Table of contents for Issue 262 in PC Powerplay

AMD’S LUKEWARM RX 500 SERIES GRAPHICS CARDS AMD have released RX 570 and RX 580 graphics cards. They’ve still got Polaris 10 based GPUs but use a tweaked 14nm manufacturing process that AMD calls “Latest Generation FinFET 14”. The RX 500 series cards are mildly overclocked for a minor bump in performance and use a little more power or a little less power depending on what you’re doing (e.g. about 10W on average in gaming, but 30W lower in video playback). They’re also a few bucks cheaper than the RX 470 and RX 480. Other than though, the RX 500 series cards practically identical to their RX 400 series predecessors. If you’ve already got an RX 470 or RX 480 though, don’t bother upgrading, there’s not much to see here.…

You probably know PLE Computers as an Australia-wide network of stores selling a huge range of PC gear, all backed up by a comprehensive website offering just about anything you will need for your PC, with easy online shopping and fast, trouble-free delivery. But there’s more to PLE. The people behind the scenes love to get involved with Aussie gamers, it’s their passion, and it’s backed up by a long history of supporting the Australian gaming scene. PLE support the community in many ways. They’re there at the frontlines at many events and tournaments, backing Aussie gamers with prizes and gear. In just the last year PLE provided over $50,000 worth or prizes across the country at various gaming events, big and small. As PLE’s Anthony Hollingsworth explains. “At PLE…

“you have no idea what the rules of this new world are and you have to discover them” RIME DEVELOPER TEQUILA WORKS PUBLISHER GREY BOX/SIX FOOT DUE MAY greybox.com/rime/en/ Pristine blue water laps against the shore, its white foam fringe briefly darkening the sand before retreating. Further down the beach a thin headland reaches out to support a brilliant white tower like a hand holding a candle above the ocean. The sun is high in the sky, there are birds singing and crabs scuttling across the sand. It’s an idyllic setting for a game. But some players just didn’t get it. “This is not like Halo,” Rime creative director Raul Rubio recalls one playtester telling him. “I asked him why he thought it would be like Halo and he said…

“look, five years in and Diablo isn’t going to reinvent the wheel here” DEVELOPER BLIZZARD PUBLISHER BLIZZARD DUE WHEN IT’S DONE http://us.battle.net/d3/en/ It’s been five years since Diablo III was released. That’s insane. Isn’t that insane? It seems like only yesterday the long-awaited sequel busted out of the doors without enough server capacity to handle launch loads. Ah, a simpler time. In all seriousness, Blizzard has done a fairly solid job of keeping Diablo updated with enough content to satisfy the hungry hoards – there have been enough changes that it’s hardly the same game. We got a chance at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco to sample its next update: Rise of the Necromancer. Blizzard already showed off a character build last year at Blizzcon of a female,…

“as good as the sniping can be, CI Games seems determined to sideline the game’s main appeal” DEVELOPER CI GAMES PUBLISHER CI GAMES PRICE $49.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM sniperghostwarrior3.com There is something alluring about sniping in games if you have the patience for it. Lining up the perfect shot, making incremental adjustments to account for distance and weather and then finally pulling the trigger for a clean kill is a great feeling, and one that many games have done well over the years. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 handles sniping very well. Taking aim, slowing down time (or holding your breath if you want to use the in-game terminology), making any adjustments demanded by difficulty (as the difficulty gets higher so do the requirements for lining up a shot) and then…

“there are many good, genuinely frightening sequences, but there’s also plenty of repetition” DEVELOPER RED BARRELS PUBLISHER RED BARRELS PRICE US$30 AVAILABLE AT STEAM redbarrelsgames.com/games/outlast-2 Outlast 2 garnered no small share of notoriety when it was temporarily refused classification in Australia on the grounds of sexual violence. While there are elements of sexualised violence in the final game, they play an all but inconsequential part in the overall story. At its core the game deals with something far more interesting and controversial: belief. Everyone believes something in Outlast 2, and believes to a pathological degree. Blake, the protagonist, believes he is responsible for a suicide, and the different factions all believe in some way or other they are doing God’s work. It’s a game about the corrupting influence of fanatical…

“making more than one or two attacks in a row is a good way to get yourself dead very fast” DEVELOPER OGRE HEAD STUDIOS PUBLISHER OGRE HEAD STUDIOS PRICE $9.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, HUMBLE, GOG www.asurathegame.com There is a bit of controversy around Indian developed ARPG Asura, and that is a pity. The developers have been called out for posting a glowing review of their own game on Steam (though they put the blame on the Chinese publisher of the game) and as such all positive reviews of the game can now be seen as being somewhat suspicious. It’s kind of an ironic situation for the game to be in, because the early glowing review from the developer or publisher - depending on who you believe - is entirely unnecessary.…

“heading up to Gaming mode sees the Boost clock jump to 1657MHz” PRICE $1239 www.msi.com.au In the last issue of PC PowerPlay, we revealed Nvidia’s latest flagship consumer product, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Offering performance boosts of up to 35% over the existing GeForce GTX 1080, we pronounced it the world’s fastest gaming GPU. A month later and we’re now being flooded with samples from Nvidia partners who are releasing their own heavily customised versions of this product. The first to cross our testbench is MSI’s new Gaming X 11G – at $170 more expensive than the cheapest GTX 1080 Ti Founder’s Edition cards on the market, what do you get for the extra price? Once again we see MSI using its new Torx 2.0 fan system, which delivers…

“if you want gaming grunt without back-breaking mobility, it doesn’t get much better than this potent little runt” PRICE $2,699 www.alienware.com Proving that you don’t need a behemoth of a laptop to power the latest games is Alienware’s shiny new Alienware 13. This tiny 13-inch laptop weighs a mere 2kg, yet has ample power to smash through the latest games on the market. You’re going to have to pay a little extra for the privilege, but if you want serious gaming grunt without back-breaking mobility, it doesn’t get much better than this potent little runt. The 13.3-inch screen is a full HD 1920 x 1080 display, and shows off Dell’s trademark excellent panel quality, with rich vibrant colours and deep, inky blacks. There is one annoying bug though – no…

PRICE $129 logitech.com/en-au As much as we liked the G810 Orion Spectrum and G610 keyboards, the new G413 is the best keyboard we’ve seen from Logitech in years. It combines everything we like in a keyboard - premium feeling mechanical keys, solid construction, a small footprint and a general lack of bells and whistles that do little outside of increase the price tag. The result is a great looking keyboard that is a joy to use. The keyboard comes in two varieties - Silver and Carbon (a fancier word for black) - but aside from the colour of the thick aluminium faceplate and the backlighting (white in the case of Silver and red for Carbon), the keyboards are identical. This means they both feature the same lovely short throw Romer-G…

REAL TIME GRAPHICS Dear RTS, where did the graphics go? I recently got my hands on Grey Goo and the more recent Ashes of the Singularity and was shocked to find that C&C3, nearly 10 years old, looks just as good if not better. The pretty glowing lights of Ashes notwithstanding, C&C3’s textures were crisper, the models were just as good, and effects intense and visceral. Other areas have graphically moved ahead in leaps and bounds: AC2 could never visually pass as a 2016 game (particularly after seeing AC: Syndicate), and neither could the original Star Wars Battlefront games. Yes, Warhammer: Total War is gorgeous, but this seems to be the exception. After reading in PCPP 258 that Dawn of War III might limit the zoom to let them get…

It truly is a new era in the world of performance CPUs. Thanks to four long years of hard work, research and innovation, AMD’s brand new Ryzen 7 series of processors have delivered high-end performance at an unprecedented price. Power users have never had it so good, with the cost of a top-end machine halving with the release of this single product. So just what is Ryzen 7? This all-new product from AMD has been built from the ground up over the last four years, based on a powerful new CPU core design called Zen. Today’s CPUs aren’t really just a single CPU – they each contain between two and ten CPU cores. Each core is basically an individual CPU, but they share specialised memory pools known as caches. The…

“I got mine up with a couple of clamps and plasterboard poles from Bunnings” VR is taking us places - the movement is real - and those of us who have dropped the clams on the first premium products of its new era, HTC’s Vive and Oculus’ Rift, are certainly inhabiting worlds on the bleeding edge of new technology. But now after the familiarity has set in and the awe has been consumed, the anticipation for the next step is growing. As a HTC Vive owner, I experience VR in a room-scale setting with motion controllers. I paid about $1200 for one of the units in April 2016 and waited excitedly for it to ship, reading post after post on VR forums by early adopters exclaiming, “Oh my god…

TANZIA DEVELOPER ARCANITY INC. PUBLISHER ARCANITY INC. DUE EARLY ACCESS playtanzia.com Tanzia is an odd beast, but has the potential to be a really fun one. The single player action RPG in which players take the role of a young shaman retracing the footsteps of their Akazi ancestors in an effort to become the greatest shaman ever has a great lineage behind it. The developer, Arcanity Inc. is made up of ex alum of some very prestigious studios, including inXile Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment, Obsidian Entertainment, Westworld Studios and more, with designers, programmers and artists who have worked on KotOR II, Neverwinter Nights 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera and EverQuest. The pedigree shows in Tanzia, with elements both of old school RPGs and MMOs shining through. The island of Tanzia…

“this isn’t just an RPG about killing and looting, though there is plenty of both, don’t worry” DEVELOPER LOGIC ARTISTS PUBLISHER LOGIC ARTISTS PRICE US$30 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG expeditionsseries.com The clue’s in the name. No, not the Viking bit. Though it does accurately describe the amount of beards and longships awaiting you. It’s the other bit, the bit before the colon. Expeditions is the name of the series which began a few years back with Expeditions: Conquistador. Both games lean heavily into ideas of travel, of trekking to new places and returning home, of time passing. This is the kind of RPG that’s less about quests and more about journeys. You play your tribe’s young new “thegn” prematurely thrust into a leadership role after the untimely death of your…

“things are going swimmingly until the gas-masked staff start murdering the guests” DEVELOPER CAVALIER GAME STUDIOS, TEQUILA WORKS PUBLISHER TEQUILA WORKS PRICE $19.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG thesexybrutalegame.com Most murder mysteries boil down to being a simple “whodunnit”, and a few focus more on the motive than the perpetrator, but The Sexy Brutale, the latest game from Tequila Works (the developer also responsible for our cover game this month) takes a different approach again. You see, there is no question as to who is responsible for the 10 murders in the Brutale as you can witness them all, and while the motives may only become apparent towards the end of the game, what prompted the murders isn’t the real question either. No - the thrust of The Sexy Brutale is…

“murder combos grant bonus points, so it really rewards creativity, and not a little bit of cruelty” DEVELOPER PEOPLE CAN FLY PUBLISHER GEARBOX SOFTWARE PRICE $49.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM bulletstorm.com Bulletstorm was a rad game when it was first released in 2011, thanks to a winning combination of puerile humour, fast and rewarding shooting mechanics and some excellent action setpieces. The Full Clip Edition takes this original game, puts a shiny coat of paint on it and then charges you way too much for a six year old game. The constantly exciting and creative combat is still very appealing, but the simple fact that the game is being sold for the same price as a newly released AAA title (or more if you get the Duke Nukem DLC that…

“our favourite feature is the Windforce cooler found on the new Aorus high-end cards” PRICE $1,229 www.gigabyte.com.au And here we have Gigabyte’s version of the hallowed GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. As you’ll see, just like motherboards, picking between it and the competition is extremely hard, as they all have very similar features. However, there are a couple of minor differences that make the Gigabye version our favourite that we’ve seen so far. Our favourite feature is the Windforce cooler found on all of the new Aorus high-end graphics cards. It’s a triple fan solution, with one fan in the centre, nestled beneath the other two. Despite there being an extra fan, it’s actually slightly quieter in operation during OC mode, at 2dB quieter than the MSI model. However, it’s a…

“we managed to get its quad-cores running at 4GHz, though paid a 5dB price in fan noise in the process” PRICE $4,299 www.evga.com EVGA is better known for its close relationship with Nvidia in Australia, so it was with great interest that we accepted an invitation to check out this chunky 17-inch gaming laptop from the brand. EVGA is renowned for being a premium brand, so we were expecting a rather hefty price tag… just not quite this pricey. Weighing in at a hefty 3.7kg, it’s not the kind of machine you want to stuff in your backpack. This is largely due to its size, based around that whopping 17.3-inch display. It’s a full-blown 4K panel, and we have to hand out praise where it’s due – this is one…

I’ve wanted a triple screen gaming rig for a very long time. These days I play mostly sims – flying and driving – and by all accounts this is where a triple screen rig should shine, so for no other reason the time is now to get this project going. Now, with this being the age of VR and all, it’s fair to question the sanity of investing in an expensive triple screen rig – which includes not only the cost of the screens, but the graphics card to run it all. VR is life changing, no doubt about it, but the current generation VR screens are too low resolution to be useful in some games. Yes, you’re really there, but if you can’t read how much fuel is left…

“the whole thing was cooked up in some British shed over a lot of beer” A meticulously detailed sci-fi universe full of hundreds of pre-designed units, weapons, structures and more, with a dedicated fan-base than lives and breathes the fiction? One lucky publisher should have made a mint off this IP. And yet, the history of videogame versions of Warhammer 40,000 are like the history of that universe itself: full of chaos, confusion, and the occasional burning of an entire world. DEVELOPER So, so many, but notable alums include Relic, SSI, Gremlin, Sega, THQ and Electronic Arts. RELEASED An average of 1.4 Warhammer 40K games (or expansions) have been released per year, since 1992. NUTSHELL Most 40K games are turn-based strategy, while RTS is dominated by Dawn of War. But…

I’ve only recently gotten back into PC gaming last year, when I bought a prebuilt and over the course of that year I’ve ended up tearing that apart and basically building a new computer from scratch. The addiction is real, but I think I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’m content with my set up. MOST IMPRESSIVE ELEMENTS: • Acer Predator 27” 1440p 144hz Monitor • Phanteks Enthoo Pro M Tempered glass case • CableMod black and red sleeved cables • Corsair Magnetic Pro 120m Red Led Fans WHAT MAKES MY PC SO SPECIAL? The monitor punching out 145hz (165hz when it’s overclocked). Running games at 144fps makes so much difference, the smoothness is unbelievable. I’m running an MSI 1070 which does a pretty good job of keeping those…

GALAX - GALAX GTX 1080 EXOC SNIPER WHITE EDITION With a core clock speed higher than that of the GTX 1080 Founder’s Edition you might expect the Galax GTX 1080 EXOC Sniper White Edition to run hot and loud, but the white chassis is a keen visual indicator of how the card runs; cool and quiet. Thanks to efficient fan design and the fact that the fans only become active when the GPU hits 45 degree, the card runs quietly through normal usage and only slightly louder under full load. Even at full load the GPU temperature should not exceed 66 degrees, making it a prime candidate for further overclocking. ANTEC - ANTEC CUBE RAZER EDITION Case, cooling and power supply manufacturer, Antec has joined forces with peripheral and laptop…

1 Panoptic DEVELOPER TEAM PANOPTES PUBLISHER TEAM PANOPTES DUE 2017 teampanoptes.itch.io/panoptic First prototyped for a game jam, Panoptic is an asymmetric local multiplayer game for one person wearing an HTC Vive headset, and the other playing on the PC. The idea of the game is that the VR player takes the role of a powerful Overseer, keeping a fascistic eye on the city. The PC player takes control of a single rebellious citizen trying to bring down the system while hiding from the Overseer. 2 Hob DEVELOPER RUNIC GAMES PUBLISHER RUNIC GAMES DUE SOON runicgames.com/hob/ The team behind the fantastic ARPGs, Torchlight and Torchlight 2 are back with something a little different. Hob is a narrative but wordless adventure game that sees the player transforming the world around them by…

“it’s fair to assume that all of the cinematic Guardians of the Galaxy will appear” DEVELOPER CAPCOM PUBLISHER CAPCOM DUE SEPTEMBER 19 marvel.com/games/179/marvel_vs_capcom_infinite While the Marvel vs Capcom series, since the second iteration, has featured a simplified combat system that uses four buttons rather than the more typical six seen in other Capcom fighting games, to make the series more appealing to newcomers to fighting games, Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite has taken a new approach to accessibility. Instead of featuring the light, medium and heavy attacks that are all but synonymous with Capcom fighters, Infinite instead restricts attacks to light and heavy versions of punches and kicks with another two buttons controlling character switching and Infinity Stone activation. It makes for an interesting change that takes some getting used to…

“base-building and tech upgrades are back, and immediately feels more RTS-like” DEVELOPER RELIC ENTERTAINMENT PUBLISHER SEGA PRICE $59.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM dawnofwar.com FORDHAM: Videogames based on Warhammer 40,000 might have begun all the way back in 1992 with Space Crusade, but it took 12 years to find a truly winning formula in 2004’s Dawn of War. Sadly, for 40K fans, that “winning formula” meant letting go of a faithful, digital reconstruction of the table-top game, and instead shoving Games Workshop’s IP into an RTS. Full credit to Relic: the first Dawn of War still kept plenty of 40K flavour. Squads had individual upgrade options, the graphics were visually faithful, and by the time the last expansion (Soulstorm) came out in 2008, most of the core races had made an appearance,…

“there’s ample exploration, but the absence of side quests makes everything feel vital to the game” DEVELOPER ENIGAMI PUBLISHER FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE PRICE $29.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM shiness-game.com Sometimes you have to wonder if game Western game development studios that make Japanese style RPGs are all headed up by furries. Nearly all of them feature at least one, if not more muscular cat or wolf people that brood and are, at least to one of the other characters, more than a little dreamy. Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom doesn’t shy away from anthropomorphic animal characters in the slightest, with multiple cat people, and a fox boy with his chubby bear man sidekick. So can a French indie development studio successfully make a Japanese style action RPG? Yes, yes it can. Well,…

“populated by bloated and malformed adults who would like nothing more than to eat you up” DEVELOPER TARSIER STUDIOS PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT PRICE $19.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM little-nightmares.com/en/ While most horror games deal in gore and jump scares, there is a different breed of horror that has established a firm foothold in the indie scene - the horror puzzle platformer that relies on mood and the chase rather than the shock and the kill. Not necessarily pioneered by, but certainly brought to mainstream attention by the likes of Limbo and Inside, these games use scale and distance to make the player feel small in an overwhelmingly dangerous world, and insignificant compared to the evil they face. Little nightmares takes this approach a step further, putting the play in control…

“being shaped like pistol-grips also makes them a much better fit for shooters” PRICE US$99 www.oculus.com When the Rift first launched, we praised it as having the superior headset when compared to HTC’s Vive, but it was missing one must-have feature to make it the VR kit of choice – motion control. Originally shipping with an Xbox controller, it only delivered half of the VR experience; while everything looked grand through the HMD, the inability to reach out and touch (somebody - Noiseworks Ed.) objects in games really took away from the immersion. Well, that problem has now been solved with the release of the Oculus Touch, a pair of motion controllers that use a radically different design than the wands of the Vive. Each one is held like a…

“it’s nice and quiet, hitting a mere 46dB under load, a big drop over the other laptops” PRICE $2166 www.metabox.com.au We’ve been inundated with gaming laptops of late, thanks to Nvidia’s wondrous new mobile GPUs. The Metabox Prime P650HP-G is a GeForce GTX 1060 based laptop that focuses on value and performance over portability, designer good-looks and exotic materials and features. The 15.6-inch display means this machine fits squarely in the middle of the pack when it comes to gaming laptop sizing. It’s a little heavy, at 2.6kg, and it’s been built with ‘al-alloy’ according to Metabox. However, we’re sure some of the surfaces use plastic as well, or are at least covered in a coating that is reminiscent of plastic. Regardless, it feels nice and sturdy. The screen is…

“rather than pair this top-end CPU with an entry level GPU, Gigabyte has gone for a GeForce GTX 1070” PRICE $3,599 www.gigabyte.com.au Welcome to the latest version of Gigabyte’s highly successful P57 gaming laptop. Based on the naming nomenclature, it seems to be the seventh version of this beast, so they’re obviously doing something right. It’s a big 17-inch bruiser designed to deliver top gaming performance without giving a damn about portability or battery lifespan – we’re talking good old school gaming laptop design ethics. In some ways it’s the antithesis of the Alienware 13, but boy does it deliver performance in spades. The overall dimensions are dominated by that huge 17.3-inch display, which packs in a rather hefty 3840 x 2160 pixels – 4K gaming is here baby. Well,…

PRICE $749 samsung.com/au The stand of the Samsung CFG70 is a thing of architectural beauty - a large hinged arm that allows for extremely fine control of viewing height and angle. While it looks great and performs well, it’s also somewhat problematic - the arm is long and deep, so if you usually have your monitor up against a wall or partition, this forces the screen closer to your eyes than you might like. This could be to take advantage of the curve, but then again, maybe not. This is a problem that’s kind of emblematic of the CFG70 as a whole. It’s beautifully put together and looks great, but the design seems to have taken precedent over practicality in some aspects, making it a product that doesn’t quite meet…

01 Sony E-Paper Tablet $1000 • Sony www.sony.com The DPT-RP1 just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? It’s the latest in Sony’s “Digital Paper” line which displays documents and allows you to take notes on them with a stylus… style… pen. It’s Sony’s attempt to remove physical paper dependencies in business. POWERED UP: 13.3 inches of display at a resolution of 1650x2200, giving you all the screen/document/note-taking real-estate you need. PLAYED OUT: So the documents this works with? PDFs. Yep. Just PDFs. 02 Duo AI Mirror $530 • Duo duo.computer Voice assistants are getting smarter, or at least, better at how they filter and disseminate information; Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Assistant are all working to push the boundaries of our expectations for AI assistant interactions. None…