In 1965, Coco Chanel said, “Mode passes, style remains,” and while the iconic fashion house founder probably didn’t have RGB standing desks or Razer Boomslangs in mind as she said it, it’s just as pertinent to our own strange little corner of cultural expression as it is to high fashion. Over the last decade we’ve seen a very distinctive visual theme emerge from PC hardware, one drenched in multicoloured lighting, scribbled with tribal designs like a lower league rugby player’s arms, and built from black plastic into severe, angular shapes. The gamer aesthetic had us all in its thrall throughout the 2010s, but now manufacturers are steering away from it in favour of sleeker, more sophisticated product designs. Its days may be drawing to a close.
It existed at all because for so long beforehand PC gaming felt like sneaking in behind enemy lines and performing covert ops on beige machinery designed for much more sensible, productive pursuits. Indeed, that landscape of office-friendly, off-white hardware and peripherals is probably what prompted – ahem – gamer gear to take on such garish forms when it did emerge. Nobody knew quite how to sell home computers for about the first 20 years. They were boxes of amazing, unprecedented computational power, and they could do all sorts. But what should their manufacturers lead with when trying to convince people to swap large piles of money for them?
ALL WORK, NO STRAFE
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Esta historia es de la edición October 2022 de PC Gamer.
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SUNDOWNER
Wipe out a cult with one bullet in CHILDREN OF THE SUN
KENWAY AHEAD
Smooth sailing and pearly whites in ASSASSIN'S CREED IV BLACK FLAG
COUNTER INTUITIVE
PICK & POKE your way through this gorgeous tabletop roguelite
DOUBLE TROUBLE
Whatever happened to MULTI-GPU setups?
MICROPHONES
A good microphone can be the difference between a professional sounding triumph, or a crackly, tinny disaster
BORING PLATFORMER
In a good way! The superb drilling of PEPPER GRINDER is sublimely chaotic
MEIER'S BASTARDISATION
MILLENNIA attempts a spirited but messy coup to Civ's throne
LOOSE MORALS
BROKEN ROADS: a cerebral narrative adventure
CROWN WARS: THE BLACK PRINCE
Tactical medieval combat with a gory edge
NO REST FOR THE WICKED
One of the smartest Soulslikes I've played in a long time