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The 9 worst neighbourhoods in PC gamesOne Off The List

One Off The List

Lower Undead Burg -Dark Souls

The player character stands, drawing back a long bow, in the Lower Undead Burg of Dark Souls, a collection of European-style castle towers falling to ruin.

Riften -The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The interior of a pub in Riften from Skyrim. The walls, ceiling, floor and furniture are all made from the same dark wood. It is lit by one candle, and there are a lot of empty bottles on the floor.

Come to Riften, get a griftin'. Riften is the scum-filled fantasy city your grandpappy warned you about, and if you went there in real life you would do as he says and stuff all your tenners in your sock. Before you even set foot in this town of coldwater canals and scurrilous con artists, you are facing extortion at the gate. The city itself is home to the Thieves Guild. Not just another threat to your pocketbook, they are a group of happy-go-lucky stealers who fancy a bit of what everyone else has got. The Guild are daring and charismatic anti-heroes who show the player the true meaning of aspirational redistribution, leading a plucky life where one can turn disenfranchisement into jewels and honey, and misfortune into glittering gold. They live in a sewer.

Ravenholm -Half-Life 2

A screenshot of Half-Life 2, mid-Ravenholm. The player is firing a machine gun down a street as headcrab zombies advance

Industrial Zone -Streets Of Rogue

Brendan’s description of this image below is essentially accurate

Here is an image of a corrupt police officer pumping sulphuric acid into the air filtration system of a gangster’s safehouse. You would not believe how often this occurs in this neighbourhood.

Kamurocho -the Yakuza series

Kazuma Kiryu, Yakuza protagonist, is taking a selfie of himself in Kamurocho. The street behind him is narrow and crowded with bright store signs.

Good to visit, terrible place to establish a business. If the roving bands of scowling thugs and besuitedYakuzaare not enough to put you off investing in Kamurocho’s forever exploding property market, then perhaps the constant caterwauling of its needy citizens will be. There is no end to the random strangers waving you down. They are practically lining up to ask for favours. Please get back my stolen video game, mister. Please keep watch over my bag of matchsticks, mister. Please let me read your palm, mister. Actually, go on then. A little palm-readingnever hurt anyone. That’s a transparently noble occupation.

Wonderful Living Quarters -Cities: Skylines

a screenshot of the map from Cities: Skylines showing several different zoned areas: The Filth, Smoggy Arch, Consumption Zone and Squirm District. These surround the Wonderful Living Quarters.

Martinaise, Revachol West -Disco Elysium

A screenshot of the singularly depressing beachside dwellings of Martinaise. They are rusting, rotting, and half falling down.

Unique in this list as being the only rotten burgh to inspire real sympathy. Martinaise is run-down in the tragic, avoidable way that parts of our real cities become run-down. In the same way a whole city district can become steadily more derelict with every passing year of nationally sanctioned neglect. Boarded windows, trash-filled streets, corner shops fulfilling the dwindling cigarette and beer needs of an entire no-go zone. Martinaise is poverty and old war wounds. You can see the edges of its old beauty in the crumbling churches, find remnants of better times covered in the dust of abandoned buildings. And hiding among the racists and dirtbag mob bosses you’ll find a lot of inherently decent people too. It’s a pity they live in such a grim place, where a rotting body hanging outside your window inspires not horror or shock but apathy.

Stardew Valley

A really lovely, neat farm in Stardew Valley, with a field of greens growing next to peach trees, and a yard with cows, goats and hens.

Everyone’s so fucking smug here.

Warehouse district -Pathologic 2

The inside of a warehouse in Pathologic 2, with stacked wooden crates. Three people (two relatively normal looking and one a terrifying spectre in a white mask of some kind) are sitting on some of these crates.

“The Warehouses” is a bleak area of town in this survivalist plague simulator which I absolutely forbid you from playing until at least 2023. “Only rats live here,” advises the game with some text that pops up when you limp onto the gravel between its corrugated steel shacks. This is a ramshackle conglomeration of tin huts home only to miscreants and children and miscreant children who scuttle onto the adjacent railway lines to tellimprobable ghost stories that are definitely not real.

One Off The List from… the worst US presidents

Last month we lined upthe 7 worst US presidents in PC games. They will now be administered a joint mega-impeachment. But one of them you have granted a presidential pardon. It’s…George Sears aka Solidus Snake.

Sound argument. Solid factual basis. Concrete understanding of the insurmountable nonsense-verse of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. This is a commendable comment. Until next month, list goblins, stay safe.