PC Powerplay #247 January 2016

What a month. Every Christmas period sees some heavyweight games duking it out for marketplace superiority, but this year is exceptionally dangerous when it comes to wallet casualties. In the space of only a couple of weeks we saw the release of Fallout 4 (a game I have now sunk about 120 hours into and still have quite a ways to go when it comes to actually finishing the main quest), Star Wars Battlefront, CoD: Blops III, StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, Just Cause 3 and a few others. It’s crazy, not just for the sheer number of huge, hotly anticipated AAA titles coming out in such a short time, but for the fact that so many of them are in direct competition with each other,…

DANIEL WILKS Made three magazines @drwilkenstein MALCOLM CAMPBELL Made four magazines BENNETT RING Cracked Star Wars puns @bennettring JAMES COTTEE Paid tribute to Roddy Piper @j_cottee MEGHANN O’NEILL Cried @firkraags JAMES O’CONNOR Waited for Christmas @jickle BEN MANSILL Got older NATHAN LAWRENCE Got even beardier CHRIS PIRINA Started interning DAVID HOLLINGWORTH Roamed the wasteland ALEX MANN Went back to Melbourne CAMERON FERRIS Forgot his computer @pcpowerplay SEAN FLETCHER Got a cold…

LETTER OF THE MONTH PAY OUT Hello, I am an American Payday 2 player. Your payday 2 review score is high and very visible on Metacritic’s site. Because of this, I would like to request Payday 2 be re-reviewed if your team has the time. Microtransactions and very unpopular decisions regarding the Completely Overkill Pack has ruined the reputation of the game at the time. Lowering the critics’ Metacritic score might be some way to get the attention of the developers that the game has taken a turn for the worse. Steven Snyder Hi Steven – we’ve considered doing re-reviews for patches but unfortunately, due to the nature of magazines they aren’t really feasible. We work on a long lead time, so by the time we can get around to…

4 MOST IMPRESSIVE FEATURES Race Rig: - Fully kitted Fanatec race hardware including base, Formula and GT rims, pedals and shifter. - Modded Thrustmaster TH8RS shifter as my handbrake. Nice and close to the wheel for easy Dirt Rally slidin’ action. - Bucket race seat. For that authentic feel :) - Siminstruments Dash. Gives me all the telemetry data as I am racing. Revs, lap times, tyre temps, you name it. Main Rig: - Full mixing desk - Mic on boom arm. Spider-web holder to cut down on the surrounding noise. - 30” Dell in the middle. - Overclocked 3770K LAST UPGRADE: Race Rig: Yesterday! Dropped a i5 6600K into a Gigabyte Gaming 7 Mobo, G-Skill DDR4 and water cooled using the Corsair Hydro H110i GTX. Main Rig: Nvidia GTX…

Lenovo and Razer are, all of sudden, best friends. The relationship’s starting out pretty chilled, but it’s going to ramp up to something pretty interesting over the next year or two. The two announced their partnership over the weekend by revealing a prototype Lenovo Razer branded gaming desktop at DreakHack Winter 2015, ahead of a full unveiling at CES. The partnership is going to deliver a lot more devices, too. For now Lenovo and Razer seem content to simply co-brand Lenovo Y Series gaming machines (most likely with Razer peripherals and a lot of green branding), and to merge Lenovo’s proven supply chain with Razer’s gaming know-how. But in the future, and the companies are looking to produce entirely new designs and products, focused around immersive gaming experiences.…

You’ve got to love modders. Fallout 4’s barely been out, and already tweaks, mods, and community fixes are starting to appear. Modders are tireless in their drive to create new content for the games they love, and Steam Workshop user TPangolin has just created a whole new civ to add to Civilization V. Even better - it’s all about indigenous Australians. The Kimberley Aboriginals civ lets you take on the role of Jandamarra, the leader of the Kimberley People. He was a famous guerrilla fighter, and the civilisation includes units like Trackers and the specialised Trepanger Camp, which is a special kind of harbour. And if you really want to rewrite history, you can also get Tpangolin’s Australia Civilisation, and really show those settlers what’s what!…