Table of contents for Issue 268 in PC Powerplay

Gigabyte’s new AORUS X9 flagship gaming laptop is kitted out with an Intel i7-7820HK processor, two GTX 1070s in SLI, four DDR4 RAM slots for up to 64GB of DDR4-2400 memory and the choice of either a 17.3” 4K UHD IPS LCD or QHD 120 Hz WVA LCD if you prefer higher refresh rates over 4K. Rounding out the high end specs on the AORUS X9 is an ESS Sabre HiFi audio DAC, two speakers and two woofers, a mechanical keyboard, configurable RGB lighting all over the unit, and Killer DoubleShot Pro technology that improves network performance by sending important game data over Ethernet and offloading background and non-gaming stuff to the Wi-Fi network. Considering there are two GPUs in this thing, the AORUS X9 is relatively svelte at 1.18”…

AMD will no longer refer to its multi-GPU support standard as CrossFire. The new name is simply mGPU, as in, multiple GPU. When asked why AMD is moving away from the CrossFire brand, AMD said that it is simply a branding decision not a technical one. Multi-GPU support is still a big part of AMD’s feature set and its latest drivers enable multi-GPU support for the recently released Radeon RX Vega GPUs, bringing up to 80% more performance when a second GPU is added to the mix. A large part of AMD’s re-branding of CrossFire is also due to the fact AMD and Nvidia no longer need to hand craft each game to work with CrossFire or SLI profiles, as DirectX 12 now allows the game developer to do this…

“the first thing I do in any RPG is walk to the end of its world, killing chickens” Can you believe I’ve been writing this column for ten years? If you’ve been reading it for that long, probably. I do tend to explore themes more than once, like how my Sims all lead terrible, optimal lives and how much I love games with snow. This month, however, I have a completely new angle. I’ve become fascinated with a game I’ve never played. It was recently removed from Steam, so I likely won’t get a chance to. Yes, I could ask the developer for a copy but the most important feature would be missing. Also, there’s an amazing twist and I know it already. And so, I’ve started watching various people…

“doesn’t feel anywhere near as light-hearted or whimsical as the look might imply” THE SWORDS OF DITTO DEVELOPER ONEBITBEYOND • PUBLISHER DEVOLVER DIGITAL • DUE MARCH 2018 THESWORDSOFDITTO.COM The Swords of Ditto is adorable, with a look that immediately brings to mind a number of modern animated series such as Steven Universe and Adventure Time, but don’t let the look fool you – there are some dark themes at play in this action RPG. Actions count in Swords of Ditto, and your success or failure can lead to some serious changes in the world. You, a young boy, girl or robot, depending on what the game generates as its first Sword of Ditto wake up on a beach. A magical floating dung beetle tells you that you’re the prophesied saviour…

“some serious skewering of superhero tropes separated by some busy work” Can a video game be fart? DEVELOPER UBISOFT • PUBLISHER UBISOFT • PRICE $79.95 • AVAILABLE AT UPLAY, STEAM, RETAIL WWW.UBISOFT.COM/EN-US/GAME/SOUTH-PARK-FRACTURED-BUT-WHOLE Within minutes of starting The Fractured but Whole, Buttlord, Douchebag or New Kid, depending on who he was interacting with, was on the toilet and I found myself playing a mini-game to drop a huge stink nugget in the bowl. Successfully mastering Buttlord’s own toilet earned an in-game achievement, leading me on a quest to master all the toilets in town, a feat I happily pursued. It’s a pointless pursuit, no matter how perversely enjoyable, and really kind of serves as a macrocosm of The Fracture but Whole as a, well, whole – a great deal of the…

“at the start you’re asked if you want to sign up to a newsletter - if you do, you’ll get extra XP” Warner takes cynicism to the extreme, and ruins a perfectly adequate sequel DEVELOPER MONOLITH PRODUCTIONS • PUBLISHER WARNER BROS • PRICE US$59.99• AVAILABLE AT STEAM SHADOWOFWAR.COM Ever hear the one about that person? That when they’re good, they’re very, very good, but when they’re bad, they’re very, VERY, bad? Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor is basically what would happen if that person were somehow - say, by some evil wizard - transformed into a game. There are elements of Shadows of War that had me on the edge of the seat, from gameplay to graphics, but for every one of those there’s an offset aspect to the game…

“there are fewer hay bales to hide in, but almost everywhere is covered in waist-high flora” Stalk like an Egyptian DEVELOPER UBISOFT • PUBLISHER UBISOFT • PRICE FROM $89.95 • AVAILABLE AT UPLAY, STEAM, RETAIL ASSASSINSCREED.UBISOFT.COM Last year, for the first time since 2008, Ubisoft did not release a major Assassin’s Creed game. This was due to the poor reception to the unpolished Unity in 2014, the subsequent poor sales of the following year’s much better Syndicate, and the general sense that the series had lost its way in the annual grind. The year off, Ubisoft argued, would give them time to “step back and re-examine,” to refresh a series that had not paused for breath in its ten year existence. Origins is the result of this enforced break, a…

“using the game’s flaws against it seems to be the only way to beat some opponents” Gothic Industrial DEVELOPER PIRANHA BYTES • PUBLISHER THQ NORDIC • PRICE $49.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG ELEXGAME.COM As a massive fan of the Gothic series (even the overly ambitious but deeply flawed Gothic 3), I’ve been following the progress of Elex for a long while, eager to see what the team at Piranha Bytes could do with European RPG design in a science-fantasy setting. The setting of Elex itself is fantastic. The world of Magalan prospered until it was struck by a meteor. Not only did the meteor devastate the planet, it also brought with it a new resource that the survivors of the apocalypse would battle over. Elex can power machines, manipulate…

In the last six months, I’ve seen more new hardware than I have in the last five years. This is all thanks to team Red, with AMD releasing not one, but three major new product lines. Nvidia has sat on the sidelines for the time being, but Intel has stepped up to the plate to show that’s not going to take this on the cheek. Thing is, they’ve been forced to release products earlier than expected, such as this month’s main feature – the Intel 8th Gen Core CPU. Because it’s been launched early, we’re going to see this chip change halfway through its generation, and the first round of CPUs aren’t hugely uncommon to their predecessors. It’s all very messy, and has shown that simply by supplying competitive products,…

 PRICE $279 “room for two M.2 drives, though one only supports SATA speeds, so you’ll be losing performance” WWW.ASUS.COM.AU As one of the more affordable boards in the roundup, the Prime Z370-A surprisingly doesn’t scrimp too much on its feature set. It’s certainly eye-catching, with the black PCB offset by a white I/O cover and silver heatsinks. Like all of the boards reviewed here, this is an ATX board, and has the usual number of PCIe physical lanes. There are three PCIe x16 lanes, with another four PCIe x1 lanes. As expected, the x1 lanes will be knocked out if you use double slot coolers, but that’s par for the course these days. A feature that seems to be commonplace in 2017 is an I/O shield that doesn’t need to…

 PRICE $1,089 “Where this panel really shines is its colour accuracy.” WWW.AOC.COM AOC used to be known as entry-level players, but the AOC AG271UG shows those days are long gone. At over a grand, it’s certainly aimed at the higher end of the market, but with 27in displays starting at $249, is a 400% price rise worth it? Let’s start with the exterior. The stand is easy enough to install, and is fully adjustable in terms of height, angle and swivel. The bezel is rather thick, unlike the slick edge to edge screens we’re used to at this price. There’s also a surprising lack of inputs, with a single HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2. Instead AOC has focused on USB connectivity, with four USB 3.0 ports, one of which can…

PRICE $249.95 WWW.IMPACTSYSTEMS.COM.AU Despite the aggressively militaristic/sci-fi name, the Stealth Raptor is actually quite an understated keyboard, eschewing the frills and blinking lights of the high end gaming keyboard market. It’s a fairly basic looking slab of black plastic without much in the way or ornamentation or excess aside from two selector buttons and a dial to control the intensity of the backlighting or volume situated above the numpad. The Stealth Raptor also features both USB and audio passthrough to minimise cable clutter. Under the hood, the keyboard sports real Cherry MX switches from the most popular colours – Red, Blue, Brown and Black - (our review version featured the pleasantly firm linear Black switches) as well as variable polling rates. The backlighting is kept nice and simple with a…

LETTER OF THE MONTH WINS! Write in to PCPP with your rants, considered opinions, and endless run-on sentences of pure awesome. The address is letters@pcpowerplay.com . au. Each letter read by hand! Letter of the month wins a copy of Hard West from Gambitious. TBS AWESOMENESS Dear Mr Wilks, Kudos on the fine PC gaming mag. A letter to the editor below, for your consideration: I’m loving this resurgence of turn-based strategy games. Once more, the TBS gamer is spoilt for choice – whether you prefer space civilisation destroying, a spot of general world conquering, brawling vikings, dwarves or alien sniping, it’s all there, in pausable semi-statistical glory. It’s like the ‘90s again. I had started to worry. My current fave is Divinity: Original Sin 2. So…

Once used to expose indie game developers and raise money for charity, Humble Bundle is now part of the IGN empire. Made popular off the back of its lack of DRM on downloaded games and a “pay what you like” pricing strategy, Humble Bundle has been struggling lately. Rival sites gaining momentum, attempts to become a game publisher themselves not going to plan and the sacking of over 150 staff have been a challenge Humble Bundle of late. It’s no surprise when game review giant IGN, a subsidiary of publishing company Ziff Davis, comes knocking with a sack of cash, Humble Bundle take it simply to keep the lights on. Fans are slightly concerned that the Humble Bundle ethos will be eroded now that there’s a big corporate at the…

So this came from out of nowhere, but it looks like Razer is expanding its market position to include premium, gamer focussed phones now. Launching November 17, the Razer Phone is quite the powerhouse, featuring a Snapdragon 835 octacore chip with a clock speed around 2.45GHz, 8Gb RAM and a 5.72”, 1440p, 120Hz display and stereo front facing speakers with a THX certified DAC. COmpared to other phones in the same price range (around $700 USD) it’s a ludicrously powerful games machine. To keep the price reasonable (for a premium phone at any rate), it looks as though Razer have skimped on some of the killer features you’d find in similarly priced phones - the cameras, for example are only eight and 12 megapixels on the front and back respectively,…

“dip your toe into a piping hot digital bathtub of internet drama” Star Citizen (the game) is still a long way off. But Star Citizen (the meta-game) is easily the hottest augmented reality experience of 2017. There are many exciting game modes, and millions of players. You can play as a Doubter, and scrounge through forums for nuggets of evidence that the project is in trouble. You can play as a Loyalist, and question the motivations of those who would dare to undermine Chris Roberts’s vision. You can play as a Whale, and donate towards the care and feeding of the large salaried workforce at Roberts Space Industries. The limited-time offers make this game mode particularly exciting, just like ALDI Special Buys. Except instead of paying AU$4.99 for a hammer,…

Fully, fully automatic Nathan: If you’ve played enough Battlegrounds, you’ve likely been caught in one of those situations where you’re balancing ranged combat (sniper rifle) with close-range (shotgun) scenarios. Maybe this is by choice, or maybe it was the will of RNGesus. The P18C is a relatively new addition to Battlegrounds, and it kicks all kinds of arse. It has 17 rounds in the clip by default, which jumps to 25 with an extended mag, and can spew out bullets in full-auto firing mode. If you’re looking to engage exclusively in close- or mid-range combat, consider having three fully automatic options across your two primaries and pistol. This is even better with the quickdrawextended attachments, which means you can quickly switch between shooters as guns run dry. Pick your shots…

Punch a Nazi today DEVELOPER MACHINE GAMES • PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS • PRICE $59.95 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM, RETAIL WOLFENSTEIN.BETHESDA.NET There is a bonkers moment around the 5-6 hour mark in The New Colossus that radically changed the way I viewed the game. Rather than being an occasionally funny but rather grim look at America being under the grip of the Nazi regime, a-la The Man in the High Castle, it transformed into something gloriously silly without losing any of the actual heart of the rather maudlin story of loss and redemption. Although not perfect, Wolfenstein II captures what gaming can do better than any other form of entertainment – give you a visceral thrill and challenge while still managing to tell a story capable of moving you. Most of…

“a damsel in distress, a lost child, a carnivorous tree with some interesting looking fruit” Deal with it DEVELOPER DEFIANT DEVELOPMENT • PUBLISHER DEFIANT DEVELOPMENT • PRICE APPROX $30 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM WWW.DEFIANTDEV.COM/HOF2 A shrouded man sits across a table from you. Cards swirl in the air, shuffling themselves into patterns on the tabletop. A figurine appears on the table and moves to the first of the cards. It flips to reveal that a group of thieves are lying in wait to ambush some farmers. Do you jump to the defence of the farmers and attack the thieves? Do you warn the farmers of danger but let them know that your help doesn’t come cheap? Do you mind your own business and watch the slaughter unfold? This is only…

“feels like pure driving heaven, with the tyres screaming for grip as you round each bend” Turn 8 out of 10 DEVELOPER TURN 10 STUDIOS • PUBLISHER MICROSOFT GAMES STUDIOS • PRICE $99.95 • AVAILABLE AT MICROSOFT STORE FORZAMOTORSPORT.NET There’s not much argument against Forza Motorsport’s lineage as the go to, top tier racing title on the Xbox One. It’s had some competition in recent years, but in terms of manufacturer support and history, it’s unrivalled. It’s a vastly different story on the PC though, where Forza Motorsport 7 shares the pitlane with some of the most accurate and uncompromising racing sims available. So there are really two ways to look at this. As a racing sim, it bares the frayed edges that have plagued the series inherently since its…

“Behind each kicked-down door you’ll learn to expect jumpy balaclava-clad thugs” Cocaine is a hell of a drug DEVELOPER TERRI VELLMANN, DOSEONE • PUBLISHER DEVOLVER DIGITAL • PRICE $8.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM HIGHHELLGAME.COM High Hell is a neon-clad goofball comedy of a grindhouse FPS featuring phat beats, a twist of revenge and full frontal male nudity. From developer Terri Vellmann (Heavy Bullets) and music by Doseone (Enter the Gungeon, Gang Beasts) this arcade shooter captures the charm of yore with an exhilarating playlist of dodge-and-shoot encounters, set across a number of rooftop compounds controlled by a cultist conglomerate machine. Like many FPS games, High Hell’s first stage allows players to find their footing in simple surroundings. But when you encounter your first doorway and are prompted with the usual…

 PRICE $284 “when it comes to features, the ASRock Z370 Taichi truly kicks ass in this price range” WWW.ASROCK.COM It’s becoming incredibly harder for motherboard manufacturers to differentiate their products. They all pay generally the same price for the Z370 chipset, as well as many of the components on the board, such as the audio system. So just how do you make your board stand out against the rest when they’re priced and specced almost identically? A biggie is the way the board looks, and the Z370 Taichi is beautiful. The company has used a unique cog looking print on the board backed up by a cog-shaped cooler at the bottom of the board, in stark black and white colours. ASRock hasn’t gone overboard with RGB lighting, and overall it’s…

 PRICE $249 “It’s now possible to buy a 27in display for less than $250, even if it is only a dollar cheaper” WWW.PHILIPS.COM.AU Yes, that price is indeed correct. It’s now possible to buy a 27in display for less than $250, even if it is only a dollar cheaper. If you’re looking for the cheapest possible 27in display on the market, look no further. Now, obviously there are going to be serious compromises when you’re paying so little for so much screen real estate, but still, that’s a damn fine price for somebody who wants a basic 27-inch screen. The first trade-off is the stand. To be blunt, it’s horrible. There’s no height or swivel adjustment, with only tilt adjustment included, from -5 to 20 degrees. This means it’s impossible…

PRICE $189.95 WWW.IMPACTSYSTEMS.COM.AU The Black Hornet MKA-3 is essentially the little brother of the Stealth Raptor keyboard. It features a very similar design, the same range of Cherry MX keys (again our review version came with the pleasantly firm but linear Cherry Black switches) and the same blue and yellow lighting - blue for the majority of keys and yellow for WASD, space and arrows. Where the two keyboards differ is the fact that the Black Hornet features a tenkeyless design and ships with a large, comfortable wrist rest. For our money that makes the Black Hornet the clear winner of the two Armaggeddon keyboards we’ve tested. THe smaller footprint of the Black Hornet both makes the keyboard a more attractive option for cluttered desks, but it also serves to…

“Duke Nukem 3D was loud, dumb, and incredibly fun.” QUAKE, UNREAL, DUKE NUKEM 3D DEVELOPERS ID SOFTWARE, 3D REALMS, EPIC PERSONALITIES JOHN CARMACK, KEN SILVERMAN, TIM SWEENEY RELEASED 1996, 1998, 1996 NUTSHELL Doom showed us the future of PC gaming was the first-person shooter. But what would gamers support? A more impressive 2.5D engine with a fun game, a super-serious but bafflingly abstract tech demo, or a sprawling sci-fi epic (heh) with shiny floors? For any gamer under the age of, say, 20, the idea that someone would choose which game to play, exclusively, based on the way the game was programmed, might seem kind of bizarre. Who cares about the underlying engine? Every game looks pretty much as good as every other, right? Of course, the late 1990s was…

Oculus has announced their follow-up to the Oculus Rift - the Oculus Go. Unlike the Rift, the Oculus Go does not need to be plugged in to a computer, or have a smartphone dangling in front of your head. The Oculus Go a fully self-contained headset with Snapdragon 821 SoC inside, giving it the equivalent computing power of a mid-range smartphone. The Go also has integrated spatial audio, a 2560x1440 “fast-switch” LCD display and a remote control. Unlike the Rift, the untethered nature of the Go means that it doesn’t have the same full tracking capabilities, which is to be expected at this price-point. Software wise, the Go is “binary compatible” with the Samsung Gear, so any apps that work on Gear, should work on the Go too. At US$199,…

After eleven years of being the strange, awkward and genuinely funny co-host of Good Game and Good Game Spawn Point, Stephen O’Donnell, better known to ABC reviewers has resigned, effective December, to start a career as a full time Twitch streamer. We reached out to Stephen for comment and he told us that the decision to move away from the ABC wasn’t an easy one but it was a natural one. “When Good Game ended so suddenly at the start of the year, I knew I wanted to stay in the adult gaming space somehow. I have still been doing Spawn Point this year, our show for younger gamers, which I love and will miss SO much now that I’ve decided to leave to become a full time streamer. Basically…

“an age where advanced weapons are ancient weapons, it’s technology lost during the time of the Great War” WHO HIROAKI YURA WHERE AREA 35 WHY TINY METAL We recently had the chance to talk with Hiroaki Yura, the producer and director of Tiny Metal. Mr. Yura began by telling us of how the particulars of his upbringing set him on the path towards re-imagining Advance Wars for a modern audience. “I was born in Tokyo, but was brought up in Sydney since I was six, which makes me more Australian than anything else. I was groomed to be a concert violinist, but my interest always lay in the video game and animation industries which allowed my first foray into the soundtrack business. “It all started with the founding of the…

1 We. The Revolution DEVELOPER POLYSLASH PUBLISHER POLYSLASH DUE 2018 WE-THE-REVOLUTION.COM Paris is burning. The French Revolution is in full swing and you, an alcoholic and gambler who also happens to be a judge on the Revolutionary Tribunal, you stand in judgment over the people brought in front of you – criminals, revolutionaries and innocents alike. Peruse files, study evidence and sentence for justice or profit, but no matter how you decide it will influence the balance of power in Paris, and may lead to your head being on the block. 2 The Works of Mercy DEVELOPER PENTACLE PUBLISHER PLAYWAY S.A. DUE 2017 WWW.THEWORKSOFMERCY.COM The Works of Mercy sees players stepping into the shoes of a very unlucky individual – his wife and daughter have been kidnapped by a mysterious…

I HATE RUNNING BACKWARDS DEVELOPER BINX INTERACTIVE/CROTEAM INCUBATOR • PUBLISHER DEVOLVER DIGITAL/CROTEAM PUBLISHING • DUE 2018 WWW.BINXINTERACTIVE.COM There have been rumours circulating about a new Serious Sam game being in the works for quite some time, and for anyone who likes old-school circle strafe and backpedal style FPS in which hordes of enemies charge you and you run around like an idiot trying to kill them all and survive, that is definitely something to look forward to. At a recent Devolver Digital hands-on event, we had a chance to play a new Serious Sam game, and it wasn’t anything like we expected. In a good way. I Hate Running Backwards is another in the Serious Sam side project series, like the side-scrolling shooter with gun stacking mechanics, Serious Sam Double…

PHANTOM DOCTRINE DEVELOPER CREATIVEFORGE • PUBLISHER GOOD SHEPHERD • DUE 2018 It’s 1983 and the Cold War is getting hotter. You are either a KGB or CIA agent, burned by your own agency. You now command The Cabal, a secret intelligence organisation bent on uncovering and stopping the even more secret conspiracy that is manipulating world governments and leading the world to the brink of annihilation. You may be a player on the world stage, but compared to the opposition, you’re tiny. Rather than playing the hard game, you have to play smart, using intelligence (in the covert operative sense) to pre-empt the enemy, infiltrate their ranks and disrupt their supply lines. This use of intelligence plays out in multiple ways. One of the key jobs of the head of…

“a lot of fun to be had levelling, some fantastic locales to explore and enemies to kill” Guardians of the galaxy DEVELOPER BUNGIE • PUBLISHER ACTIVISION • PRICE $69 • AVAILABLE AT BATTLE.NET, RETAIL WWW.DESTINYTHEGAME.COM If you never played Destiny on console don’t worry that you’ve missed something and that you won’t be able to figure out what’s going on. Rather than a sequel, Destiny 2 is more of a do-over. Not quite a reboot of a franchise but a game that addresses many of the criticisms of the first game while not doing anything hugely new. That may sound a bit reductive but it’s not necessarily a negative. Destiny did some things very well, and those aspects of the game have been kept, but the levelling, progression and feel…

“due to the overall scarcity of ammo, stealth is really the order of the day” Bend the knee DEVELOPER TANGO GAMEWORKS • PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS • PRICE $59.95 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM THEEVILWITHIN2.BETHESDA.NET We weren’t particular fans of the original The Evil Within due to a number of reasons, chief amongst them being that the game really didn’t seem to have a coherent direction, walking an uneasy and, in our opinion, unsuccessful like between the slow, tense horror of something like Silent Hill 2 and the action horror of Resident Evil 4 without committing fully to either style, making both the action and scares ultimately unsatisfying. There was also the revelation about STEM, partially turning the game into a case of “he wakes up and it was all a dream”…

“it would have been silly talking to Eugene the backpack, Terry the helmet and Travis the gun” I’m blue da bu dee da bu die DEVELOPER TICKTOCK GAMES • PUBLISHER REBELLION • PRICE $24.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG WWW.TICKTOCKGAMES.COM There is a fine line between straightforward and uncomplicated and dull, and too often Rogue Trooper Redux traipses over that line, taking a game that was fun when it launched eleven years ago and showing, through little more than a facelift that some mechanics just don’t last the test of time. There are many games made a decade or more ago are still incredibly playable and fun, but in the case of Rogue Trooper, the lack of nuance in the shooting just makes the game feel old. Based on characters…

 PRICE $699 “Where it shines is with the DiskStation Manager(DSM) software” WWW.SYNOLOGY.COM Synology’s DS718+ is the latest update to the popular Plus Series of DiskStation NAS units. This 2-bay model is an upgrade from the DS716+II, featuring a new CPU - and that’s about it really. Not that this is a bad thing, the DS716+II is a great unit in the first place, there’s just not much new besides a slightly faster CPU. The DS718+ looks identical to the DS716+II it’s replacing. Two gigabit LAN ports, a USB 3.0 port on the front and two more on the rear, together with an eSATA port. On the inside, there’s still 2GB of RAM but the CPU is now an Intel Celeron J3455 quad-core 1.5GHz chip that can burst up to 2.3GHz.…

 PRICE $259 “the design is rather plain, with a pure black finish, nowhere near as striking as its predecessor” WWW.ASROCK.COM As we’ve just seen, ASRock’s Z370 Taichi, is a feature-packed board at a great price. Now we have the z370 Extreme, which is almost identically priced, and made by the same company. It’s a mere $30 more, which is nothing in the world of IT components, so what makes these two boards so different? For starters, it simply feels more solid, as if the mainboard PCB was built from more layers. ASRock don’t list this on their specs, so it’s a guess, but it certainly feels that way. This is another ATX board, and ASRock has equipped it with three full length PCIe 3.0 x 16 slots and another three…

 PRICE $349 if you want your gaming room to look like a laser testing facility, this is the board for you WWW.MSI.COM.AU I was just about to shoot myself after watching Full Metal Jacket and having to do yet another motherboard review of a product that is just like every other board until this sucker came along. At $349 it’s substantially more expensive than the competition, so I expected to see some major innovations or new features. I’m not so sure I ended up seeing what I wanted. Like Gigabyte’s Aorus brand, MSI’s boards are all about the RGB. If you want your gaming room to look like a laser testing facility, this is the board for you. Mystic’s version of RGB is called ‘Mystic Lighting’, and it does up…

 PRICE $480 “under the marketing and stickers, the hardware in these new 3D NAND-powered SSDs is identical” WWW.WDC.COM • WWW.SANDISK.COM You might wonder why we’re testing two solid state drives in the one review? Well, it’s because WD is being a little tricky with its marketing for these two products. The WD Blue 3D range of drives is aimed at resellers and system builders, while the SanDisk Ultra 3D drives are being marketed to gamers and creative types. The fact remains that under the marketing and stickers, the hardware in these new 3D NAND-powered SSDs is identical. Pricing isn’t, however, so it’s worth shopping around to make sure you get the cheapest drive available at the capacity you’re looking for. And, it is worth the effort, because both drive…

“the vast majority of people are doing something unexpected - believing women” The Harvey Weinstein scandal and its fallout appear to have had a ripple effect across the entire entertainment industry. What started with more and more actors, both male and female, overcoming the stigma and telling their stories of groping, shaming, exhibition and other forms of sexual abuse has seemingly spread to other entertainment industries, and for the first time in a long while it appears as though people are listening and doing something about the problem. On social media, #metoo, a hashtag attached to stories of sexual assault or rape has become disturbingly ubiquitous. With the exception of some incel creeps who have co-opted the hashtag to talk about how women not having sex with them is sexual…