Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i APC

We explore the trends and technologies that are set to shape the future The future is unevenly distributed. That famous axiom, courtesy of sci-fi author William Gibson, has become a tech cliché, but when it comes to the arrival of futuristic technologies it holds true. Yes, many sci-fi innovations are already here if you’re willing to put in some effort and turn on your imagination, but you must also lower your expectations. Consider driverless cars, AI personal assistants and robot butlers. These technologies loom over the horizon. They may never come to be, perhaps tripped up by technical limitations or regulatory demands. But you can try out the early versions of these ideas now for a small taste of what the future could bring. Here’s how to capture a glimpse…

Easily the most important part of a gaming notebook is its GPU, but choosing based purely on the model of GPU is sadly no longer enough. You now need to know how much power the laptop manufacturer is letting that GPU chow down on, commonly referred to as the TGP. That’s why our very favourite current mobile GPU isn’t necessarily the most powerful; it’s a bit more complicated than that. 5 AMD RADEON 890M ‘Integrated’ used to be a dirty word when it comes to gaming graphics, but AMD has recalibrated expectations in recent years, and its new Strix Point APUs with their RDNA 3.5 Radeon 890MiGPU is pretty damned impressive. We were already into the 780M and its 1080p gaming chops, but the new 890M of the Ryzen AI…

35 Intel B580 36 Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27UCDM 37 Lemokey G1 38 Asus RT-BE92U 39 Asus ROG Pelta headset 39 MSI Datamag Magnetic Portable SSD 40 Nvidia RTX 5080 group test 42 Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 16GB GDDR7 OC 43 Aorus RTX 5080 Master 44 MSI RTX 5080 16G Suprim SOC APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for over forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to…

PRICE $99 WEB www.lemokey.com “None of that horrible cut-out shell design that makes a host of other dedicated lightweight gaming mice a trypophobe’s nightmare.” Though sister brand Keychron does sell some obviously gamer-orientated mice, that’s really Lemokey’s gig. For the G1, that starts with the 8,000Hz polling rate, a feature usually the preserve of high-end gaming mice from the likes of Logitech or Razer at twice the price. That makes the Lemokey an excellent entry-level pro-level mouse for super-competitive gamers, right? Not exactly. I’ve checked out the performance of the Pixart 3950 sensor in the Lemokey mouse, and while in general use at 1,000Hz the mouse performs admirably, as soon as you spike it up to 8,000Hz, the data points start to look weird. That’s because it’s not polling at…

PRICE $2,599 WEB gigabyte.com If you’re after an RTX 5080 that offers factory-overclocked performance with a reasonable price tag, the Gigabyte Aorus RTX 5080 Master is worth considering. With an RRP of $2,599, it’s positioned below some of the pricier models while still offering mighty cooling and a handful of extra features. At the time of writing, availability is limited, with no retailers listing it for preorder at RRP, and prices range from $2,399 up to $2,899. Performance out of the box is well above stock, with the 2805MHz boost clock giving the Gigabyte 5080 around a 4% edge in games. Of course, for those who like to tweak their hardware, there’s more on offer – pushing the card is easy, and it happily delivers a 10% improvement in frame…

FileSeek Pro WEB www.fileseek.ca PRICE US$19 FREE TRIAL 30 days NEEDS Windows 10 or 11 We’re always on the lookout for alternatives to the unreliable file-search tool built into Windows, and FileSeek is a worthy contender. It has lots of useful options to help you find files quickly, and it doesn’t slow your PC by ‘indexing’ in the background. The Pro edition has a generous free trial that lets you test all FileSeek’s features for a month before it reverts to the Free version. Unlike many freemium tools, it doesn’t nag you to upgrade and there are only a few differences between editions. Both versions allow you to search any folder or drive, with options to search only for items created or modified within a specific time frame, set minimum and…

Every year, CES acts as a calling card for all the great new technology due to be released in the coming year. It’s the only place to be if you want to see what companies will be pinning their hopes on. You’ll bump into everyone from PhD students with ideas fresh from research labs to directors of global tech firms. And CEOs, too, with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang stealing much of the limelight, as we describe opposite. CES takes place in Las Vegas, consuming two huge convention centres and speckling its way across many of Sin City’s hotels. With the first briefings taking place on a Sunday and the show closing the following Friday, even with the assistance of our colleagues at Future Publishing – including brands such as Laptop…

HDMI 2.2 PRICE Not applicable AVAILABLE Late 2025 The HDMI specification body used CES to announce HDMI 2.2, an upgrade on the current 2.1 version. As you would expect, it has lots of shiny new features – specifically around faster data rates and hence higher resolutions and frame rates. You can share the 96Gbits/sec of data bandwidth between resolution and frame rate, so although HDMI 2.2 supports panels at 16K resolution, it can also do 4K at a 480Hz frame rate. There are new features in the specification for latency management, too, which will be handy. All of which sounds great, but sales of 8K TVs are weak due to lack of content and high power consumption. It’s hard to see a broader need for these new 2.2 capabilities, but…

Over time, game AI has become more refined. Anyone’s who ever played Space Invaders or one of its many clones remembers how the aliens relentlessly bear down on the player until they’re either destroyed or collide with your ship. This is one of the earliest examples of game AI (Artificial Intelligence), where developers made clever use of scripted responses to enemy NPCs capable of challenging players. These days, AI can be used to do much more than have the Pac-Man ghosts run around a maze. Innovations like procedural content generation can spontaneously generate in-game items and even entire worlds. LLMs can even be used to inform enemy and other NPC behaviors, creating more realistic and convincing interactions. Still, the course of in-game AI hasn’t always run smoothly. Here, we’ll chart…

TWEAK Armoury Crate, DriverHub, et al With Windows installed and your network connected (see Part One last issue), a variety of programs will start popping up with auto-installers. Asus, for example, will have DriverHub and Armoury Crate. DriverHub is incredibly useful, as it will point you toward missing installs and new versions of any chipset or drivers you’re missing. That said, if you hit ‘Install all’, it will also install a bunch of crud that we don’t want, such as Norton 360 Antivirus, AIDA64, and other superfluous programs we’ll only end up uninstalling. The same goes for MSI and Gigabyte, so be wary no matter what your motherboard. Now that we’ve done the majority of the legwork on our driver updates and clean install process, it’s time to tighten up…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create original images using AI and Apple’s Image Playground app YOU’LL NEED macOS 15.2 or later, M1 chip or later Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage at the moment, and Apple is getting in on the act with Apple Intelligence. This AI is woven throughout macOS 15 (Sequoia) and helps power up Siri, rewrite text, organise your emails, and more. A key element of Apple Intelligence is the Image Playground app, which is all about creating AI-generated images. It’s very easy to use but offers a lot of power and flexibility, and whether you want to whip up a personalised image for a friend or create your own custom emoji, it’s a good place to start. You can also…

PRICE $7.50 PLATFORM PC WEB webfishing.net The constant search for nostalgia often ends in disappointment, but Webfishing is different. It’s managed to capture things I loved so dearly about the bizarre social chatroom games of the 2000s – Habbo Hotel, IMVU, Gaia Online – while cultivating the kind of community I never really found in those older romps. Mere minutes into booting up Webfishing, and I knew I was stumbling into something special. It’s crunchy-looking in all the right ways, sporting a pixelated, low-polygon art style reminiscent of earlier Animal Crossing games. Playing alone is fun in its own right. It’s good for when I feel like exploring Webfishing’s small island with all its nooks and crannies, doodling on the floor with some chalk or simply needing a chat-free fish.…

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past An intriguing photograph recently appeared in my Facebook feed, featuring an employee at a US doughnut shop using one of two Commodore 64s to process orders. The post featured the ageing computers positioned side by side in Hilligoss Bakery in Brownsburg, Indiana, and it garnered more than 1,300 comments, many of which echoed the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, doughnut fix it!” “Over the years, hobbyist communities have emerged around many retro computers, and enthusiasts have resolved this very issue by writing apps and developing hardware that make older machines more relevant to users in the modern era.” Upon closer examination, it became evident that the computers were running a program written in BASIC, a relatively primitive programming language by today’s standards. But,…

It’s that magical time of the year – judgement day! The APC team, together with our friends and colleagues from PC PowerPlay, TechRadar and PC Gamer have brainstormed over all the products we used and reviewed through 2024, with the goal of coming up with a list of what’s better than all the rest. And that’s what we’re thrilled to present to you today. In this issue we have all the finalists announced and the big winners reveal will be in issue 544 of APC, and on TechRadar and PC Gamer online. Motherboards BEST MOTHERBOARD MAKER • Asrock• Asus• Gigabyte Aorus• MSI BEST VALUE MOTHERBOARD • Asrock B760I Lightning• Asrock B760M Pro RS• Asrock Z790 Steel Legend• Asrock Z790I LightningWiFi• Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi• Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite…

The long-awaited new Nvidia RTX 50 series graphics cards are upon us, and Asus has applied its considerable engineering expertise to ensure that they offer the maximum amount of power, performance, reliability, stability, efficiency and value to buyers. The improvements are so significant, in fact, that the top models form part of a brand-new ROG range called ‘Astral.’ What’s more, Asus has innovated further by developing new GPU-first power supplies to go with the new cards. Here’s what’s arriving... ASUS’ NEW GRAPHICS CARD RANGE Asus is very experienced when it comes to delivering the latest and greatest graphics cards, and so it’s developed variants for all types of buyer. There are several models which range from those suited to users that simply want a wallet-friendly, high-performing graphics card, to the…

X $0 / $4.88 / $13 / $35 per month, www.x.comBLUESKY Free, www.bsky.app It’s a dangerous business, getting up each morning and heading onto the internet. If you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling what dark alley of Reddit you might be swept off to. Social media is divisive right now. From Meta announcing that it’s getting rid of its factcheckers, to AI profiles springing up and pretending to be human, to algorithms perpetually drip-feeding you 10-second dopamine reels, it’s a challenge to find somewhere that truly is ‘social’ by its very definition. With that in mind, and the mass exodus currently erupting from X (formerly Twitter), we decided that it was about time APC cautiously waded into the shallows and had a look at the founding father of…

PRICE $479 WEB intel.com Intel isn’t a big player in the discrete GPU market but, nevertheless, the recently launched Arc B580 makes key design choices that have resulted in a new favourite in the budget gaming segment. Priced from around $449, the B580 delivers impressive 1080p and 1440p performance, outclassing similarly priced alternatives from Nvidia and AMD. The B580 features a dual-slot, 272 mm long design with a single 8-pin power connector, a twin-fan cooler and the ability to drive 4 monitors. Despite a 17% reduction in compute units compared to the older Intel A580, and a 10% decrease in transistor count overall, the higher 2850MHz boost clock and increased efficiency means the B580 gives noticeably better performance. The GPU features 12GB of GDDR6 RAM with a wide 192-bit memory…

PRICE $424 WEB https://rog.asus.com/au The Wi-Fi 7 router market is finally maturing and prices are plummeting. Into it has launched Asus’ RT-BE92U – a premium domestic device that’s targeted at power users, with smart homes, that demand performance, features, security and multiple-network segregation. We’ve seen all this before on expensive models but, on one that costs around $400? Could this be the sweet-spot router we’ve been waiting for? The first thing to note is that this is one of the better-looking routers: it’s not a giant, mecha-space spider, nor is it a simple white tube. It’s got some geometric design flourishes, a smart, red stripe and it doesn’t take up much desk space. It also comes with a wall-mounting bracket. Set-up is simple thanks to the well-polished Asus router app.…

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 takes the honour guard position for the RTX 5090. In times past, the penultimate Nvidia GPU of each generation has often been the best overall pick. But the gap between first and second place has widened significantly in the past two generations, at least for 4K gaming and other demanding workloads. The 5080 also takes over from the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super, often with only modest gains. It may still be one of the best graphics cards when the dust clears, but it doesn’t have the wow factor of its big brother. Both the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 are on sale now, and the moment they became available quickly sold out. While we anticipate a lot of demand for the halo card,…

PRICE $2,399 WEB msi.com The MSI RTX 5080 16G Suprim SOC presents as a somewhat premium take on the Nvidia RTX 5080, offering a decent factory overclock, an impressive cooling system, and a few tasty extras. As far as overly expensive RTX 5080s go, it’s competitively priced compared to more basic offerings, as well as OC models from other brands. At the time of writing, it’s not actually in stock, but you can still preorder it for $2,399. Out of the box, the card comes with a factory overclock, boosting to 2745MHz in gaming and silent modes, and 2760MHz in extreme performance mode. Read our benchmarks for the full story, but that translates to about a 2% performance boost over the standard Nvidia RTX 5080 – slightly less than expected.…

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs were arguably the biggest news of CES 2025, encompassing four desktop cards – the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070) – plus equivalent chips for laptops. But to get a true taste for what the cards could do, I went behind the scenes at a private Nvidia event. DLSS 4 IS THE KEY “Can it run Cyberpunk 2077?” has become the 2020s equivalent of “can it run Crysis?”, and boy, can the RTX 5090 run Cyberpunk 2077. At maxed-out settings, I saw a peak of around 265fps and a low of 245fps. Every detail is crisp, the fidelity incredible and smoothness fantastic – and much is thanks to Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 4. This uses a machine learning model trained on…

HP OMNISTUDIO X NEXT-GEN AI PC PRICE TBA AVAILABLE Soon What’s most striking about the OmniStudio X is that it actually looks like a monitor rather than an all-in-one. Indeed, it can act as a monitor if you connect a laptop or PC. But its real skill is as an AI PC, based as it is around Intel’s Core Ultra 200V processors, with support for up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. I was a little saddened to see that HP had abandoned the movable camera of its previous high-end all-in-one PC, but at the expected relatively low price I’m willing to concede the point. TIM DANTON ACER ASPIRE S AI PRICE TBC AVAILABLE Q2 2025 Acer launched two all-in-one PC ranges at CES: the C series, with…

Q-See CCTV replacement I have a self-installed security system by Q-See from 2012 – eight QCN8093B cameras with motion detection, night vision, playback, and so on. Q-See went under during Covid, and although my system works, I would like to plan for when the computer system that came with it dies. The cameras are POE, and the computer is a proprietary system with 8TB of Western Digital HD storage. I could build a new system, but I don’t know where to start. I haven’t found software that seems to be able to collect data from multiple security cameras to do what this system does. Any ideas? I am not afraid to build a new computer if that’s what it takes, I just don’t know where to go for software. Dorothy…

ONLYOFFICE Add text from files saved on your PC OnlyOffice 8.2, released last October, adds the option to import text from a file on your computer, saving you the hassle of opening the document then cutting and pasting the text. The option appears only in the Document and PDF Form tools (not Presentation or Spreadsheet), so open either then click Insert at the top, followed by ‘Text from File’ ( 1 in our screenshot below right). Now click ‘Text from the local file’ 2 then find and click the relevant file on your computer. The text will appear in your document. There’s also a ‘Text from the URL file’ option 3 that lets you insert text from a file you’ve saved online. Click it to see a box where you…

The games we play PRICE $39.99 PLATFORM PC, Mac, Linux, Android WEB www.cavesofqud.com Caves of Qud is a traditional roguelike RPG in form, a top-down, turn-based game that relies on text and simple-yet-evocative graphics to convey its world. It doesn’t stick hard and fast to permanent death, though, instead letting you choose whether you want save points and even tweak how much fighting you’ll have to do. Nor does Qud stick hard and fast to the traditional roguelike rules of having an opaque, frustrating user interface and arcane, entirely keyboard-driven control scheme – it even plays very well on a mobile PC like the Steam Deck. You make your character from a variety of archetypes that describe teched-up normal humans or the far more numerous mutant inhabitants of Qud. You…

Everything you need to know from the month in tech As the RTX 50-series rollout continues, users are experiencing what seems to be a shockingly high rate of failure. The proprietary 12VHPWR/12V-2x6 cables providing power to the graphics cards have been seen melting inside the GPU slot of 5090 and 5080 cards. Nvidia was confident that users would no longer see the same issue that also plagued the RTX 4090 thanks to the redesigned 12V-2x6 connector, but multiple sceptics are asserting that Nvidia is making its cards less safe with each generation. Nvidia has consistently removed safety regulations like shunt resistors from its cards generation-over-generation, contributing to a high risk of burning and other dangers. Shunt resistors on GPUs monitor the flow of power from the cable and ensure that…

Onkyo Creator GX-30ARC As good as the speakers built in to your computer can be, they’re still no substitute for a proper stereo setup, especially if you like to listen to music, watch movies, or fashion your own crowd-pleasing creations. That’s where Onkyo’s new Creator GX-30ARC comes in. Available in black or white as part of a wider Creator series family that also includes the GX-10DB, the GX-30ARC comprises a pair of active desktop monitors, each containing a 4-inch woofer, 3/4-inch tweeter and driven by an integrated 2x25W Class D amplifier. They’re also festooned with connectivity options including Bluetooth, USB-C, HDMI ARC, digital optical, RCA (phono), a subwoofer pre-out and a 3.5mm aux port. You even get a pair of angled stands to get your listening enjoyment just so, plus an infrared…

PRICE $2,099 WEB https://rog.asus.com/monitors/27-to-31-5-inches/rog-swift-oled-pg27ucdm OLED 4K monitors are finally becoming more accessible, with the brilliant panel technology now available on 27-inch gaming displays. Beating many manufacturers to the punch is, as usual, Asus with the ROG Swift OLED PG27UCDM. It will be an attractive option among enthusiasts craving high framerates on a conveniently sized, gorgeous panel. However it does come with some tradeoffs that are very, well, gamer-y. The PG27UCDM is no doubt a gorgeous monitor, and it offers the peak performance that many desktop users are looking for – it’s the extra stuff core to the ROG brand that may be a deal breaker. An aggressively large tripod stand and a projector that doesn’t seem to do anything except shoot the red ROG logo down onto the surface of…

PRICE $269 WEB rog.asus.com/headsets-audio The ROG Pelta is just brilliant. This ultra-comfortable and stylish headset has quickly become one of my favourite headsets, backed up by its brilliant sound quality and value. Priced well below the top-end $369 ROG Delta II, the Pelta packs high-end sound quality with its 50mm titanium-plated diaphragm drivers. It also sports a brilliant 90 hour battery life, or 60 hours with the RGB lights on. Its settings (including sound and microphone quality adjustments) can be tweaked in the ROG Armory crate application, along with the small RGB logo on both cups. The headset is capable of both Bluetooth and USB-C connectivity (no 3.5mm jack), and comes with a wireless USB-C dongle for dedicated wireless use. Compared to other headsets I’ve tested, it’s able to hold…

PRICE $2,799 WEB asus.com For those wanting a high-end RTX 5080 with an aggressive factory overclock, extra cooling innovations, and quiet operation, the Asus ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC Edition stands out. At $2,799 RRP, it’s on the higher end of the price scale, and while availability is limited (like most 5080s), the preorder offers are at RRP at least. The Asus ROG Astral gets a higher-than-most factory overclock, with a boost clock of up to 2790 MHz when running flat out. This results in an average 4% performance gain over the standard RTX 5080, while further manual tuning allows it to comfortably hit 10% over stock speeds without stability concerns or any major temperature increase. That’s thanks to the mighty cooling system, which in a unique move, uses a…

NEEDS Windows 7, 8.1. 10 or 11 WEB https://fotosketcher.com Software that turns your photos into art by applying stylised effects is usually expensive, complicated or both. Although there are now AI tools that transform your pictures at the click of a button, they tend to be resource-intensive and limit the number or quality of images you can convert. FotoSketcher avoids all these problems, offering a free, simple and unlimited way to make ordinary photos look like oil paintings, watercolours or pencil sketches. The program takes care of all the complex processing, letting you create stunning results with minimal effort. The FotoSketcher interface is split into two, with the left side showing your source image and the right offering a preview of the edited picture based on your chosen filters and…

DEVELOPER Eric Turgeon and GhostBSD Team WEB www.ghostbsd.org LICENCE FreeBSD As fans of both Linux and open source, we keep a weather eye on developments in the BSD camp. GhostBSD was first released in 2010, presenting itself as a more user-friendly alternative to FreeBSD, on which it’s based. The official ISO is 2.6GB and uses the MATE desktop, though there’s also a community image running Xfce. Whichever version you choose, downloads are available both via BitTorrent and directly from the website. After firing up the MATE version we were slightly puzzled by the notification that GhostBSD intended to ‘Replicate [the] system image to swap-based memdisk’. After reviewing the download page, we realised this is because when the OS boots, it loads directly into virtual memory. This is also why you need…

ASUS ZENBOOK A14 PRICE & AVAILABILITY To be confirmed Asus pitches the Zenbook A14 as the world’s lightest Copilot+ PC, somewhat ambitiously describing it as “light as air” in one claim. That’s for the 48Wh version, which weighs 899g, but I’d opt for the 70Wh model as that promises 32 hours of video playback per charge (thankfully, this is the model that will be sold in the UK). Powered by Snapdragon X chips, it packs a 14in OLED panel and Wi-Fi 7, while Asus’ “Ceraluminum” material combines the feel of ceramic with the lightness of aluminium. In the flesh, it looks genuinely lovely, too. Three final plus points: the keyboard is nice and crisp, the trackpad is large, and you still benefit from USB-A and HDMI, along with two USB-C ports.…

MANAGED BY ASCOTT Celebrating the latest and greatest in the hi-fi and AV industry, giving visitors the opportunity to see and hear a range of products from all around the world, featuring live demonstrations of some of the world’s most renowned hi-fi and AV brands including high-end audio, TVs, projectors, headphones, home theatre systems, amplifiers, streamers, wireless and Bluetooth speakers and everything in between. 2024 SHOW IMPRESSIONS Scan to buy tickets online…

Ah, Windows 11, you old devil. Microsoft’s latest iteration of its operating system line might be quite contentious these days, filled with advertising, data scraping, and enough bugs to make even a Tyranid Hive Fleet jealous, but it’s nothing if not a consistent thread throughout our custom PC building life. It represents the ultimate middle-ground OS – versatile and customisable enough to outpace the very best of MacOS, yet with more than enough compatibility and stability to give any Linux distro a run for its money. If you just want to get an install up and running quickly, tailored just how you like it, and compatible with 99.9 percent of all the programs out there, then Windows is the place to be. That said, it’s not without its pitfalls. In…

YOU’LL NEED • USB Wi-Fi antenna (optional) • Router with open source firmware (optional) When wireless networks were introduced in the 1990s, they were widely derided as being clunky, slow, and prone to interference. The first widely adopted wireless networking standard (802.11b) offered speeds of just 11 Mbps. In other words, it would have taken at least 12 minutes to copy a 1GB file from one network device to another. The introduction of subsequent Wi-Fi standards like 802.11n and 802.11ac welcomed new wireless bands, channels, and other features for optimising wireless performance. That said, Wi-Fi can still be prone to slow speeds, dropped connections, and wireless interference. This is particularly true if you live in an area with multiple access points and devices that can crowd out existing radio frequencies…

CHROME Remove the new ‘Tab groups’ button Google made lots of tweaks to Chrome in 2024, some of which were more useful than others. One of the most noticeable was the addition of a ‘Tab groups’ button to the browser’s Bookmarks bar. This looks like a grid of four squares and appears to the left of your bookmarks ( 1 in screenshot below). While this button will come in handy if you use Chrome’s ‘Tab groups’ feature to organise your tabs into themed groups, it’s otherwise likely to prove annoying. Thankfully, you can remove the ‘Tab groups’ button if you don’t need it. Rather than right-click the button and choose Hide or Delete (which would be the obvious solution), you have to right-click elsewhere on the Bookmarks bar and deselect…

PRICE $12.34 PLATFORM PC WEB ballionaire.net Ballionaire is a twist on pachinko that adds roguelike deckbuilding elements. Essentially Peggle has gone to college, smartened up and gotten itself a master’s degree in compelling strategy gameplay. The goal is to make enough money to pay a tribute that has to be cleared every seven balls. The starter tribute is $500, which is worrying, because the board is initially a complete tightwad. Hitting these pegs pays out a pathetic one dollar apiece. Luckily, after every ball you get a choice of three obstacles that you can add to the table. A trampoline will pay out $200 if you hit it and bounce the ball upwards. A smiling tree will also pay out $200, but only if you hit it from the bottom…

PRICE $18.95 PLATFORM PC WEB tinyurl.com/APC543mouth I played Mouthwashing entirely in one sitting and had to lie down for a while afterward to recover. I felt vile, unsettled at what I’d seen over the previous three hours. Mouthwashing is about as classic a walking simulator as you can get mechanically, and while its stabs at more intensive gameplay fall a little flat for me, its narrative, vision, and atmosphere make it one of this winter’s standouts, a people’s champion of indie horror for very good reason. The game begins with you playing as Captain Curly of the long haul delivery space ship Tulpar, purposefully setting the vessel on a collision course with an asteroid. After crash landing, the ship is compromised while Curly is horrifically maimed and burned in the…