Innehållsförteckning för January 2015 från PC Powerplay

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.…

(Please note, if you haven’t played the first series of The Walking Dead, there may be plot points within this article that you don’t want to know yet.) The last time I wrote about The Walking Dead, I related to the narrative as a parent. It was all about who got the candy bar and advocating for the child’s turn on the swing, in between mashing buttons to waste zombies, of course. In Series 2, you are the child, even if everyone treats you like an adult, presumably because that’s the harsh reality of the post-apocalyptic world. So, how does playing as Clementine change the experience and story? I’ve only just finished the third episode out of five. I thought it might be fun to write about it now so…

OVERWATCH DEVELOPER BLIZZARD PUBLISHER BLIZZARD DUE 2015 us.battle.net/overwatch/en/ I’m not going to get into what it was going to be, or what we wanted it to be. I can tell you what it was: it was frustrating. It was a big, giant idea, it was almost like six videogames in one, it was the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done. We wrestled with it for a long time. And it... it sucked. We couldn’t figure it out. We couldn’t crack it.” Chris Metzen, Blizzard’s keeper of lore, is sitting alongside Jeff Kaplan in the Blizzcon press room, addressing a small assortment of journalists at the end of a long, exhausting day. The game he is talking about is Titan, the company’s canned second stab at a Massively Multiplayer game, and…

DEVELOPER TELLTALE GAMES PUBLISHER TELLTALE GAMES PRICE $24.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.telltalegames.com/talesfromtheborderlands/ In each of the previous three games set in the Borderlands universe, players have taken the role of Vault Hunters, each possessing phenomenal power and superhuman abilities. Tales takes a very different approach. It’s about relatively normal people trying to do the same things as the Vault Hunters. As you may expect, things do not go particularly well. Rhys is a corporate stooge vying for the top job in Hyperion after the death of Handsome Jack. Fiona is a Pandoran thief and conwoman looking to make one big score and retire. Add a vault key, bandit lords, forbidden Atlus technology, Zer0 and more double crosses and betrayals than you can point a skag at and you have…

PRICE $97 www.tesorotec.com There’s a good reason this mechanical keyboard is relatively cheap compared to the dozens of competitors on the market – it doesn’t use the Cherry MX switches that many automatically assume power all mechanical keyboards. Instead it’s built around switches built by Kailh, which just happen to come in the same colours as the Cherry MX switches, with the Excalibur offering Blue, Brown, Black and Red options. These claim to offer identical performance to Cherry’s switches, but we noticed that the Blue version in our review sample required much more force than their Cherry counterpart. They also felt a little soft in comparison; overall we still prefer Cherry’s by far. There’s not much else on this keyboard to write home about. You can forget about any macro…

We’re kicking off something special this month. A grand project between all our enthusiast technology and gaming titles; a project that will let us, and our partners, share one, over-arching goal with our readers. We want Australia to upgrade – their PCs, their storage, their networks, any piece of technology that may be lying around... Out with the old, in with the new, that’s the motto of Upgrade Australia, and you can follow it through Hyper, PC & Tech Authority, PC PowerPlay and Atomic online. SO WHAT IS IT? It’s six months of hardware advice and recommendations from our most trusted partners, in our print publications and online, and it all culminates in a very special technology event next year, where it will all come together, and where you get…

AZTEZ DEVELOPER TEAM COLORBLIND PUBLISHER TEAM COLORBLIND DUE 2015 Aztez.com A cross between a strategy board game like Risk and a 2D fighting, Aztez sees players trying to maintain and expand the Aztec empire with the end goal being not only survival but triumph against the Spanish invaders. In a turn based mode, players expand their empire, form alliances, conquer opposing tribes, develop technology and infrastructure and the like. When it’s time to fight, players duke it out in stylish and bloody 2D hack and slash combat. HOMEFRONT: THE REVOLUTION DEVELOPER CRYTEK UK, DEEP SILVER DAMBUSTER PUBLISHER DEEP SILVER DUE 2015 www.homefront-game.com Hyped as something of a playable version of Red Dawn, Homefront turned was a lacklustre FPS remarkable solely for its lack of subtlety. And now, for some reason,…

Wyatt Cheng keep coming back to one item. “Aether Walker, a Wand for the wizard, [that] allows you to teleport as much as you want. We didn’t add that item for a long time, because if one day we do PVP, you’re not going to want to fight against an infinitely teleporting wizard. It’s just not fun. The Senior Technical Designer on the Diablo 3 team is talking about buffing items in the wake of a few key decisions made over the game’s short history. The first was the removal of the game’’s real money trading system, the second a decision by the team to abandon any plans for PVP modes (at least, anything beyond duelling). Diablo 3 is enjoying a great run in the wake of this year’s Reaper…

DEVELOPER BIOWARE PUBLISHER EA PRICE $89.99 AVAILABLE AT ORIGIN/RETAIL www.dragonage.com WILKS: I really wanted to love Dragon Age: Origins but I just found the game too standoffish when it came to character and story. The combat was brilliant and I especially liked the fact that they approached sword and board combat as just as brutal as charging about with a two handed sword, but the mute main character and the extremely clinical and episodic nature of the story kept me at arm’s length. Conversely I loved the approach to story taken in Dragon Age 2. It’s a ballsy move to focus on a small personal story in an epic fantasy RPG rather than trotting out yet another chosen one destined to kill the baddies and save the world. Unfortunately, the…

DEVELOPER SEETHROUGH STUDIOS PUBLISHER SURPRISE ATTACK PRICE $14.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.seethroughstudios.com It’s rare to find a game in which the narrative and gameplay are as inextricably linked as they are in Particulars. At its core, Particulars is a clever puzzle game based around particle physics, but when the narrative is laid over the top it becomes the wonderful tale of an awkward young genius named Alison who has a hard time with forming social bonds in a game that is all about the dynamics of attraction and repulsion. Each level begins with a quote cryptically detailing Alison’s personality. These quotes come from family, friends, teachers, associates, therapists and philosophers. There are also some simply but evocatively animated cutscenes that delve less cryptically into the protagonist’s life – the…

Until 12 months ago, I avoided power supply reviews like the plague. It’s not that I’ve got an irrational fear of tiny boxes containing enough voltage to zap me into next week, it’s just that I had no way to accurately measure their performance. Sure, it’s possible to plug one in and monitor a few basic voltages via a motherboard’s BIOS, but this fails to take into consideration how a PSU performs under load. Not to mention the fact that the BIOS voltages don’t show all of the crucial stats. It’d be like reviewing a CPU’s performance by looking at its heat while sitting at the desktop. Thankfully Jon Gerow from Corsair came to the rescue, hooking me up with his behemoth of a load tester, the SunMoon SM-5500ATE load…

PRICE $1299 www.alienware.com.au Alienware’s new Alpha PC aims to finally deliver a gaming PC that is even smaller than a gaming console. And when we say smaller, we mean way smaller – this thing is about the size of a box of chocolates. It’s an admirable goal, but has Alienware been able to cram game-ready hardware into such a small form factor? Measuring a mere 20cm by 20cm, with a height of 5cm, this thing is tiny. These dimensions don’t take into account the external power pack though, which is about a third of the size of the PC itself. Still, it’s easily the smallest gaming PC we’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something. Twin USB ports adorn the front, next to the cute Alien-head power button. Another two are…

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…

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…

DEVELOPER TURTLE ROCK STUDIOS PUBLISHER 2K GAMES DUE FEBRUARY 10, 2015 evolvegame.com Australia is a beautiful case study for divergent evolution – the harsh, unforgiving environment gave birth to some of the most ruthlessly efficient wildlife on earth. Fish that walk on land, mammals that lay eggs, spiders that dig holes. Evolve found itself in a similarly challenging environment when a floundering THQ won the bid to publish their game in 2011 – unsurprisingly, they adapted and found a way to make it work. “Evolve wouldn’t be what it is if it we hadn’t gone with them. Because that first year, they left us alone,” Phil Robb, co-founder at TRS told PC PowerPlay during a tour of their studio in Orange County. “I mean, we turned in our monthly milestones,…

DEVELOPER 11-BIT STUDIOS PUBLISHER 11-BIT STUDIOS PRICE $19.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM 11bitstudios.com/games/16/this-war-of-mine They are hungry. The refridgerator is long since empty. Marko is a good scavenger but lately he has had bad luck. There was a confrontation last night, at the supermarket. Men with guns. Marko escaped with his life but that is all. No salvage, no food. Pavle has not slept and is showing signs of starvation. He is tired and depressed and requires constant encouragement from the house’s livelier inhabitants merely to continue living. He won’t last much longer. If his hunger doesn’t consume him his demons will. And the rest of the group will breathe a silent, guilty sigh of relief as they mourn his loss. This War of Mine is a bit like The Sims: they’re…

DEVELOPER RELIC ENTERTAINMENT PUBLISHER SEGA PRICE $39.99 US AVAILABLE AT STEAM, RETAIL www.companyofheroes.com/en_us/ardennes-assault Late in 1944 American troops were digging in to sit out the Winter, figuring that – for now, at least – the war was more or less on hold. Then, in a single moment, signalled by the rumble of heavy armour tracks and roaring engines, Hitler’s last great gamble on the Western Front began. It would come to be called the Battle of the Bulge, and though the Allies eventually won, it was a hard, brutal and completely unexpected fight. It’s also the basis for Relic’s generously standalone expansion for Company of Heroes 2, and while it keeps the signature snowy setting, it swaps the bleak Russian front, with its meatgrinder battles and general disregard for life,…

DEVELOPER UPPER ONE GAMES PUBLISHER E-LINE MEDIA PRICE $14.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.neveralonegame.com It’s rare to encounter a genuinely new story. Most seem to be rehashes of popular tropes or variations on the same theme. Sometimes to find new stories you have to look far afield, to cultures that have a different history and set of social mores than we do. Never Alone takes the admirable step of trying to bring a story from Alaskan Inupiaq people to life. The story of the making of the game is as interesting as the story in the game. Rather than simply spending government grants, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council instead decided to use the money to try and create a self-sustaining community by fostering new businesses. One of the ideas was…

Pity the poor Power Supply Unit, aka the PSU This unloved box of power transformation is the least glamorous component in a gaming PC, and is accordingly fed the stingiest portion of the build budget. Most PSUs are left to linger in the bottom corner of the case, hidden away from the bright lights of the Perspex window. Yet it just so happens to be one of the most fundamentally important pieces in the silicon jigsaw that is a PC. Its task is to convert the raw 240V AV electricity pumping through our power lines into a smooth, reliable supply of DC power. Nearly every component in a gaming PC has a direct umbilical cord to the PSU, and it only takes a millisecond’s worth of poorly filtered power to…

PRICE $139 www.cougar-world.com We’ve seen a lot of mechanical keyboards recently that have tried to cut costs by using cheap knock-offs of Cherry’s wildly popular switches, so were relieved to see that Cougar has used the real-deal with the 700K. Available with Cherry MX Blue, Red, Brown or Black, there’s a flavour of 700K that will suit any buyer’s taste. These switches are mounted in a unique manner, with the keyboard base ending at the base of the switch. This makes each key look a lot taller than on a standard keyboard, and it also means they move from side to side just a little bit. It’s not enough to be a turn-off though, and the metal backing behind them inspires confidence in the keyboard’s hardiness. Along with the usual…

PRICE $169 www.roccat.org Let’s be frank – $170 for a gaming mouse is a seriously large chunk of change. We’re accustomed to paying half that for an A-grade, pro-gaming mouse, so what makes the Tyon so special? It turns out that this mouse does have a rather unique feature in the form of an “X-Celerator” switch that sits on the left side of the mouse. Note to Roccat – whoever came up with the name of that switch needs to be shot. Said “X-Celerator” is basically an analogue slider, which can be used to control your chopper’s height in BF4, or your Sidewinder’s throttle in Elite: Dangerous. Whether or not you’ll want to use it to control these is up for debate; we found it rather tricky to move this…

There are many ways to tell a story in a videogame; linear, non-linear, cutscenes, full-motion video, loading screens, pre-level briefings... the possibilities are almost endless. The quality of a story is usually featured in reviews, but the manner in which it is told isn’t. Ever since playing Half-Life I’ve had a fascination with storytelling methods in videogames, and I rarely understand why the easiest ones are so often employed. By far the most commonly used is the cutscene: simply adapting the cinematic style to work for sequences between gameplay that serve, almost exclusively, as the exposition in games. Exposition is where information is laid out for an audience to ensure there is no unintentional ambiguity regarding the narrative. It’s usually where goals and objectives are laid out and characters meet…