Table of contents for Issue 264 in PC Powerplay

Samsung has announced a massive 49-inch gaming monitor using its popular quantum dot technology. The Samsung C49HG90’s display features an ultra-wide 32:9 aspect ratio, 3840 x 1080 resolution, VA-type panel with an 1800R curvature, so you can see the whole damn thing while sitting at a desk. This 49-inch monitor is essentially the same as placing two 27-inch 1920 x 1080 monitors side by side and removing the bezel from the middle. It’s got all the goods you expect in a gaming monitor too, like 1ms response time, 144 Hz refresh rate and importantly, AMD’s upcoming FreeSync 2 tech. The C49HG90 doesn’t disappoint when it comes to colour reproduction either, with 95% DCI-P3 colour gamut support. Samsung also announced smaller size monitors featuring the same specs, but smaller screens (the…

If you’ve tried to buy a graphics card lately, you probably noticed that many are out of stock. Why is this? People using them to mine cryptocurrencies like Ethereum that have shot up in value. This, unsurprisingly, frustrates customers that simply want a single graphics card to place in their rig for gaming, but can’t get one due to these industrial scale cryptocurrency minters. To address this, ASUS has come up with cryptocurrency specific graphics cards, the Mining RX 470 (based on AMD’s RX 470 GPU) and Mining P106 (based on Nvidia’s GTX1060). The RX 470 has a single DVI port, whereas the P106 has none - don’t need them! Both have IP5X certified dust resistant fans and higher durability components for solid 24/7 operation at 100% utilisation. ASUS hopes…

News has popped up that, on the surface, seems to suggest that the makers of the long-awaited await Star Citizen may be in financial trouble. News popped up on Press Start that UK-based Foundry 42, a subsidiary of Cloud Imperium Games, has taken out a loan with the bank Coutts & Co, and has leveraged as collateral a large amount of the company’s intellectual property. Basically - miss a payment, and the bank then owns the assets. It sounds more drastic than it is, however. For one, Coutts - a financial institution that only deals with high value, reliable clients, like rock stars and even the Royal family - is not in the business of handing out loans to failing companies. It would much rather make its money from interest,…

“we saw one of the giant ogres waltz into a city, smashing structures with his massive limbs” DEVELOPER IRON GALAXY PUBLISHER MAXIMUM GAMES DUE TBA irongalaxystudios.com What do you get when you take a bit of Attack on Titan, a smattering of Shadow of the Colossus, add in a pinch of Assassin’s Creed, sprinkle some Dragon’s Dogma on top, and put them all together? You get something that looks a lot like Extinction, a brand-new IP developed by Iron Galaxy and published by Maximum Games Humanity in the fantasy world of Extinction is facing a terrifying threat. The kingdoms of this world, which have long warred with each other, became blind to a threat lurking right under their noses. The massive Ravenii ogres and their magical servants have risen, and…

“the RPG-like structure of the game’s exploration and combat is territory DontNod has not yet tread” DEVELOPER DONTNOD PUBLISHER FOCUS HOME INTERACTIVE DUE LATE 2017 www.vampyr-game.com DontNod, the French studio behind Remember Me and Life is Strange, is well regarded for the strong narrative elements their games feature. But their newest title, Vampyr, is something of a departure from the norm for them. While the game is still heavily narrative-driven – and filled with choices and moral quandaries with long-lasting consequences – the RPGlike structure of the game’s exploration and combat is territory DontNod has not yet tread. But the game’s been shaping up nicely over the past few years of development, and the demo we saw at E3 has us pumped about how this supernatural alternate-history adventure will…

“Cole prowls the hall of the asylum, using his magic phone to solve puzzles” DEVELOPER THE FARM 51 PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO PRICE $29.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.getevengame.com/en Sometimes games tell great stories through interaction, inference and player involvement. Other times games tell great stories through more traditional means, with linear plotting narrative beats and an overall structure designed to tell the one story that the developers want to tell. Get Even is an example of the latter type of game. It tells a fantastic story of memory, manipulation, betrayal and revenge through fairly traditional, if somewhat flashy means. It also doesn’t really require the player to participate to tell the story. Get Even is a great thriller, but it’s not thrilling to play - it’s more like a good movie…

“mashing together an old-school side-scrolling shooter with an RPG-style progression system” DEVELOPER ALKEMI PUBLISHER ALKEMI PRICE $18.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.drifting-lands.com Side-scrolling action RPGs, or side-scrolling games with RPG elements are becoming pretty commonplace in the indie scene, with numerous games combining action platforming with loot gathering and inventory management. Drifting Lands bucks this trend and sets out on a relatively new course, mashing together an old-school side-scrolling shooter with some bullet-hell elements with random loot drops, unlockable skills and an RPG style progression system. It’s not always the most successful of fusions, but more often than not it makes for a compelling and enjoyable shoot and loot experience. When it comes to story, Drifting Lands veers more towards the side-scrolling shooter side than the RPG side. It’s rather cursory…

“you can tell he’s old because he has a big grey beard and carries a walking stick” DEVELOPER BROKEN RULES PUBLISHER BROKEN RULES PRICE $14.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.oldmansjourney.com The past ten years or so have seen video game development move through a period of what has come to be known as Dadification. That is to say, from Sean Bean in Fallout 3 to Lee in The Walking Dead, from Red Dead’s John Marston to various BioShocks, The Witcher 3, The Last of Us and countless others, there has been a heck of a lot of dads in video games of late. When I spoke with Rime creative director Raul Rubio a couple of issues ago, he cited the birth of his first child as an inspiration for much of…

“remember that the X299 is for Intel, and the X399 is for AMD. We think AMD’s naming is a little bit dodgy” When AMD dropped Ryzen on the market, offering the performance of Intel’s high-performance ten-cored CPUs at just half the price, nobody could have expected how quickly Intel would respond. It took them just a few months to release its competitor, the new Core-X series of CPUs, which dominated at this year’s Computex. Along with the new chip came a new chipset, the X299, and it was impossible to visit a motherboard maker’s booth without seeing products based on this. So has Intel been able to bring back its lead when it comes to multi-cored behemoths, or is the Ryzen series the best offer on the market? Also, is…

“one of the most affordable on the market, yet Galax hasn’t scrimped on quality” PRICE $575 www.galax.com Once associated with budget products for those scraping the bottom of their bank accounts, Galax has successfully morphed into a brand that is now associated with higher quality products. They’ve done so without breaking the bank, delivering innovative features and top-tier performance at a very reasonable price. This graphics card is one such example. The price is extremely competitive, one of the most affordable on the market in fact, yet Galax hasn’t scrimped on the quality. The fact that it has a beautiful white finish will be enough to get many people interested, but Galax has given it more than just a mere paint job. A 5+2 (five for core, two for memory),…

PRICE $159 www.corsair.com The new K68 looks a lot like the budget priced Corsair Strafe keyboard but costs around $50 more. From typing on it you wouldn’t really notice the difference – both feature real Cherry MX switches, a single colour backlight and integrated media controls. It’s full sized and comes with a simple but comfortable wrist rest. There is no software needed for setup, so it’s a simple plug and play affair. The lighting design can be customised with downloadable drivers but given that red is the only lighting colour available it’s really much of a muchness. Our review sample features Cherry Red switches and they feel like you would expect – pleasantly mechanical but without any tactile bump or click. It feels good to type and game on.…

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 Tekken 7. 56K BAUD Can’t find the email for tech support or even The Oracle but finally getting around to checking out this cover disc! Nice work! I think as a new and upcoming magazine in the Australian market you’ll go far! Also, trying to get a game of Command & Conquer happening to try out these swell tactics - but when I wave my Null Modem cable at people they run away from me... Any word on if there is any IPX LAN parties happening? Seems…

At their recent Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Apple revealed the iMac Pro, a beefed-up iMac with workstation guts. Apple will provide options for up-to 18-core Xeon CPUs, Radeon Pro Vega GPUs, up to 128GB of ECC RAM, 4TB PCIe SSD, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, 10Gb Ethernet and an improved quality 27” 5K Retina display. To differentiate the iMac Pro from the regular iMac, it comes in a Darth Vader-esque, all black finish, including the keyboard and mouse. To get all those power hungry, heat spewing parts into the iMac’s slim chassis, Apple engineered a new cooling system that they reckon dissipates 80% more heat than the existing iMac. Unusually for Apple, they’ve announced it months in advance. The iMac Pro isn’t coming out until December 2017. It won’t be cheap either,…

Sick of having to recharge or swap the batteries in your wireless mouse? Logitech’s new Powerplay (Nice - Ed.) system removes that burden from your life. The first part of the system is a 280mm x 340mm mousepad that plugs into a USB port and sends the power from that USB port to compatible Logitech mice (so far, the G903 and G703) via a proprietary magnetic resonance wireless power transfer system. The second part is a little disc Logitech calls a Powercore, which goes into the compatible mice and acts as a receiver of this wireless electricity and delivers that to the battery inside the mouse. Unlike other wireless charging systems (e.g. Qi), you don’t have to keep the mouse in a single spot. As long as the mouse is…

1 Anthem DEVELOPER BIOWARE PUBLISHER EA DUE LATE 2018 www.ea.com/games/anthem You could cynically look at Anthem as the Xbox/PC version of Destiny, but the new IP from BioWare seems to be going in a different direction to the Activision juggernaut. Players take the role of a “Freelancer” - a power armour wearing mercenary hero exploring the world, fighting monsters and experiencing world altering “shaper storms”. Each player has access to the three different categories of power armour, all of which can be customised extensively, and can set out solo or in a group of up to four other players. 3 A Way Out DEVELOPER HAZELIGHT STUDIOS PUBLISHER EA DUE 2018 www.ea.com/games/a-way-out A fascinating sounding co-op only game, A Way Out charges two prisoners, Leo and Vincent, to work together to…

“In many ways, Star Wars Battlefront was a test run for Battlefront 2” DEVELOPER DICE PUBLISHER ELECTRONIC ARTS DUE NOVEMBER 14 starwars.ea.com/starwars/battlefront Star Wars Battlefront 2 improves on a lot of ideas 2015’s Battlefront failed to deliver while introducing a much needed single player campaign. It’s the first multiplayer game to include all three film eras, and according to producer Craig McLeod, modernises the series in the same way as the Rogue One film. “We’re taking the essence and the fantasy of this prequel era and these prequel battles,” said producer Craig McLeod, “and bringing it into something that’s really modern, feels very cohesive as you play through these differing eras. “From a multiplayer perspective, people want[ed] all the eras… more heroes, more Star Wars characters, more progression and…

“exploration and hunting require extensive knowledge of the island’s bestiary” DEVELOPER CAPCOM PUBLISHER CAPCOM DUE 2018 www.monsterhunterworld.com Monster Hunter World is like an unofficial video game adaptation of Jurassic Park. A beautiful ecosystem of prehistoric creatures with a hierarchy of power and food chain. Prey and predators follow their natural instincts and hunt - sometimes you, other times your target. As a hunter, you can use this to your advantage, baiting your target towards another’s nest, pitting them against one another, or use the environment to trap your prey before striking its weak points. You play as a hunter who has travelled to the New World as a member of the Research Commission, exploring new unknown territories. Every time you leave town to explore the open world island, you’ll…

DEVELOPER BANDAI NAMCO PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO PRICE $49.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM tk7.tekken.com Tekken 7 is a heap of crazy bullshit wrapped around one of the most solid fighting frameworks in years, and that is exactly what makes the game so good. The developers have concentrated on the fundamentals of any fighting game - a compelling roster of well-balanced characters, and a tight cohesive and powerful fighting engine, delivering the best overall Tekken game in years. That said, the game does feel safe. It doesn’t feature the type of innovation or experimentation that typified many of the earlier games in the series, making the game, in some ways, feel more like a very proficient tribute act than the headliner itself. Let’s start with the good. The new additions to the fighting…

“classes are better defined, making it easier to understand how they fit MMO archetypes” DEVELOPER FUNCOM PUBLISHER FUNCOM PRICE $FREE AVAILABLE AT STEAM, OFFICIAL SITE secretworldlegends.com At its core The Secret World was about its universe and story. Secret World Legends doesn’t change that. Instead it revamps a lot of the more complicated game systems to allow players to focus on the game’s narrative strengths. It’s the same alternate-universe where all our myths, legends, and stories are true. It’s the same quests and brain-busting puzzles for you to unravel while interacting with the same memorable characters. If you played TSW and didn’t like those things, Legends won’t be a game you enjoy, but if instead you didn’t like game systems such the combat, crafting, or somewhat directionless skill wheel, there’s…

“zoom in to make sure that one Sherman tank is positioned just so to cover a gap in a hedgerow” DEVELOPER EUGEN SYSTEMS PUBLISHER PARADOX INTERACTIVE PRICE US$40 AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG www.steeldivisiongame.com Eugen Systems first tried its hand at World War 2 with the rather flavourless RUSE, a game that was less about the units on your virtual sand table (RUSE was kind of meta like that), than the tricks you could pull to convince the enemy you were flanking from one direction, when in fact you were attacked from another position entirely. Steel Division: Normandy ’44 eschews those tricks in favour of a more traditional strategy game, albeit while still staying true to the God-like sense of scale of the games – you can zoom out to review…

“it mightn’t be the most portable laptop on the market, but it certainly is fast” PRICE $3599 www.gigabyte.com.au When you’re onto a good thing, stick to it. That seems to be the motto at Gigabyte’s laptop division, as they’re constantly releasing revisions of laptops that have been around for several years. The latest is the seventh iteration of the X5, in the form of the X5 v7, and it’s quite the beast. Gigabyte has dubbed this the world’s fastest 15.6-inch laptop, and the specs go quite a way to prove as much. But before we delve into that, let’s look at what you’re going to have fit into your backpack. Thanks to the larger screen, it’s rather heavy, but Gigabyte doesn’t have an official product page, and didn’t supply us…

PRICE $3299 www.microsoft.com Looking at the trajectory Microsoft’s ubertablet has taken since the first Surface hit the market in 2012, it’s certainly reasonable to think that, one day, it will be capable of doing anything a gamer could possibly want. With this, the latest and most expensive Surface Pro yet, that day has not yet arrived. Iris Plus 640 is an excellent onboard GPU, and it can run your GOG library and your indie collections no problem. But coupled with the Surface’s 2736x1824 display, this GPU still can’t run the latest stuff. But perhaps you expected that. Perhaps as little as 15 years from now, every PC will be a shiny slab of pure computronium that can fling 8K graphics to whatever smart surface you’ve had sprayed on your wall.…

“that it ran well should not be important: the real miracle was that the game ran at all” XENUS or BOILING POINT: ROAD TO HELL DEVELOPER UKRAINIAN OUTFIT DEEP SHADOWS. RELEASED 2005 NUTSHELL Wander an open world managing your reputation among no fewer than six factions, upgrade your skills, meet RPGs, lose hours of progress thanks to terrible bugs, and maybe become part of a small but loyal fanbase that has persisted for nearly 13 years… Games released in the second decade of the 21st century are spoiled by technology. And it’s not just that they run on incredibly powerful and increasingly standardised hardware. More than that, developers now have access to a huge pantry of renderers and physics engines, APIs and plugins. But Xenus was built in 2005 by…

This project initially started with me building my rig out of my mum’s garage when I decided to buy a starter Thermaltake water cooling but ended up expanding to a gaming room when I moved out and managed to pick up the six screens for $450. I’ve managed to build my own little gaming den now which is pretty cool! MOST IMPRESSIVE ELEMENTS: 1. Crossfire RX480’s 2. Custom EK / TT water cooling loop 3. Hand crafted “Ragnarok” PSU plate 4. The six screens! WHAT MAKES MY PC SO SPECIAL? I started building this PC after I was made redundant at my previous job. It really helped me get through a tough time so the experience I had putting her together and custom making components really helped me get back…

Intel has updated their high-end desktop (HEDT) platform, superseding the X99 chipset with the X299 and taking the Skylake and Kaby Lake CPU micro-architectures to new levels of performance. There are three Skylake-X CPUs: i7-7800X (6C/12T, 3.5GHz/4GHz, 140W TDP), i7-7820X (8C/16T, 3.6GHz/4.3GHz, 140W TDP), i9-7900X (10C/20T,3.3GHz/4.3GHz, 140W TDP) and four Kaby Lake-X CPUs: i7-7740X (4C/8T, 4.3GHz/4.5GHz, 112W TDP), i7-7700K (4C/8T, 4.2GHz/4.4GHz, 91W TDP), i5-7640X (4C/4T, 4.0GHz/4.2GHz, 112W TDP), i5-7600K (4C/4T, 3.8GHz/4.2GHz, 91W TDP). All the X parts use a new LGA2066 socket, with the others remaining LGA1151. There’s support for up to DDR4-2666/DDRR-2400 RAM, loads of L3 cache and on the i9-7900X, a whopping 44 PCIe lanes heaps of I/O options. All CPUs are unlocked too, perfect for overclocking. Even faster (and more expensive) 12, 14, 16 and 18 core…

Sound Blaster, the name synonymous with sweet ear tingling audio back in the 90s, has a brand new professional grade soundcard. The Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 uses a low noise 122dB DNR, 32-bit/384kHz ESS Sabre DAC that connects to a 600-ohm discrete headphone amplifier for “audiophile grade” sound. Inside the headphone amp are German-made WIMA film/foil capacitors. The Sound Core3D DSP and BlasterX Acoustic Engine software feature Crystal Voice, improving the quality of in-game voice communications and the ability to enhance in-game audio like footsteps and gunshots. The BlasterX AE-5 also supports Scout Radar 2.0, a first-person shooter game companion that allows you to visualise and see where enemies are on your smartphone based on the audio the game produces. If you’re into a bit of bling, the BlasterX AE-5…

Wargaming was nice enough to send us on a lovely tour of Moscow that culminated in a trip out of town to the massive Patriot Park, a giant military museum that covers Russia’s military hardware from the Great War up to the modern day. Nestled in between fields packed with MIG jet fighters and Hind helicopters, was a couple of giant hangars packed with the most complete and pristine collection of World War 2 fighting vehicles we’ve ever seen. If you’ve never seen a tank in the flesh, it’s amazing just how large these steel beasts are – especially if you’ve only seen the tanks in-game in WoT, as many of the journalists in our group had. As an old war nerd, though, these vehicles were like old friends –…

“If we want to become more inclusive, we have to be active in our welcome” So, I was sitting on the floor, next to my nine year old son, who was standing on his head, listening to Liam Esler welcome everyone to GX, the second of two such queer-focused game conventions we’d been to. I already felt welcome, and I got the sense that everyone in the room was really happy to be there, but when Liam started specifically explaining how to meet the people around you, by saying “Hi” and asking them what they thought of the indie games on show, I started thinking, “Well, yeah. This needs to be explicitly stated more often.” We’re all computer nerds here, right? And we were nerds in high school? And we…

DEVELOPER VOLITION PUBLISHER DEEP SILVER DUE AUGUST 18 www.aomthegame.com Trying to be the good guy in a video games isn’t always easy, especially when being bad is so much more fun. Be honest, if you were playing as Superman in a video game would you rather save a busload of passengers from going off a cliff, or lob that same bus into the side of the Daily Planet? Sidestepping the heroes in an open-world game issue entirely, Agents of Mayhem instead plays with the notion of moral relativism. The Agents are here to save the world, whatever it takes. Drawing inspiration from ‘80s action cartoons, G.I. Joe in particular, Agents of Mayhem tells the story of the Multinational Agency for Hunting Evil Masterminds (Mayhem for short) as they battle the…

“after casually shooting a few Nazis, he climbed into a wheelchair” DEVELOPER BETHESDA PUBLISHER MACHINEGAMES DUE NOVEMBER 27 wolfenstein.bethesda.net Everything about the reveal of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was perfect. The humour, the violence, the character moments - all of it showed that MachineGames don’t need to resort to bullshit marketing and hyperbole. They’re confident their game can sell itself. The reveal also help introduce the world to newcomers, yet it also showed returning fans that despite everything, the Nazis are still very much in control of America. With the reveal out of the way I couldn’t wait to get my hands on The New Colossus and find out what else I could learn about the world. As you may recall, the ending of The New Order (the…

“I put her to work dismantling microwaves, the initial step of constructing a sturdy fortress” DEVELOPER SCREWFLY STUDIOS PUBLISHER SCREWFLY STUDIOS PRICE $6.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM zafehouse2.com Anthony, Juan, Lisa, Joshua and Karen made it to Lumpkin Springs. The fragile group consists of a police officer, a nurse, a priest, a salesperson and a carpenter. Karen isn’t adjusting well to the group. Hopefully, Joshua can hold things together.” This is my introduction to Zafehouse Diaries 2, a mostly text-based zombie survival sim set in generic suburbia where Lavender St meets Cinnamon St and there’s still a bank in the middle of town. There are five sandbox missions of increasing difficulty and when you start each it procedurally generates the layout of the town, the items and enemies you’ll find in…

“a positional tactical RPG that uses a colour-matching mechanic to “charge up” each character” DEVELOPER ROBOT CIRCUS PUBLISHER ROBOT CIRCUS PRICE US$14.99 AVAILABLE AT STEAM (AND IOS) www.robot-circus.com/games/ticket-to-earth/ Puzzle Quest came out way back in 2007, can you believe that? The jewel-matching RPG that took the simplicity of a basic mobile phone time-waster and layered on impressive RPG depth. Now here’s another Australian indie twist on colour-matching. We profiled Ticket to Earth at PAX 2016, then it hit the App Store in March. Now it’s out on PC, where it costs about twice as much for some reason. Anyway, a bunch of characters with different abilities are battling for a seat on the last starship to Earth... more or less. They’re definitely doing a story about the doomed colony of…

 PRICE $449 www.coolermaster.com “built from steel and aluminium, with a beautiful subtle brushed finish to the front” When it was first released almost ten years ago, the Cooler Master Cosmos jumped straight to the top of our list of most desirable cases. Sure, it was huge and expensive, but if you wanted a full tower that was as well-built as it was flexible, there was nothing better. In fact, it was so beloved that it remained our most recommended case for several years. It might have taken them a decade, but Cooler Master has now released the next iteration, the Cooler Master Cosmos II 25th Anniversary Edition (the 25th Anniversary refers to the company’s age, not the case design). Unlike the first case, the Cosmos II now comes with dual…

“for example, you can have one light on the strip flash white while another is red” PRICE CORSAIR LIGHTING NODE PRO RGB: $78 • CORSAIR HD120 RGB LED, 3X120MM HIGH PERFORMANCE RGB LED PWM FANS: $120 • CORSAIR COMMANDER PRO: $109 www.corsair.com We’re doing this review a little differently than usual. Rather than review a single RGB product, we’re reviewing Corsair’s RGB ecosystem. So it’s really three products in one, and our goal is to see if buying all of them together is worth the rather high price. The first of the three products is a triple pack of HD120 LED fans. Each has 12 RGB LEDs mounted in the frame, and there’s a button on each to control their mode or colour. With a rated maximum air flow of…

“the Beyond Good & Evil 2 trailer looked great, sure, but so did the last trailer at Ubidays in 2008” E3 2017 has come and gone. Although the event seemed much more subdued than those of the past (I haven’t been in a few years because of clashing deadlines and the fact that I’m old, grumpy and take roughly forever to get over jetlag), there were still a number of announcements and reveals that drew my attention and made me genuinely excited. One of those announcements or reveals that didn’t excite me was the one that seems to have garnered the most press – Beyond Good and Evil 2. Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely loved Beyond Good and Evil and replayed it again recently, and would love to…