Innehållsförteckning för Issue 255 från PC Powerplay

“While most people think of gaming when they think of the Rift, I can’t wait to see what documentary makers and museums will do” The second - well, kinda third, really, but let’s not get bogged down in semantics – coming of VR may represent a range of cutting edge technologies, but it can still feel at times like the developers were just making shit up as they went along. Remember that rather interesting USB3 issue from my last column? The one where certain controllers on certain boards can’t be seen by Oculus hardware? Well, not only have I lucked out in that regard, but it also turns out that I can’t turn on my PC with any of that hardware already plugged in. I need to turn it on,…

BATTLEFIELD 1 DEVELOPER EA DICE PUBLISHER ELECTRONIC ARTS DUE 21 OCTOBER, 2016 battlefield.com Before the Battlefield series existed – hell, before DICE as we know it existed – there was an ambitious title from Stockholm-based developer Refraction Games called Codename Eagle. This game explored an alternative timeline in 1917, where players could fight as infantry or make use of various vehicles (including planes) to achieve victory throughout the campaign or in multiplayer. Refraction Games was purchased by DICE shortly after the release of Codename Eagle, and the Refraction team was enlisted to help build what would ultimately become Battlefield 1942. Lars Gustavsson worked on Codename Eagle, and has been involved with the Battlefield series since its inception. He’s now the design director on Battlefield 1, and I had the chance…

DEVELOPER ARMATURE STUDIO, COMCEPT PUBLISHER MICROSOFT STUDIOS DUE 13 SEPTEMBER www.recoregame.com Judge ReCore by a 15-minute action-heavy hands-on preview that’s been doing the rounds at press events, and you’ll likely feel underwhelmed. But combine that demo with the knowledge gleaned from a hands-off presentation led by producer Keiji Inafune (Mega Man) and writer Joseph Staten (Halo), and ReCore showcases a depth of gameplay not on offer in such a short play session. The developers are reportedly a mixture of Japanese and American devs, recruited from across the two development studios, in a deliberate meshing of East meets West design principles. As a practical instance of the end result, in ReCore there are anime-like robots, but it’s all grounded in realistic colours. It helps that it looks gorgeous on a 4K…

“After a couple of hours and one ruined savegame I decided Phantaruk had given me all it could give” DEVELOPER POLYSLASH PUBLISHER PLAYWAY S.A. PRICE $11.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM phantaruk.com One thing I think we can definitely say about Phantaruk is that, despite the way it looks from certain angles, it really is a labour of love, a genuine effort from developer Polyslash. It is not, as some have suggested, a shameless “Mockbuster” style grab for cash. Because if it was, why would they have called it Phantaruk and why, of all the games you could clone, would you choose Alien Isolation? Alien Isolation was a summer romance, a game that was praised high and low for a few weeks and then basically disappeared. The art direction was amazing; the…

GIGABYTE 100 SERIES DESIGNARE BOARDS Today’s content creators require finely tuned computers that can produce results fast and efficiently, and with the release of the Designare Motherboards, Gigabyte provides motherboards that meet the needs of these content creators with the right mix of features. With support for DDR4, better compatibility with Intel’s 750 series NVMe SSDs, as well as support for USB 3.1 over USB Type-C, the new Designare motherboards are an ideal choice for high performance PCs that will meet the needs of today’s digital artists and engineers. Gigabyte X99-Designare EX and Z170X-Designare are the models to look out for. With support for a 10-core processor, killer looks, 8 DIMM slots, support for Intel’s 2.5-inch 750 series NVMe SSDs, dual Intel LAN, and the best 3-way SLI/CrossFire multi-graphics support,…

“The included LEDs indicate PCB temperature and fan speed, or just pulse in time with the rest of your system” PRICE $379 www.sapphiretech.com Now this is a strange one – looking at the specs, it’s basically an RX 480 with a tiny corner cut off several of the key components. In fact, it’s actually possible to pick up a baseline Radeon RX 480 for the same price as this card… but that’s generally the case with brand new products, whose price usually drops pretty quickly. If you were to buy a $380 card the day this article was written, the Radeon RX 480 would be the obvious choice, but hopefully by the time you get this piece the price is a friendlier $340 or so. Still, the difference between the…

PRICE $299 www.asus.com.au Yowsers. That’s the first thought that occurred to us when we saw the $300 price tag of this new RX 460 based card from Asus. That’s a rather hefty 36% price increase, but we highly doubt that the Asus card will deliver that much more performance. Sure, it’s part of the Asus Strix range, which is its top-tier product catalogue, but still – that’s one pricey version of the RX 460. What do those extra dollars actually deliver? Firstly there’s support for Asus’ new Aura lighting tech, which synchronises the RGB lighting of the graphics card with any other Asus products that support Aura. It also changes colour depending on certain sound effects. The biggest change though is an increase in the default GPU frequency. The default…

“Is Razer going to release a Pascal equipped version in the next two months, making the 970M version obsolete?” PRICE $2999.95 (256GB), $3299.95 (512GB) www.razerzone.com It’s always hard to recommend products when a new technology has just been released. Take the new Razer Blade for example. It’s packing Nvidia’s excellent GeForce GTX 970M GPU, but we know that the mobile version of Pascal is just around the corner, which delivers up to 40% better performance, and an even better VR experience. If the mobile Pascal wasn’t around the corner, it’d be easy to recommend the Blade for those with fat wallets, but we’re faced with a dilemma – should we wait a couple of months for the inevitable Pascal-equipped version? Sadly we don’t have a crystal ball to see whether…

01 Infinity Stone Rings $80+ • Distributor: Shapeways www.shapeways.com/shops/ jarvis Fans of the Marvel Universe are probably aware of the infinity stones, objects of incredible power, one of which was depicted in the Age of Ultron movie, attached to Vision’s head. Now you can have them for yourself, in rings! POWERED UP: There are several ring designs available, which can each be made in a variety of materials. The stone’s glowing effect is granted by the use of tiny tubes of tritium, a radioactive isotope which is mostly fine – just don’t eat or inject it, okay? PLAYED OUT: With great power comes great responsibility. 02 Toasteroid $100+ • Distributor: Toasteroid toasteroid.com Who hasn’t, at some point, wanted to burn their toast in interesting ways? This is the power that…

“Balfour inferred the game had some kind of special insight into how NASA was designing future colony ships” OUTPOST DEVELOPER SIERRA ON-LINE PERSONALITY BRUCE BALFOUR RELEASED 1994 NUTSHELL Ambitious attempt to create a rich CDROM based hardcore NASA-science-backed colony management sim with amazing pre-rendered video thanks to Autodesk 3D. Resulted in an unfinished mess that made no sense and seemed to have only a passing acquaintance with its own manual and strategy guide. Who misses Windows 3.1? What, nobody? Come on! Still, there was a reason that back in 1994, most games still ran in DOS. Windows 3.1 was more a sort of UI layer over DOS and took up valuable system resources, especially RAM. Yes, DOS was destined to hang around until XP finally ended the dread days of…

FOUR MOST IMPRESSIVE FEATURES: 1. Sapphire R290x O.C GPU 2. AMD Phenom II X6 1095T CPU (Thanks Win10 and Directx 12 for the free upgrade) 3. 46” Sony Bravia Monitor (Just wall mounted today) 4. Custom made Keyboard Board (Thanks Wifey!), has a counter sunk fixed Razor mouse mat. Perfect for the deskless or couch surfer. LAST UPGRADE: The R290x. Replaced HD5570 xfired DREAM UPGRADE: A whole new system but for this rig an SSD would probably give the best performance boost. WHY SO SPECIAL: Built it myself in 2010 and still plays games on high to ultra (Total War: Warhammer runs on Ultra without missing a beat! Now where did I get that from?) 1. We can’t quite put our fingers on it, but something tells us that Jeff…

Thanks to the massive continued commercial success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its expansions, Polish game developer CD Projekt Red has had a bumper financial year (or half year as the case may be) as shown by their recently posted financials showing that the company is now valued at 3.92 billion zloty. It’s quite the Cinderella story for a developer who had nothing but a single PC and a poster at their first E3 back in 2004, but thanks to both the development prowess of the team and clever diversification with GOG.com and GOG Galaxy, the company is now something of a juggernaut. Although the developer doesn’t have another AAA title for release any time soon (aside from the Game of the Year edition of The Witcher 3,…

You might know Gaijin Entertainment more for its wide-in-scope World War 2 tank and flight sim War Thunder, but the company’s just teamed up with Targem Games to bring a new title to Steam’s Early Access - Crossout. In Crossout you battle across post-apocalyptic wastelands in vehicles that you’ve designed and crafted yourself. It’s basically Minecraft on bloody, flaming wheels. “We are delighted to launch Crossout on Steam through Early Access and continue to build our vocal and collaborative community before Open Beta starts”, said Stanislav Skorb , CEO of Targem Games, in today’s release. “Closed Beta players help us shape the direction of development to build the experience that the community demands.” You can get the ‘Westland Warrior’ Early Access pack for $29.99 now.…

“It’s thematically convoluted, fourth-wall breaking and it clearly loathes itself” If you’ve read the indie pages this month, you’ll know that the ending to Dreamfall Chapters left me very satisfied, like the game equivalent of undoing your pants, belching heartily and sinking into the couch after a and generously portioned meal. It got me thinking, and tweeting, about what people expect from game endings and Ben Chandler, the artist on Shardlight by Wadjet Eye Games, tweeted me a bunch of eclectic examples, then recommended I play The Preposterous Awesomeness of Everything. I’d previously noticed the game on Steam and passed on it, because it reminded me of an annoying show my kids watch called “The Flamin’ Thongs” but Ben knows his adventures. It basically is The Flamin’ Thongs only with…

DEVELOPER TARSIER STUDIOS PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO DUE 2017 little-nightmares.com Announced at Gamescom, Little Nightmares is an eerily grim adventure focussed on a child’s imagination and fear of the unknown. Much like Playdead’s similarly dark platformer Inside, the world of Little Nightmares is disturbing and mysterious. Players experience the world as a young girl named Six, trapped in an underwater labyrinth and searching for a way out. Whether the maze is a part of the child’s imagination – or nightmare – is left unsure. In the real world, children don’t understand most trivial parts of life, creating ridiculously hyperbolic understandings of everyday objects like an oven or even the dark. The choice of a child protagonist ties into level design as household objects appear tall and imposing, and nearly everything is…

“AMD has really taken an axe to the GTX 460 – it’s basically half a GTX 470, yet costs just 30% less” PRICE $209 www.sapphiretech.com Nvidia might have the high-end stitched up, but AMD is widely acclaimed for its budget and mainstream offerings. The brand new Radeon RX 460 is the latest in its new RX range, and it’s the cheapest of the lot – we’re talking the same price as a (fairly expensive) night on the town. However, thanks to the Australia IT tax, we’re paying twice that of our Trump-loving cousins, who only have to pay $109. This puts the RX 460 into a slightly different league in Australia, where it struggles to offer the value for money that our overseas brethren get to enjoy. At this price,…

PRICE $415 www.asus.com.au Despite being part of Asus’ Strix range, it’s nice to see that they haven’t given it an outlandish price increase when compared to the – albeit expensive – Sapphire Radeon RX 470. However, with Gainward just releasing a basic GeForce GTX 1060 for $299, and other versions of Nvidia’s mainstream card coming in for around $389, Asus’ premium version of the RX 470 is left in a very tough position when it comes to value for money. As the benchmarks show, it’s outclassed in DirectX11 titles, and also lacks some of the more advanced features supported by NVIDIA. Asus claims an overlocked boost clock of 1270MHz, but ours topped out at just 1175MHz during our overclock stress test. It’s the first card we’ve seen to not deliver…

PRICE $799 www.gigabyte.com.au Gigabyte recently introduced its Xtreme Gaming Range at Computex, following in the footsteps of the likes of Asus’ Republic of Gamers brand. It’s meant to separate premium products from their general range, and the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Xtreme Gaming is the first graphics card we’ve seen from this new brand. We have to say it’s appropriately named, as it contains some rather special extras unique to this card. The biggest change is the use of a binning process to hand-select the very best GPU. Binning refers to testing all computer chips, and then taking out the top-performing samples, and Gigabyte has used this process on this card. They call it “Gauntlet GPU Sorting” and it’s resulted in a card that has a very healthy factory overclock.…

PRICE TBA Ocz.com Until now, you could only buy the newest and fastest NVMe SSDs from Samsung, with its 950, and Intel with its 750 series. OCZ entering this scene is great for choice, and hopefully pricing. OCZ’s product is in effect a Toshiba product, branded as OCZ. Capacities cover a wide initial range, with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB SSDs available in the RD 400 series. It comes as an M.2 stick attached to a PCIe card. You can easily unscrew the M.2 and install just that if you like and your motherboard supports it. Performance is identical whichever installation you choose. We benched the OCZ RD 400 at 2280MB/s read, and 1360 MB/s write. Benching the Samsung 950 in the same test rig yielded speeds around 100MB/s slower,…

“By tacking on a narrative framework, ADOM became more than the sum of its procedural parts” I love Rogue-like games. Always have. One of my earliest memories of playing games is becoming fixated with the idea of beating Nethack – somehow making it all the way down to the bottom of the dungeon and then making my way back up again. I loved discovering the little Easter eggs hidden in the game, like being able to wish at wells for Stormbringer, Excalibur, Hrotti, Gungnir, Caladbolg, Colada or any of the other magic weapons from the fiction or fictionalised history that I was obsessed with as an 11-year-old. Then, of course having to contend with the powers and drawbacks such a weapon afforded me (pro-tip – never accidentally bump into a…

When Nvidia debuted the Pascal GPU series it shifted to the smaller 16nm finFET process. That enabled far higher frequencies for similar power consumption, and meant that GPU designers no longer had to depend on cramming more cores onto the die to achieve enough of a gain over the previous generation to make it worthwhile. The end result is that Pascal GPUs offer a sizeable increase in performance over Maxwell. Even the low-end GTX 1060 from the new range is roughly equal to the GTX 980 – which until now was the premium card to have. And, because these new mobile GPUs are almost identical to the desktop parts, whenever you read about a new Pascal-based gaming laptop you won’t have to do any mental adjustments to take into account…

My God I feel old. But I’m also kind of excited, because the Civilization VI 25th Anniversary Edition is packed with cool stuff. • Copy of Sid Meier’s Civilization VI game and all bonus digital content found in the Digital Deluxe Edition; • 25th Anniversary Edition premium packaging; • Exclusive 25th Anniversary commemorative coin set with display case; • “Civilization Through the Years” 100-Page hardcover art book; • Aztec Civilization Pack pre-order bonus “The vitality of Civilization is in the new ideas that each design team brings to the game as well as the passion and feedback from an incredible community” said Sid Meier, Director of Creative Development at Firaxis Games, in today’s release. “We hope players enjoy the vibrant living world and the new features the team has created…

“You can spin it any way you like, but Sean Murray lied to the gaming public and got away with it.” Was No Man’s Sky originally supposed to have some sort of multiplayer? Yes. There are several clues that suggest this. The very name of the game is a reference to No Man’s Land, a hotly contested region between two battlefronts. The art on the front of the box shows the player staring in wonder at the vista of an alien world, as what appear to be two other player-controlled ships dogfight overheard. This implies that at least three players can blast it out in a given instance. Now, we all know that the imagery on the front of a game box is merely an aspirational artistic impression, like the…

ELIOSI’S HUNT DEVELOPER TDZ GAMES PUBLISHER TDZ GAMES DUE 29 SEPTEMBER http://www.tdzgames.com/en This top-down sci-fi shooter platformy thing combines fast paced challenging gameplay with beautiful bright graphics. You play as wannabe bounty hunter Eliosi as he embarks on his first bounty contract. Monster and level designs look particularly unique with a vibrant colourful tone, as enemies vary from humanoid gun-wielding guards in an industrial space station to spiked shell turtles and scorpion-riding tribal men. There’s also a heavy emphasis on platforming as the player navigates through various terrains. LANCE A LOT DEVELOPER ROCKET HAMMER PUBLISHER ROCKET HAMMER DUE 30 SEPTEMBER http://rockethammer.com/ A rocket-boosted jousting multiplayer indie where players battle each other by pushing one another off small islands in the sky, with the last remaining knight being the winner. As…

“According to my guide, The Fractured But Whole’s pooping mini-game boasts “total arse control”” DEVELOPER UBISOFT SAN FRANCISCO PUBLISHER UBISOFT DUE 6 DECEMBER http://southpark.ubisoft.com/game/en-au/home/ True story: the Nosulus Rift is real. That’s the fart-producing peripheral that Ubisoft is using to market South Park: The Fractured But Whole, which takes a stab at the current virtual reality zeitgeist. It was on hand to be used at Gamescom, but I wasn’t game to try it. In retrospect, and after discussions with a peer who did (and said he could still “taste it the next day”), this was a wise move on my part, because the opening of The Fractured But Whole is quite flatulent. Set mere days after the events of The Stick of Truth, this South Park sequel ditches fantasy roleplaying…

“As they died, the raging winds picked up their bodies and flung them around with cinematic impact” DEVELOPER THE COALITION PUBLISHER MICROSOFT STUDIOS DUE 11 OCTOBER http://gearsofwar.com Gears of War has had a somewhat shaky relationship with the PC. The original Gears of War was part of Microsoft’s ill-fated Games for Windows – Live platform, while its two sequels and Judgment prequel weren’t even released on PC. Gears of War Ultimate Edition made its way to PC earlier this year and, as long as you had Windows 10, it only became properly playable after patches fixed some hamstringing launch issues. Gears of War 4 is in a similar boat – landing on Windows 10 PCs later this year – but, according to creative director Chuck Osieja, it should have a…

“Bruce seems to have an identity crisis as the player is offered almost sociopathic options” DEVELOPER TELLTALE GAMES PUBLISHER TELLTALE GAMES PRICE $24.99 (FULL SEASON) AVAILABLE AT STEAM telltale.com/series/batman The best Batman stories aren’t those about punching the villain of the week in the face. The best stories are the ones that see Batman and Bruce Wayne as masks for each other and ask questions about how far a man can push himself, how far he can transcend his limitations, and how deep into the rabbit hole he can go before he becomes as much of a monster as the criminals he hunts. The first episode of Telltale’s Batman series tries to tell such a story, but thanks to some wildly erratic characterization and awkward action, it comes off as…

PRICE $3199 www.asus.com.au The moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. Nvidia launched its new GeForce GTX 1070 desktop part about two months ago, which is usually about the waiting time between the desktop and laptop version. Well, Asus were the first to get us a sample of the new mobile version of the GeForce GTX 1070, and boy is it a killer. First, the machine itself. It’s a middleweight, at 2.34kg with the battery and a 15.6 inch screen. It’s built to look like a gamer’s machine, though we weren’t fans of the keyboard or touchpad. For some weird reason, many of our keys were in the wrong spot, making it rather difficult to type. The screen is decent, though not up to the quality of Razer’s…

PRICE $399 www.msi.com Installing a new Nvidia card is easy – just plug it in and it’s good to go, without the need to reinstall drivers. Not so with the RX 460. We had to reinstall the drivers, and then reinstall MSI’s factory overclocking tool to get it to work. It took us about an hour to figure out why the MSI factory overclocking tool wasn’t working, before trying the full driver reinstall. Once again AMD shows its weakness when it comes to drivers. Once again we see a card that is more expensive than the competing GeForce GTX 1060 – AMD has really managed to screw up its Australian pricing. Why pay $80 more for a card that is 10 to 15% slower? At least MSI has endowed this…

PRICE $150 www.coolermaster.com At this year’s Computex, we were present when CoolerMaster unveiled its brand new range of Masterliquid All-in-One water coolers, and one such product was the Masterliquid Pro 120. Unlike other AIO coolers, which are simply rebrands built by a couple of other companies, the entirety of this model is built by CoolerMaster, giving them total control over every facet. The new Masterliquid Pro 120 is a total overhaul of CoolerMaster’s existing range of All-in-Ones, bringing several major improvements to the table, the major one being its new “FlowOp” design. Put basically, this term means they’ve looked at every area that impacts the flow of water, and have improved it. First and foremost is a huge increase in the size of the water block. According to the specs,…

“The MG248Q is the perfect display for serious gamers who don’t have serious amounts of cash lying around” PRICE $499 www.asus.com/au If you want a seriously good gaming display, arguably there’s only one brand to consider – Asus. For the last couple of years their displays have delivered the best gaming performance, with beautiful colour quality, high speed refresh rates and most come equipped with G-Sync. There’s just one small hitch – these displays are generally bloody expensive. As one of the most affordable gaming displays Asus has ever released, the MG248 aims to change that perception. And it manages to do so too, and even better: it does it without cutting too many corners. It might be around twice the price of the most basic 24-inch displays, but basic…