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The Epic Games Store's free games program has been running for more than two years now, and Epic just announced that the program will continue through 2021. Every Thursday at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET, Epic offers up one, two, or occasionally three free games. You merely need to create a free Epic account and enable two-factor authentication to start snagging freebies. At this point, Epic has given away well over 100 free games, and there's no sign that the program will stop any time soon. We keep this article up to date weekly to highlight both the current free games and next week's offerings. This week's free game at Epic From now until March 25 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET , you can claim The Fall, a puzzle-packed, side-scrolling adventure game about a sentient, AI-powered space suit's race to save its unconscious human pilot. Next week's free game at Epic Epic regularly reveals the freebies you have to look forward to a week in advance, and starting March 25 , you can claim … [Read more...] about The Fall Is Free On The Epic Games Store

It's not a good sign for a loot shooter when I'm tired of shooting stuff by hour three. I went into Outriders ready to be surprised after its disappointing demo, but it turns out those first few missions are representative of the final game—flat arenas connected by uneventful hallways, underpowered abilities, and guns that aren't much fun to shoot. Outriders plays like it was raided by the fun police. The story treats your character like some godlike force of destruction, but you're so fragile that I spent most of my time fighting for scraps of health. People Can Fly seemingly wrote itself into a corner when it set the game in an alien world where only humans make guns, because its arsenal of standard assault rifles, shotguns, LMGs, and sniper rifles are so needlessly dull. The numbers go up, sure, but my level 3 shotgun shoots exactly the same as the one I killed the final boss with. Instead of modifying the gun's behavior (bullet spread, rate of fire, and other stuff … [Read more...] about 13 hours in, I’m still waiting for Outriders to get good

DNA Tracing This article first appeared in PC Gamer magazine issue 354, as part of our 'DNA Tracing' series, where every month we delve into the lineages behind iconic games and studios. Why choose the name Irrational? Because, although it would one day be worth millions to a major American publisher, the studio's founding was not a sensible decision. Jon Chey, Rob Fermier, and Ken Levine had all left full-time jobs at Looking Glass Studios, and only one of them had ever shipped a game. The year was 1997, and so there was no way for a small studio to distribute games independently—they would have to rely on the blind faith of publishers. It went about as well as you'd expect: within three weeks, Irrational's first deal was cancelled. The game was FireTeam, a Counter-Strike-style tactical shooter co-designed by Arkane's Harvey Smith. Irrational had been tasked with developing a single-player campaign, until the publisher decided FireTeam simply didn't need one. No … [Read more...] about The story of Irrational, the studio that shut down to rediscover its roots

There probably needs to be a new word for it: That deep ennui that comes from entering a videogame area full of suspiciously medium-height piles of rubble and overturned machinery. "Ah, here we go," I think, seconds before a wave of targets pour into the arena. If you play cover shooters, chances are you don’t mind shooting things from the safety of cover. You might even love it. But you’d probably still agree there’s a uniformity about cover shooter level design, and I’m hardly the first to bring it up. You open a door, enter a large room full of waist-high stuff, and then shooting happens. You finish the shooting, open a door or follow a path, and then enter another large room full of abandoned cars and square planters. So we’re doing this again, are we? I’m no fan of the cover shooter, myself. It’s repetitive and boring: not even The Division’s loot game can keep me interested. You’d have to pay me to play another Gears of War. As for Mass Effect, I’d prefer if it was a visual … [Read more...] about Outriders is the anti-cover shooter

Diablo 2: Resurrected overhauls Diablo 2's graphics, but underneath the intricate new 3D models, dynamic lighting, and shiny puddles, it's the same old Diablo 2. And Diablo 2 still rules. There are little hints that what you're seeing is just a costume. As I clicked around the trampled fields in the limited technical alpha today (the full release is coming later this year), I noticed that my sorceress gently snaps to the eight directions her original sprite has to face. And when I clicked too close to a cow, she clipped through it, whereas in the original Diablo 2, character sprites can only be in front of or behind another object. Most of the time, the disguise is hard to see through. I might not even have believed that Diablo 2: Resurrected is a reskin of Diablo 2 if it weren't possible to yank off the mask. Press G, and the 4K art dissolves into the original low-res renders. It's an effect we've seen in other remasters, and it's always cool. Only three classes and two … [Read more...] about Diablo 2: Resurrected hands-on: still the satanic lord of action RPGs