Innehållsförteckning för Issue 292 från PC Powerplay

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (gotta love a name that is also a succint pitch document) emerged in the 1980s as a huge licensing extravaganza. Success in the comics field led to multiple TV series, an outrageously popular line of action figures (I had the one with the swords, but am not such a fan that I can even remember which one that was), and even pen & paper roleplaying games. Soon after the property made the leap to video games, and like the ongoing popularity of the four pubescent turtles and one very old rat, those video games are still coming. Shredder’s Revenge is, like the turtles themselves these days, a pure hit of side-scrolling, fighting game nostalgia. It’s our cover preview this month, but the game that’s really…

Knives out The editor draws its unusual name from the powerful sword first seen in 1994’s King’s Field and then found in some slightly redesigned and renamed form in every game in the modern Souls series. Always powerful and difficult to acquire, the striking turquoise blade is sure to help anyone who can survive FromSoftware’s harsh landscapes long enough to find it. Finding the Eye of Horus and placing it on an altar in Trismegistus is an unforgettable event. The entire world fades away before returning as a warped version of itself, cloaked in ominous purple hues. It feels like the kind of trick Trismegistus just shouldn’t be able to pull off, considering how it was made: as an original adventure built with the 22-year-old Sword of Moonlight: King’s Field…

Meghann O’Neill is concerned that her husband has been raising bee ownership in conversation a lot, recently. Could be sweet, or just painful. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so determined to enjoy a video game. Over six weeks, I started (probably) 30 games of Civilization VI, and abandoned almost all before the atomic age. I loved it at release and there’s lots of “new stuff”, but I’m engaging inconsistently; opening strong, getting bored. This is not to say I haven’t had fun, but it’s been a stoic, oppressive kind of fun, like I imagine it would be to get a beehive, then have to actually learn how to take care of bees, wear rubber clothing, and read beekeeping blogs, honey notwithstanding. Former PC Powerplay editor, David Wildgoose, once told…

I’m no ghost scientist, but there are a few things I’m confident ghosts do: spin office chairs as a gag, fry electronics at the worst times, and make soda machines eject cans like fizzy ballistic missiles. I was able to do all three in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, so at the very least it passes my amateur ghostology test with slimy colours. Ghostbusters is Illfonic’s third licensed, 4v1 multiplayer game after Friday the 13th and Predator: Hunting Grounds. While the first two have come and gone while Dead by Daylight keeps on trucking and Left 4 Dead 2 settles into old age, I don’t think Ghostbusters is really trying to supplant either. This time Illfonic’s really doing its own thing, making an asymmetrical game where one team never gets torn limb…

Lieutenant Karl Fairburne is nothing if not a professional. A deep grizzled voice that would make any 1940s woman swoon, short back and sides haircut, and far too many pockets – you can tell he’s a man on a world-changing mission. Even if he has just accidentally fired his pistol into the ground, alerting several nearby Nazis to his position. I swear at myself in frustration while launching over a countryside fence and running into a patch of long grass to evade my pursuers. Crouching down, I steady my breath as the guards anxiously amble over. That was a very stupid move… but I can’t help but laugh. Sniper Elite 5 is the latest game in the World War II shooter series from Rebellion. Although solidly set in the serious…

1 BFF Characters helped out in side quests can become Friends for Life, meaning they’ll appear randomly in battle. It’s a lovely gesture, and you feel bad when they die. 2 POWER CURVE Abilities are a mix of gun powers and character-specific supernatural powers, all of which are bought using Nimp Relics, found through exploration. 3 FOLLOWING THE LEADER You can hire mercenaries in saloons, or recruit the former protagonists, who will bring their inventories across with them.…

FromSoftware’s games, from Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls to Bloodborne, have always quietly been open worlds. Far off castles and swamps caught your eye, you trekked towards them, fell down a hole, probably died and went looking for a new destination. They didn’t need maps or icons, because their carefully crafted settings were dense with clues and lures leading to new paths and back to old locations. Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s successor to the Souls series, spreads the mysteries and challenges of Dark Souls across an open world in a more conventional sense. There are castles to infiltrate from several angles, swamps to ride through on horseback, and gargantuan beasts to chase you down. The sheer amount of freedom is a first for the series, and it results in a game…

Shadow Warrior 3 is a fast-paced FPS for adult-aged children. It stars East Asian caricature and human dick joke Lo Wang, whose main character trait is that he sucks. He’s an onslaught of crap one-liners and innuendos, the kind of man who’s rating how bangable the game’s only woman is within moments of meeting her. He’s the answer to a question nobody asked: what if Deadpool was racially insensitive, and you had to be him for many hours? While the legacy of the original 1997 game is better left forgotten, I’d like plenty about Shadow Warrior 3’s throwback shooter rhythm if it was anywhere else. Its singleplayer campaign of combat arenas is a perpetual parkour of air dashing and wall-running, all while rotating through different flavours of carnage as each…

In my opinion there’s no better peripheral for your PC than a racing wheel. I enjoy VR headsets, though they’re pretty great even without a PC at hand; and a flight stick really feels crucial to a fun flight sim experience. But it’s the racing wheel that I find myself using most often – so much so that one is a permanent fixture on my desk nowadays. There are many different racing wheels vying for your cash, however. You’ll find multiple varying underlying technologies powering each wheel available – each with their own positives and negatives, fans and critics. I’ve tested and reviewed six of the best on the market to see which is really going to deliver a true-to-life tyre-screeching experience for avid and casual driver alike. 1 GT…

WINDOWS 11 GETS NEW AUTO HDR SLIDERS AND GAME PROFILES Fine control over your HDR settings sounds like a huge win. According to Sweclockers, Microsoft is releasing a slider for the Auto HDR feature in Windows and what a time it is to be alive. The slider works through the Windows settings menu but can also be adjusted on the fly if you’re using the Xbox Game Bar. This could be great for some games that are still a bit experimental in their usage and might need to be adjusted in case by case scenarios. Most you’d hope to be able to set and forget, and there’s more good news there too. The new slider can even save settings to game profiles so you can really dial in the games…

DARK DESTINY With the titular dark destiny hanging in the air and voices haunting his dreams, the protagonist sets off for Melenat. HEIR OF GRANATYKI A mysterious darkness sweeps the land in this engrossing and traditional King’s Field prequel. RETURN TO MELENAT An interesting mix of the old with the new keeps this post-King’s Field 3 experience feeling fresh and exciting. TRISMEGISTUS This original adventure focuses on puzzles over combat, taking the gamemaking tool in a whole new direction.…

In the late 1800s, towering metal pylons loom over the Victorian city of Nightingale, crackling with magical energy. In this alt-history timeline, ancient mystical creatures from another realm known as the Fae revealed themselves to the world in the 1500s, changing the course of human history by introducing us to magic. Nightingale essentially became the new centre of the world as people flocked to the city to learn the ways of arcane sorcery and put it to use in science and industry. Magic portals were opened and human explorers, known as Realmwalkers, began stepping through them to explore unknown worlds, returning with new resources, discoveries, and a whole lot of treasure. But in 1889 this bold new age of magic came crashing to an end. A mysterious cataclysm called the…

Trek to Yomi’s demo makes it clear that the team behind the game are not only in love with legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa: they’ve also spent a considerable amount of time studying his work, from Seven Samurai to Yojimbo. Every monochrome area is a feast for the eyes. Flashes of lightning flood the sky with intense bloom, and foreground scenery is skilfully used to convey a sense of cave-bound claustrophobia, or focus your attention on a particular part of the screen. Wherever you look you’ll find faux film grain and digital dirt. There’s a texture and life to every scene. Unfortunately something else became obvious as I played through this side-on sword fighting adventure: copying Kurosawa’s visual style doesn’t translate to earning any of his films’ depth or meaning.…

THROWN OBJECTS In Chaos Theory, the AI doesn’t just doggedly investigate the place a thrown object lands, but if they see it in flight they’ll first investigate where the object came from. Clever. AI ON EDGE The more suspicious sounds an enemy hears, the more anxious they become; do a little rustling in the bushes and they’ll dismiss it, but do it a few times and they’ll come a-snoopin’. LIGHT LOGIC Every source of light affects your visibility – from overhead bulbs to glowing computer screens and the intermittent red flashes of a bomb you’re trying to defuse. REFLECTIONS These days, games seem to have given up on making mirrors ‘work, ’ but in Chaos Theory enemies could spot you through mirrors. Surely it’s time for mirrors to make a…

Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, the Borderlands 2 expansion that doubled as a loving parody of Dungeons & Dragons, came out in 2013. That was a year before fifth edition revitalised interest in Dungeons & Dragons, two years before Critical Role premiered. At the time, jokes about Dungeons & Dragons seemed pretty niche. It was a surprising move for a shooter expansion, but it sure did pay off, hitting an untapped vein and quickly becoming everyone’s favourite DLC. In 2022, though? D&D is popular as it’s ever been, approaching cultural oversaturation, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands returns to a well that’s close to running dry. While it looks like a bouncy fantasy comedy, it plays like Borderlands. Specifically, Borderlands 3. Some of the guns shoot crossbow bolts and the grenades…

When people talk about Norco, they might mention its discerning use of science fiction, its punk roots, or how it resonates as a universal story about place and personhood. It’s full of social commentary on capitalism in the real-life Louisianan town of the same name. But for all these lofty themes, it also nails something petty: the tiny weaknesses and hypocrisies of people looking for a place to belong. Norco is the first game from the collective Geography of Robots, founded by writer/designer Yuts, who was born and raised in the town. The story follows Kay, a young woman who returns home to Norco to find her brother, Blake, in the wake of their mother’s death. As something of a nomad, she’s been running from her roots in a post-apocalyptic…

T he mere existence of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is, well, strange. When Square Enix announced it was remaking Final Fantasy VII, it made sense. It was, after all, the game that put the world’s most ironically named series on the map. An action spin-off inspired by and serving as sort-of- prequel to the now 35 year old and largely forgotten first game in the franchise, however, is an odd choice. The resulting game is even odder. Stranger of Paradise offers a new take on the bare-bones narrative of its pixelated predecessor, with developer Team Ninja injecting the series with a more edgy tone. At least that’s what it was going for, but cringe-worthy dialogue from over-the-top characters sees the game sail right by the realm of cool…

PRICE $499 ONLINE www.msi.com Last year, MSI entered the high performance SSD market with a bang. Its Spatium M480 drive performed well against its competition, blending form and function, although we felt its launch price was a little high to earn an unequivocal recommendation. Fast forward to 2022 and the Spatium M480 has received an upgrade from Micron 97-layer NAND to the latest and greatest 176-layer chips. It’s also built with PS5 compatibility in mind, making it a high performance and versatile option. But the competition hasn’t been sitting idle either. In the latest APC, we reviewed the Silicon Power XS70. The MSI is all but identical as is the case with just about every high performance Phison-based drive. The M480 Play is a 2280 (80mm length) M.2 drive. It…

What’s the deal with Half-Life 3? No, stop, this isn’t the opener for some kind of stand-up routine. The Spy isn’t wildly gesticulating and putting undue emphasis on the words ‘what’ and ‘deal’ in the attempt to convey the inherent absurdity of an otherwise mundane annoyance for comedic effect. The Spy’s brief tour of the open mic circuit was long ago, and The Spy thinks it’s rude that you would even bring it up. Earnestly, then, what is the deal with Half-Life 3? Or, more accurately, what’s the deal with the internet’s reaction to the continued lack of news about Half-Life 3? The absence of information used to be a big deal. Even just a few years ago, the comments of completely unrelated gaming news stories would be filled with…

This month, MEGHANN O’NEILL got unreasonably obsessed with golf and plants. Luckily, vast adventures were to follow, in procedurally generated lands. It’s great that some indie games focus on one thing, others are expansive, and many are a combination, depending on which elements of gameplay and aesthetics are under investigation. Scope is further confused when you realise a game only about golf is impossibly large, or that a game only about plants has a complex political backstory, or that your massive world is really just about the small and finite love between a band of ultimately forgettable people. We hope you find as much, or as little, as what you’re looking for, within. BRENDAN KEOGH’S PUTTING CHALLENGE DEVELOPER Mellow Games PRICE $1-4.50 + DLC AVAILABILITY Released WEBSITE https://brkeogh.itch.io/brendan-keoghs-putting-challenge Golf. The…

Halfway through Discovery’s first season, I accepted that it wasn’t my kind of Star Trek. The modern series’ grim war felt tonally off for a series that’s always been about exploration and humanity, and when it did spend time on its crew, the melodrama dial was stuck at 11. Good or bad, it wasn’t my Trek. I had the opposite experience when I played a new demo of Star Trek: Resurgence, a story-focused adventure from former Telltale developers at new studio Dramatic Labs. Within five minutes, Resurgence’s captain was lamenting a catastrophic warp core malfunction and dropping technobabble like “10,000 teradynes per second” while he stared out a viewport. Twenty minutes later and the senior officers were sitting across a table from Ambassador Spock, talking about their mission to negotiate…

By the time I was a kid growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, arcades were already well on their way out. Home gaming on consoles and PCs has long overtaken the hobby’s original home, relegating it to a novelty for nostalgia-baiting barcades in gentrified neighbourhoods. Still, I found my way into arcades over the years: a friend’s birthday party at a local pizza joint, or killing time while off on my own during a family vacation. One game that I always ran into without fail was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. Turtles in Time and its predecessor, simply titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, remain the gold standard of TMNT games to this day, combining simple, yet fast-paced and explosive combat with drop-in, four-player co-op and…

OK, so we’re all a little tired of superheroes at this point. With the ever growing Marvel Cinematic Universe and however many Batmans we have now, you probably think you’ve had enough of both great powers and great responsibilities. But I promise you you’ve never seen superheroes quite like the ones in Superfuse. This action-RPG takes place far in the future, a time when the people of Earth have gone on to populate other areas of space led by gods. And by gods, we’re talking billionaires evolved by science to the point they’re undying, domineering dictators of the universe. You play one of their lackeys. Not only have these gods altered themselves, but they’ve also taken on an army of supercharged mercenaries (that’s you) called Enforcers. Which doesn’t exactly make…

THE LOGICAL PUTDOWN Sam: Give me some intelligence or you’ll be pushing up daisies in a cemetery full of guys just like you. Guard: I don’t have any intelligence. Sam: Hey, you just called yourself stupid. THE FAKE ORDERS FROM ‘HIGHER UP’ Sam to HQ: “He’s not talking, should I kill him? HQ to Sam: “Negative, Negative” Sam to Guard: “OK, they say I should kill you so…” THE REMINDER WHO’S IN CHARGE Sam: What are you doing here? Guard: I would ask you the same. Sam: I have a knife. You go first. ‘THIS IS JUST A DRILL SO PLAY ALONG’ ROUTINE Guard: Wait a minute, is this a training exercise? Sam: Ugh, damn. Support! This guy knows it’s an exercise, who let the cat out of the bag?…

As a lover of sci-fi and a Singaporean, playing Chinatown Detective Agency was a rare experience. Not long after entering this near-future version of my home country, it became clear that this game has two layers, aimed at two audiences: one is a point-and-click adventure for folks who grew up with Broderbund’s Carmen Sandiego series that took them all over the world. The other is a game made especially for Singaporeans. In 2037, the country has gone through the unthinkable process of deregulation, there’s anti-government graffiti on the train, droids are a routine sight, and there’s only one human librarian left in the country. You play as Amira Darma, an ex-cop starting out as a private investigator. As she takes on cases and meets clients, Amira gets to travel the…

I knew I was in for a good time with Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga when I began the Prequel Trilogy portion and saw Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan’s ship get stopped at a traffic gate floating in space. After a quick video conference with the Trade Federation, which saw them hastily try and hide their evil plans labelled “evil plans”, Qui Gon and Obi Wan breeze through the gate, accidentally knocking a hapless battle droid, sending it floating off into space. The Skywalker Saga pushes its charm, with practically every cutscene featuring some visual gag or punchline at the film series’ expense. Kylo Ren is pumping iron and flexing as Rey contacts him in that infamous scene from The Last Jedi. Ben Kenobi pops some popcorn before…

I’ve lived many lives as I’ve travelled around in Weird West. Bounty hunter, werewolf, pigman – that was a memorable one. And in every body I made the West a little better, or a little worse. As much as it’s a game about constant micro decision-making – stealth or direct assault, Molotov cocktail plus oil barrel or revolver plus John Woo slow-mo dive – Weird West is just as concerned with the bigger picture as other immersive sims, including Dishonored and Prey. That bigger picture begins in a familiar place: with a bounty hunter coming out of retirement. For the first few hours, I was tangling with outlaws in typical Wild West fashion and wondering where the weirdness was. You buy supplies in towns and pick up bounties before heading…

PRAWN GUY He stole a necklace, but lets you buy it back. He boils prawns and sells them. An unhappy fellow. WAR COUNSELOR IJI Kind giant with a peculiar helmet. He’s the only trustworthy NPC in the game; protect him! RANNI THE WITCH A witch that has plans for you. Though gentle, she doesn’t seem like she’s telling you the full truth. KENNETH Kenneth is a noble sort that asks for a favour. He appears innocent, but I don’t believe him.…

Whether you’re making loop-deloops in a Pitts biplane, or going long-haul in a Boeing 747, it’s imperative that your flight sim sessions are piloted with precision. Sure, there are no real passengers around to persecute your flight control peripheral choice, but imagine the distaste if another pilot were to enter your cockpit and find only a mouse and keyboard. For the full flight simulation experience you’re going to want to snatch yourself a well-engineered Hands-On Throttle and Stick (HOTAS). Or for a more realistic approach (pun intended), a full-on yoke system might be the thing to get your propellers going. Whatever your flying style, there’s a joystick for you. And to make the choice easier, we tested the following for their feel, functionality, build-quality, and all-important action. THE DEDICATED EJECT…