PC Powerplay

One of the very best perks of this job is being able to get a glimpse of great games ahead of the curve. It’s also one of the oddly annoying things, too – and in the case of this issue’s cover feature, it’s even worse. Yes, I have gotten to play a bi

We learned last month that the US Army’s Twitch stream was being trolled by viewers who, instead of focusing on the games or players — the Army has its own esports team — insisted on asking about war crimes. The pointed questions put a spotlight on t

Yandere Simulator is the Star Citizen of indie gaming. In development for over six years now, it is a pig’s breakfast of spaghetti code and broken promises cobbled together by an egotistical hack who is demonstrably incapable of realising his vision.

Most games are about one thing hitting another. A bullet and a soldier’s head; a platform and your foot; a sword and a demon’s arm; a jaw and a Shoryuken. And that means a lot of games are all about hitboxes, the invisible geometry which tells them w

I was doing OK for the first few weeks of Covid-19 isolation; glad to be teaching from home, helping my younger son with his (rather abominable) spelling, drinking lots of tea. Things got hectic; my older son broke his arm, my day job moved to shaky

Luckily she’s created her version of a blanket fort; Rimworld, where she’s been stockpiling rice and chocolate. Indeed, the threat of impending doom neatly ties together this issue’s collection, including vengeful, encroaching armies and murderously

One of the most important cyberpunk novels ever written opens with a stark image. “The sky over the port was the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel” – so begins William Gibson’s seminal book, Neuromancer. It’s a novel that went on to insp

You start Humankind as a nomadic tribe in the Neolithic era. The wilderness around you holds pockets of treasure: a resource deposit here, a volcanic pool there. As I move my tribe across the map I’m rewarded for discovering the Great Blue Hole, a ci

Space is mostly bleak and empty,” says Michael Schade, CEO of Rockfish Games, the developer of Everspace 2. Without getting too Douglas Adams about it, this makes open space combat games “boring, because most of the time you shoot at tiny pixel clust

Project Cars has amassed a large, loyal following of virtual motorsport fans, thanks in part to its impressively realistic car physics. But the series has always  been missing a few of the features expected from a modern racing sim – something its de

Sometimes the real world weighs heavy on us all. This year, it’s felt like about 2,020 kilos’ worth. It can make luxuries like videogames feel pretty frivolous. But, at the same time, your PC can provide the perfect escape. Virtual worlds, despite

The scene before me is unfathomably ghastly. Charred limbs and torsos the colour of charcoal are only things that suggest that these are humans littering the ground as I pick through the gore to find a man’s lost brother. I’ve witnessed the carnage t

Hereby, I offer my apology to every environment artist working in games, past, present, and future. How many hours do they spend creating lavish, gorgeous, massive open worlds? Hundreds? Thousands? Huge teams spend years bringing to life spaces we

The reason space sim MMO EVE Online’s universe is so special – and enduring – is its relationship with its players. Thanks to an interwoven tangle of reactive systems, it’s a sandbox that plays host to dynamic politics, economics, espionage and warfa

Meditation rocks are not only for a quiet rest but also inform the player of the different species they are looking at. The name of the fish appears at the bottom of the screen, and the camera switches from watching the diver to examining the fish, a

Underwater levels in games can make you flounder. Weird water physics, breath timers, and clunky character movements have historically made submerged worlds daunting. But Giant Squid’s subaquatic adventure ABZÛ takes all that away, turning even the c

It’s interesting how two of the most atmospheric, detailed and well-realised worlds on PC – Yakuza’s Kamurocho and Shenmue’s Yokosuka – are among the smallest. Each game presents a painstakingly  recreated, but economical, slice of Japanese life, roo

When it comes to virtual tourism, it’s hard to beat the atmospheric streets of Sleeping Dogs’ Hong Kong. It’s at once an authentic snapshot of a unique and historic city, and a kind of exaggerated martial arts flick soundstage writ impossibly large.

The most compelling open worlds are the ones that feel like they would exist even if you never visited them, and the key to that illusion is to fill the world with convincing people. I’m not talking  about the main characters, the quest-givers, or th

Many fervent Dark Souls fans have written off Dark Souls II as an accident. But, in the words of Bob Ross who’d no doubt look over Medula with a tear in his eye, the sun setting over an endless sea, bathing the ruins of a once proud civilisation in g

Fast travel is ubiquitous in open world games. I get why – it’s a time-saver in an industry more packed with massive games than ever. But I think it also undermines the scale of these virtual realms. More and more I find myself swearing off using i

PCPP scores its games on a 1 to 100 scale. The higher, the better – though 100 is by no means a “perfect” game. We’re not convinced such a thing exists, so consider a 100 a masterpiece of PC gaming, despite its inevitable flaws. A 50 is a decidedly a

Every one of its stealthy encounters is its own puzzle, and every puzzle is a chance to experiment and, more often than not, fail. Desperados III is all about a team of specialists working in sync, using preternatural precision and timing to overcome

I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve eaten. My mission was to consume ten golfers, and since people don’t golf in the ocean I had to jump out of the water and shimmy my way onto the golf course to start chowing down on them. Three patrol boats fil

A special piece of armour that collects all the delicious souls. How can you harvest the souls of the dead without a good ol’ scythe? A cube of immense destruction that uses souls to unleash a high-powered beam. A tome that siphons souls and then re

I’m in a dark crypt, surrounded by skeletons and creepers. I’m blasting mobs with my firework arrows which explode into a cloud of colourful sparks, dual-wielding sickles that freeze enemies, and harvesting the souls of the fallen to power my laser c

Checking all of the boxes needed to fit into the service game climate Crucible has: a roster of heroes with diverse abilities, cosmetics, a battle pass with dozens of progression levels, and snippets of lore that suggest a larger world. Unfortunately

It’s wild how quickly Valorant has captured the collective consciousness of FPS fans. Riot’s competitive shooter is just barely out of beta, yet it already stands toe-to-toe with the biggest games in its genre. It helps that Valorant comes from a gig

PRICE $6,399 ONLINE dell.com/en-au/ The Alienware m15 laptops have been a staple of Dell’s gaming laptop range for years now and as per the company’s business model you can get this new 15-inch rig with just about every CPU and GPU combo you could w

PRICE AMD Ryzen 3 3100 - $175, AMD Ryzen 3 3300X - $205 ONLINE www.amd.com Remember that time just a couple of years back when a quad core CPU was regarded as high end? How far things have come! The new Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X bring 4-core/8-thread c

Storage may not get the blood racing in the same way that a CPU or graphics card does, but it is an increasingly important component of any gaming system. With the next-gen consoles both looking to make the most of their PCIe SSDs, it seems only reas

PRICE $1,699 ONLINE www.vive.com The Cosmos Elite is essentially the original Cosmos bundled with the first generation base stations and controllers, and a different faceplate attached to the headset. If you’ve already bought the Cosmos, you can upg

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PRICE $89 ONLINE www.thermaltake.com.au While Thermaltake continues to push various iterations of its hyper-designed Level 20 series, the case-maker is still keeping a watchful eye on on the budget end of the market, and the S100 Tempered Glass is a

PRICE $60 DISTRIBUTOR Donut Robotics www.donutrobotics.com Given how 2020 is going we’re surprised this didn’t happen sooner. Of course it’s a smart mask. Because we’re living in a world now where wearing a mask outside might be the only way you get

There have been two Infinity Wards. The first invented Call of Duty; the second saved it from diminishing returns. In the middle was a cataclysmic event in game development, one that played out in public and left a world-famous studio forever changed

My fondest gaming memory: half a dozen boys squeezed tight into a uni halls bedroom, gathered around a monitor watching two boxy men stumble and push each other over, in endless loops. We’re losing our minds, laughing so hard that we gather a crowd f