Table of contents for Issue 283 in PC Powerplay

It’s been one of those months where I really wish I wasn’t such a basic bish when it game to the games I play. There’s two MASSIVE games reviewed in this issue that I am almost literally in awe of, that I really, truly want to play and enjoy, and then join in the discourse of all the people I know who love them... But instead I’m comfort-playing through Ghost Recon: Wildlands again. I wish I was the kind of person who liked flight sims, because Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 is garnering rave reviews, and my social feeds are full of people sharing their flight paths and adventures, not to mention flying around the now legendary Melbourne Monolith. I want to be there, but... My tolerance for flying games ends…

When US President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning the Tencent-owned WeChat app back in August, there was speculation that the Chinese conglomerate’s voluminous gaming portfolio might also come under scrutiny. Tencent owns Riot Games and holds a 40 percent stake in Epic Games — its fingers are in dozens of other pies as well. Bloomberg reports that the scrutiny has commenced: the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US has reportedly written to companies including Riot Games and Epic Games on the topic of their handling of personal data security. The motive is likely the same one that prompted executive orders banning WeChat and TikTok. In these orders, Trump claimed the apps shared the personal data of Americans, and Chinese citizens in the US, with the Chinese Communist…

Ninjas, Japan’s historical hitmen, were originally meant to be stealthy assassins, striking in the night and then disappearing into the shadows. I’m not sure what changed between 12th century Japan and 1980s Hong Kong, but by the time cult movie director Godfrey Ho was through with ninjas, they were white guys wearing bright red and yellow Halloween costumes, racing to the top of mountains and bellowing “NINJAAAA” into the sky. That’s one of many bizarre, hilarious scenes that pops up again and again like a meme in the mixtapes of Forgotten_VCR, a Twitch channel that mostly eschews videogames in favour of pulp cinema streamed from actual VHS tapes three nights a week. The Forgotten_VCR Twitch channel started as a convenient way for the streamer, who has asked me to refer…

It’s all stories and systems for MEGHANN O’NEILL this month, but in one game or the other, not both at the same time. Except, of course, that systems can often inspire the stories you will tell in your imagination, as you play, and that stories can be structured in systemic ways, too. Video games; we love  them because they combine things, like a town made from many colours, or a collection of murderous food. Just decide which special drink you’d like to order after you die now. It won’t be your last. Until it is. TOWNSCAPER DEVELOPER Oskar Stålberg PRICE $8.50 AVAILABILITY Early Access WEBSITE https://store.steampowered.com/app/1291340/Townscaper/ Townscaper opened suddenly and spectacularly, like accidentally falling in love. The initial lack of familiarity meant that each investigation had a surprising outcome. I…

The work never stops when you’re trying to organise a holiday to Troy with a bunch of your Greek mates. I just want to smash some walls, but I’ve got soldiers freaking out about bad omens, centaurs that need feed, petulant deities setting fire to shit like bored pyromaniac teens, and people pestering me endlessly about bronze they really don’t need. Get your own bronze, Achilles! A Total War Saga: Troy never lets up. If you’ve read any of the Greek epics that serve as Troy’s inspiration, you’ll know that everyone’s a dick, especially the gods. Thanks to some divine meddling, this Orlando Bloom-looking arsehole runs off with Helen the Spartan queen, and takes her back to the titular city, plunging the Aegean into a brutal war. Troy still lets…

The creative director of Spiritfarer, Nicholas Guérin, was at Ubisoft before he joined Thunder Lotus Games. During his time there, he worked on the Assassin’s Creed series, creating scenarios that would let players stab people in the neck in acts of vengeful fun. Wanting to create something nicer, Guérin joined Thunder Lotus to develop a game that approached the topic of death with compassion. Spiritfarer, a life sim about dying, does just that. Thunder Lotus always wanted Spiritfarerto be a death-positive game. You play as Stella, an upbeat ferry master who’s responsible for finding and helping wandering spirits pass on into the afterlife. After inviting the spirits to stay on your boat, you take care of them and make sure they live comfortably. Then, when they decide they’re ready to…

The Wasteland games have always mixed grit with silliness, offsetting slavery and cannibalism with mutant killer bunnies and the like. That’s one of the things that hasn’t changed in Wasteland 3, which is still an RPG where malfunctioning toasters can be cracked open for loot if you’ve got the Toaster Repair skill, and my squad of hardened wasteland warriors is joined by a goat, a swearing parrot, a cyborg chicken, and a cat who wears a hat. Only a few of the members of your own party get much personality.t6 What’s different is the setting. The endless sand of Arizona and California has been traded for the endless snow of Colorado. Your Desert Rangers are way out of their depth here, sent north to cut a deal prosperous local leader…

PRICE $469 ONLINE www.eposaudio.com Visually, the GSP 670 continues the GSP family’s aesthetic, which one might unkindly describe as Terminator earmuffs. The headset’s overall look is probably the aspect with which I’m least enamored. But Sennheiser was right to keep the headset’s scheme muted by using black and gray and avoiding RGB lighting or accent colors. With this many angles and surfaces, you don’t need any additional details. “FORTUNATELY FOR YOUR HEAD, THE GSP 670’S PHYSICAL LOOKS ARE THE RESULT OF CAREFUL CHOICES MADE IN THE NAME OF COMFORT.” Fortunately for your head, the GSP 670’s physical looks are the result of careful choices made in the name of comfort. At 398g, it’s on the heavy side for a gaming headset, but discomfort simply isn’t an issue with these cans.…

Wingspan is one of the best board games of the past decade, and now it has a digital version. Just released on Steam, Wingspan’s new digital edition is a pretty impressive bit of work for a port between physical and digital. In Wingspan, players build out clever combinations of birds—all of which have unique powers — to make their collection of birds more valuable and effective than their competitors. The digital version has everything you’d want for that purpose: Birds, bird noises, forest noises, and gorgeous illustrations of birds — some of which are even animated in this version. Plus, you can click on your birds while you wait for your turn and they make adorable chirps. It’s relaxing to play. Released in 2019 on tabletop, Elizabeth Hargrave’s Wingspan has…

The Cluvens scorpion “cockpit” is a motorized desk, transforming from a ‘relaxed’ incline to an upright desk. The keyboard tray slides into place in front of your lap (trapping you, incidentally). The arm, which can hold up to three 29” monitors (or a 49” ultrawide), folds down in front of you, enveloping your entire field of view. Cluvens announced this chair in September, but I honestly can’t believe it hasn’t somehow appeared in a movie about evil hackers already. You can easily picture this thing in a fight. It’s practically a Droideka already. It’d just break off its monitor arm at the tip and use the jagged metal and exposed cables as a stinger. The legs already move as it transforms, a horrifying image if you have an insect phobia…

MARY She looks innocent, but evolving lore suggests Mary may be secretly evil. Probably because of her hair. HANUMAN Deity turned building-sized super sentai warrior. You can catch him palling around with Kamen Rider. HARRY Actor Richard Harrison famously starred in many of Godfrey Ho’s ultra low budget ninja movies. NINJAS You can always tell they’re ninjas because their headbands rather handily say ‘Ninja’ on them.…

POSEIDON Of all the gods in Troy, Poseidon is the most irate. He’s got a beef with the Trojans, so he’s got a penchant for causing earthquakes that make it much easier to besiege the city. A BIG BOAT Closest to the myth, this method lets you cram units into a horse-headed boat, gift it to the Trojans, and then surprise them at night by throwing them a big, bloody party. TOWERS Sieges in Troyare usually very low-tech, but for the siege of Troy itself you’ll be able to use these towers to get over the walls. And they look a wee bit like horses.…

Do you ever wonder how it’d feel to take a few years away from games, and then peek back through the curtain once you’d become out of touch? Quite often, Microsoft Flight Simulator feels like that peek. In its scope and fidelity, it seems to be visiting from the future, when it’s commonplace to have access to a photorealistic Planet Earth and the freedom to explore it. When you can hop in a plane and fly over your own town, in the same weather conditions and lighting you can see outside your window. When ‘open world’ truly means just that. What a towering achievement from Asobo Studio. What a dramatic way for the Microsoft Flight Simulator series to reappear after years under Dovetail’s DLC-focussed stewardship, and what a towering achievement…

PRICE $2,998 ONLINE www.asus.com The best gaming PCs - and best gaming laptops, to an extent - come in all shapes, sizes, and, of course, configurations. However, this doesn’t mean that cramming the most expensive components inside is key to victory. We’ve seen more carefully considered designs in the last few years, and this has resulted in some great machines that tone down the desire to cram in the latest components and opt for more deliberate combinations (all while offering an easy and straightforward way into PC gaming). The ASUS GA15 does exactly that. The case is slick black in its aesthetic, and on the whole, and I could almost leave it at that. However, there are some accents to the design which are cool and/or make for good functionality.…

I think Best Friend Forever is supposed to be cute. Dating, having a dog... what could possibly be unappealing about that? Well, my in-game dog has already pooped and tried to run away (in an idle window) while I’ve been typing and we’re only three sentences into this column. I’m using a dating app on which I can’t match with a single other person who doesn’t also have a ridiculous pet. This experience is making me glad I’m not single. And it’s making me resent my actual dog and his never-ending needs, which are interrupting my caring for this virtual dog! OK, fine, the game is cute, but definitely in a grudging kind of a way. It’s like getting up at 6am to let your annoying labrador out for a…

When it launches later this year, Shadowlands will take players on a journey to the afterlife in order to save the world of the living. And at the end of that initial story campaign, players will have to make the most difficult choice they’ve faced since the character selection screen. But Shadowlands is more than a chance to inject some much-needed feeling of consequence back into your adventure. It’s also an opportunity for Blizzard to tear the veil off an entirely new part of the Warcraft universe – one that wasn’t spelled out in game manuals, tie-in novels, or lore bibles decades ago. “Many of our past expansions had a clear anchor in some large established villain, piece of lore, a place in the world,” game director Ion Hazzikostas tells…

I’ve become completely tangled up in Crusader Kings III’s plots and family trees. It’s my jailer, keeping me far too busy orchestrating murders and becoming pen pals with the King of France to leave the flat. I should probably do something about that, but I’ve got this succession crisis to sort out. You know how it is. There never feels like a good time to step away from Paradox’s grand strategy RPG. It’s One More Crisis Syndrome and I’ve got it bad. Anyone who’s played Crusader Kings II should be familiar with the ailment and well-prepared for the sequel. Once again, you’re the head of an early medieval dynasty, and you’ll try to keep it trucking for as long as you can by click, click, clicking on an elaborate map…

I’m dressed as half-astronaut, half-ballerina when someone else dressed as a full hotdog grabs the tail pinned to my butt and runs off with it. I swear, chase them and make a last ditch dive to reclaim the tail as the clock expires. I miss and swear again. That hot dog just cost me the crown. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout may be adorable and silly but that doesn’t mean it’s low-stakes. Despite the party game vibe, it’s still a battle royale. Each round of Fall Guys begins with 60 players rushing through an obstacle course in a chaotic mob of jumping, diving, whooping, and ragdolling bodies. Only the first 30 or so across the finish line qualify for the next round, which is randomly chosen from about two dozen different…

PRICE $1,469 ONLINE www.msi.com The GeForce RTX 3080 is the lead card of the brand new Ampere range. It’s joined by the RTX 3090 (a consumer level Titan replacement) and soon the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060. Ampere cards incorporate everything great about the Turing architecture and improve on it. The RTX 3080 is faster in games, offers better AI performance, it packs in cutting edge technology support and features improved ray tracing capabilities. If Turing served as a teaser of the possibilities of ray tracing, the Ampere generation may be the one that elevates it from a technology with potential into one that becomes as commonly enabled as anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering. WHAT’S UNDER THE HOOD At the heart of the RTX 3080 lies the GA102 GPU. This is…

PRICE $1,599 ONLINE www.lg.com On paper, the 34GN850 certainly ticks plenty of boxes. The 34-inch curved panel sports 3,440 by 1,440 pixels. If that’s predictable, LG’s Nano IPS screen is a bit special. LG says it’s good for 1ms response, which puts it on a par with the best TN panels. Impressive. Speaking of speed and slickness, you also get 160Hz refresh, plus both Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium support. For the record, G-Sync support is G-Sync Compatible Verified rather than one of the fuller featured G-Sync offerings based on Nvidia’s in-monitor image processing chipset. But what of HDR support, you ask? It’s present, but also an area where the LG UltraGear 34GN850 is a little light on spec given the heady price point. You only get VESA DisplayHDR400…

To me Full Throttle isn’t so much a point-and-click adventure as a point-and-kick adventure. While many adventure game protagonists are usually bumbling, unlikely heroes who make up for their physical shortcomings by relying on their wits to solve problems in their world, square-jawed biker Ben is more comfortable using his fists and feet. More than one puzzle in the game is solved by kicking something, and this refreshingly no-nonsense approach is what sets Full Throttle apart from other classic LucasArts adventures. I mean, why solve a series of increasingly absurd puzzles to unlock a door when you can just boot it off its hinges? Released in 1995, Full Throttle was written and designed by Tim Schafer, whose name has become synonymous with LucasArts adventure games, from Monkey Island to Grim…