Innehållsförteckning för Issue 297 från PC Powerplay

HIGHS King John As Meta announced the closure of Echo VR, industry legend John Carmack got mad about games disappearing forever: "I believe in saving everything." Deepest Rock Deep Rock Galactic is letting players experience the OG version. Stadia shutdown Google’s cloud gaming device is dead - but it refunded everyone. D& no D Wizards of the Coast has tried to screw companies making D&D things under the traditional open game licence. Uri Git A card was returned to the Pokémon game after Uri Gellar admitted "I was a fool" to sue Nintendo. The new blue The Day Before, has had a delay, a bad reveal, the dev blaming everyone. LOWS…

INTERNATIONAL TENNIS OPEN Regarded as a shining example of what multimedia entertainment should be, way back in December ’94. CALIFORNIA GAMES The sickest sports of 1987: BMX, skateboarding… and also ‘footbag’. We don’t talk about footbag. ROGUE The random dungeon crawler that’s literally where the term ‘roguelike’ came from. ACTUA ICE HOCKEY 2 Hockey games are still rare on PC today, and this one has impressive motion captured animation for a 1999 game.…

PREVIEW Tchia I’ve solved puzzles in adventure games by using a crab before, but I’ve never solved a puzzle by becoming one. But when I need to cut a chain in Tchia, that’s just what I do. I soul-hop into a crab and use its (now my) pincers to snip the chain. Neat! That’s just one instance of the useful soul-jumping magic on display in Tchia, an open world adventure from developer Awaceb. The game is heavily inspired by the island of New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific Ocean, where the co-founders of Awaceb grew up. In the beta I’m playing I’ve got access to only one of the game’s three islands, and while exploring a third of a game world seems like it would be restrictive, the island I’m on…

PREVIEW Shadow Gambit A third of the way through Desperados 3, the Wild West gets a bit weird. There’s magic! Animal possession. Mind control. Living creatures can be linked together Dishonored-style. These occult shenanigans are a consistent highlight and demand a follow-up. Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, the team’s latest project, is more than happy to oblige. This is the golden age of piracy, but not as we know it. In this alternate history, death has taken on a new meaning for the pirate crews that sail the high seas. In a nod to Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Afia is on a mission to gather a crew of undead ne’er-do-wells, using magical artefacts known as Black Pearls to transform them into their best selves - all in an effort to…

2016 Steve Sinclair at the very first Tennocon, three years after the game’s launch. It was held in the home of Digital Extremes: London, Ontario, Canada. 2017 Fans are treated each year to a whole variety of novelties like this impressive real-life recreation of the in-game Warframe foundry. 2018 “Just being in the online space torso long, I think there is a Warframe bubble,” Ford says of its much friendlier online player base. 2019 The final Tennocon before the Covid pandemic struck, with a massive turnout. Warframe is a game with a huge, dedicated community. 2020-2022 During the pandemic Digital Extremes held Tennocon within the game, with a live event and stream to promote The Duviri Paradox. 2023 This year will be the first in-person Tennocon in three years. “It…

ANDREA SHEARON Specialist in Petting Koromaru Currently playing Persona 3 Portable This month Stayed up past her bed time playing games in the Dark Hour. MOLLIE TAYLOR Specialist in Waiting for code Currently playing Forspoken This month Petted a magical unicorn cat, practiced parkour while taking interesting detours. JEREMY PEEL Specialist in Inventory management Currently playing Colossal Cave This month Walked around a cave, picked up diamonds, dropped them. SEAN MARTIN Specialist in Fighting space horrors Currently playing Dead Space This month Learnt the importance of air to breathing and, you know, staying alive in deep space. SCOTT MCCRAE Specialist in Balding Italian cooks Currently playing Pizza Tower This month Waged war on the pizza. Well, pizza in the form of a massive tower, specifically.…

IMPROVED VISUALS The remake was built from the ground up in the Frostbite engine. NEW GAME+ After you ve completed it you can jump back in with Phantom Necromorphs. BETTER GUNS Weapons have new special abilities; such as the Pulse Rifle’s proximity grenades. SECRET ENDING If you can find 12 Marker Fragments in new game+ you can unlock a new ending for Isaac. SIDE STORIES New sidequests tell the story of Nicole, and Brant Harris, patient zero for the Necromorph attack. ZERO-G Dead Space now has the free-floating sections seen in the second and third games.…

Every child who falls in love with a fantasy novel dreams of its big-screen adaptation. But every adult who has seen that monkey’s paw curl knows the cost. The director’s lens replaces the mind’s eye, becoming the definitive vision of a place that was once malleable and personalised. That beloved world shrinks to become tangible - sacrificing the infinite scale and limitless budget of the imagination. It’s this conundrum that haunts Colossal Cave, a new version of Colossal Cave Adventure, a text adventure from the late 1970s. While not the first attempt at a graphical reimagining of its namesake, it is the first to render the cave in full 3D, with WASD and mouse controls, leaving nothing to the imagination whatsoever. The prose lives on as narration, which is thoughtfully…

1 POTTY MOUTH Resistant to foul language and curse words. Any attempts to swear at Frey will be reflected back. Shit! 2 CAT'S PYJAMAS Weak to feline friends. Putting one in her line of sight will cause her to be distracted and chase after it. 3 FRESH CREPS Susceptible to stylish sneakers that will inevitably be displayed on a shelf instead of worn like a normal person. 4 KILLER KINDNESS Resistant to friendliness. Convinced kindness is transactional and will remain hesitant. 5 KING'S ENGLISH The best way to tackle Frey is to be an incessant, unremovable sentient British bracelet that berates her.…

Mahokenshi is basically Slay the Spire with samurai wizards, and that’s a solid selling point right there. It’s a deckbuilder, the kind of game where you start with a set of rubbish cards and accumulate better ones as you work towards your goal, but one that tweaks the genre conventions in some unusual ways. Plus, you get a katana. The theme turns out to be the least impactful part of Mahokenshi, a thin layer of second-hand Japanese folklore on top of the familiar elements. The mahokenshi are mystic warriors who’ve made deals with divine spirits for power, and there are four to unlock, each with their own deck. The one who cut a deal with a spider gets cards with poison and stealth effects, while the one whose powers come…

Imagine looking out over the skyline of a bustling city and instead of seeing a flock of birds or a passenger jet, you see a pod of dolphins or a gliding submarine. This is Aquatico, where you’re building a city on the ocean floor after an asteroid strike has rendered the surface world uninhabitable. Instead of roads, you’ll build pipelines, instead of city buses you’ll have submarines, and instead of tornadoes you’ll have to worry about shark attacks. Despite Aquatico’s unusual setting, your city will grow and prosper based on many of the same elements found in city builders that take place on the surface. Mining for oil and stone, fabricating plastic and glass, farming for sustenance, and using turbines and solar collectors for power. Resource management is the real…

TRAM CONTROL 1 The first marker fragment is easy to get since it’s next to where you have to collect the Data Board in Tram Control during chapter one. Look to the right of the workbench to spy the fragment on a bookcase, though you may have to shoot some books to access it. KYNE'S OFFICE 2 The second fragment is located in a secret room in Dr Terence Kyne’s office. You can find his office in the Research Wing of the Medical Deck during chapter two. Use kinesis and slide his bookcase aside to reveal the room with the fragment. ENGINE ROOM 3 During chapter three you have to head to the Engine Room on the Engineering Deck to keep the Ishimura afloat. Head to the centre of the…

CHRIS LIVINGSTON Twitter @screencuisine This month Soul-jacked a bemused crab to solvea puzzle in Tchia, while also evading spooky cloth zombies. SEAN MARTIN Twitter @RemainsToBeSean This month Fought mutated undead herrers in space daily, also he reviewed the Dead Space remake. TYLER WILDE Twitter @tyler_wilde This month Injected ’90s-style FMV cutscenes into his eyeballs in puzzle game Grand Inquisitor. JODY MACGREGOR Twitter @jodymacgregor This month Wore a set of pixelated 8-bit sunglasses while fighting a giant chicken in Lost Ark.…

The Spy used to think that leaking was a victimless crime. When The Spy was just a trainee, it was easy to ignore the real, human cost of the information trade. Some target didn’t want their information broadcast to the world? Well, maybe they shouldn’t have kept so many secrets that people were willing to pay money to see. That was until The Spy’s own expense account was leaked, and The Spy learned that, actually, there are consequences at play. Consequences like being forced to appear in front of an independent committee investigating the “frankly irresponsible” number of weaponised Aston Martins found abandoned around the Swiss Alps. Or being forced to attend a seminar about the most reasonably priced cocktails to order when infiltrating a swanky party held by a…

PREVIEW Havendock You wake up on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. Your first impulse might be to escape, maybe by crafting a boat. But if you’re playing Havendock, escape is the last thing on your mind. Don’t flee the ocean. Live there by building an entire town on it. At first Havendock feels a bit like survival game Raft: I’m standing on a few tiny squares of wood with water all around me, and I need to grab floating leaves, wooden planks, and fish from the ocean to use for resources. Unlike Raft, though, my base isn’t moving through the water but anchored to the tiny sandy island I woke up on. PLAYED IT BUILDING Soon I’m able to build more sections of dock, and the space…

COVER FEATURE Ten years of Warframe Right away, back in 2013 when the game first came out, the thing that stood out to me about Warframe were the titular warframes themselves. Strange, biomechanical bodies that evoked classic ninja archetypes but also their own hybrid of shapes. Eric Vedder is lead concept artist on the game. He started at Digital Extremes 12 years ago, working on games such as Star Trek and The Darkness II. “A small group broke off and started working on Warframe. This free-to-play and I was like, ‘What’s free-to-play?’ [laughs].” After other projects were wrapped up, Warframe was all that was left. “It worked in our favour because everyone ended up liking this game they were doing, this beta.” Vedder was first brought on to work on props…

“Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are?” a dying woman sings over the elevator speakers as I climb through the decks of the doomed ship Ishimura. I’m not a big fern of that whole nursery rhyme horror cliché, but it fits for Dead Space. This was never a series about exploring the wonders of the universe or of space as a wild frontier where the worst evil we can imagine is corporate greed dominating the stars. No, this is a game about how space is downright scary; an abyss into which we gaze and see our nightmares reflected right back. It’s hard to marvel at the universe with a Necromorph’s blades in your gut Necromorph is a fancy space word for zombie, by the way, and you’ll…

Anyone who knows me would be surprised to know I’ve actually never played roller derby. Violence on wheels? Seems like my thing. Thankfully, Roller Drama has come along to not only offer me a taste of the sport, but the drama and camaraderie that surrounds it. When it’s not getting tackled by its own UI shortcomings, Roller Drama skates on its characters, art style, and the near unbearable responsibility of being a team coach. You take on the role of Joan ’Jeanne D’Arc’ Galliano, a coach for a women’s roller derby team who have all moved in to the same house together. The game is split between the hijinks of keeping your team, plus their personal lives, in order and winning matches. It’s part management game, part visual novel, though…

All of my worst thoughts strike in the ungodly hours after midnight. It’s quiet, noises I wouldn’t usually notice grow louder and I’m painfully aware of every shadowy figure in an unlit room. Sometimes my anxieties spiral out of control thanks to a weird pile of clothes or a blanketless foot. Sometimes it’s just a little too dark, and the blank eerie abyss of a dark bedroom goes full-on existential horror. Persona 3 Portable’s fretful cast must share that midnight dread with me, though they have more supernatural terrors to blame. This RPG blend of high school and gothic apocalypse welcomes you with a litany of reminders that time is always running out, and before you even know what it’s counting down to, Persona 3 starts the clock. You’ve got…

TENGU The ghosts of arrogant people and sinful priests become bird-monk things. Tengu kidnap people who return after being force-fed animal excrement. OGUMO Giant spiders, sometimes with the body of a tiger. One was defeated by the Yorimitsu after it tried to trick him by takingtheshape of a beautiful woman. KITSUNE Shapeshifting tricksters who look like foxes with nine tails, but also like to take the form of beautiful women. I’m noticing a bit of a theme here. KAPPA Wannabe Squirtles with two favourite foods: cucumbers, and human entrails. Though playful, they can become violent. Fortunately, they’re easy to defeat.…

LAYSARA: SUMMIT KINGDOM Build cities along the steep cliffs of a mountain while dodging avalanches. IXION A space station is a dangerous place to build a city, especially since the moon has been destroyed. WORLD TURTLES Manage a civilisation on the back of a giant turtle while it swims through outerspace in this upcoming city builder. NECROCITY The undead need a place to live too. Build a graveyard for ghouls and vampires and defend it from the living.…

FEATURE Welcome to a particularly interesting edition of the Australian PC Awards. Unlike most years in tech which are clean, tidy periods where everything runs smoothly and we all buy loads of nice new things, 2022 turned that upside down with one drama after another, all in a market where actual products you could buy were scarce, expensive, or delayed. This is not to say the actual products were duds - au contraire - the tail end of 2022 in particular saw a spectacular period of new GPUs and CPUs, along with exciting new motherboard platforms. DDR5 got its act together and became good, and affordable, laptops leapt into new realms of low power and high performance, and some standout new techs blew us away, like QD OLED monitors. The…

HARDWARE LABS Can Yukari and Fuuka overcome Dave James in avatar form, a monstrous Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 adorned with a crown of bank notes? ECOMMERCE WING Jacob and Katie’s daemonic army of the best gaming chairs lies in wait here, testing Akihiko’s penchant for a comfortable derriere to the max. SCUMM KARAOKE BAR If Ken and Aigis aren’t careful they’ll be dancing all night, trapped by Rob ‘Voice of an Angel’ Jones’ beastly crew of living microphones. EDITORIAL OPERATIONS Robin, Rich and Tyler take no prisoners in ed ops, with Mitsuru and Shinjiro having to deal with waves of brutally random living hot takes. EXECUTIVE SUITES Overlords Evan and Phil are the ultimate test for Junpei as they’re in so many meetings that finding them is nearly impossible. ……

PREVIEW King of the Castle I’ve just gnawed my way through half a chicken in a castle’s great banqueting hall and, as a noble of the realm, I’ve now got a serious decision to make. Should I vote to have the kingdom’s new king crowned in a lavish coronation ceremony? Or, instead, should I vote to just throw him in the river? So begins my preview play session of Tributary Games’ fascinating new title, King of the Castle, a medieval-themed multiplayer party game that leans heavily into player interaction with a unique blend of voting, narrative storytelling and outright Pratchettian silliness. The game works like this. One player, who is the instigator and streamer of the game, plays a kingdom’s new king, while everyone else joining the game play the kingdom’s…

1 An early version of a ship that would become legendary in War frame lore as the Zariman Ten Zero, a vessel that only recently appeared in the game. 2 The hero’s suit easily resembles the Excalibur warframe, which is used throughout promotional materials. 3 Grineer troopers had a more generic design back in 2005, but the foundation for them is clearly there in older models. 4 Even all those years ago the warframe method of extraction, strapping in to the exterior of their shuttle, was in place.…

THE SECOND DREAM Undeniably the point where most players sit up and pay attention is when it’s revealed the warframes are simply remote-controlled bodies. The moment you meet your Operator is memorable. THE WAR WITHIN The next big step on the journey was learning the full extent of your powers, culminating in the moment when the Operator projects their mind across the solar system to help rescue a mate. THE NEW WAR This questline had many big reveals, but none as mindbending as finding out the mysterious Drifter is really your Operator… and then finding out they’re you from another timeline.…

HOW WE REVIEW We review each game on its own merits, and try to match it to a reviewer who’s a passionate expert in the field. The main aim of reviews is to help you make buying decisions. To this end, we’re selective about what we review, and try to focus on the notable, interesting, exciting or surprising. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. If we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. EARLY ACCESS Any released alpha, beta, or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently pay for. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time. THEY'RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release…

BRUTES These are hard to kill, especially if you shoot them from the front. Your best bet is to slow them with stasis, then circle around and use the Ripper to slice ’em. DIVIDERS Though these Necromorphs are rare and hunt alone, bewary of their grab attacks. Once dead, their bodies ‘divide’ and all the parts attack at once. GUARDIANS You’ll likely hear this wall-mounted Necromorph before you see it. Sever the limbs attaching it to the wall before it fires out too many turrets. HUNTERS There isn’t much you do against a Hunter except run. These Necromorphs regenerate, so chop off their legs and use stasis to slow them down.…

CLERE Clere looks so chill. Not a thought behind his eyes. He’s just a lil’ guy who loves sleep, cuddles and being fed. ARAMAK Aramak appeals to my cold, goth heart. If I could own a slightly strange, fantasy cat, it would be this one. KALPANA Kalpana may well be the prettiest cat in all of Athia. If she was human, she’d be the popular blonde girl who always had gum. LEITE I can’t explain this, but Leite reminds me of a smart, kind but slightly frazzled old man. The kind of cat with amazing stories.…

SHINJIRO ARAGAKI He’ s not quite the hard-ass he pretends to be, but that may go unnoticed if you miss his interactions with the female protagonist. MITSURU KIRIJO She may not be a romance option, but Mitsuru’s Social Link certainly feels more intimate than friendship from the female protagonist’s perspective. AKIHIKO SANADA Akihiko’s a little more cool and confident in battle. Persona 3’ s story touches on the loss of his sister but his Social Link dives into how that grief drives his day-to-day. KOROMARU Koromaru’s design and Social Link are based on Japan’s famously loyal pup, HachikD. His tale of devotion and love fits perfectly into the setting’s challenges.…

Mid-pandemic, I was subleasing the comer of a jam space to practise drams. The unit behind mine belonged to an ageing speed metal band, who never played in-time for more than half an hour. When the lead guitarist took a break from arguing with his girlfriend on the balcony, he would pass me in the halls, begging for cocaine while playing Motörhead on his phone speakers. Power Chord is a lot like that band. Power Chord’s deck-based combat centres on its lineup, with each band member offering a distinct way of dealing or negating double-digit damage numbers. In spite of his eye-rolling name, I really latched onto Grimnir Brawlfist, a lead guitarist who throws out deadly riffs based on how much rage he accumulates from taking damage himself, which can…

Nintendo classics have always been ripe pickings for indie reimaginings. Series like Mario and Zelda have directly inspired greats like Shovel Knight and Tunic, and you can’t walk five-feet without stepping into a new Metroidvania. But I’ve often pondered, where were the Wario Land revivals? Its mix of high-speed platforming, exploration and anarchic, slapstick energy made for some of the Game Boy’s crown jewels. Well, looks like I wasn’t the only one to have that thought - in the last few years, we’ve suddenly had an influx of Wario-likes, from the breakoutinspired Antonball Deluxe and its upcoming sequel Anton Blast, to a Doom mod called Treasure Tech. Pizza Tower was announced right at the start of the trend, in 2018, and now it’s finally here. Turns out it was worth the…