PCG Article Discussion for April 2026

[neogunhero]

Sorry, just thought of something else to say here. I read tons of user reviews, and my opinion has changed recently on all of this. More and more people seem to have developed unreasonable expectations, especially for small team games. I'm beginning to get frustrated with all the ridiculous reasons people come up with for downvoting games.

Expectation and opinion are two different things that some gamers can't seem to separate. They have incredibly high expectations for a game and when it doesn't deliver their opinion of the game changes which leads to negative reviews. Pretty much what I said before, I try to not let reviews influence me unless it's from a source I put some authority into, but it's hard to ignore when most of the discourse around a game is overwhelmingly negative in a more nitpicky sense, not a constructive criticism sense.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Expectation and opinion are two different things that some gamers can't seem to separate. They have incredibly high expectations for a game and when it doesn't deliver their opinion of the game changes which leads to negative reviews. Pretty much what I said before, I try to not let reviews influence me unless it's from a source I put some authority into, but it's hard to ignore when most of the discourse around a game is overwhelmingly negative in a more nitpicky sense, not a constructive criticism sense.

I'm not going to tell people they can't have their opinions, but some of the negative reviews are really pretty poor. For instance, I was reading a review for a game I've already played yesterday, and the first negative review I came across was about the game intro. which is nothing like the rest of the game. They followed that with a really dumb suggestion that they had communicated to the developer on Discord and said that the developer wasn't listening to the community. This particular game isn't being hurt by negative reviews. It is at 96 percent positive. But it's still annoying.

 

[neogunhero]

Battlefield 6 enters its 'we've heard your feedback' era: 7 more maps are coming in 2026, including fan-favorite Wake Island

EA is going big on maps.

www.pcgamer.com

As a long time BF fan (BF 1942 was one of the very first PC games I played as a kid), I'm glad I sat this one out. They were doing all the right things... until they weren't. The playtest gave us a taste of what's to come, but it blindsided players. We all thought that the small map was for the beta only, but turns out every map in the game is pretty small. I get they wanted to scale it back a bit from BF2042 but they scaled it too far back, down to COD levels small. I would still love to get into the game, but I'll wait another year or two until some major changes come.

 

[neogunhero]

I'm not going to tell people they can't have their opinions, but some of the negative reviews are really pretty poor. For instance, I was reading a review for a game I've already played yesterday, and the first negative review I came across was about the game intro. which is nothing like the rest of the game. They followed that with a really dumb suggestion that they had communicated to the developer on Discord and said that the developer wasn't listening to the community. This particular game isn't being hurt by negative reviews. It is at 96 percent positive. But it's still annoying.

It annoys me when I see negative reviews with like 0.2 hours played saying something along the lines of "This game wouldn't even START for me. Refunded!" while the remaining 2000 reviews are generally positive. Like c'mon, you couldn't have tried a few more times? Maybe there is something wrong with your PC? Reinstall or verify file integrity? It really chaps my hide y'know.

 

[neogunhero]

It's only April but the most bitable mouse of 2026 may be the Asus ZenMouse MD202

I'm not giving up my Razer Deathadder V3 Hyperspeed for it.

www.pcgamer.com

Wish I could sample one before buying. The ceramic finish sounds very interesting. Everything we use peripheral wise is mostly plastic, I think it's about time we moved onto something new.

 

[neogunhero]

7 years on, Metro 2039 brings a voiced protagonist and 'a much darker tone'

The latest game in the Metro series will directly channel its Ukrainian devs' experiences in Russia's invasion.

www.pcgamer.com

I've never been the biggest fans of the Metro games, but I'm excited to see how this game pushes the envelope graphically. When Metro Exodus came out, it was amongst the most graphically intense games you could buy at that time. I hope this new one does the same, really pushing the graphics as hard as they can.

 

[neogunhero]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/i-know-all-you-pirates-are-busy-with-windrose-but-you-should-drop-anchor-and-check-out-this-new-pirate-themed-city-builder/

This looks fantastic. I don't play many city builder games, but I like the freeform building, allowing you to scale cliffs with your settlement. I wonder how the combat will work. You've got to build or repair the pirate ships then once that's done they get sent out on expeditions. I'm curious if that will be hands off, you just send a crew of NPC pirates to do the work, or if the player will be able to engage with the combat and exploration. The graphics look very nice as well, look how blue that water is!

Edit: Need to be cautiously optimistic about this one. The developer doesn't have the greatest track record, but they do seem to bring great ideas with somewhat poor execution. They made Park Beyond which was a very unique yet flawed theme park builder, it had great features but was marred by tons of bugs and other questionable design choices.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Valve's Proton 11 beta has a quietly hidden Arm64 version

And you can thank the Steam Frame for that.

www.pcgamer.com

$10 says Linux will be better for playing ARM software than Windows.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/i-know-all-you-pirates-are-busy-with-windrose-but-you-should-drop-anchor-and-check-out-this-new-pirate-themed-city-builder/

choices.

wishlisted

 

[Pifanjr]

I just noticed the news overview page on desktop has a little sidebar halfway through with two tabs: Hardware Buying Guides and Latest Game Reviews, each with 5 links to recent articles. However, the Latest Game Reviews one has, at the time of writing this post, 4 links to hardware reviews and only 1 link to an actual game review.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I just noticed the news overview page on desktop has a little sidebar halfway through with two tabs: Hardware Buying Guides and Latest Game Reviews, each with 5 links to recent articles. However, the Latest Game Reviews one has, at the time of writing this post, 4 links to hardware reviews and only 1 link to an actual game review.

Mine has 2 game reviews. Anyone want to read my 5000 word speculation called "What went wrong? Speculations on the cause of the PC Gamer titling disaster"? No? Bite me.

 

[Colif]

It's only April but the most bitable mouse of 2026 may be the Asus ZenMouse MD202

I'm not giving up my Razer Deathadder V3 Hyperspeed for it.

www.pcgamer.com

Wish I could sample one before buying. The ceramic finish sounds very interesting. Everything we use peripheral wise is mostly plastic, I think it's about time we moved onto something new.

the material a mouse is made of has never really been a reason for me to pick one. There are more important things to think about. The silver covering on my Sensei wore off but mouse died before that was really a problem. It was 8 years old at the time.

Since writer of the article intentionally inflicts Synapse on their PC, I don't really feel the need to listen.

news overview page on desktop

where?

Anyone want to read my 5000 word speculation called "What went wrong? Speculations on the cause of the PC Gamer titling disaster"? No? Bite me.

Decides its best he doesn't comment on this topic 🙂