PC Powerplay January 2015

It’s been a long circuitous route but I’m back on the magazine that started my career in magazines. Many moons ago, when the Earth was young and my waistline was much smaller I was given my first full time magazine job as Tech Editor of this magazine under then Editor, Anthony Fordham. It was a wild ride. I came in just in time for the major switch between PCI and AGP, the emergence of GeForce cards as the graphics baseline to reckon with, AMD and Intel breached the 1Ghz CPU barrier, Windows XP became a thing, and I had to cut a slot in the back of my PC case at work so I could fit in my ridiculous surfboard of a Voodoo 5 card. Since then I’ve bounced around…

DANIEL WILKS Got a comfier chair. @drwilkenstein MALCOLM CAMPBELL Wept into his chevrons. OLIVER BARLES Smiles like he knows something sinister. BENNETT RING Sold a house. @bennettring JAMES COTTEE Survived ABC cuts. @j_cottee MEGHANN O’NEILL Saw every indie game at PAX. @firkraags JAMES O’CONNOR Killed for Kevin Spacey. @jickle DAN STAINES Witnessed the horrors of war. DAVE KOZICKI Fought for freedom. NATHAN LAWRENCE Saw AMD and other TLAs ROBERT NORTH Moved desks. JOAB GILROY Went to the US of America DAVID HOLLINGWORTH Pined for the fjords. JOHN GILLOOLY Left the building. @labsmonkey CAMERON FERRIS Cleaned the pool. @pcpowerplay…

DayZ will get a full, final release – in 2016 But the roadmap ahead is looking full of promise. Since it’s Early Access release on Steam, DayZ has been an ongoing work in progress. Each month brings new content and game improvements – with, every now and then, a new bug to work through. But after a year of development, the dev team and their bosses at Bohemia Interactive feel they’re on top of the project, and have announced the game will be complete in the first half of 2016. However, next year will be seeing more gradual improvements to the game, with new features being added quarter by quarter, with monthly new weapons, objects, and more. You can see the full list of features here: http://www.pcpowerplay.com.au/news/dayz-will-get-a-fullfinal-release-in-2016,398308 Total War: Attila…

DEVELOPER UBISOFT MASSIVE PUBLISHER UBISOFT DUE 2015 tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game A new demo of Tom Clancy’s viral apocalypse open world shooter, The Division, has introduced a fascinating new faction. The Cleaners are a group of neutral fanatics that believe that the only way to stop the spread of the outbreak is to purge the city with fire. They will not attck if you leave them alone, but sometimes players will have to butt heads with the heavily armed pyromaniacs.…

Based out of a rambling Victorian manor house in Cape Town, South Africa, indie developer Free Lives is on the cusp of releasing its new action platformer: Broforce. The game has garnered international acclaim for its deft fusion of emergent mayhem and satire. But as it stars facsimiles of a slew of iconic 80s and 90s action heroes, its developers once lived in fear of litigation. Programmer Richard Pieterse told us of the fateful day when they received an email from Lions Gate – the day they thought, for one terrible moment, that an over-eager corporate lawyer might lay waste to all their hard work. “We expected it to be the Cease & Desist we’d been waiting for for quite a while. But instead, they were like: ‘This game is…

JANUARY: Frontier Developments continues to weather the fallout from announcing that the promised single-player off-line mode has been cut from Elite Dangerous. For those not pacified by email counselling, David Braben offers a novel solution: in lieu of refunds, jaded customers will get the chance to take a ride on a test flight of Richard Branson’s new experimental spaceship. FEBRUARY: Disaster! 33 Elite Dangerous KickStarter backers perish in a tragic launchpad explosion. Investigators are unable to determine the cause of the accident, but note that the rocket’s fuel injection system was regulated by a Raspberry Pi. Richard Branson assures the press that he’s ‘90% certain’ that Virgin Galactic will stage its first commercial flight before the end of the year. Coincidentally, Chucklefish founder Finn ‘Tiy’ Brice assures early access backers…