Indholdsfortegnelse for #242 August 2015 i PC Powerplay

In an unprecedented move, Warner announced it was suspending sales of the troubled PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight, and susequently the game has been pulled from shelves in two Australian chains. Both JB Hi Fi and EB Games have removed the game from sale, and are waiting to hear more from Warner about the next step in getting the game into a playable state. Other retailers, such as Target, have simply chosen not to stock the PC version at all.…

Since the Nexus portal opened on June 3rd, players around the world have stormed the battlegrounds of Blizzard’s cross-character combat arenas. Not content with the cacophonic, chaotic clashes, their conflict has inspired, Heroes of the Storm has introduced the Eternal Conflict, a multi-week in-game event. During the event, players should be on the lookout for Treasure Goblins. Players who track down these creatures and eliminate them before a match’s end will receive gold for their efforts. What’s more, the game’s roster has been bolstered with three characters from the Diablo universe: The Butcher, Leoric, and The Monk, alongside several Diablothemed skins and mounts. Among the two new maps is the Battlefield of Eternity, the first battleground located in one of Blizzard’s established universes. Players will need to defend their core…

BEYOND EYES DEVELOPER TIGER & SQUID PUBLISHER TEAM17 DUE 2015 www.beyondeyes-game.com Rae, is a 10-year-old girl, left her blinded and scarred, physically and emotionally, by a fireworks accident. Stripped of her sight, Rae began to fear the world outside of her comfort zone, avoiding public places and quivering at loud noises. One day, she meets a new friend – a neighborhood cat that comes by to play. The cat is the closest friend Rae has had in years, but when her friend vanishes one day, Rae must find the courage to finally break her isolation and explore more of the world. MASTER OF ORION DEVELOPER NGD STUDIOS PUBLISHER WARGAMING.COM DUE TBA masteroforion.eu/en/ So this one came out of nowhere. Arguably the finest galaxy-conquering simulator ever made, Master of Orion is…

DEVELOPER UBISOFT MONTREAL PUBLISHER UBISOFT DUE TBA forhonor.ubisoft.com Straddling the line between a third person action game and a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), For Honor features three factions, The Chosen, The Warborn and The Legions – knights, samurai and vikings respectively – battling it out using an innovative melee combat system known as ‘Art of Battle’. Here’s how it works. When players confront each other they enter a duelling mode that enables them to change stances and the directionality of attacks or blocks. The left thumbstick is used for movement and the right for positioning the player’s weapon either up, to the left or right (no word on how mouse/keyboard control will work as yet). The position of the weapon is key to both blocking and attacking as enemy…

DEVELOPER GEARBOX SOFTWARE PUBLISHER 2K GAMES DUE LATE 2015/EARLY 2016 battleborn.com “in truth it became clear very fast that communicating and strategising wasn’t necessary” Every Borderlands game has launched at a point in my life during which I couldn’t make the time to fit them into my schedule. Within weeks of release my friends are at too high a level to play with, and I end up clearing the first few missions alone – or with one or two random folks online, if I’m lucky – before eventually dropping the game entirely. Battleborn is a more ‘casual’ take on the Borderlands formula, a game that feels like it has been designed to fit into busy lives. The RPG elements have been toned way down: the level cap is now 10,…

DEVELOPER UBISOFT SAN FRANCISCO PUBLISHER UBISOFT DUE TBA www.ubisoft.com/en-US/game/south-park-fractured-but-whole/ The game with arguably the best name of any game announced this or any year at E3, not simply because of the puntastic subtitle but because that name actually sounds like the subtitle for a modern (Transformers: Rise of the Fallen, we’re looking at you) movie whilst simultaneously detailing the superpower of the main character, South Park: The Fractured But Whole continues the adventures of New Kid in the quiet mountain town of South Park. The Stick of Truth set a benchmark for games based on existing movie or TV IPs, managing to make a 30 hour RPG feel like an episode of the show and by the looks of it we should expect the same from the sequel. The announcement…

DEVELOPER ROCKSTEADY PUBLISHER WARNER BROS. PRICE $69.95 AVAILABLE AT STEAM (PROBABLY), RETAIL www.batmanarkhamknight.com As the final Batman game from series’ creator RockSteady, Arkham Knight should have been a glorious swansong to all that made this the greatest superhero game series ever created. And on many counts it succeeds, with a laser-tight focus on the strengths of combat and exploration that made the first two games so successful. Sadly the PC version has more bugs than a filthy Gotham city alleyway, crippled by performance issues, crashes and all-round weird behaviour. Games like Arkham Knight remind us why PC gaming can be such a fickle mistress, but if you’re able to get past its myriad issues there’s a satisfying conclusion to the Bat’s adventures hidden beneath its many technical woes. You know…

DEVELOPER IMGN.PRO PUBLISHER IMGN.PRO PRICE $19.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM kholat.com The Dyatlov Pass incident is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the last century. 10 hikers went to the northern Ural Mountains in February 1959 and all but one died under extremely mysterious circumstances on the eastern side of Kholat Syakhl. The investigation into the deaths discovered that the hikers had cut their way out of their tents and fled the campsite. Some of them were barefoot and none had any protective gear on. Two of the hikers had fractured skulls and crushed ribs though there was no sign of a struggle and there were no contusions on the bodies. One was missing its tongue and eyes. It was, and remains, rather creepy to say the least. You…

DEVELOPER CAPCOM PUBLISHER CAPCOM PRICE $24.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.capcom.co.jp/devil4se/ In a day and age when it seems like every second game being released is a reboot of a classic game, it’s kind of refreshing to see the release of a special, remastered edition of a fairly recent game. Initially released seven years ago, DMC4 took the already absurd action series to further absurd heights with constant, frenetic combat, massive unforgiving bosses and a protagonist that veered wildly in personality from nihilistic angel of fury to goofy teenager yet could always remain hilariously unimpressed by demons, no matter how large or deadly. Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition is a pretty spectacular game. The well optimised engine can deliver crisp 1080p, 60 frame per second silliness on moderate hardware…

PRICE $3199 www.aorus.com Aorus claims that this is the world’s fastest 15.6” gaming notebook, which is a rather bold claim to make. But a quick scan of competitor’s models confirms that this is indeed the only one gaming laptop of this size on the market with a dual GPU configuration. Stuffing twin graphics processors into a 15.6 inch laptop is no easy feat, but Aorus has had to pay a price to do so. The twin GPUs in question are NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 965M, which is the desktop equivalent of a GTX 960. It’s a superior product to the woeful GTX 960M that powered so many budget gaming laptops at the start of the year, and shoving two of them inside the X5 gives this machine the performance required to…

PRICE $999 www.amd.com A grand for a 27 inch gaming display might sound like a bit much, especially when it’s possible to pick up budget screens of the same size for a third of the cost. But the MG279Q isn’t your average, everyday display. This sucker is built from the ground up for gaming, and is one of the first to use an IPS display for the purpose. Until now gamers have had to make do with TN panels for gaming, as they offered vastly superior pixel response times. Meanwhile IPS panels had the advantage for wider viewing angles and better colour and contrast reproduction. ASUS is only the second company (after Acer) to figure out how to build a gaming display based on IPS technology, which it has employed…

I’m writing you this email because I always wanted to enter your PC rig competition in your magazine but never had a cool computer until now. 4 MOST IMPRESSIVE ELEMENTS: 1) Asus Maximus V11 ranger motherboard. I love the bios. It makes it so easy for a 1st time PC builder to overclock. 2) Asus GeForce GTX 970 strix direct cu 11 4gb graphics card. I like the GPU tweak software. 3) 4 X 4gb of Kingston Hyper X Beast DDR3 memory gets the job done. 4) Intel core i7 4790k CPU also gets the job done. LAST UPGRADE: My last upgrade was the TP-Link archer t8e Wi-Fi card. I needed it to connect to the home Wi-Fi DREAM UPGRADE: My dream upgrade is to make a simple pilot gaming…

I think we can safely say that gaming has now fully and entirely mirrored music as a model of cultural and creative evolution. By and large, all the genres were nailed down years ago, leaving us with sub-genres within sub-genres, each flaring up for a span before being washed away by the next new-old thing. The big reliable IPs are churned out year after year, consumed by mainstream gamers who, anecdotally at least, appear unwilling to take risks on anything too niche. And what is old is new again, with the surge in retro gaming, which is now fully into the remake and remastered era. I’m going to resist the easy temptation to roll out some terrible analogies – like how Call of Duty is sort of big and bland…

If someone were to blackmail you, what would they use? What special thing, when threatened, could fundamentally undermine your integrity and influence how you might act? In Technobabylon, a recently released adventure from Wadjet Eye Games and Technocrat Games, Regis’ abandons his loyalty to the CEL police force when items of great personal value are stolen. It’s a compelling premise that permeates the narrative. The violence these items are subjected to is shocking in a way that should be theoretical to most (but not all) current audiences, yet Regis’ motivations are entirely plausible. Set in 2087, the world has changed enough to provide intriguing context, but not so much that we can’t relate to the action. It is a precise balance that makes for an excellent story, relying on the…

DEVELOPER UBISOFT QUEBEC PUBLISHER UBISOFT DUE 2015 assassinscreed.ubi.com/ “So here’s hoping Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate can bring this once mighty series back from the doldrums” Sequels, remakes and comebacks seem big on the agenda for developers again of late. I mean they always are, but this year feels like there’s more than ever. Anyway, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate fulfils two of those categories – it’s yet another sequel in the long running series and is hopefully the comeback we’ve all been waiting for since the less than stellar previous game Assassin’s Creed: Unity. Set in grimy old London in 1868, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing but so too is the world of underground crime. Gangs are thriving in a time when the Assassin Brotherhood is all but a memory and…

DEVELOPER ARKANE STUDIOS PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS DUE 2016 www.dishonored.com Fifteen years after Corvo Attano was framed for the assassination of the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin and subsequently gifted with supernatural powers to murder his way to justice, the Empire is once again plunged into political disarray and supernatural upheaval when the young Empress Emily Kaldwin is dethroned and is forced to become an outlaw and assassin like her father, Corvo. What could have been another sequel that just presents more of the same is shaping up to be something very special indeed. By the end of the first game, 10-year-old Emily Kaldwin had been put through the ringer – her mother murdered, kidnapped by a rogue spymaster and eventually taken under the wing of a supernaturally powered assassin. At 25, Emily…

DEVELOPER DICE PUBLISHER EA DUE FEB 26, 2016 www.mirrorsedge.com Eight years after the release of Mirror’s Edge, players will once again have the chance to step into the shoes of parkour runner extraordinaire, Faith Conners. Parkour is fairly ubiquitous in games, but what makes the Mirror’s Edge games stand out from the pack is the fact that they are played from a first person perspective, so every jump, slide, swing, wall-run and roll becomes an immersive, vertiginous thrill. A prequel to the original game, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst delves into Faith’s backstory and expands the city, eschewing the linear levels of the first game for a semi-open world rife with the potential for exploration. Runner vision is still present in the game (the mechanic that highlights the objects that can be…

DEVELOPER ID SOFTWARE PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS DUE 2016 www.doom.com Although the initial reaction to the Doom announcement and footage shown at E3 was positive, sentiment has cooled a little in the weeks following the event, and, looking at the state of the franchise in recent years, the trepidation many Doom fans feel is certainly justified. Doom 3 was a beautiful game when it was released in 2004. It was leagues beyond anything else on the market when it came to looks, but to achieve the visuals id Software had to make some rather fundamental changes to the way the game played. Rather than the long, mazelike corridors and wide arenas populated by huge hordes of demonic monsters that made up the first two Doom games, Doom 3 was instead made…

DEVELOPER STARDOCK PUBLISHER STARDOCK PRICE $49.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, RETAIL www.galciv3.com At first appearance Galactic Civilisations III isn’t the prettiest child. Its large, almost goofy interface shouts at you like a Fisher-Price toy sale, and the sometimes the layered info screens aren’t the most intuitive. But like books, looks can be deceiving. As I learnt the core mechanics of planet development, understood the difference between exploring and surveying, and dove in for my first scuffle in combat, it just felt something was missing. But I kept on playing and then, the next time I checked the clock, the sun was rising. Ooohk... so it must be doing something right. Where’d my time go? It went where it always goes when you’re preoccupied - in that pursuance of just one more…

DEVELOPER BLIZZARD PUBLISHER BLIZZARD PRICE FREE-TO-PLAY AVAILABLE AT BATTLE.NET us.battle.net/heroes Heroes of the Storm is a true example of what Blizzard as a developer is best at – taking a popular gaming style or concept, picking and choosing the best parts, streamlining the interface or mechanics and offering a level of accessibility not seen in other games of the type. WarCraft, StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Hearthstone all fall into this development philosophy, each refining, if not redefining their respective genres thanks to the mixture of cherry-picked features and accessibility. Now Heroes of the Storm joins this rather illustrious group of games, as it brings the same ease of play and accessibility to the MOBA. There are no items to be picked up and equipped in Heroes of the…

PRICE $2899 www.aorus.com It seems that Aorus can do no wrong. This off-shoot of Gigabyte has been releasing top-notch gaming laptops since it sprang into creation a couple of years ago, and we can’t think of a single Aorus laptop that we haven’t loved. Obviously there’s a price to pay for such perfection, with their gaming machines tending towards the ritzier end of town, but those looking for a machine that is as mobile as it is powerful tend to have slightly thicker wallets than the rest of us. The 13.9 inch screen might be relatively small, but Aorus has packed it with 3200 x 1800 pixels, making it ludicrously crisp but also leading to readability issues in applications that don’t properly support font scaling. Driving this display is NVIDIA’s…

Another year, another Electronic Entertainment Expo. With attendance spiking for the first time in years, it looks as if the conference which seemed to be approaching irrelevance has become, well… relevant again. To be honest I barely noticed E3, with some exceptions. I was buried in 7 Days To Die for a fortnight. I doubt that differs much for most PC gamers, given the lack of interesting content. The exception would be Fallout 4. I never played the original Fallouts growing up. As mentioned ad nauseum I didn’t play much beyond FPS and RTS games, and isometric RPGs left me vexed - they lacked immersion. Needless to say, that is entirely wrong. When Fallout: New Vegas was approaching I purchased Fallout 3 to see if I could get into it.…

LETTER OF THE MONTH WINS! Write in to PCPP with your rants, considered opinions, and endless run-on sentences of pure awesome. The address is letters@pcpowerplay.com.au.  Each letter read by hand! This Letter of the Month winner scores himself an ARC 100 Solid State Drive courtesy of the fine folks at OCZ! LETTER OF THE MONTH THE FINAL FRONTIER G’day again. Sorry to bug you but i thought you might like to see one of my past projects and my current project. The first one on my YouTube channel took 5 years to complete. I started this before I started playing Eve Online. I no longer have this ship as it was sold to a business man for his kids to play in, lol. https://youtu.be/0OFiL1GDIE4 The next one is…

If you’ve been hearing about the closed beta test of Wargaming’s World of Warships, and been wanting to get in on the action, this is your D-day. The game has now hit open beta. The closed beta slate has been wiped clean (which was a little alarming, we must say), but now you can join the rest of us and see what might be Wargaming’s best free to play title yet. It’s slower and more deliberate than World of Tanks, and a much more polished sim than World of Warplanes, presenting a great take on naval combat before the age of the guided missile. So sign up now, at http://worldofwarships.asia/…

Valve’s digital download service Steam is no longer a mere convenience. It is now so ubiquitous, so instrumental to our gaming hobby, that for all purposes and intents it has become a utility – and you only really think about utilities when they let you down. When the lights go dark. When you turn the tap, and nothing comes out. It’s only then that we recall Immortan Joe’s warning: if you become addicted to something, you will resent its absence. It wasn’t that long ago that Valve revised the Steam terms and conditions to state that by accepting said terms and conditions one waives all rights to participate in a class action lawsuit. Complaints gushed forth, but they sputtered and died away. Then came another two furphy magnets: Steam Greenlight…

DEVELOPER BETHESDA GAME STUDIOS PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS DUE NOVEMBER 10 www.fallout4.com “Literally reshape the wasteland by scavenging and repurposing materials to build new dwellings” War, as RON PERLMAN, the man whose name can only be spelled in capital letters has frequently told us, never changes. While this may be true, how wars happen and what people do to deal with the consequences does change. Fallout 4, the latest game in the acclaimed post-apocalyptic RPG series is the first to show players what the world was like before the war that rendered the Earth a radioactive wasteland. An idyllic suburban happy family with a new child prepares for the day ahead, getting themselves ready in the mirror – an action used to customise either the male or female lead. A man…

DEVELOPER AVALANCHE STUDIOS PUBLISHER SQUARE ENIX DUE DECEMBER 1, 2015 justcause.com/en-au/ Avalanche Studios knows exactly what kind of game fans of Just Cause want. Whilst the first game tried to have a plot and took itself a little seriously at times, the third instalment of the franchise has embraced the over the top silliness of both the premise and the way people play. There is ample evidence of this ridiculously over the top approach evident in all the footage of the game that has so far been released, but the real kicker is announced loudly and proudly in the trailer. Rather than having to find shops to purchase explosives, dashing super-agent Rico Rodriguez is now equipped with infinite C4. That’s right – the weapon that players are always guaranteed to…

DEVELOPER UBISOFT PARIS PUBLISHER UBISOFT DUE TBA ghostrecon.ubi.com I’ll admit I was pretty shocked when I first saw Ghost Recon Wildlands and had concerns that somebody had put an action game into my tactical shooter. But after watching a live play through of one long mission it’s clear now that Wildlands is still a tactical game at heart, it’s just got a few more fun ways to deal with situations when the shit hits the fan. My demonstration was a hands off one in a dark room where I watched four players explore a sizable chunk of the South American republic of Bolivia. The variety of the terrain was immediately apparent and we were assured this is Ubisoft’s biggest open world game ever. Dry salt plains, snowy mountains, lush jungles…

DEVELOPER DESTRUCTIVE CREATIONS PUBLISHER DESTRUCTIVE CREATIONS PRICE $19.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.destructivecreations.pl Credit where credit’s due, Hatred is a masterpiece. Not as a game, mind you, the game itself is a derivative, dull, poorly executed, nihilistic and boring twin stick shooter that doesn’t even manage to capture an ounce of the shock value of Postal, a game released 18 years prior. What Destructive Creations deserves credit for is the way they marketed the game. The developers played both the media and the audience like a harp, finding a niche to exploit and the rumbling undercurrent of dissatisfaction within a certain group of gamers who believe that everything in gaming is going to hell (or maybe more precisely, heaven) in a handbasket because of political correctness. This same niche wedged…

DEVELOPER TOMASZ WACLAWEK PUBLISHER DEVOLVER DIGITAL PRICE $12.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG www.devolverdigital.com/games/view/ronin Proving that Polish videogames need to be known for more than The Witcher, Ronin is a solid, if short, game, with stylish turn-based combat, a strong soundtrack and art design, and some stealth elements which require more brains than the typical sidescroller needs. Ronin puts players in the boots of a motorcycle suit and helmet wearing assassin out for revenge. There’s little else to the story, aside from some perfunctory information on the targets, though given Ronin’s short length and gameplay, this isn’t an issue. Ronin is far from a stealth game; level design makes stealth a limited option, with enemy placement designed to provoke open combat. As soon as players are spotted, a musical cue rings,…

“MicroProse’ Strategic Space Opera Is Rated XXXX!” People love a good headline, especially one that references sex; sex sells. Alan Emrich knew this, which is why he used those words to headline his review of Master of Orion. More than just a playful pun on pornographic pronouncements, the four exes that Emrich used stood for key features that resonated to him from the game: the ability to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. Those four exes are often the phases of gameplay a player undertakes to win; scouting the map, growing their forces, gathering resources, and eliminating enemies. What made Master of Orion and its predecessors, particularly Civilization, in the 4X sub-genre so different from Real-Time-Strategy games is that they often feature advanced diplomacy as opposed to the typical friend/foe demarcations,…

If I have any overriding trait, it is that I am a collector. It is a compulsion that informs much of my life. I collect many things. I have bookshelves filling most of the walls in my flat filled with thousands of DVDs and BDs, a huge number of books and comics, drawers full of videogames, some for platforms I no longer own. I have display cases full of rocks and shells, a number of WWII cigarette lighters, a collection of antique shaving gear, I obsessively collect obscure facts. I am compelled to collect things, not for the owning, but for the sharing. To me, the true joy of any collection, or any passion, is the sharing – introducing people to things they may not have been familiar with, or…