Innehållsförteckning för Issue 266 från PC Powerplay

Intel has officially launched its 8th generation of Core processors. These new chips are a refresh of the previous 7th generation Kaby Lake units and have a 15W TDP, making them ideal for slim, full featured laptops. The i7-8650U, i7-8550U, i5-8350U and i5-8250U are all 4 core parts and all have Hyperthreading enabled - a first for a 15W part. The i7s have an 8MB L3 cache an the i5s a 6MB cache. Intel has also included UHD 620 integrated graphics, which is capable of 4K video playback and near real-time 4K rendering with Intel Quicksync. Intel are claiming a huge 40% increase in multi-tasking performance versus the previous generation CPUs and a 2.3x speed increase versus a 5-year-old Ivy Bridge based system. A big chunk of that performance increase…

TVS-882BR This powerful NAS uses 7th Generation Intel 14nm multi-core processors, providing advanced hardware with enhanced tiering storage, application-based partitioning and network traffic distribution. The TVS-882BR comes with a SATA optical disc drive (ODD) slot, allowing you to install a compatible Blu-ray Disc drive. QNAP also provides models with a preloaded ODD, allowing you to experience extensive disc applications right way. With simple installation, you can backup the content of your discs to NAS for long-term storage and easier sharing, or you can burn NAS files to disc. You can also play Blu-ray discs directly on HDTV via HDMI output through virtual machines or Linux Station. Three PCIe Gen.3 slots allows for 10GbE/40GbE NIC, SAS storage expansion card, and USB 3.1 10GbE adapter. TVS-882BRT3 Also powered by 7th Generation Intel…

“the public doesn’t understand how game development works because we’ve done a terrible job educating the consumer” WHO PETER BARTHOLOW WHERE LAB ZERO GAMES WHY INDIVISIBLE Indivisible, the new Valkyrie Profile-inspired RPG from Lab Zero, is shaping up to be a ground-breaking work of art. Yet, as producer Peter Bartholow told us, it almost never got off the ground. “In late 2015 we launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, seeking $1.5M. If we hit that goal, 505 Games would provide the remaining $2M of the budget. Since we’re still a relatively new studio, we released a playable prototype on PC and PlayStation 4 to drive interest in the game.” The campaign was rough, to say the least. “What we didn’t know when we set this plan into motion in early…

1 Dungeons 3 DEVELOPER REALMFORGE STUDIOS PUBLISHER KALYPSO MEDIA DIGITAL DUE 2017 www.kalypsomedia.com Despite what the name would have you think, Dungeons 3 isn’t all about dungeons (It's about three dungeons? - Ed.). The evil Dungeon Lord has enticed the sultry dark elven princess, Thalya, into his employ, and with her help he’ll not only build the most secure an intimidating underground lair and monster factory ever, he’ll also take on those do-gooders on the surface by raiding their towns, killing their heroes and capturing their cities. 2 Break Arts II DEVELOPER MERCURYSTUDIO PUBLISHER AGM PLAYISM DUE 2017 n/a If anime has taught us anything, and we like to think it has, then one of the truths of the world is that nothing moves faster than a giant robot. Break…

“that certain strong individual, an ugly/cute furry mutant cat/raccoon thing” DEVELOPER EXPERIMENT 101 PUBLISHER THQ NORDIC DUE 2018 biomutant.com You might not know the name Stefan Ljungqvist, but he’s been working on games for 15 or so years, both as an art director, designer and team leader on games ranging from the adventure game Gast, to the open world action of Just Cause 2 and Mad Max. After leaving Avalanche Studios in 2015, Ljungqvist founded independent developer Experiment 101. Don’t let the independent nature of the studio lead you to think that the studio isn’t ambitious, however – Biomutant, the first game from Experiment 101 looks about as ambitious as you can get. An open world action RPG billed as a “Kung Fu Fable”, Biomutant is set in a post-apocalyptic…

DEVELOPER VOLITION PUBLISHER DEEP SILVER PRICE $59.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM, RETAIL www.aomthegame.com Before developing Agents of Mayhem, developer Volition had already parodied the superhero genre with the excellent Saints Row 4, a game in which the leader of the Saints is now the President of the US and must fight back against alien invaders. For a series that began as a tongue in cheek shot at GTA and its contemporaries, the final full outing fully embraced the absurdity of both the premise and the superhero conceit. Set in the same universe as Volition’s other games, Saints Row and Red Faction, Agents of Mayhem follows on from the “Recreate Earth” ending of the Saints Row IV standalone expansion Gat out of Hell, and presents a near future in which the…

“rage, desperation and fear all vying to be the trhing that pushes her over the edge” DEVELOPER NINJA THEORY PUBLISHER NINJA THEORY PRICE US$30 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG, HUMBLE hellblade.com Hellblade is a bold departure for UK developer Ninja Theory, a deeply atmospheric narrative-driven adventure that sidelines the studio’s traditional emphasis on fluid and stylish combat in favour of immersing you in the mind of its lead character. Hellblade is a misstep for UK developer Ninja Theory, a messy mish-mash of genres whose repetitious mechanics fail to satisfy or support a confusing and, for all its displays of emotion, oddly uninvolving story. Senua looks like a 2017 video game action hero. She’s lean and taut, dreadlocked and face-painted. She physically resembles Aloy from PS4 game Horizon: Zero Dawn, but mostly…

 DEVELOPER WIZARD FU GAMES “they manage to evoke not just a retro sensibility but also a real incentive to explore” PUBLISHER WIZARD FU GAMES PRICE US$20 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG, HUMBLE songbringer.com Within moments of starting the Rogue-like, Zelda inspired pixel exploration/RPG, Songbringer, Roq, the shirtless rockstar protagonist had already found two powerful weapons, the Nanosword, and a remote controlled boomerang top hat that could pick up distant items and bring them back to the hero. Oh, he’d also awakened an ancient evil hell-bent of doing some particularly not nice things to the people of the planet Ekzera. Then Roq went into a dungeon and was blown up by some traps. Within moments of starting a second run at Songbringer, Roq had found the Nanosword, awakened the evil and got…

“what weapon you spawn with has a huge impact on how you approach the game” DEVELOPER MESSHOF PUBLISHER MESSHOF PRICE $14.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, HUMBLE nidhogggame.com Nidhogg is a game that could almost typify the term “pared-back”. The original game stripped away anything that got in the way of the core concept of two player duelling. Attacks were about positioning for a quick stab rather than spectacular swinging, and the sprites were simplified to the point of being little more than stick men. The game essentially took the concept of tug of war and added jousting without horses. It was brilliant upon release and is still fantastic. Nidhogg II is a different beast entirely. The stick men have become charmingly grotesque creatures and the original rapier is now but one…

PRICE $1440 FOR 1950X; $1149 FOR 1920X www.amd.com Just when we thought things couldn’t get any more exciting in the CPU world, along comes AMD with another bombshell. With quite possibly the coolest product name ever, the Threadripper series of CPUs takes core-counts to the next level, offering Enterprise-level performance at consumer priced dollars. But is it any good for gaming, given that its main strength is how many cores it has? We all know that the Ryzen 7 wasn’t particularly great when it came to game performance, so can Threadripper reverse that trend? Let’s find out. WHAT’S ON THE INSIDE Threadripper CPUs are truly huge. Each chip is 569 x 638 x 272mm, and comes in a special orange plastic mounting plate. This then slides into the new TR4…

“build quality throughout is spectacular, with only the highest quality components” PRICE $879 www.asus.com.au When we tested the Threadripper this month, it came with the Asus X399-powered Zenith Extreme. We were kind of expecting a slightly more affordable than Intel’s X99 platform for its Xeon processors, but it wasn’t to be. Having said that, the Zenith Extreme has every feature a professional user could ask for, where these kinds of prices aren’t crazy. Obviously it comes with the new TR4 socket and X399 chipset required for Threadripper. It also ships with eight memory channels, supporting up to 128GB of DDR4. The speeds supported change depending on how much memory you use though, from 2133MHz all the way up to 3600MHz. The beauty of this is that it can support ECC…

PRICE $219 www.corsair.com When you first pull it out of the box, the Void Pro headset feels pretty heavy, and the padding on the headband seems entirely inadequate for the job of making the headset sit comfortably on your head. You couldn’t be more wrong. The fit of the Void Pro is excellent, with the weight distributed comfortably across the front of the head and the well-padded earcups sitting flush over your ears. Each of the earcups hosts a big, clear 50mm neodymium driver capable of pumping out some serious volume with excellent clarity in stereo. The Void Pro also boasts Dolby Headphone 7.1, and the results are pleasantly surprising. The headset offers some good spatial sound with identifiable directionality. The quality of sound is impacted a little by the…

THE PRODIGAL RETURNS Heya Guys, remember me. Letter of the Month from Issue #55. Wanted to drop a line, I’m an aging gamer who’s still kicking it. Maybe I should send you a photo for your magazine, I’m still gaming on my old systems, still got a C64, Amiga and PC setup in the same room, all working, and used almost daily, while banging out the latest and greatest on the PC and PS4. I recently realised how much I missed some of that older stuff, something those young kids won’t know or understand till they reach my age, or I laugh when they go “oh man, remember the PS2, that was ages ago”… pfft, they have NO idea. So during one rainy Sunday afternoon I got thinking, I missed…

The popular CrashPlan backup service has announced it is ending its home user offerings to focus on small business and enterprise customers. Those with current CrashPlan for Home subscriptions will be allowed to use the service for the duration plus an extra 60-day grace period. After this grace period, all backups will be automatically deleted unless users migrate to CrashPlan for Small Business (formerly CrashPlan Pro), which is near-identical to CrashPlan Home but twice the price at US$120 a year. CrashPlan is also offering users the option of a 50% discount to use Carbonite, but you’ll have to start your backup from scratch, there’s no migration from CrashPlan to Carbonite. Sounds like it’s a perfect time for CrashPlan users to re-assess their backup solution and see what else is on…

Shuttle have updated their mini gaming PC range with the Shuttle X1 - an extremely small desktop PC that fits in the palm of your hand. It’s basically an Intel NUC on steroids. The Shuttle X1 is based on Intel’s mobile CPUs, the Core i5-7300HQ and Core i7-7700 HQ. To achieve smooth gaming performance, Shuttle managed to include an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB MXM GPU module. Choose between 8GB or 16GB of DDR4 RAM, 128GB or 256GB M.2 SSDs and a 1TB HDD. Connectivity wise, the Shuttle X1 offers a typical set of I/O such as 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a gigabit Ethernet port, one USB 3.0 Type-C connector, four USB 3.0 Type-A headers (two on the front, two on the rear), four USB 2.0 ports, three HDMI outputs (one…

Cores, cores, cores. You want CPU cores? Well AMD’s brand new Ryzen Threadripper CPUs has loads of ‘em! Threadripper takes the Zen microarchitecture from the wildly popular Ryzen CPUs and takes it to a whole new level. AMD hasn’t simply slapped a few extra cores and threads onto some existing Ryzen CPUs – nope, there’s also a whole new chipset built around leveraging the immense Threadripper CPU performance and providing oodles of I/O professional users have been crying out for. AMD Threadripper CPUs come in three flavours. The behemoth 16 core/32 thread Threadripper 1950X, a 12 core/24 thread Threadripper 1920X and an 8 core/16 thread Threadripper 1900X . Yes, you read correctly, 16 cores and 32 threads in a single CPU! All have a max boost clock speed of 4.0GHz…

Rather than just being some fancy words thrown around to make the new drives from Western Digital sound cutting edge, the 3D NAND technology contained within the new WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSDs and SanDisk Ultra 3D SSDs will impact the speed, reliability and power consumption of your PC. WD BLUE 3D NAND SATA SSDS Targeted towards DIY enthusiasts, resellers and system builders, the WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSDs range between 250Gb and 2Tb capacities in both a traditional 2.5-inch/7mm cased drive as well as a single-sided M.2 2280 form factor, and boast an industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF (mean time to failure). The 3D technology also helps to reduce cell-to-cell interference, leading to increased reliability, in a drive that draws up to 25% less power than previous generations…

The Microsoft Store Sydney is doubling down on some serious gaming, thanks to a partnership with Asus. From the 2nd of September until the 25th of November there’ll be weekly League of Legends tournaments run in the store on Asus ROG laptops. All you have to do to get into the action is to register online - you don’t need to be a pro-level player, as the tourneys are open to all comers. You can sign up by yourself, or as a complete team with some mates. It’s not quite as cool as the LoL events happening at other stores around the world, where participating can earn you IP and XP on your personal account.…

DEVELOPER UBISOFT MONTREAL PUBLISHER UBISOFT DUE OCTOBER 27 assassinscreed.ubisoft.com Few franchises are as free to experiment with tone and setting as Assassin’s Creed. While the heart of the series has remained relatively the same, it’s a testament to the original concept that it can transition smoothly between the seriousness of the Third Crusade in the Holy Land in one game, and later shift to the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean in another. It’s surprising then that a franchise so full of potential ever got stale, but after the lukewarm response to Assassin’s Creed Unity, and the low sales of Syndicate, Ubisoft did the right thing by the series and let it take a much-needed breather. Now primed and ready to return to the spotlight, Assassin’s Creed Origins is…

“like you’re watching a play, except you’re up on the stage mingling with the actors” DEVELOPER THE FULLBRIGHT COMPANY PUBLISHER THE FULLBRIGHT COMPANY PRICE US$20 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, ITCH.IO, GOG tacoma.game As a genre label, “walking simulator” is most often used as a pejorative, despite the best efforts of those fans who have sought to reclaim the phrase. I first heard it applied to Dear Esther and thought it fit that game’s poignant stroll through the Scottish tundra, albeit in an amusingly reductive way. The problem with using “walking simulator” to describe Firewatch, Jazzpunk, Virginia or Gone Home is that the walking is the least interesting thing about them. Tacoma is the second game from Fullbright, the creators of Gone Home. It’s similar in some ways, but also shows the…

“the emotional impact is heavily reliant on standard horror conventions” DEVELOPER BLOOBER TEAM SA PUBLISHER ASPYR PRICE $29.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG observer-game.com Being an Observer kind of sucks. It’s low-paid work for a domineering corporation that involves enduring invasive biotechnological augmentations, an immunosuppressive drug dependency and a mandate to pry on the sub consciousnesses of the depraved citizens of tech-noir Krakow, 2084. For player-character Daniel Lasarski, the night that Observer takes place is particularly unpleasant. After receiving a distressing call from your estranged son and tracing the signal to a lower-class apartment complex, you happen upon a series of grisly murders. This meticulously crafted first-person cyberpunk thriller admirably takes queues from Deus Ex, System Shock, The Cell and Blade Runner (Rutger Hauer even plays the protagonist), as crude electronics,…

PRICE $899 ($699 SOON APPARENTLY) www.amd.com If there’s any doubt that AMD has guts, 2017 has certainly put that out to pasture. Striking a major win against Intel with its Ryzen and now Threadripper CPUs, that’s not enough for the team in red. Now they’re taking on the might of Nvidia, but rather than stick to the budget and mid-range sector, they’re aiming high, taking on the best that Nvidia has got. Considering AMD is a fraction of the size of both Intel and Nvidia, does it have what it takes to win on two fronts at once? THE BIGGEST UPGRADE IN 6 YEARS Ever since 2011, AMD has been using its Graphics Core Next architecture for its GPUs. In that time it’s made five revisions to the technology, leaving…

“there are hundreds of options for networking nerds to really tweak this router to their delight” PRICE $695 www.asus.com.au Asus’ Republic of Gamers team aren’t known for doing things by halves. And with the release of this router, they’ve really outdone themselves. Sure, it’s crazy expensive, but it’s built with so much bandwidth and future-looking technologies that this router is going to last you several years at least. First, there’s the fact it’s a tri-band router. The 2.4GHz network runs at 1000Mbps, while the twin 5GHz networks run at 2167MHz each, hence the AC5300 designation, which is the total of all three networks. It’s also fully MIMO ready, unlike many routers which are currently being sold as “MIMO support in future firmware updates”. Looking like a robotic spider with eight…

PRICE $149.95 www.hp.com Kailh switches are pretty common in peripherals nowadays and it’s becoming progressively more difficult to tell the difference between original Cherry MX switches and Kailh switches of the same colour. The HP Omen 1100 is the first keyboard we’ve seen from a big manufacturer to feature Greetech keys. Much like Kailh, Greetech makes mechanical switches that emulate Cherry MX switches, but in the case of the blue switches used in the 1100, the difference between the Cherry originals and the Greetech switches is marked. The switches are tactile and clicky, but don’t have the solid feel of the Cherry Blues. The keys feel wobbly, a little squishy and generally a little slow. They are also louder than the Cherry counterparts. We couldn’t fully test for hysteresis, but…

PRICE $149.95 www.hyperXgaming.com It’s no secret we were big fans of the original, delightfully minimalist HyperX Alloy keyboard. As a first attempt by a first time peripheral maker, it was a near complete success. At the time we said we were looking forward to what the company had in store next. Well, the Alloy Elite is the answer, a keyboard that doesn’t sacrifice quality components and design to remain at a fairly budget price point. The full sized keyboard isn’t as sleek as the Alloy but it’s as solidly built with no bounce or flex at all. Like the Alloy, the Elite uses real Cherry MX switches – red, brown or blue - but also adds some new, dedicated controls to the mix. To the top left of the keyboard…

FOUR MOST IMPRESSIVE ELEMENTS: 1) Dual Samsung 4K Monitor (for movies/work/boring stuff) & ASUS 144hz 2K Monitor (for gaming). 2) GTX 1080 Founders Edition - Jumping from a GTX 460 to the 1080 saw a slight increase in performance! 3) Corsair water cooling loop for my i7-6700K. 4) Xonar U7 Sound Card + Audio-Technica ADG1X - gives me control of volumes I didn’t even know existed. LAST UPGRADE: The Asus sound card and headset combo, which cost a bit but was 100% worth it as I can now hear people scream on the plane in PUBG with crystal clarity. DREAM UPGRADE: Maybe changing my card up to a GTX 1080Ti or even chucking in another 1080 in SLI. FAVOURITE FEATURE: Asus ROG monitor - not that I can see 144…

There is yet another Wi-Fi standard coming to a router near you. It’s called 802.11ax and it is designed from the ground up to deal with congestion. Of course, there’s a raw speed boost, thanks to wider and multiple channels that greatly increase throughput to a theoretical maximum of 3.5Gbps (4x streams with 160 MHz wide channels) - a huge boost in speed and total capacity. Wireless network congestion is improved via a technology first seen on LTE radios, called orthogonal frequency division multiple access (ODMFA). The use of OFDMA means up to 30 clients can share each channel instead of having to take turns broadcasting and listening. Another benefit is that the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands can be combined creating even more channels for data. The first…

Cryptocurrency miners looking to extract the most mining density from their rigs, look no further than the new ASUS B250 Expert Mining mainboard. This new mainboard has 19 PCIe 1x slots, so when used with graphics card risers, can support 19 cards on a single mainboard. This is of keen interest to cryptocurrency miners as it reduces the need to spend money on additional CPUs, storage and RAM to support multiple GPUs. ASUS have also included tripe ATX12V (24-pin) connectors so you can hook up the necessary three beefy PSUs to power those cards, along with voltage stabilisation capacitors for each slot and a mining specific BIOS for increased hash rates. The ASUS B250 Mining Expert is based on the B250 chipset with an LGA1151 socket, 2400MHz DDR4 RAM support…

“the back end snapped on me violently, causing me to spin and slide embarrassingly” DEVELOPER SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT DUE SEPTEMBER 22 www.projectcarsgame.com I’m half way through a run of hot laps around the street circuit of Long Beach, California, in a fully kitted out racing simulator, complete with triple screens and a $40,000 D-Box motion platform when I hear a voice I recognise from the TV say something in my direction. “Oh wow, you’re pretty quick, man!” “Thank you…” I reply sheepishly, focusing instead on trying to wrestle the beastly DW-12 Indycar over the bone-shaking bumps whist threading the concrete barriers that line the track’s limits. As I cross the line to finish the pre-allocated number of laps, a familiar figure sidles up next to me,…

“and combat becomes a crazy dance of blows, counterattacks, and near misses” DEVELOPER SLOCLAP PUBLISHER DEVOLVER DIGITAL PRICE $29.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG absolver.com Absolver is a game not quite like anything you’ve played before. There are instantly recognisable elements – the methodical, tactical combat and shrine (bonfire) based spawns of something like Dark Souls instantly springs to mind – but due to the way the story is approached, the pacing and way that online is integrated into the game makes Absolver a whole different, confounding and kind of wonderful beast. What is an Absolver? It’s not expressly clear exactly what they do aside from fight for stability against masked enemies. Given that everyone aside from a few given individuals wear masks in the world of Absolver, what exactly makes…

“lure you out to one point on the map and then sucker you from another direction” DEVELOPER BLACK LAB GAMES PUBLISHER SLITHERINE LTD. PRICE $TBA AVAILABLE AT STEAM slitherine.com I really love the idea of slow-paced, capital ship combat. I love Games Workshop’s take on the genre, with Battlefleet Gothic, but only on the tabletop – the video game version left me cold. I love the books of military sci-fi writer David Weber, especially the Honor Harrington series, which is all space-broadsides and epic fleet actions – but the tabletop game is one of those systems that you almost need a math degree to understand. Surely there’s a sweet spot - one that doesn’t need legions of fiddly, painted models, but that still has that slow-pacing that only a tabletop-style…

“designs look as though they could be from any Korean MMO released in the last ten years” DEVELOPER BOSS KEY STUDIOS PUBLISHER NEXON AMERICA INC. PRICE $29.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM lawbreakers.nexon.net Kudos to Cliffy B and Boss Key Studios for trying to do something different with the competitive shooter. Lawbreakers adds a genuine sense of three dimensionality that is lacking in most competitive FPS through something the developers call “The Shattering”. A global catastrophe, the Shattering sundered the land with seismic events so great they lead to gravitational anomalies dotted around the planet. In gameplay terms this means that maps have areas of zero or reduced gravity, and the nine playable classes (each class has two character options) all have their own way of navigating the maps, from triple jumps…

“the loudest it hit was a mere 43dB of fan noise, which is simply phenomenal for a card clocked like this” PRICE $1499 www.msi.com.au If you’re a professional overclocker, there’s one specific video card that seems to be the favourite that they all turn to. MSI’s Lightning series is so heavily over-engineered that it can take a smashing from LN2 abuse, and has won many world records in the past. The moment these guys are all waiting for has finally arrived – the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti version of the Lightning Z. This is one gigantic graphics card, taking up three slots. This provides plenty of room for two glowing RGB strips, and comes with a special reinforcement bracket to ensure it doesn’t warp your motherboard. The Tri-Frozr cooler uses…

“given the hardware, we weren’t surprised to see the 112 minute battery life” PRICE $3799 www.msi.com This is a rather unique review for us, as the unit supplied isn’t the one that is currently available. The existing MSI GT75VR on the market is equipped with a GeForce GTX 1070, while our review sample comes with a GTX 1080. Thankfully the name should change – the 1070 equipped version is the GT75VR 7RE Titan – 018AU, while the 1080 equipped version will be known as the GT75VR 7RF Titan, and is due for release in late 2017 at $5199. As a result, our benchmarks don’t really indicate the true speed of the $3799 GT75VR 7RE Titan – 018AU; you can expect performance to drop by around 20 to 30%. Other than…

PRICE $89.95 www.hp.com The Omen 600 gaming mouse features everything you would expect from an entry level gaming mouse. It has an optical sensor capable of far more DPI than most gamers will ever use, textured side grips and six buttons in a pleasantly straightforward package. By the time of writing we were not able to confirm whether or not the optical sensor is a proprietary HP developed unit or one of the core common sensors seen in other mice, but ultimately that doesn’t matter too much. It’s a good sensor that provides all the accuracy and speed you could want, and the DPI switcher features 12 levels (each of which of course have an associated colour), rather than the more common four, so there is a lot of possible…

“yes, the game is at its best when multiplaying with a bunch of kids” When Microsoft bought Minecraft for a brain-melting US$2.5 billion back in 2014, it seemed pretty obvious the code-monster from Redmond was getting a hell of a deal. But what it actually got at the time was a mess. To be fair, from 2011 until 2016, Mojang found itself virtually drowning under an increasingly powerful cataract of pure cash. A gang of indie devs who wanted nothing more than to fiddle with their biome generation algorithms were instead having to deal with what must have felt like an endless series of ports to other platforms. Everyone (except Nintendo) wanted a piece of Minecraft, and by the time Microsoft came along, there was a Pocket Edition for mobiles…

“it was clear, after the shock of the “outdated” graphical system had worn off, that Blizzard had created a masterpiece” STARCRAFT DEVELOPER BLIZZARD PERSONALITIES PERSONALITIES? BLIZZARD? HA! RELEASED 1998 NUTSHELL Rather than build a resource-intensive, PC-thrashing 3D renderer, Blizzard pushed its sprite-based engine to the max, and focused on creating a three-faction, fast-paced RTS with almost perfect balance. This turned out to be a good decision. He who hesitates is lost. This is the over-arching philosophy of StarCraft. Thanks to meticulous tweaking of build times, unit costs, unit speeds, firing rates, armour and more, StarCraft has become a game where decisiveness is as key to victory as a player’s actions-per-minute. This incredible attention to the ultra-fine element of balance means StarCraft can showcase player skill like almost no other strategy…