Table of contents for issue 271 in PC Powerplay

“Reality flows from belief, induced from electronic stimulus, infinitely scaleable” In December 2017 Cliffy B’s longtime collaborator Arjan Brussee (Killzone, Jazz Jackrabbit) left the studio they had built together. In January 2018 publisher Nexon wrote off its investment, and in April Boss Key admitted that LawBreakers was such an utter farrago that it wasn’t even worth re-launching as a free-to-play title. At this point a lesser man might’ve quit, but Cliffy B did not. Within four months of the launch of LawBreakers he realised that the only way he could keep the lights on at his studio was to create an entirely new product, and in five short months he did just that. April 10 saw the launch of Radical Heights, a ‘Battle Royale with cheese’ – a direct competitor…

“What Bansal and Pancholi have achieved at such a young age is extremely impressive.” ALTER ARMY DEVELOPER VAGUE PIXELS • PUBLISHER VAGUE PIXELS • DUE SOON vague-pixels.itch.io/-alter-army The first thing you need to know about Alter Army is that is has been developed by two 15-year olds. That’s not the only interesting thing about the game, but it’s impossible not to let this fact colour your experience with it. Mridul Bansal and Mridul Pancholi are two school kids in India who have, in their spare time, crafted a competent and enjoyable action-platformer. “We used to talk about game development all the time”, Bansal and Pancholi tell me over email. “We decided to make a game as a practice project. We would give it only one month and polish our skills…

“But the fact remains: the game is simply too buggy to review, as it stands, at this time.” DEVELOPER HAREBRAINED SCHEMES • PUBLISHER PARADOX INTERACTIVE • PRICE $US39.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG battletechgame.com I do not want to be writing this review. I would much rather be playing Battletech, Harebrained Scheme’s tactical break into the more than 30-year old universe of the same name, a game about giant walking mecha striding about the battlefield causing glorious mayhem in a universe that is as rich as it is far-fetched. And I would be playing it now, and far happier to be writing this review, but to date I have tested Battletech on three different PCs, and the damn thing just won’t run – and not in any comprehensively familiar pattern,…

 DEVELOPER TELLTALE GAMES • PUBLISHER TELLTALE GAMES • PRICE $28.99 (GOG) • AVAILABLE AT STEAM, GOG, RETAIL telltale.com/series/batman-season-2 “... it’s possible to through the entire fourth chapter without ever donning Batman’s cowl.” For all its faults, the first season of Telltale Games’ take on Batman established that the writers weren’t afraid to mess around with canon. Major characters died without much fanfare, others had their roles changed substantially (Penguin and Two-Face were reinvented while still being recognisable), and – in the game’s most obvious season 2 table setting – the Joker wasn’t really the Joker yet. Instead we had John Doe, an Arkham Asylum inmate with that distinctive green hair, pale face, and terrifying grin. The Enemy Within is as much about John’s journey as it is about Batman and…

“You can just sit down, get into the game in small increments, and play until you die.” DEVELOPER ONEBITBEYOND • PUBLISHER DEVOLVER DIGITAL • PRICE $US15.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM theswordsofditto.com I have died a lot playing Swords of Ditto. I’ve been poisoned by the puke of shambling zombies, and died trying to run away; I’ve been blasted by sonic bat things; beaten up by skeletons; and more ways besides. I have constantly let down the land of Ditto, who are relying upon me – the valiant Sword of Ditto – to rid them of the rule of evil sorceress Mormo. And this whole process is just so darn CUTE! Thankfully, death is a mere hiccup. Sure, you die, but the legend of the Sword of Ditto goes on, and…

 DEVELOPER CREATIVE ASSEMBLY • PUBLISHER SEGA • PRICE $US44.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.totalwar.com “This detail fits a period when the Shield Wall reigned supreme as THE battlefield tactic” I really do love the giant scope of Total War games, but after playing Thrones of Britannia, I really do think these more… intimate takes on grand strategy are what the company is really best at. Thrones of Britannia takes the epic scale of its usual games and crams it all into the British Isles, starting in the year 887, and letting you take control of one of the many factions vying for control of that green and pleasant land. If you’ve played a Total War game before, there’s only a handful of innovations to be found, but they are far-reaching.…

“If you’re an expert user, there’s plenty in the BIOS to tweak to your heart’s delight.” PRICE $339 www.asrock.com ASRock seems to have carved out a niche for itself in an era where motherboard branding seems to be increasingly targeted towards gamers. While in reality a gaming board might share 99 per cent of its DNA with any other motherboard, the Taichi branding does seem to be successfully engaging non-gaming power users with its excellent combination of features and affordable price. The X470 Taichi is the latest entry in the series and it promises to be yet another hit in the sweet spot. The X470 Taichi looks like a high-end board and it has features to match. It really is lovely looking, with the chipset heatsink’s gears and cogs being…

 PRICE $419 www.msi.com.au “It’s also the only board in the test to come with dual 8-pin auxiliary power connectors...” MSI has aggressively targeted the PC gaming market more than any other manufacturer, having transformed almost its entire high-end branding over to a gaming theme. This trend continues with the release of MSI’s X470 motherboards where the Gaming M7 WiFI is for now the highest end AMD offering from MSI. As you’d expect in this price range, MSI has equipped the M7 with an enthusiast feature set. The board appears to be running a 12+2-phase power delivery system that’s cooled by chunky metal PWM heatsinks. It seems that VRM cooling is no longer a concern as none of the tested boards had any heat related issues. MSI has clearly built the…

“It’s no massive, gaming beast of yore, but at 2.6KG it’s not particularly-portable either...” PRICE $3,699 www.gigabyte.com.au Gigabyte’s Aorus X5 fully-featured, gaming laptop has been around for a while now. This latest v8 refresh comes with Intel’s 8th generation, Core i7 Coffee Lake processor and promises to fly like never before. Our review unit came with the high-end, 2.6GHz Core i7-8850H CPU. All six cores Turbo Boost to 4GHz while one pushes to 4.3GHz. It’s flanked by 16GB RAM, a big-and-fast 500GB NVMe SSD plus there’s a 1TB HDD for storage. Graphics come via Nvidia’s GTX 1070. Something to note about beefy machines like this is that performance will depend on temperature and cooling. When warm the fans ramp up noisily regardless of the task you’re preforming but especially so…

PRICE $859 www.asus.com/au Many gamers like the idea of a large screen with a relatively-low resolution as it makes targets larger and headshots easier. But over-stretching a Full HD resolution introduces annoying pixelation effects to text, graphics and movies. The XG32VQ’s combination of a 31.5-inch VA panel with a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution seems to have hit a sweet spot though. Desktop text was comfortable for our middle-aged eyes to read (when at default magnification) and the image-enhancing gaming technologies have not obliterated its clarity which some competitors can do. It’s also a 144Hz panel and the smoothness in motion feels as good as we’d hoped. There’s a slight curve (in technical terms it’s rated 1800R) which adds an extra degree of comfort without significantly-distorting anything. Ultimately, it feels great…

 PRICE $1299 lg.com/au “ There’s also the ability to overclock the refresh rate to 165Hz, if you’re in to that sort of thing.” Gamers have never had it better, with a plethora of devices and accessories currently on the market to help them indulge in their passion. Monitors of course, are not immune from the gaming product sphere, with most manufacturers producing a range of displays made with the gamer in mind. LG’s latest monitor is a gamer’s delight, fitted out with all the specs any demanding gamer will love. The 32GK850G-B is a 31.5-inch, 2560x1440 display with a VA-type panel. A VA-type panel is the best choice for most gamers, as it retains a level of colour rendition superior to that of the cheaper TN type panels, but allows…

 PRICE $99 www.razerzone.com “And to help you feel okay if you really can only afford a single set of headphones, the mic is removable - a plus.” Razer’s second iteration (extremely Doctor Nick voice: The V is for VERSION!) of its Elektra headphones are a pretty good effort at producing a budget set of gaming cans. They look the part, without being over the top, have some very useful features, and they even sound… okay. I mean, we’re not talking high-end audio, here, so it seems churlish to get too critical with how these headphones sound, but how does the virtual 7.1 stack up? It’s… not great 7.1 sound, virtual or otherwise. Truth is, getting 7.1 right can be hard for headphones that cost a lot more and have real…

 PRICE $600 www.razer.com “... gaining the ability to play the latest games on an ultraportable is transformative.” Want to turn an ultraportable laptop into a full-powered gaming rig? Then check out Razer’s Core v2. This graphics-card-enclosure-cum-docking station is super solid, consisting of two, well-ventilated slabs of metal which slide apart to allow for the easy insertion of a full-sized, desktop graphics card. Even the longer, wider varieties like the Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti are compatible. The interior compartment, which holds the electronics, is unlocked with a gratuitously-large lever that gives everything a sense of blacksmith-hewn solidity. All connections are tool-less and plugging in a card is intuitive. A kettle lead provides power to a built-in 500W PSU but almost everything else passes through the ThunderBolt 3 cable (note that the…

PRICE $109 Hyperxgaming.com More than a few RGB mice have passed under our palms but this is hands-down the nicest looking. It carefully straddles totally over the top with relative subtlety, creating a sharp line of illumination that looks gorgeous. You can of course go gaudy and have rainbow cycling, but I think it looks grand enough with a static colour. It’ll do cycling and static red with no software, or pretty much whatever you want with the NGenuity app installed. It feels only average out of the box, somewhat light and with a hard shell, but I was hooked the moment I started using it. I think this is my new favorite mouse. The lightness means easy speed of movement and the comfort is bang on perfect, with it…

“Uru had a very troubled life, occasionally popping up on live servers only to be shut down shortly thereafter.” MYST DEVELOPERS CYAN WORLDS PERSONALITIES RAND AND ROBYN MILLER RELEASED 1993 NUTSHELL Apple’s Hypercard 90s buzz-word hypermedia ‘programming’ language allows an incorporeal investigator to flick between static locations where they pull levers and feel smart. Way back in deep geological time (aka, 1973) a musician named Mike Oldfield created a prog-rock album called Tubular Bells. It was one of those rare pieces of art that was both revolutionary and inoffensive, such that, as far as can be determined, every single person who owned a record player in the 1970s bought a copy. Oldfield became a household name and an icon of British music, despite never quite revisiting the high of his…

DARWIN PROJECT GOES FREE TO PLAY But it’s still technically in early access, so your mileage may vary. Survival game meets battle royale title Darwin Project has just announced it’s moving to a free-to-play model to increase its player count. The game is currently in early access on Steam, and while it may have a vocal and passionate community, it is - apparently - a somewhat shrinking one. “We’ve been fortunate to have a core community of players join us at a very early stage, with many still supporting us during Early Access, and the last thing we want to do is let those passionate players down,” said Simon Darveau, Creative Director at Scavengers Studios. “Lately, members of our community have reported longer queue times and difficulty finding matches in…

WHO CAMERON HART & SCOTT MCMILLAN WHERE WARGAMING SYDNEY WHY WORLD OF TANKS 1.0 World of Tanks has gone through a lot of changes, and I’ve been lucky (except for those changes I didn’t like, unlucky, I guess) to see a lot of them. I’ve been playing since the beta days, when Wargaming was just a bunch of ambitious Russians in a cramped flat making solid, if niche, strategy titles. Since then it’s been a weird ride, watching Wargaming grow to become a global juggernaut, swallowing companies whole that once upon a time dwarfed it by entire orders of magnitude. And one of those companies is – or, more accurately, was – Australian massively multiplayer specialist Big World. Big World is now better known as Wargaming Sydney, and I recently…

1 State of Mind DEVELOPER DAEDALIC ENTERTAINMENT PUBLISHER DAEDALIC ENTERTAINMENT DUE 2018 www.daedalic.de There’s a distinctly Deus Ex vibe to State of Mind, with its transhuman narrative about the convergence of humanity and machines. But whereas Deus Ex went for a high-res look at the future, State of Mind has a more artistic, almost cartoony take. It almost makes the game look more appropriate, like some lo-res machine-mind simulation. In State of Mind, you take on the role of Richard Nolan, a journalist critical of the ongoing drive to technological nirvana. As the game progresses into a thriller about the future of society, Nolan will have a LOT of decisions to make – ones that could change the world… 2 The Cinema Rosa DEVELOPER ATREYU GAMES PUBLISHER ATREYU GAMES DUE…

“Not sure if this pirate life is sustainable, despite the simple pleasures...” DEVELOPER RARE • PUBLISHER MICROSOFT STUDIOS • PRICE $99.95 • AVAILABLE AT MICROSOFT STORE www.seaofthieves.com Captain’s Log: Day 1 – Success! Used the mythical vee-pee-en relic to magically transport between time zones. From Nova Hollandia to Nova Zeelandia. The reward: a two-hour head start on the high seas. It’s as quiet as the grave. Odd sighting of passive pirates. Beautiful sights to behold. Easy favour-earning with Gold Hoarders and Order of Souls. Avoiding the favour of the fauna-loving Merchant Alliance (for now?). Captain’s Log: Day 2 – Some time on the ocean, but not ideal. Rare, the god of these waters, has plagued all pirates with a pox of beard-related curses. Lavenderbeard. Bronzebeard. Kiwibeard? Possibly a lingering curse…

 DEVELOPER 11 BIT STUDIOS • PUBLISHER 11 BIT STUDIOS • PRICE $US29.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.frostpunkgame.com “By the time I crept closer to endgame, Frostpunk became easier rather than harder.” I1 bit Studios, the same dev behind This War of Mine, is at it again with Frostpunk. Kinda. While both simulators, This War of Mine has a micro focus on its cast of characters and Frostpunk takes more of a macro approach. The setup is simple enough: the world has frozen over in an alternative history and it’s up to you to keep your people alive. Things start out chilled enough, but you’ll soon be met by threats that range from predictable to unexpected. There are times when past decisions came back to bite me in the arse, but…

“Revenant Kingdom is one of those games that suffers for being a sequel...” DEVELOPER LEVEL-5 • PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO • PRICE $US59.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM, RETAIL en.bandainamcoent.eu/ni-no-kuni/ni-no-kuni-ii-revenant-kingdom Ni no Kuni, like all good JRPGs, is a sequel for most of us but the third game in the series for the Japanese. Except not really because while it first appeared on the Nintendo DS, the game was massively rebuilt (and re-subtitled from Dominion of the Dark Djinn to Wrath of the White Witch) for the PlayStation 3. The sales pitch was that the game was packed with hand-animated sequences produced by Studio Ghibli, which was so so hot back in 2010. These animations informed the rest of the design, from the pseudo-cell-shaded characters to the pseudo-hand-painted backdrops. Now here’s a…

“We expect nothing less than excellent performance from every ROG board we test - and this is no exception.” PRICE $499 www.asus.com.au No high-end motherboard comparison would be complete without an entry from the Asus ROG series. Now that Ryzen is well and truly shaking up the market, the Crosshair has a lot more eyes upon it. As you’d expect from any ROG board, the feature list is comprehensive. A single 8-pin power connector is adequate for normal overclocking operations, and Asus has included an extra 4-pin connector if you need the extra juice for chasing some HWbot points. A few things are apparent when examining the physical layout and design. The RGB implementation is somewhat subtle. Perhaps we have reached ‘peak RGB’ with just the PWM and chipset heatsinks…

Intel’s assault on mobile computing enters a new phase as the company announced its 8th-gen mobile CPUs, including for the first time (for Intel), five new 6/12 thread mobile parts Alongside the seven new performance parts, Intel also has four new standard mobile CPUs, for a total of 11 mobile 8th-gen CPUs. Among these are a i9 part (also the first time this series, albeit quite new, has a mobile version) and two new Xeons. One, and just one, is fully unlocked and overclockable – being the highest-end i9-8950HK, which is no surprise given that these mobile i9 CPUs are effectively cherry picked i7s for better thermal range - however another (the i7-8860H) is “partially’ unlocked, specifically meaning it can be overclocked by up to 400MHz. But that’s far from…

 PRICE $2,999 au.msi.com “The balance of price, performance, and usability make it our favourite all-rounder notebook...” MSI makes a bewildering array of gaming laptops. They come in all shapes and sizes from big, noisy and fast, to thin, light and portable. The Raider GR63 seeks to be an all-rounder – a gaming notebook that remains portable and sober enough to use for work. While MSI might not be the coolest moniker, its dragon badge makes amends. Cooler still are the pulsating, glowing streaks on the lid, which impressed everyone who saw them. It’s also well-built with a solid chassis and a screen which hardly flexes. The 15.6-inch Full HD screen is matte and reflection-proof. It gets very bright but it’s not as crisp or uniformly-lit as rivals. It’s no deal…

 PRICE $139 www.corsair.com/ww/en/spec-omega-case “... and the red number currently gracing our test bench is really quite striking.” Ask me a few years ago who my favourite case maker was, and the answer would be an emphatic CORSAIR! It’s true, I’d probably yell it and everything. Watching the company come to pretty much define what it meant to produce a truly enthusiast-grade case at approachable price-points was a real pleasure over the last ten years. But then the market hit one of those points where everyone was doing good work, at pretty much the same time that building or rebuilding your PC went from being something you do every couple of years to a much less regular event. The market became very competitive, and the upgrade cycle slowed down. Corsair kinda…

PRICE $1,049 www.asus.com/au Having raved about the three-and-a-half-inch smaller XG32VQ monitor on this page, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s big brother must be better. The XG35VQ isn’t just 35-inches wide, it has a higher, 3,440 x 1,440 resolution which gives it a 22:9 aspect ratio compared to the 2,560 x 1,440, 16:9 combination provided by the XG32VQ. Big deal you might say, but the core difference isn’t the $190 price increase, it’s the 100Hz refresh rate which is noticeably-slower than the smaller-sibling’s 144Hz. We’ll start with connectivity in order to explain the issue. In place of a mini DisplayPort socket is a second HDMI port to complement the full-size DisplayPort (version 1.2). One HDMI port is version 1.4 while the other is version 2. When we attached the…

“The same basic Saitek spring around the base system is still here but you get a set of four swappable springs...” PRICE $399 www.logitechg.com/au Following Logitech’s 2016 acquisition of Saitek, the somewhat legendary X-series HOTAS controllers have been evolved and refined. The basic design still carries elements going back to the ancient X-52, but has been beefed up with hints of Thrustmaster’s very serious Warthog HOTAS product. Notably, the industrial-vibed metal switch surrounds, and a move towards more toggle switches, as well as rotary controllers than plain old buttons. While the toggle switches offer good in-game mapping application, rotary controllers are more difficult to find a use for, and there are many of them. Together with the standard stick and throttle axes, the rotaries bring the total number of axes…

 PRICE $249 www.asus.com/au “ ...one of the cleverest features is a groove on the underside of the keyboard to route your headphone cable.” A lot of companies have expanded their business into making keyboards and mice over the last decade, and it’s been interesting watching PC hardware manufacturers like Asus and Gigabyte get into the act. It’s not been a smooth process, by any means, every now and then one of them makes a massive leap ahead in quality. The new ROG Strix Flare is just such a stride forward, an impressively solid and weighty piece of kit that demands respect as soon as you put it in place in front of your monitor. It eschews the over-wrought design of many gaming products in favour a more elegant, monolithic aesthetic.…

PRICE $59.95 Razer.com/au-en We wonder why there aren’t more mouse pad product releases to match the Cambrian explosion of mice, of late. Razer has something new, so let’s look at it, then. It’s an updated version of the Goliathus that now includes an RGB edging. It’ll do all the usual RGB tricks – breathing, spectrum cycling and reactive, as well as your own custom efforts. When used in conjunction with the essential Razer Synapse software other compatible Razer devices can sync up and RGB in unison. I don’t mind installing software to control a mouse pad’s lighting, but you also need to do a full account creation and registration which is a bit of an affront to what should be a less fiddlesome process. Razer – you don’t need to…

01 OWC Thunderblade $1600+ • Other World Computing eshop.macsales.com The Thunderbolt port’s throughput allows some truly astonishing technologies, for example, you may be aware of external video cards running through this interface. The Thunderblade is an external SSD. POWERED UP: Data transfer up to 2800MB/s for a single drive, capacity up to 8TB, daisy-chaining of up to 6 Thunderbolt devices, and RAID capable! PLAYED OUT: Thunderbolt is not as common as we’d like it to be – though this is improving. Price for 1TB starts around $1600 AUD up to around $6600 for 8TB. You’d require a desperate need for speed to justify this. 02 Logitech Crayon $70 • Logitech www.logitech.com Made for the 6th gen iPads, Logitech’s crayon is targeted towards students but is good for anyone art-inclined! POWERED…

LIAN LI REVEALS NEW PC-O11 DYNAMIC CASE It’s blocky, but it’s good! If one tempered glass panel is considered cool - and that’s certainly the current meta when it comes to enthusiast chassis design - then do you know what’s even cooler? TWO TEMPERED GLASS PANELS! That must be the thinking behind Lian Li’s new PC-O11 PC Dynamic case, and to be honest, it certainly looks pretty damn striking. Both the side panel and front panel are tempered glass, allowing you to either show off your cabling and PC building skills with elan, or live with ongoing mockery as all and sundry can see how little you care for neat builds (hint: I am the latter.) The PC-O11 Dynamic uses a multi-chamber design to isolate components and cabling - so…

“So I’m learning how to navigate an open Rimworld with a mix of awe & terror” You know how games elegantly signal danger, so that unexpected twists never feel unfair? Into the Breach, which I wrote up in this month’s indie pages, is a masterclass in this method of design. The first time you meet a new boss, you know what terrible things it can do because it’s doing familiar, just bigger, terrible things. And if you’re still not sure, you can select it and read explicit details. Then, at the beginning of every turn, it heralds its next attack perfectly in red, anyway. Theoretically, you could win Into the Breach the very first time you play it. But what about the games that don’t signal danger at all? I’ve…

WORLD OF WARCRAFT: BATTLE FOR AZEROTH DEVELOPER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT PUBLISHER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT DUE 14TH AUGUST 2018 worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/battle-for-azeroth Tropical islands conjure glorious imagery. Sandy beaches. Shady palms. Salty goblins ready to cut your throat to beat you to the Azerite. Yes, this is an island expedition of the World of Warcraft variety, and we have good news from our hands-on access on a visit to Blizzard HQ in Irvine, California. This new feature coming to the Battle for Azeroth expansion is looking like the standout upgrade when it comes to replayable content. Put simply, if you’re the kind of player who doesn’t really like PvP but want something more dynamic than running the same raids and dungeons on a loop, this is going to light your fire. THE ISLAND BROCHURE When…

“We started Overload as a nostalgic homage to Descent, but it’s really grown into something more...” OVERLOAD DEVELOPER REVIVAL PRODUCTIONS • PUBLISHER REVIVAL PRODUCTIONS • DUE 31ST OF MAY playoverload.com To say that I have fond memories of Descent is somewhat of an understatement. I played it a lot - at net cafes, in the back room of the bookshop I used to work in, and even on my struggling home PC at the time. To say that the upcoming reimagining of the game, designed by the same team, causes those fond memories to explode in a massive burst of nostalgia is also somewhat of an understatement. Thankfully, there’s more to Overload than just that - though it must be said, it is a remarkably… accurate recreation of the original.…

 DEVELOPER FAT SHARK • PUBLISHER FAT SHARK • PRICE $US29.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM www.vermintide.com “Just hammering at these monsters for minutes on end is kinda boring...” Fatshark pretty much came out of nowhere a couple of years ago with what is arguably one of the greatest PC games ever developed. It also had one of the silliest names when it came to overblown pomposity. Warhammer: The End Times: Vermintide. It was a tie-in to the End Times event that saw the Warhammer tabletop game morph fatally into Age of Sigmar, and a damn fine take on gameplay pioneered by Left 4 Dead. Four adventurers, hordes of the Skaven rat-men, and lush, challenging levels to negotiate from point A to point Z. Vermintide II - the Warhammer moniker is still…

 DEVELOPER CCCP • PUBLISHER PLAYDIUS • PRICE $US19.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM http://deadinvinland.com/ “The main stats are all negative - no one ever gets happy, they just get less depressed.” A raid; a hall-burning; a family forced to flee across the ocean, through a raging storm, to a mysterious island… Dead in Vinland starts out like many of the historical stories and myth cycles that have inspired it. It’s your hall that’s been burned, and your family, and it’s you that is responsible – though the actions that have caused such a turn of events are left vague. Regardless, the background of Dead in Vinland soon pales to the reality – keeping your family fed, happy, and safe. Which is a much bigger challenge than you might expect… Back when…

“Archers and spearmen, farms and harvesting, build queues and upgrades... it’s all there.” DEVELOPER DESTINTYBIT • PUBLISHER SLITHERINE • PRICE $US29.99 • AVAILABLE AT STEAM empiresapart.net The most accurate thing I can say about Empires Apart is that it is a charming, old-school RTS for folks who still think Age of Empires is the high-point of real time strategy game design. And, given that a remaster of that game’s recently come out, well, that must be a pretty sizeable demographic. The worst I can say is that Empires Apart is essentially a lo-fi clone of Age of Empires, with little soul of its own, and no real innovation. The game’s charm comes from its blocky, colourful graphical style – it’s particularly cartoon-like, which not only looks remarkably unique in this…

PRICE $469 & $319 www.amd.com It’s hard to believe that it’s been just over a year since AMD brought itself right back into the CPU game with the release of the Ryzen series of processors. It even forced Intel to respond to the Ryzen bomb by finally increasing the core counts across its range after years of incremental updates. Would we have even seen the six-core i7-8700K if not for the competition that AMD offered? Whatever the answer, Ryzen really did deliver competition, and highly compelling products that gave the consumer real choice. Now Ryzen gets its first update in the form the Ryzen 2000 series. LET THE BATTLE RESUME! The Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X we have on hand for this review are part of the family…

 PRICE $349 www.gigabyte.com.au “Despite the affordable pricing, Gigabyte has not skimmed down on features...” Gigabyte’s Aorus brand may not have the long standing reputation of Asus’ ROG moniker, but it is making great strides towards building its own legacy. Aorus boards typically strike a great blend of high-end features without breaking the bank, something we see repeated here, with the Aorus Gaming 5 going for just $349 at the time of writing. We’d never describe Aorus boards as subtle, but Gigabyte has clearly toned down the rather extreme use of RGB in favour of a more refined look. There’s still plenty of lighting adorning the board, but the overall look is a much better blend of bling and functional aesthetics. Despite the affordable pricing, Gigabyte has not skimmed down on…

 PRICE $3,599 www.asus.com/au “The ROG Zephyrus is almost a great notebook, but its thermal throttling issues are real.” Asus’ ROG Zephyrus was one of the first notebooks that was designed to be svelte in size but a beast when it came to gaming. This black beauty, with its sharp lines and glowing details sure looks great, although having ‘Republic of Gamers’ branding all over it will make boardroom brethren suspicious. Opening the Zephyrus’ lid famously simultaneously opens up an exhaust port at the rear of the base for enhanced cooling. While this sounds cool, in reality a plastic flap opens to reveal a heatsink. If it doesn’t sit on flat surfaces it bends and distorts. But is this a gaming beast? The latest version comes with a Coffee Lake hexacore,…

 PRICE $2400 www.razer.com “You’ll be able to get through most of a working day without charging the Blade Stealth.” There are solid notebooks and then there are Razer notebooks. The Blade Stealth is another solid-chassis stunner from Razer, only this one is an ultraportable that weighs less-than 1.4KG. The matte-black finish looks incredibly classy (despite being a fingerprint magnet) while the hard-to-flex lid displays a sense of sophistication thanks to the cultured design. Despite being an 13.3-inch notebook, it’s available with a whopping 3,200 x 1,800 resolution, which you’ll need to magnify with Windows unless you have the eyes of a hawk. It’s very glossy but it’s also a touchscreen. It gets impressively bright and colours pop. Under the hood, is Intel’s new Coffee Lake processor, the 1.8GHz quad-core, Core…

 PRICE $119 www.corsair.com “...the entire top is vented so whatever space is left over after you fit a radiator is still open for heat to rise out of.” You can find this for under $100 and if you’re after a classically simple case with plenty of room inside and good ventilation it’s a steal. The slab of tinted tempered glass consuming all of one side is a bonus-feeling treat that belies its bargain price, as does the large, shiny and rubber-padded feet that give it a faint air of Hi-Fi style. Our review unit was white and looked very smart. The finish is almost but not-quite matte on the metal areas. The entire removable front panel is plastic and is of the design type that allows air in through the…

 PRICE $2099 alienware.com.au “Colour accuracy is surprisingly good, with 99% sRGB coverage thanks to the IPS panel.” Alienware is synonymous with pimped out gaming rigs and its latest big screen gaming monitor will fit right in to any pimped-out gaming rig you’ve got going. The Alienware AW3418DW is a 21:9 ultra-wide 34-inch display that’s designed to be an immersive experience that sucks you right into whatever game you’re playing. The immersive feeling is delivered via a subtle 1900R curve that wraps around your noggin, filling your peripheral vision with nothing but the 3440x1440 pixels on offer. The chunky, angular stand is emblazoned with Alienware branding and is fully adjustable, so your gaming sessions are ergonomic, as well as immersive. Connectivity-wise it’s all pretty standard on the AW3418DW. 1x DisplayPort 1.2,…

 PRICE $359 en-au.sennheiser.com “ ... it manages to combine a chunky and aggressive aesthetic with some really neat design flourishes.” It’s very rare - being as I am a jaded, middle-aged gamer – for me take a product out of the box and just go “Wow!” But I did just that with Sennheiser’s newest headset, the GSP 600. To say it looks like kinda cool is an understatement – it manages to combine a chunky and aggressive aesthetic with some really neat design flourishes. They look, and even feel, like they could stop a bullet. Putting them on I noticed right away was that they do in fact stop a lot of sound. The covered-back enclosures of each ear cup do a good job of blocking out ambient, noise and…

PRICE $269 www.hyperxgaming.com/en Out of the box, the Alloy Elite RGB may not immediately justify the $269 price tag, but it’s certainly an impressive bit of kit nonetheless. More irritating however, is the labelling on each key; the Alloy Elite RGB has all the special characters beside the main letter of each key, rather than underneath, and that’s something I find can really throw me when I’m hunting-and-pecking for a key, rather than touch-typing. The Alloy Elite RGB is sturdy under gaming conditions, and the combination of weight and rubber feet means it’s staying in place no matter how much hammering it gets in the heat of battle. The volume roller feels lovely when you’re trying to up • Solid as a brick • Fantastic design • Great to game…

 PRICE $399 www.razerzone.com “...setup is super easy, as the software to download runs automatically when you plug your new gear in.” Ican’t remember the last time I was excited about a mouse pad. And I’m pretty sure I’ve been less than excited about mice ever since Corsair pretty much put a lock on my mousing time with its first few forays into the market. Am I jaded? Possibly. But that just makes my excitement for Razer’s latest effort that much more surprising. The product name is one of those ‘does what it says on the tin’ jobbies - it’s a box with a Mamba mouse and Firefly mousepad in it. They both come with RGB goodness because that’s essential in every gaming product these days, and they’re just as comfy…