The best PC Gamer forum threads from this week

It’s been a busy week on the PC Gamer forums, and the community wasn’t limited to the latest breaking news. Don’t get me wrong, we’re pulling our hair out over Cyberpunk 2077 like everyone else. But, we’re balancing it all out by casting misty eyes over old boxed favourites. We’re even turning back the clock far enough to think about what games were surprisingly fun. Just so we don’t get too stuck in the past, though, some of us are thinking about Ubisoft’s future as well.

Oh, and giveaways seem to be popular around here, so we’ve got another one!

Here are this week’s top discussions:

Remember boxed sets?

There are few things that can bring a nostalgic smile to gamers’ faces like an old-fashioned boxed game. Whatever your preferred genre, there was just something special about a game that came in a set with some extra, tangible goodies. 

I still have a boxed copy with a thick manual for World of Warcraft. Every time i take it in my hands it acts like a brief nostalgia portal and fills me with such joy.—Dakkon

I've got a lot of 90's big boxes, but I find Tomb Raider II's cover artwork is great, along with that unique shape, probably my favorite.—Volley

Add your own old favourite here. 

A huge giveaway! 

We’ve teamed up with Wired Productions, AMD, and Falcon Northwest to give away this absolute beast of a rig: the Falconeer themed Falcon Northwest Talon PC. This beasty build includes an AMD Ryzen 5900X 12-Core CPU, NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founders Edition, Asetek Liquid cooling, a 2 TB Seagate Firecuda 520 PCIe Gen 4 storage and more! 

You can enter this giveaway and see this monster’s ridiculous specs over here.  

What game exceeded your expectations once you played it?

Gaming, like many other things, is a subjective process. Despite your own gut instincts and expectations, you are always at risk of enjoying something you expected to be thoroughly terrible. This week, we wanted to hear about the community’s pleasant surprises. 

Alone in the dark (1992). I remember trying it out not long after it released, but back then I thought controlling the character was horrible and the overall feel was not a good one. I tried it again not too long ago and I managed to get into the groove of navigating the quirky character and enjoying the absolutely fantastic atmosphere. It is definitely not a perfect game, but the claustrophobic horror element is something it did incredibly well. It basically paved the way for games like Resident Evil.—Frindis

Truth be told, I bought Counter-Strike on disc (I still have it here somewhere, remember when it was a modpack? damn I'm old), and never played the base game it was built on, Half-Life, until Half-Life 2 came out and I went ape for that. So insane that I blew off an instant classic for a FPS mod.—Cynagen 

Here's the full thread.

Ubisoft survey - a possible direction they're thinking

Right now, Ubisoft is being talked about for its current massive hit, Valhalla. And yet, it’s always tempting to think about a future beyond Assassin’s Creed. One thread this week, started by imposter, writes about a feedback request survey they received from Ubisoft that sounded particularly keen to understand if they would play the publisher's AAA games on mobile, either through streaming through a PC or directly.

This got the discussion going about mobile phone's place in the world of PC gaming. Would you play Ubisoft's big titles on your mobile? Let us know in the thread. 

Somehow mobile gaming is a big market. I worked for a particular publisher right around the time they started making a big push into mobile gaming and it's a big money maker. I don't really get it, phones just don't seem like a very comfortable or capable device to game on for more than 5 minutes at a time, but perhaps that's enough to keep the market successful. I know cloud gaming is becoming more capable but that doesn't really change how awkward it can be to use something like a phone to play a game.

But then again, I'm clearly not the target audience as I prefer to sit in front of my PC when I play games.—drunkpunk

Yeah, I'm also not in that market. The key is in the name: MOBILE. This is for playing games when you're nowhere near a computer but have time to kill. For me, that's practically never. But if you commute on a bus/train/subway, you could have a couple of hours every day for it. Or while waiting for the kids to finish sports/music/whatever practice so you can drive them home. And so on....—Zloth 

 Here’s the full thread.  

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