Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 290 i PC Powerplay

When you think of someone who’s lucky enough to edit a games magazine like this one, you might imagine the kind of gamer who loves every genre out there, from puzzle games to shooters, strategy titles to RPGs. Sadly... I am not that editor, and there is one kind of game I’ve always bounced off. Yep... it’s Souls-like games. Like this issue’s cover feature, Elden Ring, from actual Dark Souls developer From Software. But I’m not gonna lie... after putting together this issue, I’m a little tempted to dip my toe into the water. I know it’ll get bitten off, chewed up, and likely spat back at me. But I’m going to give it a red-hot go. So, dear reader, if a somewhat more haggard and drawn visage greets you…

When I reviewed Mini Motorways in the last magazine, I realised that I’d never given in to the overwhelming, compulsive desire that Mini Metro had created within me; to rediscover old train sims. I think Young Meghann must have been cleverer than me, because these old interfaces are hard to understand. I’ve now played everything from the original Railroad Tycoon to Sid Meier’s Railroads(!). Even just placing tracks has been an adventure. Do not get me started on double tracking. How did we survive before tooltips? Tell me that. Did I enjoy myself? Yes, I did. My favourite thing about the original Railroad Tycoon was always choosing the best starting point on a randomly generated map; chaining resources, counting city tiles and so on. Next, I was reminded that Railroad…

Optimistic enough to book a hostel, but realistic enough not to book flights, MEGHANN O’NEILL had to cancel her plans to attend PAX Australia for the second consecutive year, due to Covid-19. She invited Australian and New Zealand developers into her living room for Zoom interviews, and was impressed by the breadth and quality of what was on offer in 2021. This year’s assistant, MAE UDARBE, documented around 40 games over six hours and (somehow) wants to come back for more (hopefully in person) next year. In this collection you’ll find that no genre is repeated. Many of the games are unique, hybrid or uncategorisable, in terms of genre, too. Keep up the great work, ANZ developers! BLUEBERRY DEVELOPER Mellow Games PRICE TBA AVAILABILITY TBA WEBSITE https://mellow-games.com/games/blueberry/ I’m sure I’ve…

Videogames are pretty invested in continuing and replaying World War II. There was a period where it seemed like people were getting a bit tired of the old confrontation between Allies and Axis, but it was short lived. Hot on the heels of Company of Heroes’ reappearance and Call of Duty heading back to its favourite war, we’ve also got returning RTS Men of War II. It’s a good time to be a lover of old tanks. These tanks were very much the stars of the first hands-off demo and presentation from publisher 1C Entertainment and Men of War’s original developer, Best Way, once again at the helm. In the clips of campaign missions and PvP confrontations, I almost felt bad for the wee digital soldiers getting mown down by…

One grisly stop on a trek through the first of five chapters in Weird West will remind you of what was so scarce in its most recent contemporary, Deathloop. Both are immersive sims with vastly different goals. Deathloop was about harnessing an unwieldy system, but Weird West is about livingin it. Early in Weird West, I came across a coven ritual. The witches asked me to leave them alone, but before I could walk away, their ritual succeeded. A horde of undead and their ghastly leader poured out of the summoning circle. The sisters were armed for it. They took care of the abominations like it was a Monday. I just watched. PLAYED IT This event, like some others I experienced in a preview version of Weird West’s first act,…

After being airdropped from a cargo plane in an AMG One, I arrive at the festival site to a fanfare. The organisers are delighted – their ‘superstar’ is finally here – and to celebrate they offer me a choice of starting car. I leave the site and head to my first race in a Corvette Stingray Coupe. This isn’t how racing games are supposed to start. I should be battling for wins in some hatchback. Instead, I’m being handed a 500 horsepower supercar. Forza Horizon 5 doesn’t need to do what other racing games would do. It just needs to be a Forza Horizon game. It’s a series with no serious rival, and as such it feels unchallenged. It’s not being forced to reinvent the wheel, and so it’s content…

BUNGIE CEO APOLOGISES FOLLOWING IN-DEPTH REPORT Sexism and toxicity at the studio rampant. A major new IGN report into workplace toxicity at Destiny 2 studio Bungie has prompted an apology from CEO Pete Parsons, who acknowledged that while the studio has made positive changes, “it is not enough, and it has taken too long.” In September, Parsons released a statement affirming Bungie’s commitment “to fostering a safe and welcoming environment for everyone, and to making conscious and constant improvements through listening, self-awareness, improving our workplace and our systems, and by acting on behalf of our people.” The statement was prompted by the events of “these past few months,” he said, but it was a clear reference to the allegations of widespread misconduct at Activision Blizzard. Parsons’ statement painted a very…

When a post praising the thousands upon thousands of game walkthrough maps created by a GameFAQs poster named StarFighters76 circulated on Twitter, the astounded responses weren’t only from people seeing them for the first time. Tons of replies were from players who’d used his maps before, but had no idea just how many he’d created. “These maps have gotten me out of SO MANY jams bro,” says one. “Shout if you’ve been using these maps for the FF Pixel Remasters,” says another. The collection of over 3,500 maps that StarFighters76 has created is impressive, but the number of players he’s helped through more than 300 games may be even more so. For nearly 20 years, StarFighters76 has been posting maps to GameFAQs, one of the few surviving institutions from the…

IETA 25 FEB PUB BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT DEV FROM SOFTWARE PLAYERS 1-4 Stumbling out of our own grave, we find brief respite at a glowing Site Of Grace. Nearby, a man in a mask rebuffs us in a posh English accent for being “maidenless”, wryly suggesting we “feel free to go off and die in a ditch somewhere”. On a nearby hill a huge knight in armour patrols on a horse. As we approach it, a large health bar fills the screen. It is the Tree Sentinel. Enormous lance in hand, he knocks over small trees as he swipes at us, sending us flying into (of course) a ditch. You died. This is, after all, a soulslike. For in as many ways as Elden Ring represents brave new ground for…

COMPANY OF HEROES 3 RELEASE 2022 | DEV Relic Entertainment | PUB Sega | LINK community.companyofheroes.com Heading into Company of Heroes3’s multiplayer pre-alpha, I’ve got a plan. “I’ll start with a comp stomp,” I tell Relic, hoping to nab myself an easy victory in an AI skirmish. I spend most of this first match fighting with the AI over a single capture point in a village square that rapidly becomes unrecognisable as the ground is turned into craters. I’m playing as the USF Airborne battlegroup, one of two currently available for the US faction, and one of four in the build I’m playing. While the singleplayer campaign lets you build your forces out of whatever companies and detachments you want, even creating hybrids with US, UK, and Commonwealth units, the…

Once again, Call of Duty spins its wheel of war, and for the sixth time in the series’ history, the needle has landed on ‘World War the Second’. Call of Duty has always been most comfortable booting Hitler right in the Panzerschrecks, nestled cosily in the history of the victors, safe in the knowledge that the baddies really were bad. But it’s also the most difficult setting from which to build something new. There are only so many World War II battles, after all, and Call of Duty has covered them exhaustively over the years. It’s a problem that Vanguard fails to resolve, which is a shame because there are hints of more interesting ideas amid the game’s familiar sights and sounds. But in the end Vanguard submits to expectation.…

Does an open world work for Halo? Since it’s announcement, that question is one that’s been constantly asked of Halo Infinite. Six years after Halo 5 left the series on a sour note, 343 Industries has dusted off the Master Chief’s armour for a throwback to Bungie’s original – nostalgic for a time when Halo was just a big green man, his blue, holographic girlfriend, and a wide open ring full of possibilities to explore. What this results in is a game that could be a true return to form for Master Chief – but I’m just not convinced Halo really needed to be an open world. Let’s make one thing clear though: this is some damn fine Halo. Having played Halo 3 with the lads every weekend for the…

Smashing a goon’s head against the wall before launching his buddy out of a window doesn’t sound strategic on paper, but the turn-based combat of Fights in Tight Spaces transforms even the simplest enemy encounter into an intricate puzzle where the only solution is your fists. Although its roguelike trappings can detract from the overall experience, these moments where everything comes together in a glorious display of violence always shine through. Stepping into the well-polished shoes of an international super spy tasked with dismantling criminal syndicates, the basic plot does little more than loosely string together the five separate worlds in which the action occurs. Divided into semi-procedurally generated levels, each world has you fighting through a number of tightly enclosed locations that range from densely packed subway carriages to…

Open world games are a dime-a-dozen in 2022. It’s actually rare for a big budget action game to come in any other format, making rare anomalies like The Last of Us 2 and Doom Eternal very welcome treats indeed. Once a promise of freedom, the open world has become stale. For all the merits of, say, Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry (noticing a pattern here?) their open worlds feel like nothing more than set dressing. Beyond the ocassional impulse to enter photo mode, a typical modern open world game doesn’t offer much more than just a huge expanse of traversable space, dotted with dozens of activities that are all pretty much identical. There’s a place for that style of game, but does every open world game need to feel the…

With Age of Empires II still held up as a paragon of strategy games, you can see why new series developer Relic has decided to model Age of Empires IV on the second entry. The latest iteration strips away the complexities of AoE III, while adding welcome touches of its own. Chief among these are asymmetrical factions, which will elicit screams of bloody imbalance but count as the game’s greatest success. On the other hand, reverence to the past can be restricting, and I can’t help but feel that Age of Empires IV could have been something more. While I respect Relic’s decision to play things fairly safe, that should result in making what’s already there really shine; polish those mosque minarets and Moscavian onion domes, pump up those population…

PRICE $279 ONLINE www.corsair.com When Corsair announced its Obsidian 4000 Series cases, we particularly liked the glass 4000X for its superb RGB implementation and clean appearance, but it had one big drawback: thermals. With the Obsidian 5000X we have on the test bench today, Corsair addresses these concerns with an added intake on the right side of the case to aid the restricted front glass intake. But priced at $280, there’s a steep premium you pay for this performance potential – and I say potential, because the chassis doesn’t come with the added fans you need to get the increase in thermal performance. Tempered glass is featured not only on the left side, but also the front, top, and right side of the chassis. The glass comes with quite a…

On November 19, 1998, Sierra released Half-Life. In the time it took to install 300MB of exquisitely poised shooter off its CD-ROM, everything from the genre prior became part of a bygone era. And perhaps the unluckiest of the lot was Ritual’s SiN, which released just ten days before it. Here was a game that, like Half-Life, wanted to bring a bit more storytelling back to the genre after a long period of dominance from dialogue-averse id Software and similarly laconic newcomers Epic Games. It had a spectacularly named hero in John Blade, and in its antagonist Elexis Sinclaire a typically salacious depiction of a woman – though to give Ritual some credit, both black player-characters and female CEOs were wildly progressive ideas for the era. It had voice actors.…