a
  day after it announced that Ghost Recon Breakpoint would
  not be getting any future updates, when Kotaku reported
  that a new game in the series was in development.
  Codenamed OVER, this is said to be a different game to
  Ghost Recon Frontline, which is undergoing a development
  “reset” following negative feedback during playtests.
  There are no details about OVER yet, nor is there any
  word about whether it will carry forward Breakpoint’s
  controversial NFTs. One of the selling points NFT
  advocates like to tout is ‘interoperability’, and how items
  could theoretically be transferred from one game to
  another. As yet, this has not worked
  out in the real world where game
  development actually happens, but
  Ubisoft seems invested in pursuing
  this tech whether anyone wants it or
  not. Alas, The Spy is powerless to
  intervene. We can but watch the
  disaster play out.
  The Spy

1

At 94%, Company ofHeroesis still

the highest score PC Gamer has

awarded an RTS. The sequel, alas, couldn’t

quite match up. “Huge, powerful, and just

a little bit broken,” our review wouldsay.

More interesting was what happened

after, as Russian users flocked to

Metacritic to condemn thegame’s

depiction of the USSR’stroops.An early

review bomb in action.

3

DeveloperRobertYang takesus

on a tour of theweird,

experimentalworld of indie FPSes.

Fromambientsoundmachineslike

Proteusand Fract OSC, to reality-

twisting puzzlers like Cities of Day and

Nightand Trauma, this isa compelling

snapshot of the breadth ofthe genre.

Last year’sCruelty Squadprovesthis

experimentalstreak liveson.

2

In a review

section filled

with niche RPGs

and strategy

games, Paradox

stands out with the

truly awful

Gettysburg:

Armored Warfare.

Score: 19%.

ISSUE

240, June 2 012

ON THE COVER

Company of Heroes 2

IN THE CINEMAS

Marvel Avengers

Assemble

T

This month in... 2012

CRUCIBLE TANKED SO

HARD THAT YOU HAD

FORGOTTEN IT

EXISTED

NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT

10

BUT WHOWATCHES THE SPY?

The Spy