PC Gamer - October 2011

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Fun with physics!

Eight awesome experiments you never learned in high school

JUST CAUSE 2

Rumor has it that you’ll find a plot somewhere in Just Cause 2, but no one’s ever looked; we’re all too busy playing with the grappling hook. Tie an enemy to an explosive barrel, or a plane, or a car, or just about anything else and enjoy the show! If you can shoot it, it can be your toy.

OBLIVION Here’s the sickest thing you can do in Cyrodiil: find a bear cub (or any other cute animal) near the edge of a big hill. Taunt it. As it leaps, hit it with a Paralyze spell and dodge, letting it overshoot you and bounce, frozen but still conscious, all the way down. To lighten the mood, try singing “Roll, roll, roll your bear, gently down a mountain...”

CRYSIS If you own Crysis, you own one of the PC’s best physics playgrounds. Find the editor in the game’s installation directory— not to create your own islands, but to fill the one you’ve got with explosive barrels and jeeps. Watch You Tube videos of whole villages being blown away by nukes, tornadoes, and more if you need some inspiration.

FALLOUT 3

Look! Up there in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s— what happens when you dump 200 landmines at someone’s feet, then shoot one. Man truly can fly in the wasteland, just make sure to bring a mop to clean up after he lands. (And if you want to cheat to get those mines, nobody will hold it against you.)

BATMAN:

ARKHAM ASYLUM If you have a recent Nvidia GPU, you’re getting a lot more for your money than ATI owners when you play the soon-to-be second-best Batman game ever. From tiles breaking to papers swirling, everything looks more complex. But it’s in the deranged Scarecrow levels that physics really bring the insanity to life.

TEAM FORTRESS 2 You don’t play with physics here: you rely on them. A quick air-blast to knock an enemy off a bridge and into the depths of humiliation/a pit. For best effect, play Pyro: find noobie Soldiers and use your default flamethrower’s secondary attack to blast deadly rockets back their faces.

DIRT 3 Drive properly and you’ll get to experience the carefully honed physics that make DIRT a realistic drive. But that’s dull; instead, drive at full speed into a wall and prepare to see the dark side of those mathematics. Blow by blow, the world’s most powerful cars become flaming scrap metal—in the best possible way.

RED FACTION: ARMAGEDDON Meet the Magnet Gun. Here’s what you do: shoot a giant structure, shoot an enemy, and stare in awe as the building tears itself apart and hurls itself into their face. In Ruin mode, you don’t even have enemies, just a pack full of guns and more buildings to destroy than you could ever wish for.