Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 267 i PC Powerplay

Whether you know exactly what you want or need some assistance, PLE’s team of helpful expert technicians will make sure you receive the right PC to fit your exact requirements. The PLE website (www.ple.com.au) has a range of common configurations from entry level to high end, where you can tweak a recommended configuration or you can start from a blank canvas and choose the specific components you desire. With Australia’s most advanced online PC configuration tool, nothing is left to chance. You’re able to see the exact components being used to build your Custom PC. You won’t find any generic or no-name brands with questionable performance or reliability. If you select to have a genuine copy of Windows 10 pre-installed, you will not find any bloatware or spam software installed…

Opaque Space, a Melbourne based VR company is going from strength to strength at the moment. Not only is the studio working with NASA and other space agencies for the development of Earthlight VR, a narrative space adventure, the studio has also signed an agreement with Boeing to supplement physical astronaut training with VR and AR applications. Emre Deniz, the CEO of Opaque Space said of the agreement, “This agreement on the eve of the announcement of the Australian Space Program represents a multi-year effort by both Opaque Space and Boeing Australia to further our place as a nation to contribute to the global human spaceflight mission. It is both humbling and exciting to be a part of this effort by Boeing to benefit NASA and other space agencies around…

Code Vein Developer: Shift/Bandai Namco Due: 2018 ELEX Developer: Piranha Bytes Due: October Warhammer Vermintide 2 Developer: Fatshark Due: TBC Nioh: Complete Edition Developer: Team Ninja Due: November A WINNER IS YOU! Congratulations to Andrew Veigel for winning the Zen Space Desk for subscribing in issue 265! We love your letters and yous PC setups, but we can’t show them or respond if you any. your and My PC entries through to letters@pcpowerplay.com.au for your chance to win some prizes. You know you want to.…

MONSTER HUNTER WORLD DEVELOPER CAPCOM PUBLISHER CAPCOM DUE 2018 www.monsterhunterworld.com My memory is a strange beast. If you want to know the lyrics of a song I heard in the background in 1986, I could probably tell you. If you want to know the plots of countless zero budget or weird movies, I’m your guy. Useless pieces of history or trivia only worthwhile in a pub setting, I’ve got you covered. When it comes to actual useful or practical information, however, my memory falls short. The only birthday I regularly remember is my sister’s (and yes, that includes my own). I forget dates, never realise it’s a public holiday until someone reminds me. Unfortunately my memory also made it so I could never really use the weapon that most interested…

DEVELOPER LARIAN STUDIOS • PUBLISHER LARIAN STUDIOS • PRICE $44.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM divinity.game WILDGOOSE: I took your advice, Wilks. When I levelled up I took the Pet Pal talent. You said it would let me speak to animals and I’d reveal a bunch of new quests I couldn’t otherwise access. I knew I’d regret this choice as soon as I met the baby bear. I’d just met its mother moments earlier, you see, and I knew I’d have to tell its child what had happened. Tears welled in the baby bear’s eyes. It sobbed. I didn’t kill the mother - it was those cruel Magisters, and I made them pay, believe me - but I had now made a baby bear cry. And it’s all your fault. WILKS:…

“Dinosaurs can be tamed by viciously punching them into unconsciousness and then saying sorry” DEVELOPER STUDIO WILDCARD • PUBLISHER STUDIO WILDCARD • PRICE $59.99 + $44.99 SEASON PASS • AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.playark.com This was inevitable, really. The way Steam works, with the Early Access and the DLC and the microtransactions and the rest of it. It was inevitable that I would one day have to review a good game that, because of the way it is sold and supported, becomes really difficult to recommend. Ark is classic Steam. Archetypal, really. Because I’ve been playing the thing on and off for [checks library] good grief, two and a half YEARS? Steam don’t lie: it says I bought Ark in June 2015 and here we are with a full release at…

“the majority of the game is made up of huge, frustrating, elating, multi-stage boss battles” DEVELOPER STUDIO MDHR • PUBLISHER STUDIO MDHR • PRICE $19.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM, MICROSOFT STORE, GOG www.cupheadgame.com Dealing with the devil is never a good idea, but it’s especially bad when you are a small boy with a cup for a head and you and your mug-headed brother live with a cantankerous old kettle in a bizarre animated world heavily inspired by early Disney animation and Felix the Cat. You see, Cuphead and his brother Mugman, a couple of drinking receptacles with arms and legs, decide to do gambling at the Devil’s Casino. After a hot winning streak at the craps table by Cuphead, King Dice, the croupier, calls in The Devil who promptly…

“it ultimately fails to really sell the concept of creative expression through music” DEVELOPER WORM ANIMATION • Publisher WORM ANIMATION • Price $9.99 USD • AvAilAble At STEAM www.wormanimations.com How do you feel about minimal, groove driven, tech-house music? A strange question to open a game review with sure, and really that’s quite a convoluted genre description. But Beat the Game’s appeal relies almost completely on your reaction to the house beats, percussion, bass lines and the weird synth chords and fx flourishes that define the genre. The core premise of Beat the Game is a strong one. Explore a richly detailed and strange environment, record different sounds, and then use those as a basis to mix and create the backing soundtrack as you see fit. But again, filtered through…

“fight through levels you’d swear you’d seen before against enemies from a cloning factory” DEVELOPER REIKON GAMES • Publisher DEVOLVER DIGITAL • Price $19.99 • AvAilAble At STEAM, GOG ruinergame.com We joke quite often about the grimdark future, but Ruiner takes it to such an extreme that we can’t help but laugh anew. Players take the role of Puppy, a leather-clad, cybernetic assassin with a screen for a face tasked with destroying Heaven, a mega-corporation that lives in luxury while everyone else in Rengkok is slaved to VR and used as cheap, disposable labour or entertainment. There’s also something about Puppy’s brother being missing or dead, and some other grimdark grimdarkness that is pretty forgettable. It’s all just an excuse for players to hack, stab, bludgeon and shoot their way…

“despite the solid colour accuracy, we think Asus has taken a misstep by offering 4K instead of high refresh rate” PRICE $1,199 www.asus.com.au Asus has foregone high refresh rates for resolution with this premium-priced product. Rather than go for a 144Hz display at 1440p, it’s instead gone for a 60Hz panel with a 4K resolution. We’re not sure this was the best idea. At 27-inches, the 4K resolution is quite hard to tell apart from 1440p displays, yet it’s easy to spot the difference between this panel’s 60Hz refresh rate and other display’s 144Hz refresh rate. It uses IPS technology to ensure the widest possible viewing angles, which probably explains why overall it did rather well in our colour accuracy tests. It also had a very solid contrast ratio of…

“we didn’t notice a hint of motion blur during the UFO test, the best screen when it came to this test” PRICE $1,350 www.hp.com As we’ve seen with HP’s other range of recent Omen products, the company is deadly serious about getting back into the gaming world. Both its Omen laptop and desktop were excellent, albeit expensive products, and now we have their 27-inch display. How does it measure up compared to the other Omen products? As you can see, this ain’t no cheap sucker. The most expensive display in the roundup, it had better darn deliver considering competition is so fierce from $800 up. It’s good to see that a 1440p panel has been used here, though anything less would be an utter crime. It’s a speedy sucker too,…

“the pay-off is much lower audio output, longer battery life, and a cooler all-round laptop” PRICE $4999 www.asus.com.au It’s obvious from the get-go that this laptop uses Nvidia’s new Max-Q thermal efficiency/power regulation technology. Most of these laptops have a huge slab of flat plastic just above the keyboard, which is obviously where most of the cooling solution goes, allowing laptops like this to house a GeForce GTX 1080 yet remain less than 18mm deep, making it the world’s thinnest laptop with a 1080. There is a cost for this power efficiency though… Nvidia describes Max-Q as a holistic approach to laptop building, taking into account cooling, power usage and frequency adjusting. We think that last point is most important though, as the frequency drops are not unsubstantial. A standard…

“the entire case is modular, so you can customise each and every component to your heart’s desire” PRICE $219 www.thermaltake.com.au At this year’s Computex, there were more PC cases than you can shake a piece of tempered glass at, but there was one range that really hit the mark with us. Thermaltake’s View series uses tempered glass throughout, offers an excellent layout, but most importantly is impossibly cheap. Take this behemoth for example. Built almost entirely from tempered glass, it’s just $219, half the price of competing models. This case has more glass than a greenhouse, with tempered glass on the front, sides, and top. It’s not cheap thin glass either, with each piece measuring a hefty 5mm thick, which is substantially thicker than the competition and accounts for its…

PRICE $169.95 gaming.logitech.com It’s safe to say that there are a few things people usually think of when talking about gaming keyboards. Mechanical switches rank up there, as do N-Key rollover, anti-ghosting and usually some kind of backlight or RGB. One thing that doesn’t come up is wireless connectivity, but with the G613 Logitech is looking to change that. Using the same technology as seen in their excellent wireless gaming mice, Logitech have developed a lag free wireless keyboard well up to the challenges hours upon hours of gaming can throw at it. Unfortunately the G613, much like the odd product number, feels a little more like a half step that a fully featured product we can wholeheartedly recommend. On the good side, the wireless connection is excellent and pairing…

Unfortunately this first shipment of the Vega cards has priced them too high to be of much worth to our performance build, but AMD has stated that the next shipment should see a $200 price drop, so we could be looking at 1080 power at 1070 prices. CONTROLLERS Sometimes you gotta go mouse + keyboardless Xbox One Controller $69 microsoft.com/en-au/ Plug and play meets comfort. Every PC needs a controller and this is the best Steam Controller $89.95 store.steampowered.com There’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s great for couch gaming MODEM ROUTERS For all rational budgets BUDGET TP-Link VR600 $169 tp-link.com Not the fastest, but it’s stable, well priced and feature packed. ADSL modem built in Synology Router RT1900AC…

It wouldn’t be a news update without some sort of CPU announcement. This month, it’s Intel’s turn to announce its 8th generation desktop CPU line-up, codenamed Coffee Lake. The main feature of the 8th gen is loads more cores for your money. The i3 range, which is typically dual core, is now quad core. The i5 CPUs contain six cores and the i7 CPUs have six cores too, but support Hyper Threading, for a total of 12 threads. Intel reckons all these cores mean up to 25% more FPS and 45% better performance when “mega-tasking” compared to the 7th generation range. Along with the new CPU line-up is a new chipset to support them, the Z370. The Z370 isn’t a huge upgrade, but it now has official DDR4-2666 memory support…

Blizzard loves esports so much, they’re opening their own dedicated arena for such activities in Burbank, Los Angeles. Blizzard Arena Los Angeles will be home for esports events of Blizzard games such as Overwatch Contenders, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft and the Overwatch League. The 4650-square metre arena will seat 450 people and contain three studio spaces, practice facilities for competing teams, multiple sound stages and two control rooms - providing a world class facility not just for broadcast purposes, but for spectators too. Blizzard said it will also open a retail store at Blizzard Arena Los Angeles with available merchandise rotating based on the competitions taking place at the time. Blizzard Arena Los Angeles will officially open in early October and will be christened with the…

A fantastic night was had by all, and one particular reader went home even happier than most, after winning the $10,000 Beast PC. Congratulations, Douglas, it was quite clear on the night that you will love The Beast as it should be loved and it will bring you much happiness. A huge thank you from us to all the companies that happily included their most premium gear for this Beast build, and to Josh Collins and Alex Ciobanu for putting it together on the night. Congrats, too, to Alex who also won the big Mod Squad comp on the night, amazing work by all entrants. All who came were treated to up close and personal experiences with the latest tech goodness, and the people behind the gear. AMD put together…

Samsung has joined Asus, HP, Acer, Lenovo and Dell in partnering with Microsoft to make their own Mixed Reality headset, but rather than sharing the same specs as the other headsets, and, contrary to the idea of all headsets being the same, the Samsung Odyssey features a higher resolution and wider FOV than any of the competing headsets. The Odyssey will boast dual AMOLED screens with a resolution of 1400x1600 (rather than the standard 1400x1400) delivering a 110 degree FOV rather than the 95 on the standard headsets. The headset will also feature an adjustable interpupillary distance for a little more customisation. Despite the slightly different specs, the Odyssey will still be fully compatible with the Microsoft Mixed Reality API as well as SteamVR. The headset is expected to go…

“Windows Mixed Reality is compatible with Steam VR, opening it up to a huge audience” I FA in Berlin in August was the event when the lid truly came off Microsoft’s virtual and augmented reality desires. Many headsets were unveiled from the likes of Lenovo, HP, Dell and Asus. All comply with Microsoft’s specifications, and it seems, common ergonomic design, too. The driving factor behind the tech specs is a need for compatibility with the Windows Mixed Reality ecosystem. That is good, and potentially bad news. The screen resolution is an unusual 1440 x 1440 on each of the two 2.89-inch screens. This is displayed in a 110 degree field of view. That is what Microsoft demands, but the net result is a good one in terms of the image…

“It’s not just my story. It’s a complex political situation we couldn’t ignore.” When I was studying for a Master of International Social Development at the University of New South Wales in 2005, I attended what was then called a Refugee Court of Testimonies. People were invited to tell an assembled audience some of what they had witnessed before, and while, seeking asylum. Many had seen their family and friends harmed, murdered or abducted, as well as wanting to disclose how frightening, and poorly resourced, refugee camps can be. Despite my own life being completely removed from these distressing experiences, I very much wanted to listen to what people had to say. Games including Dragon Age and Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire tell stories of displaced people, but fiction…

STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT II DEVELOPER DICE, MOTIVE STUDIOS, CRITERION GAMES PUBLISHER EA DUE 17 NOVEMBER www.ea.com MODE-ULAR WAR At launch, Battlefront II is set to include five multiplayer modes across eleven maps. The modes are Galactic Assault (a merging of Walker Assault and Supremacy), Blast (team deathmatch), Strike (objective-based TDM), the returning Heroes vs Villains, and Starfighter Assault (revamped Fighter Squadron). The maps extend across prequels (Kamino, Kashyyyk, Theed), originals (Death Star II, Endor, Mos Eisley, Yavin 4, Hoth), and sequels (Jakku, Starkiller Base, Takodana). “a campaign, co-op modes and competitive multiplayer across all cinematic Star Wars eras” HARD TO MASTER YODA Criterion hasn’t ditched accessibility, but still wants there to be a skill gap for starfighter control. “That’s what it’s all about,” says Matt Webster. “‘Can I pick it…

QUAKE CHAMPIONS DEVELOPER ID SOFTWARE • Publisher BETHESDA SOFTWORKS • Due EARLY ACCESS www.quake.com Quake Champions sits uncomfortably between two eras. There is something impressively and addictively old-school about the map design and the speed of play that makes Quake Champions feel like a blast of high-resolution Quake 3 Arena, but there is also a fine spray of unwelcome modern features that muddy the affair somewhat. Instead of all the characters being nothing but model swaps, Quake Champions goes the Hero Shooter route and gives each “Champion” their own special powers. And then there are the ubiquitous loot boxes with cosmetic pieces. Rather than taking over the game, however, these modern additions just feel out of place and more than a little unwelcome. At its core, Quake Champions is still…

“heroes and lords are spectacularly useful, but there are units that can counter or kill them” DEVELOPER CREATIVE ASSEMBLY • PUBLISHER SEGA • PRICE $79 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM, RETAIL www.totalwar.com From the time that Creative Assembly released Rome II, it seemed like the developer had lost its way. Each Total War game (we’re pretending that Stormrise never existed, and the Sonic games don’t count) had built on the one before it, adding more complexity, more features, and a deeper strategic and tactical experience. Rome II, though, was a technical and to be honest, a strategic mess. Maybe there were too many changes to the formula, too fast, but for most long-term fans, it was a hard title to come back from. Warhammer, based on the franchise of the same…

“It’s amazing how little effect Pirelli P-Zero Corsa tyres have on a largely frictionless surface” DEVELOPER SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS • PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO • PRICE $59.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.projectcarsgame.com This will be the most expensive amateur race in history. Thanks to an unprecedented level of organisation, involving months of logistics and tens of millions in shipping fees alone, there are now 20 Ferrari LaFerraris lined up and ready to annihilate 12.83 miles and 107 turns of the California Highway. As the tree starts to light up, 126 litres of V12 start to scream. Come the greens, we all erupt from the starting grid thanks to 900 Nm of electrically-assisted torque, accelerate to 100 km/h in just 2.4 seconds - and then all slam into the barrier as we…

“chaos no longer affects the world, so murdering people has no lasting impact” DEVELOPER ARKANE STUDIOS • Publisher BETHESDA SOFTWORKS • Price $29.95 • AvAilAble At STEAM dishonored.bethesda.net For a standalone expansion meant to wrap up the story arc of two games and the associated DLC, Death of the Outsider is pretty light on plot. As former Dishonored antagonist Billie Lurk, players must help their old and ailing mentor, Daud get revenge on the Outsider, the black eyed gentleman outside of space and time responsible for all the supernatural shenanigans in the Dishonored games, by finding a magical widget capable of killing a god. This knife is in the possession of The Eyeless, a large and powerful gang/sect with members from all walks of life and social strata. Rather than…

DEVELOPER RUNIC GAMES • Publisher RUNIC GAMES • Price US$20 • AvAilAble At STEAM, GOG, HUMBLE runicgames.com/hob My favourite moments in Hob occur in out of the way spots, on a secluded ledge overlooking a canyon perhaps, or a crow’s nest high up above the canopy reached only via a hidden ladder and series of climbable vines. These spots are marked by a symbol on the ground. You walk up to them and press a button and while you sit down or casually lean against a wall the camera swings down from its top-down perspective and presents you with a spectacular vista of the world ahead. The view is never anything less than gorgeous. I love them. Taking a moment to catch your breath is wise. Hob is quite a…

Only a few years ago, a 27-inch display would cost at least $600. These days you can pick one up for a mere $250, showing just how fast panel technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. That’s not to say all 27-inch monitors are this affordable – it’s easy to spend over a grand on displays designed for gaming. Super-fast refresh rates, curved screens, G-Sync and other features can exponentially increase the price of a display, so we’ve taken a look at the current state of the market, from screens that cost just $320, all the way up to $1200. We’re not going to compare a screen to another that is twice the price; each monitor in the following roundup has been judged on its own merits. So, just what…

“there’s nothing special about this display, and the pixel response time means image blur is an issue” PRICE $319 www.benq.com.au From one extreme to the next. The Asus PG27A costs a huge $1,199, while this 27-incher costs a mere $319. It just goes to show how far prices have dropped in recent years that it’s now possible to get a screen this big for just over $300. Obviously it’s going to be rather feature-lite, but how many sacrifices has BenQ had to make to deliver such an affordable 27-inch display? First and foremost is image quality. As you can see in our benchmarks, the BenQ came last in three of the four tests. Especially dramatic was the drop in contrast ratio, down to a meagre 189:1, while most others sat…

“the colours make this screen shine. Once you’ve seen it, you just can’t go back to a non-HDR display” PRICE $599 www.samsung.com.au Let’s get the worst feature of this screen out of the way first – it’s only 1920 x 1080. For $600, that’s rather hard to swallow. And yet it’s one of our favourite screens on the market. What the? The key here is Samsung’s new Q-LED technology. It’s been used in Samsung TVs for a while, but is now available on the PC. It uses a VA panel with an extra Quantum Dot panel added, which results in some of the most lifelike colours we’ve ever seen. It’s not quite up there with OLED, as it still requires a backlight, but once you’ve seen the amazing colours in…

“sharp angular lines leave and a glowing logo leave no doubt that this isn’t a machine designed just for Excel” PRICE $2698 www.hp.com Better known for its boring office PCs, HP is making a push into the gaming market, where it appears that pockets are deep and margins are large. As you can see from our monitor roundup, the Omen 27 inch display is targeting the top of the top, yet the Omen 15 is going for the middle of the market. Can this business branded company make it in such a tough field dominated by brands that have been making gaming machines for years. Unlike most HP machines, the Omen looks and feels like a gaming machine. It’s got sharp angular lines with a glowing Omen logo on the…

“Asus has decided to put its ports underneath the unit, which we feel isn’t the best design” PRICE $225 www.asus.com.au We’re more accustomed to seeing Asus go for the $500+ end of the router market, so the Asus RT-AC86U Wireless AC2900 router is interesting simply due to the low cost of this Wi-Fi router. Despite the decent pricing, it doesn’t make this a slouch, with a combined throughput of 2900Mbps. It may deliver a high overall bandwidth, yet it’s only a dual band router. The 2.4GHz network delivers up to 750MHz, while the 5GHz network can deliver up to 2167Mhz. Combine the two, and that’s how we end up with a final speed of approximately 2900MHz. It uses a 3x3 antenna configuration, which is fine considering most devices these days…

If you’re looking to build an ITX based gaming rig, Gigabyte has great news for you - a tiny Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Mini ITX 8G (aka GV-N1080IX-8GD) is the smallest GTX1080 on the market, almost 10cm shorter than Nvidia’s reference card design, measuring 37mm high, 169mm long and 131mm wide. To keep such a powerful card cool, but also small, Gigabyte has created a custom cooling system just for the GTX 1080 Mini. A 3D Active semi-passive 90mm fan enhances airflow by 23%, which sits on top of a finned aluminium block with a set of three composite heat pipes running through it, increasing cooling capacity by 29%. The GTX 1080 Mini is no slouch either, running by default in “gaming mode” with…

Logitech has introduced two new mice this month - one for gamers and one that’s a little retro. The Logitech G603 is the latest device to support Lightspeed wireless interconnection technology, reducing the lag common to wireless mice. The G603 contains Logitech’s new HERO (high efficiency rated optical) sensor with 12,000 DPI sensitivity, up to 400 inches per second speed and up to 40G acceleration. Logitech’s other new mouse is the MX Ergo, which sports a trackball. Yes! A trackball in 2017. It’s basically a Logitech MX Master mouse, with a ball on the side you rotate with a thumb or finger. Just like the MX Master, it uses the Logitech Unify receiver (or Bluetooth), has an integrated Li-Po battery and supports Logitech’s Flow software, allowing users to simultaneously control…

• Aorus X399 Gaming 7 Motherboard • AMD 1950x Threadripper • AMD Vega 64 • Cooler Master Cosmos II 25th Anniversary Edition case • Cooler Master ML240L RGB AIO cooling • Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L RGB keyboard • Cooler Master Mastermouse Pro mouse • Cooler Master Masterpulse Headset • Cooler Master MasterFan 120 Air Balance RGB Fans kit with controller kit • Microsoft Windows 10 Pro • Samsung 960 Pro 2TB NVMe SSD • Crucial MX 300 2TB SATA SSD • FSP 1200w Power Supply • Ballistix 32GB Kit Memory • Seagate Firecuda 2TB HDD All that plus custom Beast decals, worth over TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Yes. Indeed. Pretty sweet, and all the happiness in the world was there with our winner Douglas. We know he loves it already.…

The flagship Harvey Norman Auburn store will see Australia’s first Games Hub, a remodelled and rebranded floor dedicated to all things gaming. The Games Hub will stock a range of popular as well as new to the market PC brands, including Razer, MSI, Acer Predator, Legion (by Lenovo), Logitech, Omen (by Hp) and all modern consoles. In addition to the broad range of products, Games Hub is also designed as an interactive experience, where gaming enthusiasts young and old can get hands-on play with the latest gaming technology. Sunday, October 1 will see the Samsung Gear VR headset and the Samsung 4D Motion Chair showcased in store and Saturday, October 29 will see the Hub play host to a VR experience, with Vive and Rift headsets linked to HP Omen…

“look at Wargaming - the Belarusian Bear has cornered the market in Dad Games” Much speculation has surrounded the creation of screenPLAY, 7mate’s new program starring Nich Richardson and Stephanie Bendixsen. Is Australia ready for a new video game review program so soon after the abrupt cancellation of Good Game? Can screenPLAY attract sufficient ratings on a digital channel to survive? And why in the world is St. George Bank funding it? It all makes perfect sense, dear reader. Opening your first bank account is a very important step on the road to adulthood, and once you’re locked in with your primary financial services provider you’re unlikely to change for the rest of your life. As such, the generic, nondescript, feel-good advertising campaigns of the major banks are a ridiculous…

“the further into each island you explore, the more dangerous that night time dash becomes” DEVELOPER BIG FAT ALIEN • Publisher KEYSTONE GAMES • Price $19.99 • AvAilAble At STEAM www.keystone-games.com On paper Rogue Islands just sounds like a list of buzzwords - Rogue-like, first-person, voxel, crafting, survival shooter - but after playing for a while it proves itself to be something more than just a combination of the top keywords in the Steam store. The game features all those things to lesser and greater degrees, but the combination works and lends the game a charm and immediacy lacking in many other Rogue-like or survival games. You’re a druid, and you must stop the Lords of Torment from doing something presumably rather tormenty by battling your way across seven procedurally…

“the further you go, the more you’ll need to finesse the execution of a chuck” DEVELOPER RUSTY OAK • Publisher RUSTY OAK • Price $4.99 • AvAilAble At STEAM hurlvr.com Convincing players to purchase a game in which you bounce a ball along a set of platforms until it falls into a hole might seem like a pretty hard sell in the visceral digital entertainment landscape we live in today; even in VR, it doesn’t scream excitement. But Hurl VR is quite an interesting and fresh entry in the ricocheting-ball-off-of-things genre through the way it makes the player focused on how to best execute physics-based feats that we normally take for granted in games. I think it’s safe to say most people know, or at least have a theoretical grasp…

“Tony Stark’s face is a bit of a horrorshow when he raises the Iron Man mask to emote” DEVELOPER CAPCOM • PUBLISHER CAPCOM • PRICE $59.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM marvelvscapcominfinite.com The story mode in Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite is awful. None of the games have ever really had anything particularly great when it comes to a plot, but at least fights were against other characters. In the story mode of Infinite, players spend most of their time fighting against either Ultron drones or Asgardians infected with the Sigma virus. Long story short, Ultron invades Abel City, breaching the barrier between the Marvel and Capcom universes, merges with Sigma to become Ultron Sigma and uses the power of the Reality and Space Infinity Stones to merge the two universes together…

 DEVELOPER DECK NINE • Publisher SQUARE ENIX • Price $16.99 • AvAilAble At STEAM www.lifeisstrange.com “rather than using logic or evidence, Backtalk is about snark, anger and shutting people down” When it was announced that Deck Nine was developing the prequel to the much loved adventure game, Life is Strange, anyone with knowledge of the developer let out a collective moan. Before becoming Deck Nine, the developer was formerly known as Idol Minds and was responsible for a bunch of forgettable, non-narrative games. Imagine our surprise in finding that, not only has Deck Nine managed to make an excellent prequel to the Dontnod Entertainment developed original, by forgoing the time-travel elements of the original, they have managed to deliver a first episode that feels grounded and full of heart. Max,…

“the cars control more like remote control vehicles than anything in the real world” DEVELOPER PHANTOM COMPASS • Publisher PHANTOM COMPASS • Price $19.99 • AvAilAble At STEAM phantomcompass.com Remember the cartoon M.A.S.K.? That’s the one about the goodies and baddies driving around in weaponised vehicles wearing goofy masks, with a sweet theme song that goes something like: “Masked Crusaders, Working Overtime, Fighting Crime, Fighting Crime! Secret Raiders Who Will Neutralise, As Soon As They Arrive, At The Site Trakker’s Gonna Lead The Mission, And Spectrum’s Got Such Super Vision! M-M-M-M.A.S.K.!” Well, Auto Age: Standoff is something like that. It’s colourful with bright cel-shaded graphics, is about vehicular combat and has a sweet theme song. It also has one up on Mask by not featuring an annoying kid on an…

“when combined with the 4ms pixel response time, overall motion and smoothness is exceptional” PRICE $899 www.acer.com.au Available in both 1440p and 4K resolution, the price of this version makes it obvious that this is the 1440p version. From the moment we opened the box, it was apparent we were dealing with a gaming product, as the striking sharp red lines of the stand would make it stand out like a sore thumb in an office environment. We love the edgeless design, which makes the tiny bezel look almost invisible. The stand itself is also highly manoeuvrable, perfect for lining it up in just the right spot, minimising long-term ergonomic damage after lengthy gaming sessions. Considering the price and resolution, we were very pleasantly surprised to see that this has…

“if only the sexy stand was more adjustable - the only motion possible is screen tilt” PRICE $1,099 www.dell.com.au Dell is renowned for its amazing monitors, so we expected some seriously good results for this new beast. To our disappointment it churned out some rather strange results in our benchmarks given the specs, showing that it really requires a professional to get the most out it. This display’s key feature is that it’s ultra-thin and HDR-ready. Apparently it’s the thinnest 27-inch monitor on the market, and the inclusion of Dell’s ‘InfinityEdge’ ultra-thin, edgeless bezel design makes it look even slicker. If only the sexy stand was more adjustable – the only motion possible is screen tilt. This is rather odd for Dell, who usually excel when it comes to stand…

“Alienware has magically managed to fit a GeForce GTX 1060 within, delivering impeccable performance” PRICE $3385.70 www.alienware.com Who says you can’t have gaming performance in a tiny form factor? Not Alienware, that’s for sure. They’ve just released the latest version of its Alienware 13, a 13-inch form factor gaming laptop that is as powerful as portable. It’s certainly not a budget machine, but to squeeze so much hardware into such a tiny chassis is a remarkable achievement indeed. The biggest update to this year’s version is the beautiful OLED screen. It truly is a wonder to behold, with the richest colours and contrast we’ve ever seen on a laptop. Despite being just 13 inches, it’s a crisp 2560 x 1440 resolution, and there’s not a hint of motion blur. It’s…

“when it comes to overclocking, this board has a superb range of features” PRICE $639 www.msi.com.au Now that AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper is tearing up tasks with its 16 cores and 32 threads, we’re starting to see more compatible X399 motherboards with the requisite TR4 socket hit store shelves. The latest is MSI’s X399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC, and it delivers everything a Threadripper owner could need without charging the Earth. This an ATX motherboard that comes with four full length PCIe x16 lanes and twin single length PCIe x1 lane. Thanks to the X399’s vast PCIe 3.0 lane count, MSI has been able to included three M.2 SSD slots, each one nestled between the full-length PCIe lanes. They all come with a heatshield, but only the centre one will take…

PRICE $769 www.mwave.com.au Gaming chairs continue to the flavour of the month with many local distributors, but the fact remains… for now, they’re really more or less each alike. They’re basically high-end office chairs, with a colourful veneer to add that sense of ‘gaming’ bling. They’re also often very expensive, hovering around the $500 mark for the most part. So Noble’s latest, which costs nearly $800, really needs to work hard to turn our heads. Amazingly, it’s done just that, and after a couple of weeks of resting my rather demanding derriere (I bet I’m going to regret that sentence structure) in it, it remains my go-to option for sitting down. In part, the design’s slightly deeper seat makes it feel much comfier than many gaming chairs – even without…

PRICE $59 www.coolermaster.com After seeing so many mice with eleventeen billion buttons, all the RGBs in the world and thousands more DPI than anyone really uses, it’s nice to see a company release a well-made and great feeling bare bones mouse. The MasterMouse 520 and 530 feature a few little differences aside from the shape, but for the most part house the same guts. Built around a PMW-3360 optical sensor, both mice feel fast and accurate. Both mice also have nicely textured scroll wheels and two thumb buttons. The major difference between the two mice is the shape of the body. The MM520 is short and features a prominent finger rest to the right hand side, making it ideal for claw grippers, while the MM530 is longer and narrower making…