It's a big month for PC Gamer UK. The disc is gone. We put it in a paper boat and burnt it at sea (or, rather the river next to our office). In its place we have 64 extra pages. That means more reviews, more previews, bigger features and more adventures in Extra Life. To celebrate, we're giving everyone who buys the new issue free stuff, whether you subscribe, buy online, in a shop, or even digitally. Everyone will get an exclusive Team Fortress 2 hat, and a month of OnLive access. The issue will be arriving with subscribers now, and will hit stores this Wednesday.
But what's inside? The screaming warrior on our cover gives away our huge Skyrim preview, but there's more. Much, much more. We turn the office into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. We talk to Gabe Newell about his Dota 2 obsession, delve into Firefall, take a look at Planetside 2, invent the perfect version of Left 4 Dead 3 and Tim strokes a Tribble. Read on to find out why.
We have seen the future, and it is glorious. It involves a team of PC gamers clustered around PCs, pretending to pilot a starship without nuking themselves to death. The game is Artemis: Bridge Simulator. The mission: boldly pilot a ship around the place. Expect carnage, incompetence, and more than a few Star Trek gags in our eight page Artemis feature.
In other future news, our writers have flown all over the place to see some of the most exciting upcoming releases, including Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3, Mass Effect 3, Bordlerlands 2, Tribes Ascend, Anno 2070, Planetside 2, World of Warplanes. That's all before our enormous ten page Skyrim preview, in which Tom Francis heads to the depths of Skyrim's deepest dungeons to electrocute, and then punch anyone who tries to steal his mighty battleaxe. Then we present 50 reasons to be excited about the upcoming free-to-play jetpack shooter, Firefall.
In the huge reviews section this month, we turn our glowing mono-eye of judgement on *deep breath* Dead Island, F1 2011, Desktop Dungeons, Age of Empires Online, Space Marine, Supreme Ruler: Cold War, Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation, Bastion, The Baconing, Achron, War inc. Battlezone, Chantelise...
*gasp* ...Storm: Frontline Nation, Traffic Manager 2011, Men of War: Vietnam, Pirates of the Black Cove, Serious Sam: Doubled, Cthulhu Saves the World, Dungeons of Dredmor, E.Y.E.: Divine Cybromancy and Tim Stone's review of magnificent German Bus Simulator, OMSI.
It's not just our reviews section that's massive this month. Extra Life has grown, too. This month, Tom F dives into TF2 as a Scout and is accidentally really good at it, Chris Donlan prays to the crate gods in Super Crate Box, Phil Savage becomes Frozen Synapse's equivalent of a Pool Hall shark, Tim goes back on the WoWcrack and Tom Hatfield mods Fallout 3 into something else entirely. That's before Tom S gets Japan drunk to make more ninjas in Shogun 2, Rich gets to the chopper in ARMA 2 and Duncan Geere destroys the entire universe and bowls with stars in Universe Sandbox.
New to Extra Life this month, we introduce the Battle Report. Rich gives a blow by blow account of one of the finest matches in the Major League Gaming Anaheim tournament. In Update Tom Hatfield goes a bit tank mad in World of Tanks, Tim plays Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops and makes them fight, and Chris Livingston goes on safari to see explosions in the wild in Far Cry 2. We also take a good look at the making of Total War: Shogun 2.
There's still the hardware section, this month's competition, our special report on the million dollar Dota 2 tournament, the Face Off and even more to discover. It's too many pages to fit into one web post. There's only one solution, and that's to pick it up and read it for yourself. We hope you enjoy it. For an insight into how it all came together, check out our series of video diaries on the making of issue 232. If you're inclined to subscribe, you can do so now to get every issue delivered to your door, cheaper, faster, and clad in our exclusive subscriber covers.
