PC Powerplay #245 November 2015

It’s reached the time of the year when all of the events and releases are taking place. We ran our Upgrade Australia event in September, then there was the EB Expo in early October and in a few weeks it’s time for PAX. There was also Oz Comic-Con in the middle, with a mix of all kinds of good nerd shit ranging from comics (obviously), to anime, games and cosplay. The lead up to the busy Christmas release time is a hell of a thing, with everyone putting on their big song and dance numbers to try and raise all the attention they can. Upgrade Australia is our event, run a couple of times a year to show a select group of readers all the latest and greatest in the…

DANIEL WILKS Clicked on random things @drwilkenstein MALCOLM CAMPBELL Asked for time off BENNETT RING Lost his broadband @bennettring JAMES COTTEE Eulogised Kojima @j_cottee MEGHANN O’NEILL Remembered crying @firkraags JAMES O’CONNOR Prepared for PAX @jickle BEN MANSILL Won a race NATHAN LAWRENCE Doomed a free-runner HEIDI KEMPS Punched Robots DAVID HOLLINGWORTH Coughed ALEX MANN Prepared to die CAMERON FERRIS Wore many hats @pcpowerplay SEAN FLETCHER Was confused by Blood Bowl…

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 a sweet Tyon gaming mouse, thanks to Roccat! LETTER OF THE MONTH BAT DANCE I just read that after months of it being not available on Steam that Warner Bros. are finally going to make Batman: Arkham Knight available for sale again. Personally I don’t think it matters if Rocksteady have finally fixed all of the bugs with the game. It’s too late to make it available again. People have already been screwed by the game not only with how buggy it was on PC but also because…

Matthew Schmidt: Internet in Australia is not good - and for years when people speak up about it they’re shunned by both developers and their fellow gamers with calls of ‘move somewhere with internet’ or ‘no one cares about people out in the sticks.’ The problem being of course - Australia is massive and most of it is sticks. So for Australias lead PC Gaming magazine to bookend the latest issue with the Letter of the Month by Andre and A Series of Tubes by Wilks is just awesome to see. Kudos to you guys. Hopefully those who have excellent internet and are happy will at least ease off those who don’t. Luke Evans: My thoughts are I didn’t win the sub comp. I’m really keen for new Deus Ex,…

My inspiration for this project came from watching a lot of programs about space exploration in the 60s and 70s as well as Battlestar Galactica. I really wanted to try and capture that look. FOUR MOST IMPRESSIVE ELEMENTS: 1) The timber used was all reused recycled timber from railroad sleepers. 2) The custom PC mounting method. The design originally intended to have a case inside but when I measured up my ctower I forgot to include clearance for cables! 3) Three monitors, and BenQ GW2400W and two Samsung syncmasters powered by a Sapphire AMD Radeon 7800 may have the most grunt ever, but they do create an eye-pleasing symmetry. 4) What could be more impressive than a missile switch!? LAST UPGRADE: A 120 GB Kingston SSDNow 300V. DREAM UPGRADE: I…

Asrock’s better known for its motherboards, but it’s now making a run at the networking market. It’s new G10 router is a 4T4R 802.11a/b/g/n/ac device aimed squarely at gamers, and promises to deliver “stable and lag less online gameplay.” On paper, though, the G10 sounds good. It boasts beamforming for less power output over wireless, multiuser MIMO, and even Internet of Things technology - it has a range of infrared transceivers and receivers inside that can learn the codes of TVs and game consoles, which then lets users control those devices from the Asrock Router app on phones or tablets. That’s actually a pretty cool feature. The biggest feature, though, is Gaming Boost, which promises intelligently manage network traffic so that your gaming - whether on PC or console -…