Innehållsförteckning för #241 July 2015 från PC Powerplay

Back in the 1980s, Games Workshop used to make games that didn’t feature elves or space marines. They made boardgames, wargames, even the odd RPG, and the company was a vastly different beast. They wore their hearts on their sleeves, and were quite happy to borrow inspiration from all kinds of sources. Dark Future was one such a gestalt. It was a clever, grid-and-miniatures based game of road war between elite ‘operators’ and the gangs that preyed on the weak in a kind of noir cyberpunk future. The models for the game were all diecast car scale, so on top of the ones that came in the starter set, it was easily expandable. I still have a copy on the top of my book shelf. Now, possibly inspired by the…

AEDERYN’S CRADLE DEVELOPER MOJO GAME STUDIOS PUBLISHER MOJO GAME STUDIOS DUE 2016 Mojogamestudios.com An open world fantasy adventure that sees an exile caught ‘twixt the struggles of man, nature and the gods. It may sound well trodden but the game promises to deliver a new and compelling experience thanks to the mouthful that is skill based strategic first-person melee combat (*wipes sweat off brow*). Combine this with the fact that character progression is governed by exploration and discovery, or that equipment augmentations customise how said combat plays out and you can consider our interest piqued. VECTOR THRUST DEVELOPER TIMESYMMETRY PUBLISHER ICEBERG INTERACTIVE DUE JULY Time-symmetry.com/games/vector-thrust A flight combat game with a pretty neat celshaded aesthetic in tow. Not only will Vector Thrust feature quick action game modes and a lengthy…

DEVELOPER HAMMERFALL PUBLISHING PUBLISHER HAMMERFALL PUBLISHING DUE Q2 2015 www.warhammer40kregicide.com When you’ve played chess on and off for years, the format of Warhammer 40K: Regicide can take a little getting used to. On the surface the game resembles the classic 1988 PC game, Battle Chess, and indeed the game does include a straight up chess mode, but the real meat of the game comes from the melding of chess and turn-based strategy that forms the core of the promised campaign. The current early access build doesn’t give players access to all of the variations of the Ork and Space Marine factions, but it does allow players to come to grips with the initially confusing but potentially wonderful hybrid combat. When it comes to unit movement, Regicide is just like chess.…

DEVELOPER GURU GAMES PUBLISHER STEAM PRICE $14.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM gurugames.se/games/magnetic Magnetic: Cage Closed, begins auspiciously inside a prison cell, where the player’s first choice is to proceed, or die. From there, the nameless character is taken via shuttle to a gaol-cum-weapons testing facility. Two voices accompany you through the game; the prison’s Warden, and its resident head-doctor. Why? Because you’re a criminal, for some reason, testing weapons to use in a nuclear war of some kind. The plot makes a few nods to experiments by Pavlov and Skinner, mocking the pointlessness of it all, even asking “would you kindly put down the magnet gun?”. While it lampshades the conceits natural to videogames, merely highlighting these necessary contrivances doesn’t make its useless story any more effective; it only undermines…

DEVELOPER NEOCORE GAMES PUBLISHER NEOCORE GAMES PRICE $14.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.neocoregames.com The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing trilogy finally comes to an end, but after the high point that was TIAVH2, the final installment comes more as a whimper than a bang. There’s still a lot to like about the plucky ARPG, but a lack of balance, some odd design choices and numerous hints that there may have been some cut and paste between the second and third games lend some unwelcome tarnish to the experience. This time around, Van Helsing and his ghostly sidekick, Katarina, are on the trail of former mysterious ally turned even more mysterious supervillain, Prisoner 7, of course killing monsters throughout Borgovia and travelling through the Ink, the strange substance that forms the…

PRICE $599 www.galaxstore.net This is the first graphics card we’ve reviewed with the Galax brand name, and it couldn’t be more different to the budget offerings we’ve previously associated with Galaxy graphics cards. This is one serious piece of hardware, redesigned from the ground up to extract every possible ounce of sweat out of the GTX 970 GPU at its heart. Removing this card from its packaging reveals an absolute whopper of a card. It’s using a new 10 layer PCB, reinforced by a sturdy backplate. It’s much bigger than normal GTX 970 PCBs, apparently to deliver cleaner electrical paths. The 8+2 phase VRM should deliver best-in-class power stability, while the huge Triple Force cooler is as heavy as it is sexy. A total of seven, yes seven, heatpipes suck…

01 Flyte Price: $250 • Distributor: Flyte flyte.se Wizardry and science combine to bring you this levitating light, which reached its $80,000 funding goal, and then some, blasting through to the better part of 600k. POWERED UP: Magnetic magic offers the levitating effect, and the power for the light itself it is hurled wirelessly through the air. Tesla would be proud. The wood is also sustainably sourced, and light is provided from LEDs rated at 50,000 hours. PLAYED OUT: An expensive lamp, which you probably want to avoid bumping, lest you have $250 of broken glass on the floor. 02 The Wild Hunt Price: $650 • Distributor: Musterbrand www.musterbrand.com Though ’s a , Musterbrand is one of our new favourite online stores. It’s all about gaming themed clothing, but generally…

In mid-May I moved house. It’s wasn’t a long move – I only went from Dulwich Hill to Camperdown, but it has been one of the most disruptive experiences in memory for one simple reason. The Internet, or more precisely, the lack thereof. In all my previous moves, I had the Internet connected either before I moved in to the new place or immediately afterwards. Due to a perfect storm of unfortunate events this is not going to be the case for this move. First, the previous tenant in the flat I’ve moved into didn’t connect a home phone line, so the available line pairings that could normally be switched on in a day or so are no longer available, necessitating a technician to come out and do it. Normally…

Hey guys I figured I’d show my setup, which is primarily setup for Flight Simulator. I took this new setup from under the desk with the idea to basically piss the wife off, given that she spends so much more on her clothes. The cases are Antec skeletons which have been given a custom paint job to look the part. They are mounted on aluminium racks which I made to keep these units out of the wife’s reach. The second PC is networked to support the main one with background programs like weather and navigation. The main computer is run by an i7 2600k @4.5ghz on water, alongside with a HD6970, also water cooled. Flight Simulator runs pretty happily on this hardware. The radiator, fans and reservoir are on a…

So the final specification and onsale date for Oculus has finally been announced. Cause for celebration? Well, yes, it is. Anyone who has tried the dev kit versions of Oculus Rift has swum in the deep end of Lake Kool Aid. It is, without hyperbole, game changing. But how will gamers use it? Will it be the primary gaming device – or one that’s only pulled out for special occasions? If you had asked me that a year ago I would have forecast a time ahead when we, the hardest core gamers, only run a small cheap and basic monitor for desktop and 2D use, but how wrong that would have been. Because the last few months have seen an exciting and unexpected shake-up of the whole monitor scene. Having…

As someone who has reviewed a lot of games, “enjoyment” can be a tricky thing to quantify. I’ve also often wondered if overall perception is skewed based on what most engages the player’s attention. So, if there is something that niggles you about a game, you might be inclined to find examples of more stuff you don’t like. Or, if there is something about the game that you love, nothing else bothers you as much as it otherwise would. For example, I loved the combat and characters in Dragon Age 2 so much that I had quite an indulgent attitude towards its “one cave”. In Dragon Age Inquisition, traversing more, and more (and more) desert left me too grumpy to even talk to most of my companions. Who is Josephine…

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege DEVELOPER UBISOFT MONTREAL PUBLISHER UBISOFT DUE 2015 Rainbow6.ubi.com Five hostage-takers are barricaded inside the press area on Air Force One, but nobody believes the pen is mightier than the sword in this room on this day. Their fortifications were hastily arranged, but they remain nevertheless robust and widespread. Doorways are shielded with wooden barricades, crudely nail-gunned to the frame. ‘Sledge’ will make short work of these, once he’s clambered up the ladder onto the plane’s wing. His Thor-hammer can breach most fortifications, and he’s heavy enough to absorb at least a couple of bullets if there’s a gun pointed his way on the other side. Watch him trample the roll of barbed wire laid at the foot of the door like it was a patch…

DEVELOPER OXIDE GAMES PUBLISHER STARDOCK ENTERTAINMENT DUE TBA www.ashesofthesingularity.com When I enter Stardock’s booth at this year’s GDC, I’m serenaded by a chorus of non-stop pew-pews. A massive screen before me is teeming with spaceships, thousands of them, nestled between great mountain ranges and green valleys, all firing off missiles and lasers and streams of gunfire. Stardock CEO Brad Wardell himself greets me, informing me that what I’m looking at is only the smallest map that Oxide Games’ upcoming RTS Ashes of the Singularity has to offer. The size of this map is comparable to that of the San Francisco Bay Area; bigger map sizes will apparently rival the size of mainland Australia. “The name ‘Ashes of the Singularity’ refers to the technological singularity,” Wardell explains as we sit down…

DEVELOPER CD PROJEKT RED PUBLISHER CD PROJEKT RED PRICE $59.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG.COM, RETAIL www.thewitcher.com After the thrilling start of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, the pared back beginning to The Witcher 3 may come as a bit of a shock to gamers. Rather than immediately being pitched headfirst into a tale of betrayal and intrigue, the player is instead introduced to Geralt’s life: first training his ward, Ciri at Kaer Morhen, the Witcher base and stronghold, then searching the countryside for his long lost love, Yennifer, the sorceress who smells of lilac and gooseberries. This slower, more mannered introduction to the game is fitting with the overall themes of the third and final game in the Witcher saga, with Geralt turning his back on his misguided…

DEVELOPER SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO GAMES PRICE $69.95 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, RETAIL www.projectcarsgame.com Racing simulators have long been a staple of PC gaming. Not content with the likes of Gran Turismo on consoles, petrolheads have often turned to PC racing sims with offerings of richer physics, huge multiplayer grids and a greater selection of wheels and other hardware available, designed to make them feel as close to the real track as possible. Project CARS is a new entry to this world of sim racing. Developed by a team with a history of creating landmark racing sims like 2006’s GTR2, Slightly Mad have recently been focused on creating racing fun for everyone with the Need for Speed Shift series. Project CARS is their return to creating a racing game…

DEVELOPER ROLL7 PUBLISHER DEVOLVER DIGITAL PRICE $US12.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.notahe.ro Not a Hero is pitched as a “2.25D [not a typo] cover-based indie shooter” but… well, that’s actually a pretty damn apt description. When we fired it up for the first time, the easiest comparison that came to mind was that Not a Hero is basically a side-scrolling version of the top-down Hotline Miami. That’s a bit of a simplification, but it gives you an idea of the type of game you’re playing: 8-bit visuals on a (mostly) 2D plane with gratuitous violence and over-the-top characters. For instance, one of these characters equates to an anthropomorphic bunny who also happens to be a mayoral candidate (of course) giving out nefarious missions to a bloodthirsty vagrant. If you can imagine…

We’re trying something a little different this month in PC PowerPlay’s tech section, by taking one of the year’s most anticipated PC titles and putting it through its paces on a variety of GPUs and CPUs. The game in question is Grand Theft Auto V, and to say PC gamers have been itching to scratch their trigger fingers in its epic open world is like saying the media beat up around the hot coffee mod was only slightly sensationalistic. We’ve had to wait two long years for the PC version of Rockstar’s Magnum Opus to land on the one, true gaming platform, but the excruciating wait has been worth it. Past PC ports of Grand Theft Auto have been rough to say the least, but Rockstar has truly outdone itself…

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 Turtle Beach Grip 300 Gaming Mouse Kit! LETTER OF THE MONTH WHO WATCHES THE WATCHDOGS I recently purchased a copy of watch dogs and found that the key had been used, this is the response I got. I thought you might like to let your readers know how willing Ubisoft is to hand out their personal details. Apologies for the late response, We have checked the CD key code that you have sent to us and we found that your CD key is registered to…

If you’re getting a little tired of Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth, this will be news to your genetically modified or entirely cybernetically-replaced ears. A new expansion pack - Rising Tide - is coming later this year. There’s no set date, but the expansion will be available in Spring, and $49.95. Thankfully, it sounds like it’s packed with content... Building floating settlements and accessing natural resources hidden beneath the seas of an alien planet, while alien beasts with unique abilities inhabit the water and challenge players in distinctive ways. Shaping the diplomatic landscape by upgrading traits, changing diplomatic relationships, and leveraging the benefits of your allies, all with political capital. Unlocking a dynamic set of Diplomatic Traits while activating different combinations in response to the changing world. Playing as one…

As this magazine goes to press, we stand perilously close to the time meniscus that separates us from the revelations of E3. Of all the things to look forward to, this year one question is gnawing at me more than any other: What is Chris Taylor up to? This human dynamo of RTS design has been observing near total radio silence for months, and it’s been driving me up the wall. The designer of Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, and the founder of Gas Powered Games, found himself in serious trouble a couple of years ago. With no new projects in the pipeline, he tried and failed to kick-start an RTS/RPG set in the days of the cave men. Just when it looked like the lights would go out at…

DEVELOPER ROCKSTEADY PUBLISHER WARNER DUE NOW www.batmanarkhamknight.com The action ramps up ever higher in the last installment of Rocksteady’s Batman franchise. There is a point in the 45 minute Arkham Knight session I enjoyed early in the week where I had no damn idea what I was doing. I’d summoned my trusty Batmobile, and a car-flashed past, something about The Riddler popped up, and so I decided to chase it. The Batmobile moves fast, and if - like me - you’re not too familiar with the PS4 controller, it’s actually really easy to accidentally convert the vehicle into tank mode. So I’m speeding along, every now and then deploying a big gun and turning into a quad-wheeled tank, before speeding off again. There are other cars on the street, but…

DEVELOPER RED BEAT PUBLISHER RED BEAT DUE EARLY ACCESS space-rogue.com It would be easy to dismiss Space Rogue as a clone of FTL. The two games have a lot in common. You zip from planet to planet in your ship, shuffling your crew around the various quarters to perform tasks, make repairs or control stations, combat enemy ships by targeting their various systems with your armaments and fight off boarding parties, but there are enough significant differences to allow both games to stand strong. The early access code for Space Rogue shows that the game has a much more leisurely pace than the more frantic FTL. There’s no flotilla chasing you, giving the player more time to explore the various planets in the system, mine planets for Tritanium, the multipurpose…

DEVELOPER MACHINEGAMES PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS PRICE $34.95 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM, RETAIL www.wolfenstein.com The standalone expansion is slowly becoming the go to means of extending a franchise without committing finances to a full blown sequel. It’s a welcome move for the most part – naturally there are some standalone expansions that aren’t much more than simple cash grabs based on a popular modern property (we’re looking at you Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious), but there are also wonderful releases like the ape crazy bonkers 80s action spectacular, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, and this old-school standalone prequel to last year’s sleeper FPS hit Wolfenstein: The New Order. Set immediately prior to the prologue of The New Order, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood once again places players in the shoes…

DEVELOPER HAMMERSPACE GAMES PUBLISHER SURPRISE ATTACK PRICE $5.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.quarriesofscred.com Some games make a name with flashy graphics, an amazing storyline or a host of subtle mechanics that breathe life into the world. Quarries of Scred is not such a game. It’s a game predicated on simple, beautifully executed ideas and an immediate feedback loop that can get you hooked on game after game, even when death and restarting is an inevitability. Looking like something that would have been a hit on the Apple IIe or Spectrum, Quarries nonetheless has more than enough going for it to keep any player with an interest in retro-gaming involved for hours. Players take the role of Bob, a bad miner who is forced to mine as punishment for his bad…

DEVELOPER CHASE GROZDINA, DAVID FLEIG PUBLISHER OPEN REALMS LLC PRICE $9.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM forgequestrpg.com Though still in early access, Forge Quest, a dungeon crawling, voxelbased hack and slash ARPG looks extremely polished. It’s also charming as hell, not simply because of the blocky world but for the humourous back story as well. Set in the land of Schmoop, players take the role of a licensed adventurer. The license is important, because adventuring is what keeps the economy buoyant. You see, many years before, the constant battles between good and bad became so omnipresent that the entire economy relied on them – blacksmiths repaired weapons and armour, henchmen were in high demand, as were healers, potion makers, poisoners and the like. When good finally overcame evil, the economy collapsed.…

PRICE $218 www.turtlebeach.com We’ve tested plenty of Turtle Beach headsets, but this is the first keyboard from this premium sound manufacturer. Like other Turtle Beach products it comes with quite the hefty price tag, but does it have what it takes to compete in such a crowded segment? More importantly, can it knock the Corsair K70 RGB off its perch as our favourite high-end keyboard? It’s nice to see Turtle Beach stick with Cherry MX keys in the Impact 700, but users are limited to Brown keys; there’s no other option available. Each keystroke feels exactly like every other Cherry MX Brown keyboard, and they’re backlit with a red light. While the light intensity can be adjusted, there’s no disco-like ability to setup multiple colours. We do like the finish…

A few years ago a revolution came along that helped push PCs to the next level. Solid State Drives (SSD) made everything faster, and because of no moving parts, more reliable. Initially they were expensive though – and didn’t offer much in terms of storage space compared to standard platter based hard drives. But today however, prices have come down and modern SSDs have enough capacity to keep most people happy. Now, as SSDs are more affordable and commonplace we can look to using them to even further enhance our system. One such way is to use a second SSD drive to provide data protection through mirroring. Commonly referred to as RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) level 1, mirroring is one of the simplest forms of data protection available.…