Author: Fraser Brown

A whopping 19 years ago last week, Obsidian and LucasArts released Knights of the Old Republic 2—a rough, unfinished romp around the Star Wars galaxy. Despite being pushed out the door far too soon, the complex, philosophical yarn spun by Obsidian lifted it above the usual Star Wars fare, exploring the setting and the nebulous…

Despite occasionally indulging in the popular videogame critic pastime of making wild predictions, I am not, I must confess, a soothsayer. As hard as I have tried, I am entirely incapable of peering into the future. This is unfortunate for many reasons, but for the purposes of this article the one I am going to…

Vampire: The Masquerade’s blueblood vamps, the Ventrue, are the fourth and final clan being unveiled for Bloodlines 2. Unlike the unexpected addition of the Banu Haqim, shown off during the PC Gaming Show, the Ventrue reveal has been easier to predict: these vamps are VTM’s aristocracy, heavy hitters that often have important positions in the…

Larian has followed up Baldur’s Gate 3’s hefty fourth patch with a wee hotfix that squashes a variety of bugs, one of which I wish I’d experienced before it was fixed. I knew I should have rolled a dwarf. If you’ve been playing as a dwarven Barbarian since the arrival of the last update, you…

It can be hard to find the best MMOs when there are so many of them, and so many different focuses, business models and settings. Do you want to traipse across a fantastical land as an acrobatic cat-person? Maybe you’d prefer to flit off into space, blowing up pirates and making deals as part of…

Strategy is the quintessential PC genre, keeping us buried in maps, army lists and build orders since the earliest days of PC gaming. And it’s one of the most diverse, catering to everyone from hardcore grognards to people who just want to see Gandhi nuke Montezuma.  In this list, you’ll find everything from fast-paced, competitive…

Blizzard is a legendary RTS developer, which is easy to forget in 2023. Along with Westwood, it effectively built the genre, establishing its foundations and designing mechanics and features that modern RTS games still stick with today. With that in mind, it’s pretty tragic to see how little attention Blizzard is giving the genre these…

When I first embraced my inner-demon in medieval tactical RPG Beast, I was not expecting to become a kind of satanic, horned Wolverine, ripping enemies to shreds with razor-sharp claws. My foes were equally surprised, as blood spurted out of their veins with comic book exaggeration. As I dashed around the gridless map, the miserable…

I am a fickle mayor, it turns out. My first Cities: Skylines 2 town ended up in the bin after only a couple of hours—but I think for completely understandable reasons. It looked lumpier than my middle-aged arse. The way Colossal Order’s city-building sequel deals with terrain, and the way buildings interact with it, is…