Innehållsförteckning för Issue 280 från PC Powerplay

DEVELOPER AMAZON GAME STUDIOS • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE • RELEASE MAY 26 newworld.com Yes, retailer Amazon is getting into development, kicking things off with an MMORPG. Set in the 17th century during “the twilight of the Age of Exploration”, the game mixes aspects of real-world history with fantasy, with thousands of players battling and working together to make a home on the dangerous, monster-ridden island of Aeternum. The idea of an MMO feels almost old-fashioned in this age of shared-world shooters and battle royales, so I ask director Scot Lane from Amazon Game Studios why he thinks now is the right time to bring this genre back to life. “Well, it sounded cool,” he says. “But also because MMO development has slowed down. It’s kind of interesting when everyone goes in…

Sequestered well away from other game teams at Valve, the 30-odd people making Dota Underlords are having a lot of fun. They’re loud and competitive, playing instruments on breaks from coding and jumping at the chance to down tools and just play their game for a while. After a year of growth and work, they’re preparing to release season one of Underlords this month – February 25. I visited the team, talked about their development, and got a look at what’s new in the game’s 1.0 version. What really struck me is that, approaching release, they’re still in love with their game in a way unlike many other teams I’ve spoken to in games development. Even in a studio with a healthy work environment, one that doesn’t crunch, the time…

DEVELOPER HELLO THERE GAMES • PUBLISHER WIRED PRODUCTIONS invectorgame.com Videogames have the power to work miracles. Songs like Levels, Waiting for Love, and Wake Me Up soundtracked my evenings in nightclubs. I fuzzily recall grumbling, “You’ll never find me listening to this at 3.00am on a weeknight when I’m older.” Instead, the best part of ten years later, I’m doing exactly that. Except this time I’m toe-tapping away to Tim Bergling’s (aka Avicii) inoffensive earworms in my flat. And slippers. This is thanks to Avicii Invector, but this isn’t your average rhythm-action game. The project that aimed to enhance Bergling’s brand of electronic dance and house music by combining it with interactive and mesmeric environments commenced in 2015, but the Swedish club sensation passed away in April 2018 before the…

DEVELOPER SNAPSHOT GAMES • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE phoenixpoint.info A terrible disease has overtaken mankind. The Pandoravirus, an alien threat that’s mutating and twisting our world into one controlled by swarms of hybrid creatures emerging from the seas. Society has collapsed and new social movements have risen. A few rogue military operatives seek to revive an old initiative dedicated to securing the future. It will not be easy, as Phoenix Point chooses strategic complexity over tactical simplicity. In this Phoenix Point is very much a successor to the original X-COM – unsurprisingly, as it’s designed by series creator Julian Gollop. In terms of core design, turn-based tactics games don’t get much better than Phoenix Point. To my chagrin, they also don’t get much better than in terms of copious bugs and poor…

“There’s no shortage of choice when it comes to the insides of an Alienware Aurora R9, either. You can go as powerful as you like or opt for something kinder on your wallet instead.” PRICE $3,299 www.xxx The Alienware Aurora R9 is dignified. That’s the most fitting description I can come up with. There’s a confidence to its reserved yet eye-catching shell, and it’s a welcome departure from the RGB love-ins that dominate many of the best gaming PCs. It doesn’t feel too excessively priced, either; there’s a model to suit most budgets, be it a fun, entry-to-mid-level machine or a ray tracing monster capable of ultra settings. It’s all very grown up, in other words – this is a solid foundation for the next generation of games waiting around…

“No one should expect a top-of-the-line gaming keyboard at this price point.” PRICE $119 www.steelseries.com The SteelSeries Apex 3 is part of the Danish manufacturer’s new lineup of budget-friendly gaming gear. This membrane keyboard sounds good on paper, with a reasonable price, RGB lighting, water resistance and an included wrist rest. But, like most membrane keyboards, it’s simply not that comfortable for either typing or gaming, and most of its features feel half-baked. Granted, no one should expect a top-of-the-line gaming keyboard at this price point, and I understand how the Apex 3 could be a good stepping stone for young, cash-strapped gamers who want some of the bells and whistles of a higher-end device. Comparable mechanical keyboards tend to cost between $100 and $120 – but if possible, I’d…

“The Rival 3 is light enough to use for extended periods.” PRICE $69 www.steelseries.com SteelSeries newest entry-level gaming mouse only costs $70, which is roughly half of what many people would expect to spend on a gaming mouse. That low price comes with RGB, acceptable performance with gaming as well as productivity and fewer limitations that you might expect. But if you find cable drag annoying or are seeking the best gaming mouse around, this budget peripheral won’t be enough. The Rival 3 looks a lot like the SteelSeries Sensei Ten released in late 2019. There are some important differences – especially the Rival 3’s lack of side buttons on its right casing – but it would be easy to tell they were made by the same company even if they…

“The gaming PC market in Australia has reached a point of maturity and there’s no doubt that competition has reached an all-time high when it comes to pre-built gaming systems..” PCPP: You’ve got some new Predator products coming out, but it’s a much more competitive market for pre-built gaming systems than it was when the brand was first introduced - is that affecting the gaming PC business? Darren Simmons: The gaming PC market in Australia has reached a point of maturity and there’s no doubt that competition has reached an all-time high when it comes to pre-built gaming systems. Because of this, Acer has focused its efforts on continuously delivering new Predator technology to stay ahead of the curve and differentiate ourselves. Examples of this include award winning Predator…

Over the last few months CD Projekt has had its market value go from US$6.8 billion to over US$8 billion, thanks to the popular Netflix series boosting sales of The Witcher games by as much as 554%, as well as the release of a Switch port of The Witcher 3 (which now has save game integration with Steam and GOG copies, by the way). Anticipation for Cyberpunk 2077 obviously remains strong as well. The number one slot in Europe still belongs to France’s Ubisoft Entertainment, whose valuation goes as high as US$9.6 billion.…

THE LONGING DEVELOPER STUDIO SEUFZ • PRICE TBA • RELEASE 5TH MARCH, 2020 https://store.steampowered.com/app/893850/THE_LONGING/ I’m pretty sure The Longing has broken my 9 year old’s brain. “Mum, what are you doing in this game, exactly?” he asks. “I’m waiting for 400 days to pass, in real life.” I reply. “Wait, what?” As usual, he’s incredulous. “So, in 400 days, like around February, 2021, I have to wake the king.” “WAIT, WHAT?!” “He needs to regain his power and that’s how long it’ll take.” “And that’s it?” “Well, I can explore, but I don’t have to. Sometimes I’ll find a piece of coal and, if I have 5, I can make a fire. It burns for a few (real life) hours and then stops.” “WAAAIT, WHAAAT?!?” I’m not confused by his…

DEVELOPER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE • RELEASE 2020 www.worldofwarcraft.com This is the eighth major expansion for World of Warcraft and it’s the most dramatic since Cataclysm tore the world apart. Sylvanas Windrunner has pierced the veil between Azeroth and the realm of the dead, granting players access to the titular Shadowlands: an eerie afterlife featuring five brand new zones to explore. One of the biggest changes in Shadowlands can be found in the levelling system. When they enter the Shadowlands max level players will be dropped from level 120 to 50, and work towards the new level cap of 60. The idea is to make levels feel meaningful again. “I don’t think we did a great job between levels 110 and 120,” admits Patrick Dawson, production director. “It felt…

The $4.99 battle pass has over 75 rewards such as banners, Rocky the Ravenhook comics, skins, and props to litter your combat arena with. Other players will also now see your customised arena when they come to fight you. Summoners are here: Arc Warden and Nature’s Prophet return as part of this new alliance, while Lycan, Venomancer, and Broodmother regain their summoning powers and switch to it. Say goodbye to Scrappy Inventors, as those alliances are taking the season off. (And not a moment too soon.) Of course this Valve game has sprays. Of course it does. Other Heroes, Alliances, and Items will rotate to keep the roster fresh. It’s still undecided, but the team hopes to have three to four seasons per year. The top battle pass reward is…

DEVELOPER REBELLION DEVELOPMENTS • PUBLISHER REBELLION DEVELOPMENTS zombiearmy.com In this analogy, the feeling you get as you chomp down – that beautiful weightless moment before the regret and mild tummy ache and the memory that you have a family history of diabetes – is clicking the left mouse button to fire your weapon and hearing the satisfying squish of another zombie’s cranium exploding. As gaming pleasures go, it’s not quite on a par with the solution to a fiendish puzzle clicking into place somewhere in the bottom of your brain or the explosion of possibility that comes from trying something stupid and getting a response that shows the developers saw you coming. But it is certainly exceedingly moreish. Over the 15 years and six games that have led to this…

DEVELOPER VERTEX POP • PUBLISHER VERTEX POP vertexpop.com/supercrushko It’s a tale as old as time: girl meets alien warlord. Alien warlord comes crashing through her bedroom wall, steals her cat and maybe her heart. Girl grabs a laser rifle and heads out to get her cat back. Functionally, as a setup for a videogame, this mightn’t be all that different to ‘your princess is in another castle’, but paired with a bright art style that looks like it’s been scrawled onto your monitor in pastels, it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes me do the heart eyes. So, yeah, it was pretty much love at first sight with Super Crush KO, which reminded me of Steven Universe and Scott Pilgrim and Sayonara Wild Hearts. Peel back the impeccable presentation…

DEVELOPER BLACK SHAMROCK, CYANIDE • PUBLISHER BIGBEN INTERACTIVE epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/paranoia/home The dystopia of enforced happiness has been dissected across media obsessively for decades, pretty much since capitalism and communism emerged as the two opposing ideologies of the 20th century, and did all in their power to show citizens on the other side just how happy we all are. It’s a theme that often plays out as satire, but Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory, based on the tabletop RPG, goes meta by parodying that satire. It’s witty and brimming with maddening bureaucracy and obfuscating doublespeak that’s part Joseph Heller, part Aldous Huxley. You are a clone, born into adulthood in a futuristic underground society called Alpha Complex. It’s a rigidly hierarchical place, run by an all-seeing AI called Friend Computer, and filled with…

DEVELOPER FUNOMENA • PUBLISHER ANNAPURNA INTERACTIVE annapurna.pictures/interactive/wattam When Katamari released in 2004, it surprised players and critics with its joyous mechanics and soundtrack. It was an energetic, colourful bolt from the blue, and its creator, Keita Takahashi, was launched into the spotlight. Although Katamari, and his later game Noby Noby Boy, released over a decade ago, Takahashi’s latest game, Wattam, has the same free-spirited imagination and playful sense of fun. In Wattam you play as the Mayor, a green cube wearing a black bowler who sports a dapper moustache. But as happy as a fancy hat and facial hair would make me, the Mayor in Wattam is far from pleased. At the beginning, he is the sole character in a dark and empty world. But then, a tiny stone named…

“At times, the performance of the 3970X is mind-blowing. Anyone dabbling in 3D rendering will love how fast it is..” PRICE $3,199 www.amd.com AMD has thrown down the gauntlet with the third round of Threadripper, delivering many of the fastest benchmark results I’ve ever seen. Intel’s response is telling. It slashed prices on its 10th-gen Cascade Lake-X parts. It’s still not enough – at least, not if you’re after maximum multithreaded performance. AMD and Intel have now swapped positions in terms of pricing, with the Threadripper 3970X occupying Intel’s former three-grand slot. At least the platform and hardware justify the cost. At times, the performance of the 3970X is mind-blowing. Anyone dabbling in 3D rendering will love how fast it is. Cinebench completes its baseline test in a matter of…

PRICE $485 www.sapphiretech.com Gamers have had a lot of reading to do to help them determine the best graphics cards to buy in the midrange market. The last few months has seen the release of Nvidia’s 1600-series Super cards, AMD’s RX 5500 XT and now we have another disruptive entry to add to the mix, the RX 5600 XT. The 5600 XT is a very interesting card indeed, and one that AMD believes is the one that can cause arguably the biggest mid-range realignment of this generation. Let’s see if it holds up to this promise. The RX 5600 XT is equipped with the Navi 10 GPU, with clock speeds and the memory spec being the primary differences between it and the more expensive RX 5700. Both cards include 2,304…

PRICE $89 Au.turtlebeach.com Turtle Beach is enjoying a bit of a renaissance at the moment with its headset lineup as it courts esports professionals. Its latest budget option is the Recon 200, which feels deceptively high-quality. The headset is listed with compatibility for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 (PS4), Nintendo Switch and mobile devices, but in testing we found that it works perfectly well with PC as well, when set in Xbox mode. What stood out to me immediately was the really nice design. It uses a lot of the same techniques found in Turtle Beach’s previous lineup, including the flip-to-mute fixed microphone, and diagonal pivots on the cups, but the company has included this subtle, sexy carbon fiber-style two-tone finish, which looks great. The headband is also supported on the…

Nerf is making a line of Halo toys in time for this fall’s Halo Infinite. The current lineup consists of three different toy guns that shoot the company’s classic foam bullets. The marquee toy in the new lineup is probably the MA40 Blaster, which is not just a new gun coming to Halo Infinite, but it’s also the biggest of the trio coming from Nerf. On top of that, buyers will also receive a code to use in the game to unlock the toy’s color scheme for the same gun. If you prefer something more compact, two more toys are coming via Nerf’s Microshots line, which are often single-hand, smaller guns. In the case of the Halo Infinite toys, that includes the iconic Covenant firearm, the Needler, as well as…

“As in the games, elemental magic is the star of the show..” DEVELOPER LARIAN STUDIOS • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE • RELEASE OCTOBER 20200 bit.ly/36sTicn MODEL CITIZEN Your hero is represented by a plastic miniature for you to move around the board. You also have cards that detail your skills, abilities, and perks, most of which are taken directly from the games. You can even have a Pet Pal – in the demo we grill squirrels and horses for info. DICE DICE BABY Different attacks and skills roll different kinds of dice, which have different effects. Black dice are your baseline, blue dice are more likely to trigger special buffs or debuffs (such as knocking a target down), and red dice have a greater chance of rolling higher damage results. FLIP OUT…

DEVELOPER FIRST WATCH GAMES • PUBLISHER HI-REZ STUDIOS • RELEASE 2020 roguecompany.com Jumping out of a hoverplane with the rest of my four-person crew, I cast an eye across Rogue Company’s industrial canal map. I can see the opposing team in the sky, their red contrails giving me some basic information on where they’ll make landfall. Rogue Company is Hi-Rez’s third-person multiplayer shooter. I’m playing the 4v4 Extraction mode where you earn victory from hacking an objective, counter-hacking an objective, or – because this is a shooter – mowing down every one of the opposing team and forcing them to sit through a replay of your winning kill. You start the game with a secondary weapon and some loose change – enough for a grenade of some kind, or maybe…

It’s easy to break the laws of Alpha Complex and increase your treason level. Here are some of the stranger treasonous behaviours you need to avoid TREASON LEVEL: 5 Stepping into an area demarcated for those of higher social standing than you TREASON LEVEL: 10 Initiating conversation with those of higher social standing than you TREASON LEVEL: 15 Asking questions that attempt to gain information beyond your clearance TREASON LEVEL: (VARIOUS) Giving the wrong answers in a confession booth designed to decrease your treason level.…

DEVELOPER TYPHOON STUDIOS • PUBLISHER EPIC GAMES savageplanetgame.com It looks like No Man’s Sky and it’s made by Far Cry 4 director Alex Hutchinson, so perhaps it’s best to start with which games Journey to the Savage Planet is not like. Although you and a co-op partner find yourself on a distant planet, it isn’t anything like as non-linear or as vast as No Man’s Sky. And sure, there’s a gun occupying the bottom-right of the screen, but Far Cry in space it is not. What Typhoon Studios has made with its debut title is something else entirely. Something that gives you a real sense of being stranded in a huge and uncharted alien environment, but carefully curates your path through it. That path takes you through platforming sequences, boss…

PRICE $429 samsung.com Back in the January issue of APC we took a look at how faster monitors have been shown to significantly improve response times in fast paced games like competitive first person shooters. In addition to displaying opponents faster, it also helps players track targets and reduces distracting artifacts like ghosting and screen tearing, in what adds up to a 90% better kill-to-death ratio for anyone using screens faster than 180fps. Doubling your performance is a metric that any serious gamer is likely to take note of, so Samsung’s new 27-inch curved gaming monitor is worth consideration from anyone looking to improve their gaming performance. Obviously the most notable feature of this screen is the 240Hz refresh rate – a speed that means there’s only a handful of…

PRICE $299 www.corsair.com Damn, this keyboard is terrible. The feet fold out sideways. That’s vaguely neat from an aesthetic point of view, but the slightest lateral movement causes it to crumple to the deck with a whimper. Don’t use the feet. They’re really bad, and Corsair’s engineers should flagellate themselves for designing them. Whether they choose to break out the birch twigs before or after they receive the plaudits for the rest of this keyboard is up to them. Damn, this keyboard is great. The K95 Platinum XT is an obvious evolution of Corsair’s tried-and-true overall design, which sees a cleverly folded aluminum base frame forming a neat dished base for the keyboard, with a distinct forehead and tiny, functional chin. Everything that isn’t core keyboard (and there’s a lot…

PRICE $109 http://roccat.org Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the meeting room where this mouse was first pitched. What does a mouse do—some disruptive but well-liked marketing wunderkind asks—if not just point and click? What if we just focused really hard on that part? What if – at this point, the marketing guy sweeps his hands around dramatically – we created the perfect click? This scenario is, of course, fantastical. But the Roccat website claims that the Kain did take two years of brainstorming, redesigns, and rigorous testing, and then goes on to refer to it as “our masterpiece.” Well, Roccat, we’ll be the judge of that. The Kain 202 AIMO, itself a minor evolution of the Kain 200, is the physical embodiment of this reviewer’s favorite…

01 COURANT CARRY PRICE $230 • DISTRIBUTOR COURANT staycourant.com Portable power-banks can be lifesavers when you’re without access to somewhere to plug in. The problem is the cable you need to charge with is another thing to accidentally leave at home, lose, or is just plain awkward to use on the move. The Carry solves all of that. POWERED UP: Suave pebbled leather case. 8000mAh wireless charging, which means two full charges for the majority of phones out there. Can even stack-charge this and your phone at the same time on cabled wireless charger. PLAYED OUT: Up to 5x pricier than cabled solutions! 02 HOT WHEELS TESLA CYBERTRUCK PRICE $600 • DISTRIBUTOR HOT WHEELS hotwheelscollectors.mattel.com Most of us won’t be able to afford the real version of this…