PC Powerplay

Did you ever say to yourself when you were young, “When I grow up I want to be the Pope?” No? Well here’s your big chance anyway, sort of: Pope Simulator, a new addition to the menagerie of weird, ultra-niche sims on PC that promises to immerse playe

Crytek has now officially confirmed that Crysis Remastered is on the way. A release date hasn’t been announced, but the now-updated website at crysis.com says it’s “coming soon.” The game was revealed, seemingly accidentally, on Crytek’s website. The

Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti remains the most powerful graphics card in the GeForce lineup, and with that hallowed ground comes an equally harrowing Founders Edition price tag of US$1,199. Yet that hasn’t halted efforts to build bigger, better, and even more

Codemasters has announced that F1 2020 will be released on July 10. The racing sim will launch on Steam, PS4, Xbox One, and, for the first time in the series, Google Stadia. F1 2020 will feature a new team management mode alongside its already establ

JAMES COTTEE has seen the future, and it is a poorly optimised executable, stamping on the face of your computer, forever. Jonathan Blow is making his own programming language. He calls it ‘Jai’, and he envisions it as a fully-functional replacemen

In the fiercely competitive and innovative world of the PC, it’s always an exciting thrill seeing products and technologies come along and shake things up and move the industry forward. We use and choose good gear because of the performance on offer,

FINALISTS: Nvidia RTX AMD Ryzen 3rd-gen CPUs Intel Ice Lake 10th gen mobile CPUs AMD Zen 2 chiplet architecture TSMC’s 7nm process Phison PS50 series SSD controllers OLED screens Wi-Fi 6 Intel Project Athena WINNER: AMD Zen 2 chiplet architecture Se

The Gold Award is given to the company deemed to be the very best of 2019. To stand out in a field of such spirited competition, in the ever-evolving cauldron of PC tech, requires a team that has focus, talent, fresh thinking and the ability to deliv

In the summer of 2019 a group of Olympians assembled in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, to discuss development of the god-themed MOBA, Smite. The Olympians were players halfway through their year-long terms as council members, each there to represent player i

MEGHANN O’NEILL lives in a fairly small house. Her desk and computer are in the lounge room, which doesn’t seem particularly conducive to effective learning. Perhaps she could put her family, and the dog, in suspended animation for a bit. Going to

DEVELOPER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE • RELEASE 2020 worldofwarcraft.com Few places in Azeroth aren’t covered in the boot prints of World of Warcraft players. We’ve been to every major continent, alternate magical dimensions and thro

DEVELOPER MOJIKEN STUDIO • PRICE TBA • RELEASE TBA https://mojiken.itch.io/a-space I played A Space for the Unbound without realising that it was a demo (it’s just an opening chapter, about 20 minutes long), but I’m hooked. When I was a kid, my mum

Jesus Christ,” mutters Larian CEO Swen Vincke as another arrow hits his unconscious wizard. We’ve barely started our journey to Baldur’s Gate and we’re close to a second party wipe. Vincke gets creative. He takes off his boot and throws it at a bandi

DEVELOPER TRIPWIRE • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE • RELEASE MAY 22 tripwireinteractive.com/games If it were easy to make games about being a shark, I’d be able to name more than just Jaws Unleashed – a 2006 game Tripwire played as it figured out how to build

I like Drizzt. Everyone likes Drizzt. He’s the best. That’s a problem for all the adventurers who aren’t legendary drow heroes. I don’t want a much more impressive hero showing me up in front of my mates. You can’t have Volo and not include his best

Slayer!” Is there a voice clip I’ve heard more in my life than Halo’s gravelly announcer preparing me for combat? Maybe one of his other callouts: “Double kill.” “Triple kill.” “Overkill!” (OK, now I’m just bragging). If there’s anything truly and ut

It turns out Halo’s analog stick crouch doesn’t work on the digital inputs of WASD. The fix, coming soon, is noticeably faster. “You do get more freedom to crouch as you’re moving,” says Sean Swidersky. “Some users feel this is natural for sure, but

Two valleys open out into a cove where a tank sits, waiting to dominate the map. CTF matches were full of heroic and foolish warthog runs, trickery with the teleporters, and hopeless assaults on that tank. An at-the-time awe-inspiring recreation of

In the winter of 1993, Dallas, Texas-based developer id Software released a game about a space marine killing demons, and a legend was born. Doom set the standard for the first-person shooter on PC and beyond, and was one of the first videogames to b

I recently spoke with Vincent Adinolfi, an indie designer working on a game called Heartworm. It’s low-poly 3D survival horror, so when he brought up influences like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and even Dino Crisis, that was to be expected. But then

Ten years after the Wright Brothers outwitted gravity at Kitty Hawk, the revolution they started went into overdrive when European militaries realised flying machines were useful for more than just reconnaissance. Microsoft Flight Simulator experienc

DEVELOPER RIOT GAMES • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE playruneterra.com Idon’t think I can stomach buying another booster pack after playing Legends of Runeterra. It’s a necessary part of physical card games where cards often have real-world value, but their pr

Two decades ago, Shogun: Total War spawned a history-spanning strategy series, several spin-offs and even a detour into Warhammer. Almost all of them are unified by tactical real-time battles, turn-based empire-building, and a foundation that was est

DEVELOPER CAPCOM • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE residentevil.com When I first encountered the Nemesis in Resident Evil 3, a monstrous bio-weapon sent by the Umbrella Corporation to hunt and kill protagonist Jill Valentine, I felt my pulse rise. This towering

DEVELOPER BONUSXP • PUBLISHER EN MASSE ENTERTAINMENT bit.ly/2OswL9e I love strategy games. I love The Dark Crystal. But heading into this adaptation of the Netflix TV series, I was pretty sceptical of the idea of squishing the two together. It’s a p

DEVELOPER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT • PUBLISHER BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT playwarcraft3.com This reborn RTS spins a yarn about a host of factions fighting over the course of several campaigns, and then again in multiplayer battles and skirmishes. But ther

DEVELOPER ID SOFTWARE • PUBLISHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS bethesda.net/game/doom I just finished Doom Eternal and I’m feeling anxious and exhausted. I’ve kneed the underside of my desk too many times to count from tensing up. My hands are soft from sweat

DEVELOPER SIZE FIVE GAMES • PUBLISHER SIZE FIVE GAMES sizefivegames.com Genuinely funny games are a rarity. So without overlooking the ingenuity of a game that fuses point-and-click adventures with platform-puzzlers, the highest praise I can give La

PRICE From $4,299 aorus.com Aorus is Gigabyte’s premium gaming brand and the Aorus 17 is the biggest and most powerful gaming laptop the company makes. This weapon can be fitted with an Intel Core i9-9980HK CPU, 32GB of RAM and a Nvidia GeForce GTX

For serious streamers, there’s nothing worse than not being heard during your broadcast. Your microphone tends to be the unsung hero of your entire streaming arsenal. When choosing the best microphon, there’s one thing we look for above all else: c

PRICE $6,499 www.amd.com AMD has been going from strength to strength with successive iterations of its Zen architecture, most recently culminating in the ultra-high end Threadripper 3-series. The entry level 24-core 3960X we reviewed last month dec

PRICE $349 www.hyperxgaming.com The Cloud Flight S is somewhat similar to the original Cloud Flight, although not as much as the names might suggest. Whereas the earlier model featured striated ear cups, red highlights and loose wires in the headban

PRICE $229 au.creative.com Chances are, your Windows PC or Mac speakers come with middling, if not terrible audio quality. Or maybe they’re decent, but not quite good enough to truly enjoy what the music or games you spend time listening to. Cue the

PRICE $599 www.seagate.com Docking stations aren’t anything new, and neither are external hard drives, but how about combining them both? That’s exactly what Seagate has done with its FireCuda Gaming Dock. It combines the plug and play ease of an ex

PRICE $250 • DISTRIBUTOR ECHO-SIGMA echo-sigma.com As we wall ourselves up inside our homes, it’s difficult not to want to be more prepared. Something that could help is a bug-out bag. With a bit of research it’s easy to build your own, customised to

Okay, so I’m gonna take a liberty here – I absolutely LOVE the new HyperX headphones reviewed this issue. I know our reviewer has had some issues, and these are fair problems to point out, but I’ve been using them as well and they’ve become my standa

DEVELOPER TOTALLY GAMES • PUBLISHER ACTIVISION • RELEASED MARCH 8, 2002 bit.ly/bridgecommander If you’ve ever been a Star Trek fan, you’ve probably imagined what it would be like to sit in the captain’s chair of a Federation starship. Over the years

RELEASED NOVEMBER 13, 2018 hitman.com When our former editor-in-chief Samuel Roberts tweeted that he’d claimed the top spot on the leaderboards for the Hawke’s Bay level of Hitman 2, I felt like I had something to prove. I’d reviewed Hitman 2. I’d r

Remember last issue, when I said it felt like the first couple of months of 2020 felt really and unusually long? Well, boy-howdy did I not know what was coming around the corner! This issue of PCPowerPlay was produced almost completely during the COV