Technical specs
| Panel Type / Backlight | AAS-IPS / W-LED, edge array |
| Screen Size / Aspect Ratio | 27 inches / 16:9 |
| Max Resolution & Refresh Rate | 2560x1440 @ 165Hz, FreeSync Premium: 48-165Hz, G-Sync Compatible |
| Native Color Depth & Gamut | 10-bit / DCI-P3, HDR10, VESA DisplayHDR 400 |
| Response Time (GTG) | 1ms |
| Brightness | SDR: 350 nits, HDR: 400 nits |
| Contrast | 1,000:1 |
| Speakers | X |
| Video Inputs | 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 2x HDMI 2.0 |
| Audio | 3.5mm input, 3.5mm headphone output |
| USB 3.0 | 1x up, 2x down |
| Power Consumption | 28w, brightness @ 200 nits |
| Panel Dimensions (WxHxD w/base) | 612 x 434-561 x 236mm |
| Panel Thickness | 61mm |
| Bezel Width | Top/sides: 8mm; Bottom: 26mm |
| Weight | 8kg |
| Warranty | 3 years |
Design
Gigabyte is not messing about when it comes to the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor. It is ready to take on the competition in both style and performance. The panel casing, arm, and base stand all feature sharp and straight lines which give it a very modern feel. The foot piece is made from brushed aluminium and gives a very firm base while keeping the footprint as small as possible. The stand is a mixture of hard plastic and some metal with some RGB infused. On top of the base stand, the metal makes a loop that works great for a carry handle, seeing as the Aorus FI27Q-P comes in at a respectable 8kg it is handy to have a handle to move it without getting fingerprints on the panel. The mentioned RGB is built into the sides and back of the stand, as well as the rear of the monitor itself. In the centre of the stand, facing the rear is the proud Aorus logo which looks immense when the RGB lighting runs through it.
Although the box says the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor is frameless, exactly like any other brand, there is still a very thin bezel that sits on the sides and the top of the panel. The bottom of the panel is a plain matte black plastic finish with a single small LED to indicate power status, as well as a gloss AORUS name, would be cool if it could be RGB as well, but that's just me. Aorus has even incorporated an anti-glare on the screen by adding a layer of 3H hardness and even with curtains open and light streaming onto the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor, it did not bother me one bit. I did use it as my excuse for being terrible at Warzone though, sorry Aorus FI27Q-P monitor! On the underneath of the monitor, there is a small joystick that is used to control the OSD. The OSD interface is extremely intuitive and anyone will be able to grasp the concept of how to use it, instantly.
When it comes to the movements of the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor, Gigabyte has once again smashed it out of the park. The Aorus FI27Q-P monitor has the standard up and down movement that slides along the base stand, the panel can also tilt to a maximum of 21 degrees, but the surprise is the ability for it to swivel thanks to the four-way joint built into the upright stand, a full 20-degree swivel, wonderful! With the substantial weight that comes with the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor, movements are often tough to make and even worse to maintain. Fortunately, the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor does both of these perfectly. The movements are easy and light while staying exactly where you left it.
Moving to the IO of the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor we are met with two HDMI 2.0 inputs, great for the PIP feature. A single Display Port 1.2, to obtain high resolution and refresh rate. Two 3.5mm jacks for input and output of analog audio. Two USB 3.0 ports, one for upstream and one for downstream. We cannot think of anything more we could possibly want, if we were to be critical, we have seen USB type C ports on monitors but the monitor in question was nearly three times the price of the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor and didn't get us nearly as excited as the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor.
Features
The very first thing I noticed when I started using the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor was just how vibrant the colours were. Usually, I would tweak review monitors to where I like the colours to be, but, straight out of the box, the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor hit the sweet spot. This is thanks to Aorus taking immense pride in trying to cover as much of the DCI-P3 colour range as possible, and it shows. The Aorus FI27Q-P monitor has HDR400, which means that when HDR is enabled it should still reach or exceed 400nits of brightness. Something that also sets the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor apart from many other monitors is the 10bit native bandwidth, although there is an 8bit version, this means that HDR signals are not converted to match what the monitor can output as in the case of an 8-bit monitor, hence the high colour volume.
Gigabyte and Aorus have crammed the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor full of so many features, another one of our favorites, and Aorus Exclusive is the Black Equalizer 2.0. Other monitors will create deep and dark black colours by generally turning all the colours and brightness down. Not the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor, no, Black Equalizer 2.0 is capable of, independently, adjusting 1296 partitions of black at the same time without affecting the areas of the monitor
Active Noise Cancelling 2.0 is yet another feature that Aorus has brought to the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor. The Aorus FI27Q-P monitor provides an output for headphones with an output of up to 120dB Signal-to-Noise ratio. This is amazing considering the audio is being output by a monitor and not straight from the motherboard where you would traditionally get your audio from. What makes this feature even more impressive is that thanks to some serious tech being squeezed into the monitor, the audio output is capable of driving headphones up to the impedance of 600 ohms, something that you would usually see in big, stand-alone amplifiers. Yet another Aorus exclusive!
OSD sidekick is one of the features that I did not know I needed. OSD Sidekick is the ability for you to change the settings in the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor OSD not only by using the joystick fitted to the monitor but by using your mouse and keyboard. Aorus also claims that it will provide further updates to the OSD Sidekick and even protection, I am intrigued to find out what they mean by that. One thing is for certain, we all hate fiddling our way through a cumbersome OSD, Aorus has already helped by making the OSD on the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor very user friendly, but now being able to use your mouse and keyboard to easily move through the OSD, even setting up keyboard shortcuts to change settings, now that is revolutionary.
For the gamers who mainly focus on first-person shooters, Aorus has crammed some goodies into the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor for you as well. First up is the Aim stabilizer, when you are running and gunning in your favorite shooter, you will often notice blurring from the recoil of a shot or trying to aim while firing your gun, turning off motion blur in the settings usually helps a slight bit, but thanks to Aorus, the FI27Q-P monitor can now give you the added advantage of reducing the motion blur even more and enhancing the visual clarity to ensure you have the best chance of landing that shot! The next feature that most shooter enthusiasts will relish is Crosshair, not only does the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor offer an on-screen crosshair, no, you can even draw your own and use that on the monitor!
Lastly, but definitely not the least, is PiP and PbP, picture in picture and picture by picture are a feature that the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor provides for users who want to be able to watch a game guide whilst playing the game, for example. The feature allows for a second input to be displayed on the same monitor as what you are currently watching. Different inputs, one screen, at the same time. Want to switch to the other input audio, simply flick between them with the OSD joystick. The one final feature that is handy for any gamer who loses track of time is the USB fast charger. The Aorus FI27Q-P monitor has an embedded SUPERSPEED USB Charger which will provide 5V with 1.5A to give your device that much-needed boost!
Hands-on experience
Taking the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor into some gaming felt great. We jumped between a few titles like Fortnite, for the bright and vibrant colours, Fall Guys, because my 4-year-old forced me, and the dark and gritty environments of Escape from Tarkov. Starting off with SDR games and we were totally blown away by the vividness of the colours and contrast. The dark and gritty environment of Escape From Tarkov becomes increasingly more eery. In a game where your senses are heightened due to the fear of death and so much relying on what you can see and hear. Making your environment more realistic and gritty, does not help to make life easier, yet it makes the game look SO good! Dark corners in Factory become true nightmarish areas as, unless you turn your brightness up immensely, is there someone sitting and watching you in the shadows, who knows?! The colourful titles such as Fortnite and Fall Guys look absolutely tremendous on the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor. With HDR turned on and off, the massive colour palette that the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor can produce gives any title that extra pop.
Verdict
We have been fortunate to experience many of the latest and greatest monitors as they arrive on the market. And secretly we have our dream monitor, if not a specific monitor but a few features that we would love. All of that has fallen by the wayside with the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor. The Aorus FI27Q-P monitor is the very best 1440p 27-inch monitor we have ever had the privilege of reviewing. The extremely large colour gamut as well as its high refresh rate sets the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor apart from the other monitors we have seen. Yes, you can get a 4K monitor or a 32" or even bigger, but the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor represents the perfect middle-ground between what gamers want and what is reasonably affordable. If someone asked me to choose a 27-inch gaming monitor, I would not hesitate to choose the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor. In a crowded genre of 27-inch monitors where competition is extremely tight, the Aorus FI27Q-P monitor gives enough to give it our crown of the 27-inchers!
special thanks to Gigabyte South Africa for the review item
From the moment we opened the box of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX we realized that this is a true monster. Apart from the splendid-looking motherboard, there are a plethora of accessories bundled with this board. We had to do some reading to find out what all of these goodies are truly for so here goes. The ROG True Voltician is a USB format oscilloscope. This little PCB plugs onto the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX board via one of the USB sockets. Through this device and the management software, the advanced users can keep an eye on a host of various settings in their most discrete details. With the added mini-USB port, these readings are even able to be taken and captured from a completely separate PC. This might seem silly to some but for the overclockers in the house, who are truly trying to push the boundaries of their overclock, every fraction of information can be critical.
Next in the list of extras, is the PCIe card that functions as an M.2 SSD slot. Generation 5.0 PCIe to be exact so once those versions of SSDs become available you don't have to slot them into the motherboard like in the past, simply open up this card and install it in there and this card makes use of one of your PCIe slots. It is a really interesting way of expanding the capability to have more M.2 drives on your system without having to give up real estate on your motherboard for more slots.
Even though the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX offers two M.2 slots on the motherboard, more on the above-mentioned PCIe 5.0 card, if you, for some reason, still have more M.2 modules that you need to install, ASUS supplies yet another vertical stand that can accommodate two more M.2 SSDs. This module fits into a slot right next to the RAM slots, don't worry you won't accidentally install RAM into that slot as it has a protective slot to ensure RAM won't fit.
The rest of the items found in the box, as can be seen in the video above, range from a keyholder, a handy Q connector, SATA cables, an RGB extender, and a host of other, less exciting items.
The largest and most eye-catching aspects are naturally the heatsinks, and there are plenty of them on the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX! The CPU, which in our case, is the magnificent i9-12900k monster, is surrounded on three sides by heatsinks, all in a black metal finish. The bottom one doubles as a cover for another M.2 SSD but this time it is only a PCIe 4.0. All three of the heatsinks also have cooling pipes to help spread the heat that the new CPU with its hybrid core system can create. The heatsink that cools the rear IO is hidden by the extremely good-looking shroud that has the Maximus Apex adornment in silver and the ROG sign that can be lit up by RGB which looks spectacular. While on the topic of heatsinks, the vast majority of the rest of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX is actually covered in heatsinks. The last, and large heatsink, that covers the chipsets. a simple black design with the ASUS logo that benefits from more RGB, but when taking a side-on look, we are met with another nod to the ROG brand in the way the heatsink is cut.
Another major feature and upgrade on the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX, and specifically this board is the fact that is DDR5, a bit more on that later. There is however a DDR4 version but it comes in the form of more entry-level motherboards. One of the more significant additions, albeit something minor is the addition of the Q-release. When something is plugged into the first PCIe slot, like those bulky and beefy GPUs it is often nearly impossible to be able to reach the PCIe release lever. Fortunately, ASUS has thought of that issue already and has added a push-button towards the middle right of the board, and with a simple push-of-a-button, your PCIe now has a remote release button.
Now, to the plethora of little buttons and switches situated all around the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX, let us take a look.
Power Button - Power-on the motherboard
FlexKey (reset) - Restart Motherboard. Can be reassigned in BIOS
Switch BIOS - this allows you to switch between two BIOS setups in case of a bad setup.
LN2 Mode - For those who like to push the limits, using LN2 for cooling, activate this in BIOS to avoid issues on startup.
Debug LED ( CPU - DRAM - VGA - Boot) - use these LEDs to diagnose the corresponding item during startup. If one LED stays on, that means an error on corresponding hardware.
Q-LED - the standard display that will display an error code to help identify a possible error.
CMOS CLR - this will clear the BIOS parameters and reset them to default.
Probe IT - allows for measurements to be taken directly on the PCB via a multimeter.
The rear panel of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX looks much like the other ASUS ROG boards. With enough USB ports to plug in all your peripherals and probably every USB device you own, at the same time does make it awesome as so many devices use at least one USB port these days. The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX features four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and five USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports and one Gen 2 Type-C port. Moving back to the top of the board is the Clear CMOS button as well as the flashing button for when you want to flash the BIOS via a USB drive. Some of you older folk might recognize the PS2 slots for mouse and keyboard. Why use those I hear you asking. Some benchmarks are more powerful when using the likes of Windows XP, yes that dinosaur for some of you kids.
Further down past the magnitude of USB ports we find the network port, for those who prefer the hardwired approach. Then we are met with the dual antenna ports and the WIFI antenna that can attach anywhere onto your case via the magnet in the foot piece. The audio ports are below this and are powered by the Supreme FX chip. supporting the standard five-line surround or via optical if you prefer it that way.
With the arrival of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX, we not only received the Intel 12900k CPU, the latest and greatest from the Intel stable, we also got a DDR5 RAM treat courtesy of XPG. They provided us with the XPG Lancer 16Gb kit. Not only is it an absolutely stunning RAM stick with its all-black approach, complimenting the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX board completely, but it also packs some serious speed. From a side-on view, the XPG Lancer DIMMs look great in their textured black color. Once installed and looking at the shoulder, the XPG Lancer DIMM is once again, plain with only a white XPG emblem sitting in the middle of the shoulder. Rated for 5200MHz compared to DDR4, which generally runs around 3200MHz, both these speeds being before you start to overclock them, naturally!
First of all, we need to mention, DDR5 RAM is expensive, no matter what brand you go for. Since it is still very fresh to the market the prices are high and will, over time, come down once DDR5 is the mode widely used RAM. Something to note about the XPG Lancer DIMM is the height. This comes as a double-barrel point. Comparing it to my own RAM DIMMs I found the XPG Lancer DIMM to be quite tall. Nothing that will cause any alarm unless you are planning on using a monstrous air cooler, but in my case, no issue whatsoever. Yet the XPG Lancer, the non-RGB version that we have here, is still taller than my own RGB DIMMs. The only possible reason I can think for this being the case is the fact that they use the same bottom-end for both and hence the non-RGB sticks still have the space where the RGB would fit.
So, the question that everyone wants to know is, is DDR5 THAT much better than DDR4? And my unequivocal answer is... I don't know! In terms of gaming, there are very few games that benefit from DDR5 at this point in time. DDR5 provides much higher bandwidth and with a frequency of 5200MHz at CL38 the XPG Lancer DIMM has lower latency than many other DDR5 DIMMs that are available right now. The lower speeds and only having a small boost means that it has more potential for overclocking, which as I mentioned earlier, doesn't quite seem to make for much gain right now.
The XPG Lancer DDR5 RAM is therefore neither here nor there, and that's for no fault on its side. Right now DDR5 RAM is simply for early adopters and for those who want to be at the forefront of the technology. The look of the Lancer does however get me excited, it is a good-looking DIMM while not needing RGB to be... When connected to the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX it does its job even better by being low-key good-looking while letting the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX get all the glory with its RGB, albeit very minimal. The XPG Lancer DDR5 RAM is by no means an inferior product to the new Adler Lake CPUs but just expect to pay a premium if you are going to pick when it comes to brands, the XPG Lancer DDR5 RAM sits at a great price to get into the DDR5 market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy0l6QBHHLw
What truly sets the new Z690 boards apart from previous generations is not just the step to the new 12th Gen Intel CPUs, that is a big deal as well with the new way Intel is making their CPUs work but another massive change is the introduction of DDR5 RAM. Instead of me writing lots of words that might not explain it correctly or bore you to death, I implore you, if you are interested to understand, to look at the video above and learn what makes Adler lake and DDR5 so special.
This is definitely more of a verdict than it is a rating. When this ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX arrived on my desk, with DDR5 RAM and the stellar Intel 12900K I was not quite aware of what I was letting myself in for. Little did I know that this would be less of a review and more of a learning experience, which had me watching so many videos and reading so many articles explaining how the new DDR5 RAM and Adler Lake really has changed up what we will come to expect from the newer generation of CPUs, RAM, and motherboards.
For the early adopters of any form of new tech, it might not seem quite worth it right now, with many studies finding that, currently, you might not see much of a performance boost from ditching your DDR4 for DDR5. But in the future, it certainly will. Pair this with PCIe 5,0 which has very limited support when it comes to SSDs that can truly utilize the power and speed of it right this moment, but once again, in time, this will become the mainstay of what we expect and will be using.
But back to the matter at hand, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX. If you look up the word APEX, and no, not Apex Legends, we will find that the word APEX can be used much like the pinnacle, and that is what the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX motherboard is. It comes from a brand that has invested so much into being one of the greatest and most recognizable brands in gaming and with the launch of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX board it has culminated into this monster I have before me right now. Considering yourself a knowledgeable PC user will quickly be questioned by this board. The amount of built-in features and abilities the board possesses is simply astounding, and honestly, I don't think I am capable of really testing it to its full potential!
What I am trying to say is that if you want to jump to the new Z690 platform, and you are planning on really making your newest 12th Gen CPU work to its utmost potential, there is no other board than the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX! Throw anything at it, LN2 cool your CPU, and try to overclock it to the moon, that's what this board is for! Once DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0 become mainstream, those who are rocking this card will be smiling from ear to ear, because then, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 will truly show why it is called APEX!
The Razer Kiyo Pro follows its very successful predecessor in general design, minus the obvious ring light. The first impression when I took the Razer Kiyo Pro out of its box was how heavy it is. Naturally, this gives the feeling of quality which we have grown to know with Razer and their premium range of products. The lack of ring light around the outside of the Razer Kiyo Pro makes it look a lot more unobtrusive although it is fairly large and tough to miss when placed on top of your monitor. The mounting options are endless and you have the option to either mount it to your desk, place it on top of your monitor or use a tripod, the Razer Kiyo Pro is capable of all of them. If you are planning to not use the Razer Kiyo Pro, Razer even supplies a privacy cover that can be placed over the camera for those moments you don't want to share with an audience.
Razer has also made sure the Kiyo Pro is nearly indestructible, nearly, don't go smash it with a hammer to prove me wrong, please. Razer has fitted the Kiyo Pro with Gorilla Glass 3, the lens is both damage- and scratch-resistant. The dimensions of the Razer Kiyo Pro are rather bulky and as I mentioned earlier it is bulky on the top of your monitor but thanks to the sleek design and all-black appearance, it looks really classy when added to nearly every setup.
Supported resolution: 1080p at 60 fps / 1080p at 30 fps with HDR enabled
The diagonal field of view: Adjustable between 80°, 90°, and 103°
Focus type: AF and MF
Lens type: Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Built-in mic: Stereo
Dimensions: 21.5 x 18 x 11.5 cm
Connection type: USB 3.0
Cable length: 1.5m long braided cable
A large drawcard towards the Razer Kiyo Pro is the fact that it is capable of doing 1080p recording at 60fps while not sacrificing image sharpness. Compared to its predecessor which was only capable of doing 720p at 60fps while going to 1080p would only give you 30fps. The Razer Kiyo Pro does have another improvement that comes in the way of HDR recording, this does however only happen at 30fps, but hey, HDR for the win! My previous experience with webcams has always been the ones built into laptops. Compared to the webcam fitted to some of the priciest laptops we have ever reviewed, the Razer Kiyo Pro simply smashes it out of the park.
The biggest difference that I saw moving from my budget webcam to the Razer Kiyo Pro is the low light ability! When using my budget webcam, I had to ensure that I had the room lights on at all times otherwise I would get lost and the camera would constantly be adjusting the focus to try and brighten me up and compensate. Switching over to the Razer Kiyo Pro, even with the main lights off, using only a side lamp and the shine from the monitor the Kiyo Pro is able to effortlessly increase the ambient lighting and even cancel out the change of lighting coming from the monitor. This is achieved without even using the Synapse software which is wonderful for those looking for a powerful and capable webcam that can be used as a plug-and-play device.
Razer only recommends that you connect the Kiyo Pro via USB3.0 to ensure no compression or creates stuttering during streaming if your rig is not quite as beefy. Installing the Synapse software gives you a large number of extra options. Such as three options for FOV (Field of View). Narrow( 80'), Medium (90') and Wide being 103'. This can easily be changed via Synapse and gives users some flexibility depending on what they want or need to achieve. Using the Wide option, while sitting only about 1.2m away from the Kiyo Pro, when folding my arms open would see it capture my hands on both hands in the same shot which says a lot for the FOV, or it means I have rather short arms...
Unlike many other software programs that are used by peripherals, barring one or two, are generally terrible. The Razer Synapse software is one of the exceptions. Synapse gives you the ability to adjust the basics, such as brightness, contrast, saturation, and white balance. Click on the advanced settings and you have even more to tinker with. Sharpness, gain, Powerline frequency, aperture, and even tilt, to name but a few. While playing around with the Razer Kiyo Pro, which meant spending significant amounts of time looking at myself on a screen, I did notice one slight chink in the Kiyo Pro's armour. When I was moving around in my chair and leaning in or laying back in my chair the focus adjustment that the Kiyo Pro had to make was apparent. If you are sitting still and not moving in and out too much you might not even notice it but in extreme movement situations, you can see it adjusting its focus. You can get past this hurdle if you use manual focus but if you are changing your stream from static actions to more moving actions then you might need to stick to the autofocus.
The microphone is something that I happened to test without meaning to. I use a very respectable brand of headset with a magnificent microphone that comes along with it. When jumping into a discord chat with friends they often comment that my voice almost sounds too crisp and in their ear. After connecting the Razer Kiyo Pro I didn't think to ensure my input device did not default to the Kiyo Pro and proceeded to join on my friends. They immediately commented on the change in microphone quality and said it sounds very natural, apart from the ambient noise that was now being picked up such as keyboard chatter. From this, it is evident that the Kiyo Pro microphone will be able to double as a microphone for those office meetings via Zoom or Teams. For streamers, it will suffice but a noise-canceling microphone will be the better option.
With the release of a new game, you can also expect some changes and new additions (some have already rolled out) in Call of Duty’s famed Battle Royale mode, Warzone. With me having moved on from my Battle Royale craze, I have not spent much time in this but instead delved more deeply into the campaign, followed closely by multiplayer and then some zombies for a change of pace and scenery.
With all this content packed into one game, you can expect Vanguard to take up around 55GB on a PlayStation 4, 56GB on an Xbox One, 64Gb on a PlayStation 5, 61GB on an Xbox Series X|S, and 61GB on a PC. Obviously, the newer generation taking up more space because of better graphics, as well as PC with its RTX glory. Strangely, the required space for the Xbox consoles is the same as the file size, while the PlayStation 4 requires around 93GB of total space on your hard drive, and the PlayStation 5 needs just shy of 90GB. Why this is, we can only speculate.
The campaign continues this trajectory for most of its nine missions and leaves you with a sense that you were more part of a 6 to 7-hour long World War 2 movie, more than playing a game. This, in itself, is not a bad thing as the movie is very cinematic and graphics and scenery are superbly laid out in front of you, giving you a sense of actually being there. Big ups to the devs for managing to do this.
Now, some of you reading this may think 6 to 7 hours of explosions, adrenaline, stealth, and teeth-gritting action is not much but a quick google search has revealed that all Call of Duty campaigns, since the first one, fall somewhere between 6 and 9 hours with the longest of these being the Black Ops III campaign at 9 hours and only Black Ops: Cold War falling below that with a dismal campaign length of about 4 and a half hours. So, all is not that bad with this one as the 7 hours it took me (yes, I play slow – blame it on my RPG background) to complete the campaign kept me engaged and thinking of ways to outsmart my enemies as a standard run and gun very seldom had the desired effect.
This Zombies sees you starting in a sort of neutral zone, although the horde of the undead is present here too. Your weapons, ammo, upgrades, and mystery boxes can be found here, and kill here do earn points and install, double points and max ammo can still be dropped. Scattered around this zone are portals that drop you into a plethora of game modes, some familiar and some new. All with the objective to appease some godly being and to bring some sort of order into the chaos that is this red sky hellscape.
The game modes that we’re exposed to are your usual Team Deathmatch, Free for all, Domination, Hardpoint, and Kill Confirmed. Some new game modes and ones from newer titles also make an appearance here with modes like Search and Destroy, Control and Patrol.
What is new to Vanguard is the new Champion Hill game mode. This game mode is a hybrid between Battle Royale and Team Deathmatch and rewards teamwork, communication, and gun skill (naturally). Eight squads of duos or trios battle it out in a round-robin Team Deathmatch that takes place across four maps. As in Battle Royale – the last team standing wins.
It is rumored that more game modes, weapons, operators, and skins will be added in the upcoming seasons, with operators and skins coming through the game’s battle pass that is one pass across multiplayer, Warzone, and Zombies. Playing through the campaign and completing certain challenges will also unlock things for you to use in multiplayer.
And that’s where the elation ended for a time.
My two or so weeks were spent with a highly annoying glitch that would start a 2.3GB update every single time I opened the game to play. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game about 4 times in this period and nothing seemed to help. Frustrated, I gave up and waited for the first official patch before attempting to play again. Once that update came, I installed it as quickly as my internet would allow and dove straight back in… to be greeted with a connection error at the title screen. This prevented me from playing even further and, highly annoyed with a few scathing messages about my frustrations to my friends, deleted the game AGAIN and started my reinstall. Now, if it wasn’t for the sake of this review, I probably would have deleted the game and left it in my library until early 2022 when the disappointment and frustration had worn off. For this, I am thankful for this review forcing me to reinstall the game again immediately as once I was finally in and error-free, I began to play one of the most entertaining Call of Duty titles that I’ve played in a while. I see that not all reviewers have agreed with this, and some have even gone as far as to call Vanguard uninspired, unimaginative, and unambitious. I can see where they get off with these opinions, but I quickly fell in love with Vanguard as it gave me that old-school nostalgic feel that I loved about Call of Duty in my younger years. The fact that I’m a big fan of World War 2 and lap up almost anything that I can find that is based on or inspired by, World War 2 may have also contributed to this love.
And so, in conclusion, I award Call of Duty: Vanguard from Sledgehammer Games and Treyarch the following ratings:
On the thumb side, you are met with two programmable buttons that sit rather flush with the rest of the Razer Basilisk V3. They are easy enough to distinguish without looking thanks to them being smooth in comparison to the textured side. Further forward you will find a sniper button, that will drastically reduce DPI while held to help obtain that critical headshot in moments of need. Towards the bottom is the thumb paddle, which is a fancy word for the thumb rest to avoid your thumb dragging on the mousepad. I don't have the biggest hands but neither my thumb nor my pinky ever felt like there was not enough real estate for them to rest on.
Turning the mouse over we see four skates which do a wonderful job of keeping the Razer Basilisk V3 sliding effortlessly. There is the aperture for the 26K DPI Optical sensor to work from, as well as a profile button that will change colour to indicate the profile you are currently set on. On top, there is the scroll wheel, a DPI switch button, and then the button that will change the scroll wheel from a tooth by tooth turn, into a free-spinning wheel.
Last but not least, is the braided cable, it is Razer's Speedflex which is used on all their premium peripherals. It is extremely lightweight and is the closest I have ever gotten to being wireless with a wired mouse. Personally, I would go for the wired version of the Razer Basilisk V3 since the Basilisk Ultimate is only a wireless version of the V2 and the Basilisk X Hyperspeed which has a lesser sensor and is pricier than the Razer Basilisk V3.
Razer calls it the HyperScroll Tilt wheel. This means it can scroll freely or with notched movements, Free-spin mode, and tactile mode. Right off the bat, the free-spin mode is naturally great for massive excel sheets that you need to scroll through, where I found the tactile mode, to be a joy when you need to switch weapons where some other mice, which have very little resistance on their wheel, you end up scrolling past your desired weapon or consumable in a moment of panic-scrolling. Situated south of the scroll wheel we find the Smart-Reel button, which also is a mode that Razer has designed that will see the Razer Basilisk V3 scroll freely, even when in tactile mode if it is rapidly scrolled, and go back to tactile mode once the rapid scrolling is stopped.
Although the free-spin mode is a delight when scrolling through a particularly long document such as those pesky user agreements that we all read carefully... But when using it to scroll through documents where you want to stop somewhere, the free-spin is tough to control and I scrolled way past where I wanted to be nearly every time.
In tactile mode, which is my preferred mode, there is a very slight clicking noise when you spin the wheel, this noise gets louder as you spin faster. There is a slight rattle when flicking the mouse, coming from the scroll wheel, which I would expect from the free-spin mode, much like my G903 did when in the free spin mode, but weirdly the Razer Basilisk V3 has it in the Tactile mode, not a dealbreaker by any means, but something to note.
The sniper button, that has been used by many brands as a way to quickly drop your DPI, to 400 in this case, for those well-placed shots during certain types of games. For me, there are two problems with this button, one being its physical position. I have smaller hands and my thumb cannot reach it without adjusting my grip on the mouse. The second issue is, it is a skill that needs to be learned, if you are not used to using a sniper button it becomes more of a hurdle than help. So if you are willing to learn to use it then great.
Razer has updated the optical switches on the Basilisk from previous optical switches. One thing that is noticeably different from the previous generation of optical switches by Razer is how the previous generation felt and sounded more tactile. Compared to my daily GPro Wireless, the Basilisk also feels slightly heavier to press, this might be due to the long swooping buttons that just need slightly more force than smaller buttons on other mice or placement of the switch but it is hardly noticeable.
The showcase events, which seem to be undoubtedly Top Gear inspired, are events in which you race a provided vehicle against a non-car method of transportation, which gets your heart racing just as fast as one of the many hyper-cars, as you can’t wait to see what happens next.
With all these new features let’s not forget about the character customization feature (weird for a car driving game…right) which allows the player to customize what your avatar looks like from clothes to gender; this adds to the experience as you do get glimpses of your avatar during gameplay.
To sum up our thoughts on this spectacular title – which is no easy task, believe me! Forza Horizon 5, straight from Xbox Game Studios themselves, gets the following ratings:
Many other custom cards try to really stand out by making their designs somewhat different. Other brands like to add in over-the-top designs or excessive amounts of RGB lighting. The Gigabyte, non-Aorus and Eagle, versions of cards are generally more toned down featuring a more plain and basic design. The Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb is no different. The Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb is a two-slot design with a three-fan Gigabyte Windforce signature fan setup. Starting from the top, much like all the newer variants of both AMD and Nvidia we see the top plate being open towards the rear end for better cooling. The top plate is sprayed a very pretty-looking grey with small black designs made towards the left top side. The plain and simple Gigabyte name is written in square white font in the centre. Simple and plain, the way I like it! I approve! Moving on.
The side view of the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb is much of the same. The heatsinks are very exposed from the side view, all for the reason of ventilation to keep temperatures to an all-time low, even under heavy loads. The side covers are a combination of black and grey plastics with Radeon embellished on the left of the card closest to the UI with a Gigabyte name placed on a grey accent of the side. The Gigabyte name is the only RGB that the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb has and that is another great point in my opinion. Less is certainly more when it comes to RGB. The side of the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb also shows a lot of the internals of the card such as capacitors giving it a very industrial look. It only features one 6+2pin connector on the side for power, which compared to many other cards, including my very large RTX 2080, makes for a much neater build.
Going to the bottom of the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb we see three fans all equally sized. The same black and grey plastic design follows throughout. The two outer fans spin anti-clockwise and the centre one spins clockwise to create a quick and effective dissipation of heat and thanks to the open piece in the top cover plate-like mentioned before, the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb is able to stay cool even under the most strenuous loads.
AMD has created the RX 6600 XT to be a high-end performer at 1080p and midrange at 1440p, or this is the idea comparing where it lays in the AMD stable. Compared to the Nvidia stable, this would be a card to fight to likes of the RTX 3060Ti. An extremely large influence on this is the current state of affairs in terms of pricing for GPU's and with the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb coming in at a price tag of around R11 000 at the time of writing this. It does become tough to ask for the very capable Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb to stand head and shoulders above a host of Nvidia cards that are all very capable and have very competitive pricing.
If you are an AMD fanboy and can make use of the full AMD setup which warrants and is able to make use of the AMD CPU and GPU combination features then the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb is a strong contender seeing as Fidelity FX is becoming a good competitor for RTX and DLSS in recent times.
AMD has really improved on their cards from just pumping their cards with large amounts of memory like they used to do in earlier years they have now improved and added many features to combat the mighty Nvidia DLSS and Ray Tracing capabilities and the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb is no different. Flipping over the box and reading through the lovely brief pack that Gigabyte was so nice to send. AMD mention the following.
The rest of the features speak for themselves. RGB fusion 2.0 is the software package that Gigabyte use to power their RGB on their products. This is one department where Gigabyte can improve on. Comparing it to the ASUS command center or Dragon Center from MSI. RGB Fusion 2.0 is severely lacking, not in the capabilities, but in the presentation. The interface is not attractive and even the Zotac Firestorm software that I use on my RTX 2080 is better, and that is saying something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br5dDyHMoFk
Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb
1080p - 63fps
1440p - 52fps
Zotac Nvidia RTX 2080 Extreme
1080p - 75fps
1440p - 63fps
Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb
1080p - 75fps
1440p - 58fps
Zotac Nvidia RTX 2080 Extreme
1080p - 78fps
1440p - 63fps
Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb
1080p - 140fps
1440p - 104fps
Zotac Nvidia RTX 2080 Extreme
1080p - 144fps
1440p - 108fps
Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb
1080p - 175fps
1440p - 128fps
Zotac Nvidia RTX 2080 Extreme
1080p - 175fps
1440p - 134fps
And finally, no EarlyAxes review would be complete without checking out how the RX 6600 XT handles our beloved...
Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT OC PRO 8Gb
1080p - 310fps
1440p - 183fps
Zotac Nvidia RTX 2080 Extreme
1080p - 271fps
1440p - 181fps
These tests have certainly left us a little perplexed. Looking at the performance numbers the RX 6600 XT is not lacking in the power department. Being able to keep up with the RTX 2080 which is still very capable even though it is now a generation older. The most obvious reason for the performance tests not quite showing what the performance looks like it should be on paper is exactly what makes Nvidia such a powerhouse.
Drivers, AMD struggles to optimize for DirectX 11 titles, naturally, this could all be fixed with a simple driver update and that would see the RX 6600 XT speed past many of the Nvidia contenders that currently have good performance for its price and a rock-solid driver base.
Like everyone else in the Republic, the focus here is not to become the best but to live the best life that you can with like minded people while shredding it up on the world’s biggest and sickest trails. And, of course, while doing this and having fun, some added rewards come your way for doing the best that you can do. These rewards come in many shapes and forms, although mostly in the shapes of stars that are used to track progression and level you up as you win races and complete challenges. That being said – Ubisoft has put big emphasis here on community involvement and having fun more than the need to win. Of course, with Riders Republic being a racing game, winning and doing well are still an important part of it but once you get into it, you will find that there’s so much more than just winning and even a solid win on a tough course feels secondary to all the other things that this game has going on.
Teaming up with friends, as always, brings an awesome aspect to the game and the fact that wherever you go on the map, there are actual real players around you, all the time, doing their things, adds a really cool component to Riders Republic as you really do start to get the sense that you are part of a larger community here. And cross platform is supported – so the community is LARGE.
Riders Republic has many options for you to choose where to get your latest rush of adrenaline in the 3 main sport types already listed above (bicycle, ski/snowboard, and winged suit). In each sports type, there are a plethora of options to add some nice variation to a game that already has so much to offer.
Conquering the mountain can be done in the following ways:
Career: Progress through the story of Riders Republic as you make a name for yourself and carve your story into the republic. Progress through various events and sport types, picking up acclaim and sponsors on your way.
Mass Races: The wilder the better. Mass races are multisport races where you compete with up to 50 other players in some of the whackiest things you’ve ever seen. Remain agile and swift as you battle your way through the pack to get the W.
Versus Mode: Join up with 5 friends in any of the available career events and see who gets to be Ridge Royalty amongst you.
Tricks Battles: Compete in 6v6 arena matchups and try to successfully land as many tricks as possible in the various areas of the arena to capture them and earn points. The team with the most tricks, and therefore the most points, wins.
Free-for-all: Challenge up to 11 other players and show them what you’re made of through a select playlist of events.
Exploration: Not everything is about racing. There is so much to be seen and discovered in Riders Republic that sometimes that only way to do that is to disconnect from the competition and just follow the wind and see where it takes you.
As you progress through the game and earn stars and in-game currency, you can customize your rider to look anything from seasoned pro to something quite ridiculous – although there is a weird sense of satisfaction you get while wrecking the competition in a giraffe or t-rex costume. As you earn reputation, you will also be awarded with new and better gear, sign with famous sponsors and be invited to notable (and real) competitions and events like Red Bull Rampage and the X Games.
With that out the way, I booted up Riders Republic with great anticipation and expectation as I wondered if this title would live up to the hype that surrounded it. Spoiler alert – It did.
The game starts with a very Steep feel as it puts you in the heart of the action from the get-go, giving you a good taste of what’s to come.
As I journeyed around the republic, I fell in love with the look and feel of this game. Ubisoft has worked wonders in capturing the essence of the extreme sports community, while drawing them back to the land as they recreated some of the best riding terrain known to man (stoked I got to ride some of them – now to ride them for real). And they did all this and made it look really good too!
Now for some, Riders Republic may err on the side of too much with everything that it embodies, but I think it’s just right. It has perfectly captured the heart of the extreme sports culture, including the slang and sayings that are well known in these circles. Lets face it – sometimes “that trail was amazing” just doesn’t cut it and you have to go with a “Shwa bruh, that line was gnarly man. Definitely reshreddable” hits the spot just right.
One of two small aspects that they’ve added to the game which I think really were a nice touch is the control options. You have a choice of two control setups if you will, Race and Trick. Now its not quite as linear as that as you can use Trick in race events and Race in trick events. What it means is the focus of these controls. With Race controls, you have control of the camera with the left stick (yes, we played this on Xbox) and do various tricks with A, B, X, and Y. This control setup does work well for events where speed is the focus. Trick controls allows you to control the tricks with the left stick and you then have no camera control.
Both of these configurations have their definite pros and cons, but I found that I ended up enjoying the Trick configuration more as it just felt smoother to do as the tricks just rolled off. For newer players though, I did find the Race configuration easier to start with as I got used to the various aspects of the game.
The other aspect that really adds so much value is the choice between first- and third-person view. Want to feel like you’re actually riding? Mash that stick down and get into first-person view. I found this view best for racing as it let me carefully choose my lines and pick up my speed. Third person was used out of races and when I was just exploring or in trick events. I must add here that all tricks are done in third person view as you definitely want to see some of the sick stuff you’re pulling off.
I have yet to see an ASUS monitor that is not nice-looking. But there is something about the ASUS ProArt PA329CV that just screams presence. Yes, it is a very large 32" monitor, and thanks to the near-borderless design it works great as a stand-alone monitor or in a multi-monitor setup. The large, and unexpectedly heavy, rectangular foot piece is well shaped, unlike many gaming monitors it ops for the more square foot piece over the more popular scissor-like stand. This is great to save space on your desk as well as make it easier to get other monitors up close to the ASUS ProArt PA329CV or drag it closer to you without making your keyboard land in your lap. If you do not have any space for the foot piece, ASUS is kind enough to supply you with an extremely robust desk mount that is capable of fitting to any normal thickness desk, even to bigger than normal desks. This clamp allows for full space optimization.
The tubular arm follows the foot piece in being conventional while classy. it is thick and strong and has great cable routing solutions that run through the center of the arm. The arm very easily clips in and out of the rear of the monitor. The monitor on the other hand is very heavy for a monitor of its size. Generally, gaming monitors of the same size are significantly lighter, but the ASUS ProArt PA329CV is not a general gaming monitor, and with the added weight comes significant improvements on the visual quality front.
The rear of the monitor is extremely minimal, where the ROG monitors will incorporate RGB or aggressive designs, the ASUS ProArt PA329CV opts to go with the plain black, metal-like finish with simple matte PRO ART on the back. Simple and classy. To the rear and sides, you are met with a multitude of inputs. 2x HDMI ports, a Display Port, a highly anticipated and great addition, USB-C, 3.5mm audio jack, and 2x USB 3.1 port as well as 2x USB 3.1 ports fitted to the side.
With the ASUS ProArt PA329CV, testing how it works was a bit more of a challenge seeing as it is not meant for gaming. Usually, we would put it through its pacing in a variety of games ranging from the more dark and moody looking titles such as Metro Exodus, and then back to the opposite end of the scale with the bright colors of something like Fortnite. But being as the ASUS ProArt PA329CV is only a 60Hz monitor it is not so easy. And some research had to be done on how exactly you would go about testing this monitor.
The ASUS ProArt PA329CV is designed for video and photo editors that need a 4K IPS monitor. IPS means in-plane switching. The panel is calibrated when it arrives and has a Calman verification in the box. It is certified for a color accuracy average of? E <2. This large 32-inch panel supports a whopping 1.07 billion colors covering 100% of the sRGB and Rec.709 spectrums. And if that was not enough of a mouthful, the ASUS ProArt PA329CV also supports VESA HDR400 which provides realistic and bright images while giving deep shadows.
VESA HDR400 is an industry-standard that ensures the panel will display a minimum peak brightness of 400cd/m2 (Candella per meter squared). This is in conjunction with specific color gamuts and bit depth which have an influence on color accuracy and contrast. Thanks to the easy and fast color gamut adjustments that are present on the ASUS ProArt PA329CV, which include, sRGB, Rec.709, DCI-P3, reading, Darkroom, and Rapid Rendering, you are sure to be able to match any color gamut you are given. Fortunately, if you are struggling to match, the ASUS ProArt PA329CV allows you to customize your color hue, temperature, and gamma through the OSD.
The ASUS ProArt PA329CV might not be capable of fast frame rates but thanks to Adaptive-Sync it can perfectly match your GPU frame rate to reduce tearing and stuttering or any artifacts. Another great point of the ASUS ProArt PA329CV for content creators and photo editors, in particular, is the 1000:1 static contrast ratio.
We used a light meter and some software that we normally use on medical monitors used for reporting x-rays and did some basic tests to see what we found, for science! Although we are not legally allowed to show you these results as the testing procedure is owned by a specific company the results were rather interesting. The greyscale test, where 19 images of gradually changing scales of grey are placed on the screen and a light meter is used to calculate the luminance is read in 5 areas of the panel to compare between each other, for reproducibility as well as against a medically certified scale.
The results were rather interesting but yet as expected from a color monitor. On the greyscale side of the test the accuracy to the required greyscale needed for medical image diagnostics was below the needed level, but only marginally. The general curve was only barely under the required level and unfortunately only badly dropped off on the really dark and really bright ends of the scale, but it did put up a tremendous effort against monitor that outprice the ASUS ProArt PA329CV by between 5-6 times.
The other observation that we found during this test was the bleeding effect observed between areas on the panel. the average bleed, which is the difference in luminance between different areas of the panel which is displaying a constant image, varies. The center was taken as the baseline and moving closer to the sides and corners we were met with a maximum variance of 11% from the center. This wouldn't even be noticed to the untrained eye or if you sit in a well-lit room but when in a totally dark room, the slightly duller sides of the images can be noticed.
The ASUS ProArt PA329CV is not meant for the average user nor for gaming. It is solely aimed at video or photo fanatics who have content that needs a true 4K monitor like the ASUS ProArt PA329CV. The ASUS ProArt PA329CV color gamut might not quite reach the full range that is recorded by raw files it is more than adequate for nearly all photo and video editing. Although it cannot match the real high-end displays used by the best in the field, it is very suitable for first-time users who will appreciate the adjustability of the ASUS ProArt PA329CV for color management. More experienced users will appreciate the easy-to-access pre-set color setups that will help match color renditions between different programs. After some research, we found that the ASUS ProArt PA329CV provides the functions needed to be compatible with popular colorimeters.
Due to the 60Hz refresh rate, it is clear that ASUS ProArt PA329CV is not meant for gaming, and with a response time that is anything higher than 1ms, using this monitor for gaming will see you having a bad time. But it is more than capable to be an everyday monitor for general use as well and the ability to swivel on its stand and be used as a vertical monitor gives it a great dual-use for content creators who like to game. With an easy 90 degrees swing, the ASUS ProArt PA329CV becomes a great secondary monitor, and thanks to the VESA mounting it can even be used as a third streaming monitor. More commendable features are the compliance with Flicker-free and Low Blue Light standards, these are two of the aspects where cheaper monitors usually falter.
House of Ashes plays off in Iraq, circa 2003 just after the US military has taken over Saddam Hussain's mansion and possibly uncovered weapons of mass destruction. But, before this happens we are taken back to 2231 BC where we are briefly and quickly tasked to befriend an enemy as you have to hide and try and fight off ancient evil creatures that dwell in the temple in which you find yourself. As an epilogue, it is extremely brief and makes you feel slightly lost as to what is going on, but as you progress more and more of what you saw and heard during this introduction becomes eerily clear. The name of the chapter isn't called " The enemy of my enemy is my friend" for no reason...
The into was superb at drawing me in with a sense of "what happens next" but the next hour or so is less exciting and more about fleshing out the characters, although anyone who has watched any sort of period movie can see the painful military stereotypes in each of the characters. While all this does make you almost dislike every single character and therefore probably wish for a quick and grisly demise. This is being done on purpose.
The macho military stereotypes are quickly destroyed when the characters realize they are facing a horror that is not of this world. Some of the less likable characters die-off rather and those who do survive the initial slaughter, can, but won't necessarily, survive long enough to redeem their character to the point where you might be rooting for them in the end.
While the merry band of soldiers, and their Iraqi counterpart, are fighting it out in a remote village, they are thrown into the belly of the beast, or should I say into the belly, with many beasts! Personal problems are quickly thrown by the wayside as the focus becomes staying alive rather than who slept with who, although this issue stays around while teammates are being turned inside out, literally.
House of Ashes delivers a great story and a frightful experience throughout its playtime. In many titles the fright factor drops off as you get used to seeing the scary monsters but House of Ashes does a fantastic job of keeping the suspense levels high while delivering great character progression and a very surprising and unexpected narrative arc which saw me dispising characters, in the beginning, to want them to survive!
As with the other titles in the series, or anthology, House of Ashes continues with a more of a dialogue selection having an impact on the game and less of a reaction and skill-type gameplay. What makes the game so captivating is not knowing how even the smallest of a decision can influence the outcome. More often than not, the decision does not have an influence on the story right away, but a kind word here could mean the difference between help and no help later.
QTE's (quick time events) are still prevalent in House of Ashes whether it is ensuring you jump at the correct time or closing the door in time. There are some clever uses of QTE's though with things like trying to control the heartbeat of the character in a particularly tense moment or copying the onscreen prompts to try and keep a characters' pained screams to a minimum to not attract attention.
The QTEs are by no means perfect, yes they provide a sense of tension but some of them come too unexpectedly and vanish just as quickly. Often leading to a too drastic end result and feeling of unfairness.
House of Ashes is a more playable movie than a game, and such as all great movies, it needs breathtaking cinematics and a stirring musical score. House of Ashes has both. While playing it on PC with setting cranked up to max did make it look absolutely breathtaking it is the score that truly gives House of Ashes that hair-raising feeling. The score works flawlessly with the frights that get thrown at you. Whether it's the eerie drip of water, or a flutter of wings in the background, to the distant scream of a doomed friend, or the sudden scratch of nails of impending doom!
Graphically, House of Ashes is once again on par and looks splendid in 1440p with a setting cranked up. Dimly lit and extremely claustrophobic sets a terrifying scene to go along with the horrors you will encounter. The third-person perspective really accentuates the claustrophobia by pulling the camera in tight to the character, which does also create some troubles when trying to maneuver around tight objects. For the first time in the anthology, the camera can be freely moved which does encourage the player to explore more and this exploration is where you will find even more info through foreboding flashes of what might come, as well as manuscripts from explorers who had found the forsaken tombs.
Thanks to the splendid graphics, the evil that lives down under does present a seriously frightening picture when seen, the fear are amped up even more when they stay unseen. Seeing their shadows dance along the walls or catching a glimpse of them or the Curator, will have you sit up in your chair for certain. One of the very few blemishes in the House of Ashes is the character models and their facial expressions, especially the eyes. Yes, eyes are probably one of the tougher features to get 100% accurate but although Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco did such a spectacular job with the facial features, the odd occasion that they do seem wrong, it is painfully obvious. The characters have extreme amounts of facial details and the one occasion that the eyes of a character seemed to look in the wrong direction did take away a bit of the realism that the game does so well to portray.
This is not an open world combat game like Mass Effect, but takes on more of a linear format with a few places to explore, like in Star Wars: Fallen order. Although your team will ask you what the “flark” you are doing while taking the micky out of you, as the illustrious leader of the Guardians, you are constantly handed options to respond to - whether during the actual story line or just while walking around chatting (more like arguing) with your team. For 99% of the game, the Guardians are talking, arguing or wanting to kill each other - which is amazing as the dialog and performances are as funny as we’d expect looking back at the comics and the movies. For the most part this dialog and banter is just for fun and makes you feel as though you are playing a “role play game” like Dungeons and Dragons.
This is not to say that all choices in the dialog don’t have repercussions in the game. Some choices will lead to full on fights with large amounts of enemies and potentially ending in a boss battle, while other choices might lead to stealth missions with very little fighting. This will be a constant theme in the game, but the option to choose adds a personal touch and different experience for everyone. Once you have completed the game, you will find a new selection called New Game Plus which allows you to carry over perks (except Peter’s Shot perks and Galactic Compendium) and experience the game again by making different game choices and exploring areas you missed.
As said before, you assume the role Star-Lord, the leader (although Rocket would disagree) of the pack. The game is played from his third person perspective, but this does not mean that the story is played only from or by Star-Lord. During combat stages, you assume control of him and his pistols, but instead of changing from one character to another to use their abilities you command them in a similar fashion to Mass Effect, where you unlock up to four abilities per team member and instruct them where to use the said ability. This gives you the ability to dish out damage to individual enemies, or gang up to deal a massive amount of damage to a single enemy. The combat system gives you many options with the intuitive way its mapped to the controller (Xbox) allowing for rewarding combos and task juggling mid-fight.
During the course of the game, Peter will develop a few new skills in the form of four different powers, such as his jet boots and the elemental shots from his guns - which in my opinion are super cool, alongside his normal laser blasts (which never need ammo, but require reloading – this active -reload system comes down to timing but if done correctly will reward you with a burst of extra damage).
The combat is a never-ending fun time thanks to the different options and enemy design, which is varied enough to make you use different attacks and combos in order to achieve victory. This use of team tactics makes the experience of fighting memorable by exploiting different abilities to weaken or remove shields, as well as stagger stronger enemies. Each member of the team has their place and role to fill in battle – Gamora has a high damage output due to her sword, Drax is all about strength and staggering enemies, Rocket and his arsenal of weapons has a huge advantage on enemies and Groot “I AM GROOT” yes yes I’m getting there… Groot has binding, health and attack on targets. These abilities and how you use them feel essential during the combat stages, even though you will be doing most of the damage yourself, the auto-attacks each character does out-side of your commands do as much damage as Drax did inside the Abilisk in GotG Vol 2 (you'd better know what I mean).
The constant banter throughout the combat stages keeps you entertained as I found that there was almost no repetition in the dialog between the characters, and in this banter, you can see the relationships grow and evolve throughout the story – keeping the fights, which can be monotonous, engaging.
Even in the fights, the dialog choices are brought in with an awesome move called The Huddle. When activated, Peter calls the team in for a pep talk which offers you a choice of what to say to inspire the group. This gives the team a buff for a time during the fight and, while this happens, one of the many amazing songs is played. This brings in either an exciting or hysterical moment in the game that makes it one of my favourite moments, e.g. fighting a boss while “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” by Wang Chung played, #bestmomentever.
During the course of the game, you encounter many minor fights - which earn you ability points on completion, and helps to unlock new powers for the team. The crafting is laid out in its entirety giving you the choice of what you want to upgrade right from the off set of the game, some give you a state boost while others are just new moves to use during combat. All worth it!
A fun rollercoaster ride, filled with awesome music and kickass entertainment – our ratings are… (que drum roll)
Entertainment – 10/10
Action – 9/10
Xtra – 8/10
And for the EAX overall score, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is awarded 9 out of 10 stars.
The game is played in your traditional Far Cry way – take over the map. This is done by taking over outposts and key strategic locations such as forts, plantations, and stations. Working alone for these – once a place is taken over, the Libertad then sweeps in and takes over once you’ve done all the hard work (but we wouldn’t have it any other way – would we?). These locations can then be used by the player to restock on ammo, get transport, work on your weapons, and potentially get a side quest or two.
There are tons of vehicles in this game and the player gets their own customizable ride to strap weapons on and call to you wherever you are on the map. These vehicles range from tractors to military vehicles and horses. There are even wild horses scattered throughout the map that you can ride.
One big change that Far Cry 6 sees over its predecessors is the introduction of the Amigos.
These are not just any old friends but more like animal companions that follow you all around the map (even when you zip line across a gorge – they’re there, somehow) and assist you in various ways. The first Amigo you are introduced to is Guapo, a massive crocodile with a penchant for human flesh and combat. There are seven Amigo in total to be unlocked during the game and each of them brings their own unique skills and charm to help you in your task to overthrow Anton.
One negative for me was the weapons system, and I mention this hesitantly as there are aspects of the weapons system that really works nicely. So, the good – the weapons are completely customizable, and you use parts and junk found throughout the map to do so. Your first suppressor is literally a carton taped to the end of your barrel and that’s great! Also firing it too quickly will result in it breaking and no longer suppressing your shots. Higher-level items obviously last longer, work better, and have less of a negative effect on the weapons stats. Your ammo types are also interchangeable and help you take down certain enemy types easier while being more ineffective against others – armor piercing is great for armored troops but terrible against those not wearing armor. Hollowpoint is true to the opposite.
Now for the bad,
The constant reshuffling of weapons in my inventory, although more realistic, was incredibly tedious and I went through the whole game not really knowing, or being comfortable or happy, with the weapons and weapon configurations I chose to keep as my standard – and I did change these up to try and find ones I was comfortable with.
The game does compensate for this by having workbenches littered throughout the map (literally littered - sometimes it doesn't even make sense) and near any major point of interest (forts, etc.). So, you can make the changes you need based on your reconnaissance of the area you’re about to hit. This being said, make sure you do your homework and scout out the areas, and make the changes necessary, so you aren’t going in with one hand tied behind your back.
With everything being weighed and measured, Far Cry 6 is still one helluva (can I say that?) fun game to play and I do feel like they’ve done a lot right and learnt from past titles to smoothen out a lot of the kinks in this one.
We award 8 out of 10 stars to Far Cry 6.
You, as all heroes should be, are a fierce defender of justice, and the mere sight of injustices set you into action to protect those who fall victim to it, and your inability to feel pain is what aids you in this mission. As previously mentioned, you are a Dahnan slave on your homeworld of Dahna. Your world was conquered by the inhabitants of the twin planet of Rena and has since been controlled by Renans, and the five High Lords who hunger for the power they harvest from Dahna to compete in a contest to become the Sovereign of Rena, known as the Crown Contest.
As the game sets off, our main protagonist, whose name is later revealed to be Alphen, meets the other main protagonist who takes the form of a young Renan girl, known as Shionne. Shionne has come to Dahna on her own agenda which happens to align with Alphen’s and so, an unlikely partnership is formed between oppressed and oppressor.
In this, you find out that Shionne carries a powerful artifact within her, known as a master core, that has the ability to harness firepower. Alphen unlocks this core even further and is able to draw a sword out of it. This sword damages all who we wield it, but Alphen’s inability to feel pain and Shionne’s ability to heal him make them an unbreakable partnership and an unstoppable force.
In your quest of liberating Alphen’s homeworld, you meet many interesting characters along the way. These include playable characters that you can control and battle with, as well as the various resistance groups and allies you find scattered throughout your journey. Many friends are made, and some are lost, in your quest for liberation.
The battle system uses the Linear Motion Battle System, which is well known throughout the Tales series. This system allows all characters within the battlefield to move around and interact with their opponents and allies. The linear aspect always ensures that you have a line of sight on your targeted opponent, no matter how you move around the battlefield. The combat mechanics allow you to dodge and “queue up” attacks with a mixture of Artes and simple attacks. This can be done for both ground and air attacks, essentially allowing the player to make up to 12 combo moves if timed and executed well. Artes require AP which is used and regenerated throughout the battle, support, and healing abilities require CP which are only replenished through rest, potions, or food. There are also special attacks that “warm-up” from successful attacks and evades, as well as over limit mode which allows you to execute as many Artes as the timer will allow without expending any AP. This mode also allows the player to execute a Mystic Arte, which is an overpowered super attack that wreaks havoc on the battlefield.
Tales of Arise is a fantastically put-together RPG in all elements. The story is rich and rewarding, the landscape is incredible, and the character development is almost real.
Coupled with a battle system that is unique to the Tales series and improved with each new installment of this 26-year long series, it is safe to say that Tale of Arise is in a class of its own and absolutely dominates in the RPG genre.
After many wonderful hours spent in Tales of Arise, I award this incredible game a whopping 9 and a half out of 10 stars!
As with previous versions of the popular NBA gaming title, players get to choose from various game modes to take on and tickle any and all of their Basketball fancies. These modes are;
Play Now – get straight into the action and play a quick game in any league, with any team that is available in game.
MyTEAM – a collector’s area where you open card packs, and have the option of buying more, to build your very own team to play with and compete against other teams online. The card packs include players – both new and legacy, ball parks, uniforms, coaches, logos, balls, and playbooks from top teams in the NBA and WNBA. You start this mode up by naming your own team and then opening your starter packs. Daily logins give you a pack a day to add to your ever-increasing collection. There are micro-transactions available for those who want to build quickly and don’t mind spending a little extra.
MyCAREER – following a story line, you take on the role of your custom built myPLAYER and forge a pathway to your destiny in the NBA. Make real life decisions that have very real outcomes on your journey to the top, including where you start your career – college, G League or straight to the NBA. Each choice comes with its own adversities.
MyLEAGUE – a sort of fantasy team area where you build your own roster and see how you match up to other players online. This mode includes a full WNBA season as the new and improved myGM mode where you see how you would cut it as an NBA team general manager, including keeping players, sponsors, and fans happy.
2kTV – an ongoing talk-show that you can tune straight into from NBA2k20
Play your cards right – either in MyLEAGUE or MyTEAM, and you could find yourself with a powerhouse team consisting of Steph Curry, Joel Embiid, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and LeBron James. Imagine that…
Players who feel like a break from the grind and want to try their hand at something a little more creative can spend time creating their own custom kicks in the shoe creator are. Choose brands like Nike, Jordans, Adidas and Under Armor and then select your low, mid or high cut and then go crazy as you take control over every aspect of the shoe design, from the lace eyelets to logo placements and more.
As previously mentioned, you start your story with your manager, Ricky, who also just happens to be your long-time best friend. In the opening dialogue you choose your next step to either go to college and play for some of the top college teams, grind it out in the G Leagues, or skip all this and go straight to the NBA.
We’d recommend not going straight to the NBA as the other two options have some serious perks as they help you assign new points to your attributes and gain a bit of top tier game time before breaking onto the NBA scene.
Both the college and G League routes have their own advantages and we’ve dropped them in here for you;
College:
Once you’ve been drafted to the NBA team of your dreams, it’s all on you to make it work. A small tip from us – it’s not all about scoring yourself as key passes and assists can see you get more match rating than putting them in yourself. The game rewards teamwork over individual play.
Getting consistent B or higher performances in games and attending practices is key here to climb from in the squad to team regular.
One last thing that MyCAREER offers over and above a journey to the NBA Hall of Fame (hopefully), is the potential to take on a side hustle in the music or fashion industries. While this may bring some hushed whispers and sideways glances from the basketball community as you find that hashtag worthy outfit or deliver coffee to The Game, these side ventures will help you earn more points to increase your max player rating as well as improve your overall marketability.
You will get a choice of two agencies to help you in these pursuits. We’ve broken down each agency for you here;
Palmer Athletic:
NBA 2K21_20210415101602[/caption]
As usual, defending is not just one button and I enjoy the tactical approach of choosing to box out, block, or try and poach the ball while applying pressure without getting a personal foul. Defence has never been my strength in games like this and I usually rely on a swift counter and high point conversation rate to keep me ahead of my opponents but I did take the time to improve my defence – although chasing my man around the zone still proves difficult for me and many match rating points were lost due to my man shaking me and scoring a 3-pointer with enough space around him to park a fleet of jumbo jets.
All in all, I enjoyed the time spent on NBA 2K22, including getting my butt handed to me on a silver platter in online games (I will return and avenge myself) and feel that 2K Games has once again risen to the task to give us a challenging yet rewarding, interesting, fun, and engaging basketball game.
Here's the gameplay trailer to see for yourself the best that this game has to offer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcUzwnA569M
I award NBA 2K22 a solid drive of 8 out of 10 stars.
Logitech has erred on the side of caution when it comes to the design of the G435. Following the general design of the G series headsets that have enjoyed massive fanfare across gaming platforms, with design cues and features that are alike. The Logitech G435 features soft memory foam cups, that, in my opinion, are the perfect combination of lightweight and breathable while blocking out enough ambient noise when using it in a personal environment. One of the truly unique aspects of the G435 is the extremely lightweight design, and with a frame that can easily be forgotten that it is even on your head, makes the G435 a great headset if you need to wear it for extended periods of time. The medium-sized earcups can not only slide up and down on the frame, allowing for a snug fit for nearly all but there is even a hint of a swivel which is not often seen in headsets that are designed like these. The headband does offer very little in the sense of padding but when the headset weighs a mere 165g then you don't need much padding to feel like it's floating on top of your head.
The Logitech G435 features two ways to connect to your favorite device, be it a mobile device, PC or console. First up is the legendary Logitech lightspeed wireless technology that offers a low-latency connection to any device that is compatible with the USB dongle. The second option is to connect via Bluetooth, which is great for consoles and mobile phones, and tablets.
When it comes to the audio, the Logitech G435 is fitted with 40mm drivers, which might seem on the smaller side, but thanks to Logitech and their great tuning, punches way above its actual weight and delivers solid and strong mids and highs while maybe sounding slightly weak on the bass tones, having more dense earcups might help give the bass some more kick. A new feature of Logitech headsets is the inclusion of beamforming microphones. fitted to the left earcup the beamforming microphones are not quite in the league of the Blue voice boom mic that the G Pro X headsets are fitted with but they do a respectable job nonetheless. The microphones that are fitted within the earcups do an admirable job of picking up the wearer's voice even in partially noisy environments.
On the outside, the Logitech G435 features an embossed G435 on the right ear and the expected Logitech logo on the left. Furthermore, all the controls are on the left ear. Working from the top of the left rear earcup rim, we have LED to indicate power status as well as power on or off. Right below the LED is the actual power button that, when pushed gives you an audio tone to show that it is on or off. Moving further down is the volume up and down controls which do take control of your device's main volume when adjusted. Last but not the least, there is a mute button which, when pressed and held, also activates an ear protection mode which ensures that the G435 max volume is limited to a point where no hearing damage can be caused when used for extensive periods of time. The Logitech G435 charges via a USB-C cable and Logitech claims that battery life should be good for a respectable 18 hours of use.
The Logitech G435 is extremely lightweight and that is wonderful for those who plan to wear it extensively. But it comes with a flipside. Being light generally causes the item to feel less durable. Logitech has proven that their products are very capable of standing the test of time and torture. The G435 does feel more fragile than some other headsets but if treated correctly I don't see it falling apart without some heavy-handedness.
When I was playing Warzone by myself I found myself actually hearing the other players better with the default audio settings of the G435. As it is aimed at mobile and ease of access across platforms the G435 does not utilize the GHUB in any way, so what you get out of the box is what you get. Fortunately, that is still very good. What I really appreciated about the G435 is how even though it only boasts a 40mm driver it is able to distinguish between explosions and gunfire without losing some of the quality and becoming very muddy. The microphone while clear, does bleed a little bit of background noise but nothing to be concerned about. My teammates did say I sounded significantly further away from my mic when speaking, although comparing it to the Blue voice microphone on my G Pro X is not a fair competition. The Logitech G435 does not come with any form of surround sound technology which is no problem, many games are designed to give directional audio even when using a stereo headset so it is no deal-breaker! The Lightspeed wireless is as always top-notch, with great range and easy connection, and even walking to the room next door to take a much-needed restroom break, the G435 never skipped a beat! Bluetooth is just as reliable and has a really strong connection which I never had a problem with.
The Logitech G335 takes nearly everything that makes the G733 so wonderful and simply adds a cable and removes some RGB. This might sound terrible for those who love to have a rainbow radiating from their headset. Fortunately, Logitech replaces it with some very funky color options. For those who are not familiar with the wonderful wireless G733, just like the Logitech G335, the headset has a very bold design with very attractive oval-shaped earcups which has great curvature. The headband is something that truly made the G733 so comfortable and similarly, the G335 has a removable and adjustable headband strap. The headband makes the already lightweight G335 feel even lighter as it does not rest on only one or two places on your head but a wide, comfortable band across your whole head. This is a feature that I wish ALL headsets would adopt.
The earcups are still adjustable by means of a slider on the earcup itself which is discretely adorned with the very famous "G-symbol" as well as the G335 name slightly higher up. The boom microphone sits on the left earcup and is very easy to move down and adjust to a perfect position. Controls are also at a minimum with only a volume roller that is also situated on the rear side of the left earcup. The earcups are made from a very light and breathable foam which works great with the extremely lightweight and breathable G335.
Since the Logitech G335 is so extremely lightweight it is easy to think that the build quality might not be great. The G335 is made from very lightweight hard plastic and with a rather small frame it is easy to think that the G335 might not be able to withstand extensive and regular use. Fortunately, Logitech has become synonymous with sturdy and reliable products and the G335 is no different. The lightweight and flexible plastic that is used in the G335 actually allows for it to sit comfortably on nearly all head types. With just enough clamp force to sit comfortably but not hurt after long sessions. The earcups do not have the leatherette finish like the G Pro headsets. The extremely soft memory foam does a great job of creating comfort while not creating heat which can be a problem if you use leatherette earcups. The earcups are big enough to comfortably cover all types of ears and are deep enough to allow most ears to not touch the drivers. Since the Logitech G335 is near-identical to the already-lightweight G733, with only the wireless feature missing, the G335 comes in at a mere 240g. That is a staggering 38g lighter than the G733.
At a price of touch over R1 000 when it launches, and a design and build quality that is top quality, there must be something that had to take the back seat during the creation of the Logitech G335. Was it the audio quality? Well, that is a tricky one to answer, and here is why. The Logitech G335 is fitted with Logitech's 40mm drivers. Many of the higher-tier headsets are all fitted with the more powerful 50mm drivers. Due to this, the sound is not quite as punchy as you might expect from a bigger driver headset. Luckily, Logitech is great at tuning its audio drivers to fight against much bigger and more powerful drivers, and the G335's 40mm drivers are no different. The audio is very crisp and clear in the mids and highs. The bass is a little lacking but that is partly due to the lightweight plastic that is being used as much as Logitech needed to find a happy medium where the mix between highs, mids, and lows, often one of the three needs to be sacrificed.
On the feature side, the Logitech G335 is a little barer, but understandably so for a budget headset. The G335 does have a flippable microphone that can be muted by simply flipping it up since there is no mute button on the cable or headset.
The game is a dungeon crawler in the best sense of the term and uses a hack-and-slash combat mechanic. For those who find hack-and-slash mindless, Hades ups the ante and really requires the player to apply themselves as each foe follows different attack patterns and uses different attacks on you, so simply running it and hacking at them isn’t always (in fact rarely) the most effective approach. Coupled with the varying aid you receive along the way and the fact that the labyrinth ahead of you changes every time you leave the House of Hades, the game really keeps you on your toes and trying to figure out the best way forward as every run really does look completely different.
Death is a massive component of this game. Ironic since you are in the underworld? Maybe. Hades uses death as the trigger to progress the story line and darkness that you earn in your runs through the Underworld can then be spent at the House of Hades to give you some persistent skills and abilities to make your next run a little easier. So, in a sense, death is actually levelling up in Hades…
With that being said, every death will see you remerging from the River Styx and into the House of Hades, only to be chastised by your father who seems rather disinterested in your attempts and quite annoyed by your rebellious behaviour. He doesn’t get too involved as he firmly believes that the no one can escape the Underworld, thus making your attempts futile.
In the House of Hades, you can interact with several characters. These are:
Hades – The lord of darkness himself, and your father. As already mentioned, he seems more annoyed by your attempts than anything else.
Achilles – Friend and mentor who has taught you in the way of weapons and combat from a young age. He has made an assortment of infernal arms available to you unlock and use in your escape attempts.
Nyx – The mother of Darkness and the mother who raised you and aids you in your attempts. Quite early in the story, it is revealed that she is the one who first got you into contact with the Olympians.
Skelly – a mysterious “practice dummy” you can try your weapons against in your courtyard. He seems to enjoy taking a beating and alludes to a benefactor who is paying him to be there to assist you. He also sometimes gives useful tips on how to defeat enemies in your escape attempts.
Cerberus – the guardian of the Underworld and your personal pet. You can interact with him, and he is very fond of you. So much so that he apparently ransacked the lounge in desperation when he found out about your first escape attempt.
Along with these, there are various other characters that you can talk to and interact with both in the House of Hades and in your travels through the various planes of the Underworld. Each re-entry (sounds better than death) to the House of Hades will bring in new unique dialogue with all the NPCs there as the story progresses.
Your quest to escape the depths of the Underworld will take you through different planes, each plant having a mini-boss encounter somewhere in the middle and a boss encounter in the last room, or area, of the plane who have just battled through. Each plane brings in new challenges and difficulties as you progress through the game and get closer and closer to achieving your goal of escape.
The four areas that you encounter are Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium, and the Temple of Styx. There is also a chance to enter the Chaos Gates and achieve some great boons, provided you survive the cost it takes to get them.
At each death, you start again at the House of Hades and must battle all the way through each level to get to the next. This is quite a grind, but it doesn’t feel that way all the time as each run produces a new unique layout, with new choices and boons, and new random enemy spawns in each room. The only room that stays the same is the final boss room for each level.
Will of this randomly generated change, there really is no one way to run through the game as every player will have a completely unique experience.
So – saying we have a game that is in a league of its own, top of its class and a cut above the rest really is a bold statement and to back it up, I can really only say one thing. Go and try it for yourself on whatever platform you choose as it really is on all of them, including MacOS and Nintendo Switch.
Here’s the game’s official trailer to whet your appetite even more if you aren’t already frothing at the bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91t0ha9x0AE
With all that being said, I back my bold claim up and award Hades with a solid 9 and a half stars out of 10. This really is a game worth playing and spending hours in as you unlock the highly intriguing and mysterious story.
Much like the internet, the look of routers has greatly changed, from the little box with a few lights flashing on it, to monsters that have beefier processors and specs than the computers of the past have. Not only have the internals changed tremendously but so too have their designs. The ASUS TUF AX5400 showcases the gaming-inspired design with a very aggressive design, that features many sharp lines and edges while having a spaceship-like look and many ventilation holes. Don't forget the six, yes six, external antennas that adorn the rear side of the router. The ASUS TUF AX5400 would not be "gaming-certified" without some form of RGB. That comes in the shape of the TUF logo, placed on the top of the router which can be controlled via the ASUS router app.
Apart from the TUF logo on the top, down the left side, there is TUF GAMING written in black, so as not to be too excessive with the branding. The standard router light indicators can be found right at the bottom front lip nearly tucked in underneath a fold of the router.
The days of trying to hide your routers out of sight and mind are long gone, with elaborate designs such as the ASUS TUF AX5400, they are clearly made to be seen.
The ASUS TUF AX5400 features a 1.5GHz tri-core CPU and 512MB of RAM. This is more powerful than my first PC come to think of it... This power allows the ASUS TUF AX5400 to be able to perform well even on congested networks. The Dual-Band WIFI 6 radio can manage speeds of up to wifi6 with ease. The ASUS TUF AX5400 features one of its four LAN ports as a dedicated gaming port. This port will take priority over all the traffic going through the ASUS TUF AX5400 router. This means, simply plug in your gaming platform of choice and connect it to that LAN port, and no one else in the house will be able to hog your bandwidth. ASUS has also decided, much like their more expensive motherboards, to use metal-shielded ports, not only does this improve stability it also reduces interference across ports.
The USB port that is on the ASUS TUF AX5400 is not only for the usual firmware updates. No, it can also be used for file sharing via WiFi, printer sharing, and even USB 4G modems can be plugged into it and used via the ASUS TUF AX5400 router. And for all those MacOS users, TimeMachine backups can be done through the ASUS TUF AX5400.
As the design, and plethora of antennas suggest, the ASUS TUF AX5400 is a gaming router, therefore it should have gaming features, right? Right! If you are a fan of mobile gaming, and you might need to squeeze a little more out of your connection, the ASUS TUF AX5400 features a mobile game booster via the ASUS Router App. When this is active the router will prioritize and optimize the connection for the connected phone. This will mean reduced ping and better stability, hopefully, meaning more Wins for you! If you are a PC gamer then the AdaptiveQoS is the profile you want to be using. It will, like the other settings mentioned above, help to optimize connection and latency for gaming connections specifically. Don't fret or fear console users, the ASUS TUF AX5400 features an OpenNAT feature that will definitely make many console users smile. OpenNAT type is often a thorn in many console gamers' sides but thanks to ASUS, those strict NAT type days are over!
The Recon Controller comes in two colours, black and white, with both versions being identical in design, features and feel beyond that.
In the box, you get the controller itself (thankfully) with a 3.5mm jack, a 3m USB-A to USB-C braided cable and a little info package with a quick use guide, sticker, and more in-depth guide for those really looking to get the most out of the controller.
Having already listed the braided cable, the Recon Turtle Beach is a wired controller. Take what you will from that, both wired and wireless have their pros and cons. The 3m length of the cable does mean that you can sit pretty much where you want, within logical reason, without the wire limiting you. I, personally, have no issue with wired controllers and at least it prevents that dreaded mid-game dead battery panic.
All of this is neatly, and securely, packaged in a box that shows you exactly what you’re getting.
SOUND EQ CONTROLS – Turtle Beach has included four sound EQ profiles for you to further fine-tune your gaming experience. These profiles are as follows;
1 – Signature sound (let Turtle Beach work the way it was made to).
2 – Bass boost.
3 – Bass and treble boost.
4 – Vocal boost.
One small hiccup I found while using the Recon was the plethora of fine-tuning, customize your gaming experience settings that it comes with. My hiccup was not with the actual settings or a sheer number of them, I actually think it’s great that there is so much you can tweak and tune on it. The hiccup came with my memory of what each one was or how it would benefit me…
So the Recon controller does have a bit of a learning curve, at least for me it did, and I found myself often consulting the guides. At first the longer guide and then the quick guide – I am learning and now don’t really need to look at the guides at all. My only advice to first-time users would be to keep the guides close, and then easily accessible if you don’t use it for a while – think coming back to an RPG you haven’t played in a year and trying to remember what you were doing? That’s the feeling I think you’d get with this one.
While the Turtle Beach Recon controller does have the extra remappable buttons, this controller is by no means a “pro” or “elite” tier controller. That doesn’t mean it’s bad at all though.
Just keep that in mind if you buy it expecting to get a Wolverine or Elite controller.
What the Recon Controller is though, is a well-made, good controller that comes in at a very reasonable price (around R1300 at the time of this review).
If you are looking at replacing your current Xbox controller, upgrade your gaming experience or to try and improve your skills, I would definitely recommend the Turtle Beach Recon controller to you. If wires aren’t a thing for you, and even if they are – get over it (literally), you cannot go wrong with getting this controller and I guarantee that you will see improvement in your overall gaming experience.
In closing, I feel that the Turtle Beach Recon Controller gets a very solid 8 out of 10 stars.
For more on this controller, have a look at this preview video from Turtle Beach themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9RZSNrWV5g&t=13s
The Razer Opus X certainly has a more down-to-earth design with its circumaural earcups, minimal design ars that allow the earcups to swivel. Being made from plastic with a top headband made from protein leather, the Razer Opus X certainly does come in extremely light, weighing a mere 270g. With 270g on your head, you will hardly notice the lightweight Razer Opus X on your head which makes them perfect for long sessions of wearing. The headband is not very broad but is wide enough to provide a solid build and feel while having nine notches of size to accommodate even the biggest of heads. The very soft and comfortable protein leather earcups sit extremely comfortably and even though the earcups themselves seem rather small, they fit surprisingly comfortably and long sessions are actually effortless.
The Razer Opus X, earcups are deep enough that most users won't have any problems with ears touching the drivers, which is a problem that many headsets face when they try and be as sleek and slimline as possible. These earcups house the 40mm drivers that might not be tuned for audiophiles like its older and more expensive brother, the Razer Opus is, but what it also lacks, unlike the Opus is a hefty price tag. The Razer Opus X is for the person who is looking for good noise-canceling headphones without breaking the bank, and still, looks stylish while doing so. The Razer Opus X features four microphones in total, two are used for active noise canceling, the other two are for voice chat. The chat microphones on the Razer Opus X are acceptable, but they are by no means a replacement for a headset that features a dedicated boom or retractable microphone.
The Razer Opus X has all of its controls limited to the right earcup. Along the edge, you will be met with four marginally protruding buttons. These are volume up, the multifunction button in the middle, and volume down next to that. The power button is separated from the other buttons by a small LED indicator. The Razer Opus X is charged by USB-C which is located on the same earcup but more forward-facing. The power button doubles as the ANC toggle, when pressing the power button a voice will tell you ANC on, ANC off, or ambient on.
The Razer Opus X being fully Bluetooth 5.0, has another nifty feature in the form of QAM which, with a press of a button, allows you to filter in outside ambient sounds allowing you to hear what is happening around you. Always handy if your significant other is calling you to fetch your gaming snacks. Razer has also included a low latency gaming mode into the Opus X which did not make the cut into the normal Opus. Gaming mode gives you better gaming latency of a mere 60ms.
One of the big issues that many people have with wireless headsets is, often, bad battery life. The Razer Opus X can give a very solid 30 hours of battery life with ANC on, and get to 40 hours with ANC turned off.
We put the Razer Opus X through its paces with a few shows on Netflix and a host of playlists on Spotify. Straight out of the box, the Razer Opus X equalizer settings were pretty decent with the bass being punchy enough while not having the mids become muddy or losing the highs. I was also impressed that during mostly dialogue sections of series or movies the Razer Opus X kept the voices to the front and clear and when the action erupted it never felt that the voices got lost or overwhelmed.
If the standard settings don't quite suit your ears, Razer has an Audio app that you can download that allows for the equalizers to be adjusted to your heart's content. The app also allows you to toggle the ANC on and off without having to finger around to find the correct buttons on the headset itself.
The Logitech G923 is the successor to the extremely popular and capable G29/G920. If you are a owner of the G29 or G920 it is understandable that you might be skeptical of making the move from your current setup for something, that at face value, doesnt seem that much different. On the outside the Logitech G923 features all the same premium quality materials. The extremely plush leather in which the steering is wrapped, the strong, sturdy and perfectly sized metal paddleshifters, the buttons are pefectly spaced while the inlay of the wheel is mostly brushed metal with some plastic inlay. The flat bottom steering wheel is a nod to many sportier car brands and gives you a wonderful feel of being fast, accurate and true.
Apart from the wheel and paddleshifters, the wheel also features the standard YBAX buttons for Xbox, LSB and RSB buttons are placed on eith side of the centre of the wheel and they feel much like the "NOS buttons" that are so popular in the Fast & Furious franchise. + and - keys are placed on the left bottom and the return button, with dial around the outside, to the right. These two round buttons feel like they take quite alot of inspiration from a very popular german car brand, which is never a bad thing. When turned on the new Logitech G923 also features a LED rev indicator which is a nice touch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bMzOxkW-yU
The Logitech G923 wheel can be attached to a counter or rig with a suprisingly strong clamp that can be clamped and then tightened and fits nearly all, reasonably shaped, tables or desks. The cables that go to the foot peddles, as well as the gearshifter, are all loose and enters a neatly routed area where they can be fitted and closed up tight.
The racing peddles are big and solid, which is what you need, as they might take some serious beating during the course of a really intense race. Consisting of a large, rubberized base with all three of the pedals, not only a stop and go like non-purists use. These pedals are fully metal with rubber blobs on them to keep your favourite racing slipper ( see what I did there) from from slipping off the brake or accelerator at the worst possible time. Aesthetically, the pedals are identical to the G29/920 that came before it except this time around, the brake pedal now has a progressive spring that will get firmer the harder you slam on the brakes.
The only slight drawback is that all of this vibrations do make a slight racket. And a second fallback, not of the Logitech G923's own making, is the lack of TrueForce support at this time. GT Sport, Assetto Corsa Competizione, Grid and Dirt 2.0 is some of the very few titles to currently support TrueForce.
I found the pedals to be equisite! The clutch felt great and although I did prefer to not use it I found the fact that the clutch would take differently on different cars to be a wonderful touch, both from the wheel and Dirt 2.0. The throttle peddle, much like expected provides the least of feedback through the actual but is the cause for nearly all the feedback throughout the rest of the Logitech G923. The real magic comes in the brake pedal with a progressive spring that stiffens as you put more weight on it, much like the hydraulic force that builds on a real brake pedal. This was once again evident when I took the Ford Escort or Mini for a few spins from the classic era of racing.
Once again, Logitech, with its GHUB partners wonderfully capable hardware with a very robust software. The Logitech GHUB is very easy to to understand and setup, and the features of the Logitech G923 can easily be adjusted within it. Keybinds can be changed and other features like TrueForce can be turned off.
With any item that is co-created and designed by a brand as renowned as Porsche Design, the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 instantly has your attention drawn to the very unique stand. Made from metal, and carrying quite a hefty weight, Porsche Design and AOC wanted the stand to remind us of a roll cage that is fitted to racing cars. While the stand, which is permanently fixed to the monitor, which means no mounting the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 to a VESA mount, is wonderful and a joy to look at, it does take up substantial space on a desk with a deep footprint of over 30cms.
The rest of the monitor has a brushed finish and is proudly adorned with the Porsche Design logo on the front. The bezels of the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 are a mere 8mm. On the rear at the right, there is a single joystick that is the single control for all the features and settings that can be found on the monitor.
Not only does the chrome-plated stand provide much of the eye-candy factor of the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27, but it also allows gives it a strong base to stand on. The stand allows for great ergonomics. The monitor is able to move up and down within a range of 15 cm. The monitor is also able to tilt 23degrees while swiveling 150 degrees. What makes these movements more impressive is exact, and the perfect amount of resistance these movements offer. I have yet to find a monitor that is as perfectly weighted as the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27.
To many gamers' delight, the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 even features some RGB. Around the pivot of the monitor, there is RGB lighting as well as a Porsche Design logo that is projected down between the feet of the stand. Naturally, the RGB can all be customized via the onboard settings.
Much like the Porsche cars, the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 has some serious tech under the "hood". It boasts a 1440p VA Panel that is good for 240Hz, is capable of a 3000:1 contrast ratio, Adaptive-Sync, and HDR. If that mouthful doesn't impress you then maybe the very aggressive 1000R curve and a 0.5ms response time, will. The Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 comes with two Display Port 1.4 and two HDMI 2.0 ports. The HDMI's will only give you up to 144Hz as is standard for HDMI 2.0 and if you want to take the full function of the 240Hz goodness you will need to connect via DP1.4. The HDR10 and blur reduction are also only supported over the DP1.4 ports and will be good for up to 240Hz. The Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 also features a 3.5mm audio jack as well as five USB 3.2 ports, one for upstream and the other 4 for down. As if all of that is not enough there are also two, rather powerful, 5W DTS-tuned speakers built into the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 monitor. Although I am sure these will hardly ever be used.
With VA panels you are guaranteed to get great colors and brightness but often at the expense of overly bright blacks, with the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27, this is not the case. During our time spent, we played quite a bit of fast-paced games such as Rocket League, Warzone, and Biomutant, as well as other, more gritty and dark titles like Escape From Tarkov and Days Gone.
Compared to many of the other monitors we have reviewed in the past, the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 is the only one that comes to mind, where when turning on the HDR, that we did not want to, or have to change any settings. Normally we would need to play around with some of the settings to get it to the way we like, but the Porsche Design AOC Agon PD27 has its settings perfectly dialed in, to our liking at least.
Colorful games such as Biomutant and the vibrant and fast-paced Rocket League look splendid with the rich contrast really making games look stunning. The strong curve of the 1000R panel does wonders for immersion. This is boosted more by the fairly capable 5W speakers and an extremely robust equalizer accessible via the OSD. Thanks to the DTS tuning the speakers are able to create a fuller sound and thanks to some phase effects, even surround sound approximation sounded decent with plenty of bass while keeping voices crystal clear.
AOC implemented a feature called backlight strobing which should help with smearing especially when it comes to fast-paced titles and running them at 240Hz. We had to research this whole idea a bit before we attempted it and what we found was that at lower refresh rates, basically everything below 200Hz the MBR feature did a great job of keeping things crisp and clear but moving toward the 240Hz there was noticeable smearing happening.
The packaging is as expected for ASUS ROG, utterly premium. Inside the box, you will naturally find the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard with a host of many other goodies. Apart from the needed documentation and driver CD, there is the newly designed WIFI antennas, 6 SATA cables, a large ROG sticker, Q-connector to make the pesky case IO plugs more bearable to plug in, extension cables for both RGB strips, as well as addressable LEDs, a really good looking coaster because we all need refreshments while gaming, a package with a few screws for your M.2 drives and last but not least, a ROG Thank you, Card.
Taking a closer look at the newly refreshed ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero, we do notice a few changes, albeit very subtle and slight, they do give the latest version a very classy and refined update. Small changes have been brought to the new ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero like the heatsinks now are ribbed and the beautifully brushed black is centered by the ROG logo that lights up with RGB from behind. The IO heatsink now also has ROG on it which also lights up with RGB. The IO shield, which is usually loose and often a nightmare to get aligned or even worse when you realize you forgot to install it, is now fixed into place. Even when running in "stealth mode" as ASUS calls it, with no RGB, the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero fits perfectly into nearly any build that does not favor a white build.
Average FPS ( Higher is better) - 149 FPS
In true ASUS ROG fashion, even the way the z590 board is packaged is of the highest quality and with a few extra goodies crammed in for good measure. The user manual is accompanied by a set of stickers which has a vast assortment of sticker options to suit anyone's needs. A clever SATA cable indicator sticker is perfect if you have many SATA devices and are not sure which one is for which. Nice touch! A CD with drivers is also included, although we wonder how many people actually still have disc drives in their PCs these days. ASUS clearly expects you to have a beefy GPU to go with your new beefy motherboard, and that is why a ROG branded GPU stand is also included! ASUS even includes four SATA cables, two of which are 90-degree connectors. These always come in handy if you are trying your very best to build neatly, but four SATA cables for a motherboard that can take six, strange.
You will also be greeted by a 40mm fan, no this is not a mistake, it is an extra fan that can be attached to your ASUS ROG Strix Z590-E Gaming WIFI board to assist with some extra cooling, we preferred to leave it in the box. The WIFI antennas, which do not need to be connected if you can get decent enough reception from where you are situated, have been cleverly designed. With the new design, it does not need to sit on top of your case or stand on your desk. It can now neatly sit at the back of your case and hardly be noticed if you so desire.
Having a Z390 board in my personal gaming rig, the biggest gripe I had with it the fact that the second 6-pin connector is situated just below the CPU slot which means there is no "neat" way of feeding the cable to it. With the ASUS ROG Strix Z590-E Gaming WIFI board, and I expect with all newer generation boards, both the power plugs, which is now an 8-pin and 4-pin, are situated nicely at the left top of the motherboard. I would personally suggest plugging them in before installing the board into your case, especially if you have a smaller case as they are tough to get to once installed, but they work wonders if you want to build neatly. Next to them, you will find a fan header for the 40mm VRAM fan that we mentioned earlier
Moving to the right-hand side there are two more fan headers, a CPU OV jumper that can be used if you are a brave builder and want to overvolt your brand new CPU. Next to that, there is the standard addressable RGB header that is part of the AURA setup. Moving down the right-hand side of the ASUS ROG Strix Z590-E Gaming WIFI board the standard 24-pin ATX power plug is where it usually is. It is partnered by two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 for your case front-end needs. Although the ASUS ROG Strix Z590-E Gaming WIFI board comes with a plethora of USB ports at the back it is very handy to have high-speed USB capabilities at the front of your case. Further down there are the six SATA ports that we mentioned earlier as well as a couple of fan headers. As always, in the corner is the brain-meltingly frustrating front IO plugs. With some other models of ASUS ROG boards, they provide a connector so you can plug the fiddly pins in where you can see them and then plug that connector into the motherboard. This should be a damn industry standard! There is also a W_PUMP+ header for all your liquid cooling pump needs. Two USB2.0 headers have seen a new lease on life in recent times due to so many RGB systems using those headers. Two more headers for RGB strips can also be found at the bottom.
The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 looks on the outside much like it does on the inside, futuristic and immensely capable. Before we take a look at the actual laptop, even the packaging that I come in just screams that it means business. Taking it out of the box you are met with a large imposing laptop. on the lid, a large part of it has been given a dot matrix design which is both aesthetically pleasing while certainly providing much-needed cooling to the display. The other half of the lid has a fingerprint-resistant matte black finish with a shiny ROG logo adorning it. Moving down to the hinge section, on the part that does not have dot matrix on it, you will find ROG inscribed in it, just in case you didn't know that it is an ASUS ROG laptop. Even the dot matrix design, if you look at it at the right angle, says ROG!
The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 loves to flaunt all it has and hence all the aggressive designs. Along the side, you will find a myriad of vents to cool the colossus of a computer lurking inside. In the box, you will also find end caps that you can place on the hinge that read "ROG" if you want to customize your ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 somewhat more. Opening the lid of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 greets you with a rather contrast inside. The one side continues with the matte black design while the other does remind me a bit of when semi-transparent gaming consoles or controllers were popular. The semi-transparent cover does give the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 a very industrial feel with a few rivets that can be seen directly under the plastic.
As we all know, ASUS ROG STRIX is not shy to give their products RGB, and the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 is no different. There is a light strip at the bottom of the laptop, unless you get more eye-level with the Scar 17 you will not see it directly but that is the whole point. The RGB strip is bright enough to create the much-wanted Aura effect ( see what I did there ASUS ;) ). When testing it on a polished surface or any reflective surface the effect is wonderful, but even on less shiny counters it still did its job really well. The RGB does not stop there with some RGB positioned closer towards the hinge as well as that shiny ROG sign that sits on the lid, yes that bad boy is fully RGB infused!
The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 however does leave out the webcam from the wide arsenal that it does have. This can be forgiven as the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 is aimed at the gamer and to be the muscle behind a content creator's magic, and besides, onboard webcams are generally not that great and if you are a streamer, chances are you have a camera that you prefer anyway. The ports and ports layout is spread across the left and the back of the laptop. The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 comes with 3 x USB3.2 ports of which two are on the left and one is on the back. There is also one USB 3.2 type C port as well as an HDMI 2.0 connection and last but not least, an RJ45 ethernet port.
Towards the right front side of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17, there is a curious little slot that caught my eye from the moment I opened the lid. After some reading and scratching through packaging, I found an interesting keystone. This keystone uses its RFID chip to lock or unlock certain drives that you might not want to be used or found when you are not with your laptop. By simply inserting the keystone these drives will become visible once more.
The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 that landed on our desk was the FHD 360Hz version, which on a 17-inch display, would be the better choice in our opinion. Such a small screen surface makes even 1080p look amazing and with 360Hz this is a gamer's dream! It is necessary to mention that the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 screen brightness does not quite match a normal monitor but when turned up all the way we didn't find it to be too dark. During darker gameplay or videos the video did seem slightly washed out at times but for the most part, and especially during vibrant games such as Biomutant and Overwatch the display was fantastic and really made the game look vibrant and bright!
High framerate displays sell themselves to all those who are looking for an edge over the competition. Personally, I have been gaming on 144Hz for quite some time and when the 360Hz of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 came around I had my doubts whether it would truly make that much of a difference. It is safe to say that if your hardware is capable, like in the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 then 360Hz will give you a sure edge and make games feel more engaging due to the fact that on-screen elements react so quickly and smoothly to your every input.
ASUS is clearly focusing on the esports player, current or aspiring with the Scar series of laptops. Apart from the eye-melting 360Hz display gamers and content creators alike always needs a top-tier keyboard that is responsive yet comfortable. ASUS easily addressed these demands by pairing the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 with an optical-mechanical keyboard that has a soft matte touch finish which is the perfect blend between crisp and responsive clicks while making it very pleasant to touch. The keys that are rated for 100 Million clicks have a response time of a blistering 0.2ms all thanks to the optical switches makes these keys breathtakingly fast considering that they are in a very flat laptop setup. The full travel distance on these optical-mechanical keys is still only 1.9mm to try and preserve as much of that lovely tactile feel.
The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 keyboard also features a few media keys and a few function keys that are pre-assigned to adjust things like RGB styles and a few more nifty features. Moving over to the touchpad, for gaming, ANY trackpad is absolute rubbish and if you play games with a trackpad please excuse yourself now. But if you are doing some productivity or you need to do some content creation, the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 does have a very large touchpad that is less smooth than what I would expect. But after using it I realized that that is exactly what makes it so good, more friction means more control. Well played ASUS. Naturally, ASUS makes full use of the multi-touch functions for zoom and scrolling which makes using a touchpad a very pleasant experience.
Audio has always been a tricky thing to implement properly into a small form factor like a laptop. physics proves that to make a big sound you usually need big speakers, and small laptops do not allow for those. So when I turned on a Spotify playlist to put the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 through its paced with audio, I was very surprised with the wide audio stage as well as how punchy the mids and lows were that was emanating from this laptop. After the pleasant surprise, some closer investigation was needed. There are two bottom speakers that play downwards as well as two front-facing speakers that are cleverly hidden deep into the hinge mechanism and unless you listen for them you won't see them. These hinge-placed speakers are designed to include their own subwoofers giving the deep and punchy bass considering their size.
The audio that comes from the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 extremely good considering that it comes from a mere laptop, but it would be good to note that the sound, even when at max volume is not the loudest, but then again, if you are using onboard audio from a laptop you are not expecting it to be the music source of a house party. But that being said the audio, while not the loudest does allow all the small details to come through especially when I was playing games like Days Gone, the rustling of the wind, and the growls of far-off zombie hoards were distinctly, yet eerily heard.
When taking the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 into games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, and Horizon Zero Dawn which are all very demanding games are easily handled by the extremely capable Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, its 8 cores and 16 threads that idle at 3.3GHz and boosts to a staggering 4.6GHz is almost unheard of when it comes to laptops and it effortlessly handles everything you throw at it. To put it into perspective a vast majority of PC CPUs are less powerful than this laptop processor and that, in all honesty, is very scary!
Combine the 5900HX and 32Gb of DDR4 RAM clocked at 3200MHz and as if that was not scary enough all of that is topped off with an Nvidia RTX3080 laptop GPU that has a staggering 16Gbs of VRAM. If there were any doubts of what this monster is capable of the numbers and specs should send shivers through your spine. Time to put this beast to the test and see how the 360Hz monitor handles it. Let us take a look.
1080p, RTX on, DLSS on, DX12, Ultimate settings
FPS - 74FPS
1080p, Ultimate settings
FPS - 94 FPS
Although this is a small sample to test, these titles are all extremely demanding and for the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 to be able to push out 60+ FPS on titles that are known to bring capable PCs to their knees is a testament in itself.
For those who are not aware, ASUS, whether it be ROG or TUF, has impeccable packaging, arguably the best I have ever experienced, and the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX6800 OC edition is no different. Unlike the motherboards, graphics cards usually don't have many extra things inside the box apart from the card itself. Inside the box, you will find the card itself, some loose pamphlets, a trading card, which is a nifty trinket to have and flex with, and some ASUS branded cable straps that do come in handy.
The ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX6800 OC edition features the same beefy heatsink and three-fan design that most newer ASUS cards, be it Nvidia or AMD. Before we go any further it is important to note that ASUS calls this card a 2.9 slot card, but for all purposes, it is a three-slot monster that measures a whopping 320mm long. What this means that if you are a fan of compact builds or you are running a small mid-tower case you might struggle to squeeze this monster into your case if you have a front-mounted radiator, as we have.
With a card of this size and considerable weight, sagging is something to be expected. Fortunately, ASUS has come up with a solution. They have a metal frame that is located between the cooler shroud and the PCB to try combat gravity, and it does a rather good job of it. We prefer to use a small screw on the case to screw the card into the rear and providing some more support as to not hurt the stupidly gorgeous ASUS ROG Strix Crosshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard that we are also reviewing.
The triple fan configuration, just like we saw on the ASUS TUF RTX3080 we reviewed, has the center fan spinning in opposite direction to the outer fans to reduce turbulent airflow which provides better cooling while keeping noise levels at a minimum. Upon further inspection we found the ROG Strix fans to feature more fins on the fans compared to the TUF version. This makes for more air to be able to be pushed through the massive heatsink resulting in even better cooling performance. ASUS did have some fun with these cards. On the bottom of the card, there are coordinates printed, when searched these coordinates take you to the ASUS headquarters in Taiwan. A nifty nod to the factory for their hard work.
The side of the card has an RGB light strip that runs along the side of the card, facing outwards. There is a single ROG logo on a silver plaque in the center. The RGB strip is not too brash and bright but is bright enough to be noticed. Personally, I am not much of an RGB fan so the fact that the RGB can be turned off either in the armory crate software on in the BIOS is wonderful. Moving to the back-side of the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX6800 OC edition we are met with the power connectors. The ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX6800 OC edition will need, at least, a 650W power supply and it will require two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX6800 OC edition is rather power-hungry with a rated TDP of a whopping 250W. Back to the front of the card, neatly tucked away is the dual bios switch allowing you to run the card in either Q mode ( quiet mode) or P mode (Performance mode). Naturally, this switch should stay in the P mode...
The overall look of this card when installed is wonderful, thanks to arguably the best-looking top plate, featuring the signature ROG emblem and the new open-back heatsink design allowing for massive cooling improvements while still keeping the ASUS ROG Strix sleek and attractive look that ASUS has become so renowned for. When it comes to the way to connect to the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX6800 OC edition card the immediate omission would be the USB Type-C. This might be a bummer for some but fortunately, you will still get one HDMI 2.1 port and three Display Port 1.4 ports that should cover all your connection needs.
1080p - 154fps
1440p - 110fps
1440p (SAM) - 110fps
1080p - 170fps
1440p - 125fps
1440p (SAM) - 124fps
1440p (ray tracing on) - 64fps
1080p - 142fps
1440p - 91fps
1440p (SAM) - 99fps
1440p (ray tracing on) - 45fps
As can be seen above that in its current state, SAM does not make enough of an impact in gaming performance to warrant buying the new AMD cards purely for that, DLSS is still more superior and with varied results and no results in other titles, SAM is a step in the right direction and will, probably, very good in the near future. The ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX6800 OC edition as shown above is VERY capable at 1080p and 1440p delivering a touch under 100fps in extremely demanding titles like Metro Exodus and flying past the 100fps mark in other titles.
The Razer Huntsman V2 Analog features a USB3.0 passthrough that is situated on the left shoulder of the keyboard. This is nothing new, but it is a very handy feature. This does however cause the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog to have two non-detachable braided cables coming from the keyboard itself. One of these cables is a USB cable and the other is a USB-C, but if you do not have USB-C on your motherboard, do not fret, Razer supplies a USB-C to USB-A converter in the box. The double cable does mean cable management is a bit more of a chore and possibly binding both cables in one loom might have been the better play here by Razer but still no real train smash.
Just like the previous versions of the Huntsman, and the Blackwidow Elite, the media keys are still a wonderful addition to this keyboard. Personally, I feel the media keys are a deal-breaker for me. If the keyboard doesn't have it, it needs to do a rather good job of impressing me because I simply LOVE the option to change your volume with a dial on the keyboard, and/or skip to the next song on your playlist right there and then without having to find the correct tab. The Razer Huntsman V2 Analog media keys do feel extremely premium. The volume wheel is made from some metal and is textured enough to easily grip while having enough resistance to not be accidentally bumped and turned. The rewind, play/pause, fast-forward and volume/mute keys are exceptional, near perfection,, Razer has even given them RGB, the only problem is that the signs on the buttons are not illuminated by the RGB causing you to have to memorize them. A small oversight, to an otherwise perfect media key setup.
Speaking of RGB, the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog much like the whole Razer catalog is extremely pro-RGB and the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog with the RGB on the wrist rest does wonders to give the sometimes harsh Razer RGB a softer yet still very bright look. The PBT keycaps are double-shot and with their slightly textured finish do not allow for grease and fingerprints to appear as other keyboards do. The bright RGB and PBT keycaps all provide for a wonderful environment and with the aluminum top plate is brushed slightly to resemble the same finish as the keycaps and the finish does cause some RGB reflection which I, personally, like.
The biggest thing that needs to be understood is the difference between digital and analog. Basically, digital signals separate small signals that can be put together to make a full signal, where analog on the other hand is one continuous signal. So in our case, most keyboards use a digital input which is as simple as is the button pressed, yes or no. With analog switches it is no longer, is the button pressed, it is, is it pressed, if yes, how far is it pressed. This is what makes joysticks and triggers on controllers so much better when you are driving a car for example where you can feather the throttle or brake and steer and correct with smaller increments compared to a digital keyboard where you can accelerate 100% or take the foot off the gas pedal, those are your two options on digital, 0% or 100%.
In the Razer Synapse software, you are able to set the keyboard to work like the functions of an Xbox controller. When starting up games, the game will even pickup as if a controller is connected. Like with Ubisoft connect, the play option will have a green A icon next to it like when a controller is connected. Although analog switches have been done before Razer has improved on this significantly by coupling it with their optical switches. This means that when a key is pressed the light travels down a triangular opening in the switch's stem. The further the key is pressed the more light is picked up by a photosensor and this way the analog signal is created and interpreted by the software.
The analog goodness doesn't stop there, Razer allows for the actuation points for the keys on the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog to be individually adjusted. This means you can set each key to be activated anywhere from 1.5mm all the way to 3.6mm at 0.1mm increments. The amount of force needed for a 1.5mm actuation is a mere 54g where the full 3.6mm travel comes in at 74g of pressure. Once again the Razer Synapse software is fantastic at showing you just how far you have pressed the key by way of a live graph, that does unfortunately not show actual mm representation but it is still a great idea from Razer.
The Razer Huntsman V2 Analog is also capable of having two different keys assigned to one key on the keyboard. The only downfall to this whole feature is that the game that you are playing needs to support mouse/keyboard and controller input otherwise the assigned key that you have now assigned to the joystick feature, will simply not work at all. This means that the analog advantage is only available in games that support this feature and this is a possible hurdle for the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog at launch especially.
The biggest thing that needs to be mentioned is the hefty price tag of the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog. Hovering around the R5000 mark at the time of writing, this is a massive price to pay for "just a keyboard". But this is where the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog really pulls out all the stops to justify the price. Giving you the premium build quality that has become synonymous with high-end Razer products. A splendid wrist rest that will be a staple feature for anyone who plans on using the keyboard for some work and typing between gaming. Wonderfully textured and double-shot keycaps and an impressive list of software features. Did I mention my favorite media controls...
An extremely large chunk of the price will naturally go towards the Analog switches which is great, but you need to be aware that, if your game of choice does not support the needed controller feature then many of the features that make the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog truly wonderful, might be lost until it is supported. So if you are sure that you will make full use of the wonderful optical analog switches then maybe steer clear. But for the advanced gamers among us, who know that they will make full use of the numerous and wonderful features that the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog and the Razer Synapse software brings to the party
The Razer Huntsman V2 Analog destroys what is expected from keyboard technology and moves the goalposts a good few meters further for all future keyboards. But it would be amazing if it did not destroy the wallet quite as much in the process.
ASUS has decided to give one very lucky father a nice Father's Day present!
Click on the link below and tell us why YOUR dad deserves an awesome new ASUS headset!
After doing some reading and lots of research about how Caffeine and Taurine work we have come to the following conclusion, and we are simply gamers, so don't take our crude explanation as to the final word on it. X-Gamer has two primary ingredients being Caffeine and Taurine. Caffeine is a great ingredient to fight fatigue and enhance focus while giving energy and stamina. Caffeine acts as an adenosine receptor blocker, telling your brain that you are not tired or fatigued. Caffeine is able to stimulate these receptors without affecting your neural activity which means that it will take longer for you to feel mentally fatigued, this means concentration for longer!
Taurine is the other compound that is found largely in X-Gamer, and unlike many of the rumors of where and how Taurine is made, it is actually is an amino acid that is known to help sustain energy levels. Taurine is responsible for creating what is known as bile salts that help to maintain hydration and electrolyte balance. This is naturally great for people who play sports as well.
X-Gamer has a host of other vitamins and minerals that I am not going to mention in detail but they all play a part in energy levels and maintain hydration. One of the most notable ingredients however is Niacin which is a vasodilator which means it helps to increase blood flow throughout the body which in turn help the spreading of nutrients around the body helping to keep you feeling better for longer
I am someone who has dipped into nearly every energy drink on the market. Be it the big names, the little names, the obscure, even the "scientifically proven" ones. And yes, some of them do work, to a point. Most of the time, the ones that do work also have a side effect. The side effect mostly being a big down after it has worked its way through your system. Either a significant dry mouth or in some extreme cases, headaches. I put this down to the lack of fluids being taken, when I mean fluids I mean something closer to the good old H2O. Nearly all energy drinks are carbonated and that is not a good replacement for water.
X-Gamer recommends that you mix two scoops (supplied) to 400ml water, varying the amount of water to adjust the taste. I started off with one scoop to 400ml of water and later adjusted it to two scoops. From the very first time drinking it I immediately felt the difference. Unlike other energy drinks where you might feel a physical "buzz" or sensations, I did not experience anything of that sort, but instead, I did feel more alert. I found myself to be able to focus and stay focused for longer periods at a time. This is a great health(ier) option for those who need to put in long hours of work or play.
Taking the X-Gamer into a competitive environment the results were satisfactory. Playing a fair amount of Rainbow 6 Siege, it was only natural to take X-Gamer and see if it would affect the way I play. And it certainly did, It will not take an average gamer and make them become pro by any means but it will help for a more focused approach and it certainly did sharpen up my decision-making in demanding scenarios. In a more relaxed environment such as Sea of Thieves, I found that my general attention was better overall and even after the effects had worn off I still did not experience a sudden crash and an overwhelming feeling of tiredness or fatigue.
The main buttons are both slightly wider and concave which allows your fingers to move around on them without causing a miss-click and the concave shape lets your fingers naturally return to the center of the button. The main buttons, featuring those durable Titan switches do feel slightly different from other brands and it might take a few clicks to get used to. It does feel like the travel on them are slightly longer than the few other optical mice we have tried but the click is a lot more assertive and confident which is very nice. The inside buttons do a great job of being big enough that you cannot miss them while protruding just enough to be found easily while not sticking out too much to be accidentally pressed, well done Roccat! I did have a few occasions where I did not press them down hard enough to make them actuate but that is me being used to switching between so many mice in short periods of time. They do have a fair amount of travel which allows for multiple clicks in a short time.
The scroll wheel is the owner of the only RGB on this Roccat Burst Core and it protrudes enough while having a slight but satisfying tactile feedback on its scroll steps. But the scroll click feels wonderful, I would never have thought that a scroll click could be as satisfying as this one. There is a large DPI button on the top of the mouse that does exactly what you would expect, change between the preset DPI settings that you can set using the Roccat Swarm software.
The bottom of the Roccat Burst Core features two large skates situated at the front and rear of the mouse. They are dyed black PTFE with rounded edges. These skates do a great job of allowing the Roccat Burst Core to move and slide smoothly on a variety of surfaces. We tested it on two gaming mousepads as well as on a plain smooth wooden surface and it handled all of these surfaces wonderfully.
Although the Roccat Burst Core is an extremely light gaming mouse, it does not claim to be the lightest around. The Roccat Burst Core comes in at a very respectable 69g, which is already very very light and nimble. What does make the 69g of the Roccat Burst Core feel even lighter is the fact that the weight is very well balanced making the movement extremely balanced and predictable, which in any competitive environment, makes the Roccat Burst Core a very quick-study mouse and can be picked up and played competitively soon after using for the first time.
Our previous time spent with Roccat products was overshadowed by the Swarm software. And not in a good way. Compared to software by some of the other brands, the Swarm software is just not quite there. It gives you all of the features and that is great. But it just feels cumbersome and we experienced many bugs where changes would not activate. What it does have going for it is the fact that is more self-explanatory than many of the other software. There are five DPI setting options, DPI can be set from 200 all the way to 8500. These five settings can be stored on the mouse's onboard memory, this way you don't need the Swarm software installed to take advantage of the varied DPI settings. An interesting feature that the Swarm software has is the sound feedback when changing DPI, it is a little distracting when changing DPI mid gunfight and you have a male voice telling you you are now on "1000 DPI".
Taking the Roccat Burst Core into some competitive play during COD Cold War free weekend, had a bit of an adjusting period with the left and right buttons needing some getting used to but once that was dialed in the Roccat Burst Core handled itself extremely well and it managed to perform as expected. With the Titan switches, there is some travel time that once you are used to it, allows for button spamming which is wonderful if you are that way inclined.
The ASUS TUF RX3080 OC takes a traditional design that has been used across most of the brands and has shown success. So why change something that seems to be working. There are a few modifications though, the top metal plate sees a few cutouts that allow for more airflow through the card. This is new to me as both my RTX2080 and RX580 both had solid top plates with air being exhausted mainly out the side. The ASUS TUF RX3080 OC sucks air through its massive 3 fans which flows through the radiators and gets pushed out the sides as well as the top. This design works really well to keep the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC chilly even under rather trying moments such as during Warzone. What we did find is that in smaller builds and if your CPU cooler is front mounted that the hoses could get quite a lot of heat coming off the top vents of the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC can cause toastier temperatures on your CPU. This can easily be fixed if you have the ability to top mount your AIO though. The ASUS TUF RX3080 OC, as expected, is a rather beefy card taking up a nice 2.7 slots. So as we mentioned before it's not the recommended card if you are planning on having a compact build.
After doing some research on the 3 fans that the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC has we found a couple of interesting points. Unlike some of the previous TUF models, these fans are all the same size. The middle fan however spins in the opposite direction to the outside two. According to ASUS, this helps with turbulent air as well as fan noise. The improvements don't only stop there. The fans have an integrated rim that helps with static air pressure which in turn, helps to improve cooling and efficiency even more. The rest of the card has quite a few radiators and the covers of the card do also help to guide airflow through these radiators all while not exposing too much of the internals. on the top end of the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC there is also a small switch that can be moved to either performance mode, or quiet mode. For obvious reasons, we left this to performance, because, POWER!
If you are in the market for a flashy card with lots of frills and lights everywhere to distract yourself and other people from the hefty price you paid to get this card, then the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC is not the way to go. The ASUS TUF RX3080 OC is aimed at the minimalist with only a side-facing TUF logo and a small strip below it that would, in most builds, go unseen as it faces to the bottom. Personally, I absolutely adore this minimal RGB look it totally rocks in a near-RGB-less build! For those who do enjoy some rainbow effects lighting up the inside of your case, the two RGB areas are, naturally, linkable by Aura Sync.
Something that the 30-series cards, upon announcement, manage to do really well was to set the cat amongst the pigeons with its new 12pin power connector. The masses were in an uproar with everyone being totally certain that they will all need to dump their current power supply and upgrade to one that supports 12pins. Fortunately, the 12pin trend did not take off apart from being used in the FE and a few odd cards here and there. The ASUS TUF RX3080 OC fortunately only uses 2x 8pin connectors which is pretty standard with higher-end 20-series cards already requiring them.
Lastly, the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC card comes with three Display Port 1.4a ports and two HDMI 2.1 ports. Seeing as the new HDMI 2.1 ports are now the interface with the higher bandwidth, it is nice to see that ASUS is giving two of these ports. How else would you hook up dual 70" 4K 120hz TVs, don't even mention dual 8K TVs... ( sponsors anyone? I need these, for review purposes naturally...)
The new 30-series cards are obviously very power-hungry, and with performance like they produce, temperatures are only an expected side effect. If these are some concerns that you have, we are here to put all of those to bed! So let us get straight into it. The ASUS TUF RX3080 OC comes with a massive 320W TGP. That is a staggering 105W more than its 20-series brother. Our Zotac RTX2080 Amp is also a three fan variant and it runs rather cool at around 65'C under load so how will the extra 105W do on the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC. Straight off the bat, even when idling and very little fan speed the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC is extremely quiet and unless I checked I often thought that the card was set to quiet or silent mode. When putting the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC under some stress with the severely unoptimized Warzone it did not flinch and, yet again, the fan noise was significantly less than the RTX 2080 while chilling at a really cool 60'C even at 1440p and 144Hz with most settings cranked to max.
Like we mentioned before, the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC is a beefy 2.7 slot monster so if you are looking for a compact build or you do like to use one of your secondary PCIe slots then the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC might not quite fit your build. With SLI being firmly placed in the hands of developers to use or need, I don't see it becoming a necessity in the very near future or at least during the 30-series reign. With most of the motherboards, today providing very good onboard audio solutions the need for a soundcard is very slim.
Division 2 has been around for a while now and we first played it on our older system which only had a 9th gen i5 and an RX580 GPU. At the time we could only get below 90fps even when in 1080p and only on medium/high settings. So Division 2 is quite the taxing title. After the upgrade and with the RTX2080 installed we could bump settings to ultra and 1440p and get a pretty solid 75-78fps which is respectable and very playable. But when we changed over to the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC results improved significantly and we were comfortably getting around 130-140fps. These results are only marginally better than the FE card, from what we researched and found. In comparisons like these anything around 1-2% margin of error is considered negligible and can be ignored.
Final Fantasy XV is a visually stunning title and even when set to lower settings when using lower-end cards it still shines really well. We never tested this title with the RX580 but before we tried the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC we did put the RTX2080 to the test to get a good comparison. The RTX2080 does a fair job at 1440p cracking a solid 85fps on this testing title. Dropping in the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC we see a monstrous improvement to the 140fps mark. Honestly even getting close to 140fps in a title like this at 1440p is mindblowing!
Metro Exodus was truly a game-changer when it came on to the scene with it being the first title to really use ray tracing to make its visuals spectacular. When we played it originally we played it on the RX580 and had to resort to medium/high settings to ensure a constant fps of above 60 at 1080p, and even then the little RX580 was struggling to stay cool and constantly sat above the 70'C mark. With the RTX2080 we were able to crank the settings to ultra and step the resolution to 1440p. We were treated to a respectable 60-65fps in a challenging title like Metro Exodus. The ASUS TUF RX3080 OC however boosted these numbers to above the 100fps mark. Staggering considering what can be achieved with DLSS in the future.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider has become a standard in the testing community for its really strenuous effect on all GPUs. Even the mightiest cards have been brought to their knees by this title, but what truly makes Shadow of the Tomb Raider such a gem is the ability to tweak so many different settings and instantly see the effects during its benchmarking section which puts Lara on the edge of a desert mountain. With sunlight, sand, and dust blowing everywhere this is the perfect test environment for all GPUs. As before our tried and tested RX580 was the first to venture into the Shadow of the Tomb Raider and again it delivered a valiant effort at medium settings to give us between 50-55fps at 1080p. The RTX2080 performed much better and at 1440p was capable of getting close to 100fps! When the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC was put in we were very excited to see if we could comfortably get past the 144fps that we all crave on our 144Hz monitors. We are very happy to announce that the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC was comfortably making around the 150fps mark.
This proves that by jumping from the RTX2080 to the ASUS TUF RX3080 OC at the 1440p mark, you can generally expect to see double the fps, this is excluding the effect that DLSS can do as well.
The TUF range is a more budget-orientated division of ASUS and therefore it focuses less on swag and glamour like the ROG Strix versions of ASUS have, and has more toned down styling but still features the great quality that ASUS is known for. When unboxing the monitor you can immediately see that it is made well. Although TUF is more budget-friendly, they have not jeopardized the quality to cut the price. The monitor is well-weighted and features a patterned backside. The back of the monitor is made from matte black plastic and it does give the VG32V a very clean and low-key elegance. The massive 32-inch monitor stands on a square foot piece, unlike many other monitors that stand on a claw-like foot piece. Not only does this square foot piece allow for the VG32V to have a smaller footprint allowing it to take up less space on your desk, while still keeping the behemoth of a monitor standing strong and sturdy.
Attaching the monitor to the foot stand and arm is very simple and the movements, tilting, sliding and angling feel really easy and smooth, yet firm enough to provide confidence in the said movement. The ports of the VG32V, which consists of 1 Display Port, 2 HDMI 2.0, and a headphone jack is located at the bottom of the panel. This is a little tricky to get the cables plugged in as the monitor does not tilt quite far enough, and the lack of feedthrough space in the mounting arm does mean you will need to do some neatening of the cables once you are done. The OSD buttons are situated on the right rear and consist of 4 big buttons and a small joystick. The OSD interface is very simple and easy to get the hang of. most of the adjustments can be done through the use of the joystick which makes for really easy navigation.
The sleek design of the VG32V is accentuated even more by the fact that the screen is bezel-less on three of the four sides which makes it perfect if you plan to use more than one monitor. Although the TUF VG32V design might not fit everyone's style, it is something for the person who prefers minimal styling. The VG32V can easily be taken to an office environment and no one would notice it apart from its sheer size. This is a win in my book especially since I want my gaming/workspace to be one and the same, the TUF VG32V slots into that space perfectly.
The ASUS TUF VG32V's specifications are nothing to be scoffed at, it is a very capable monitor with 1440p resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, and 3000:1 contrast ratio. The VA panel is rated to be good for 400nits of brightness. HDR400 is also a welcome feature as well as FreeSync. The ASUS TUF VG32V is fitted with a curved VA panel. Curvature is at 1800R, which on a display this size, feels right. This monitor, like other VA panels, has a wonderful contrast ratio, which provides wonderfully deep blacks. Straight out of the box, I did find the general colour to be slightly dull. This was easily fixed with the very adjustable settings and presets of the VG32V. The standard presets range from a scenery mode, racing, Cinema, RPG, FPS, Moba and an sRGB mode, each of which adjust the image quite drastically, but fortunately, they are not locked and can be adjusted.
I had the ASUS TUF VG32V connected to my PC via Display Port to the ASUS TUF RTX3080. This allowed me to truly give the monitor a good test by throwing everything I had at it. I tested the VG32V through a plethora of games such as R6 Siege, Apex Legends, Escape from Tarkov, Warzone, and even Sea of Thieves. All of these games were tested at 1440p and no framerate limiters so that we could enjoy the 144Hz goodness. After adjusting the colour, contrast and brightness of the monitor I jumped straight into R6 Siege. For a game that tends to not "pop" too much in terms of colour, the VG32V gives the game a significant improvement and colour differentiation in-game was easily seen. The 144Hz is wonderful and for someone who has not experienced a 144Hz monitor. Do yourself a favour and find one, it is single-handedly one of the biggest advantages for fast-paced shooters that you can find. Other titles like Escape from Tarkov enjoyed the same vividness improvement from the VG32V which is a worthy advantage in a title where spotting and shooting first is the difference between winning and losing.
Jumping from the doom and gloom of Siege and Tarkov I headed over to Apex Legends and Sea of Thieves. All I can say is WOW!!! The vibrant colour palettes of both these titles simply blew me away when viewed on the VG32V! The richness of the foilage in Sea of Thieves as well as the way the water breaks and the glow of the fires around the tavern really look incredible.
The ASUS TUF VG32V is however not perfect. When it comes to black uniformity it did struggle somewhat. This is made more apparent if you are using it in a dark room. Naturally, this would affect those who are planning to use the monitor for video or photo editing more than just gaming. In gaming scenarios such as dark moments in Tarkov, I did see the odd light bleed at the top and bottom of the display but nothing that was bad enough to cause me any worry. Another slight disappointment was the HDR, although it is marketed as an HDR400 capable monitor I was not that impressed. With HDR activated the videos and images simply lacked the "oomph" in the brightness and contrast department to really make it blow me away. This might be caused by the pixel density of a 1440p display stretched to 32 inches, but once again nothing to seriously spoil my opinion on this monitor. If HDR is a must-have then you would probably not be looking at a curved VA panel anyway.
Once in Dublin, your cousin greets you with open arms and gives you an overview of his city, the political climate of the country He explains that a Flann Sinna is about to be inaugarated as the High-King of Ireland, and he would like help to gain favour and prominence with this new High-King.
With a new expansion comes new cities to explore, new territories to claim, and a new romance or two along the way – but we will leave those to you to discover.
The claiming of territories works similarly to that of the base game, win favour with the king of that land to draw them to your side, defeating their enemies and allying them with High-King Flann. You also join High-King Flann as he goes to war with the Northern Irish in his campaign to unite the whole of Ireland under one crown.
This is where you uncover your true foe, which call themselves The Children of Danu, a dark druidic cult who believe the old ways are best and will stop at nothing to prevent Ireland from being under the rule of a Christian King. As you work alongside King Barid and High-King Flann, you also work to uncover the identities of key members of The Children and eliminate them as their removal aligns with the campaign that you have lent your axe to.
Along with helping High-King Flann and battling The Children, you also spend time helping your cousin, who you feel indebted to as his family took you in when you had no where to go, growing the influence of Dublin throughout Ireland as the center of all Irish trade. To accomplish this you partner with Azar, who is the chief trader of Dublin, and together – well, you do all the heavy lifting, you work to take over trade posts and grow trade in Dublin and throughout Ireland. Trade also allows you to get exotic armour, weapons, ship upgrades, homestead decorations, and other items from locations all around the world.
Raiding is of course still there – what would a Viking game be with out the chance to go a Vikingr. Instead of gathering resources for your homestead however, you now gather resources to improve your captured trade posts and improve trade and stock through them.
There is also a newish feature (which I had not noticed in my review of Valhalla so if it was there – my apologies) is avenging the death of a fallen real-life player. While running around cities and countryside, you will sometimes encounter the body of a slain Viking. When accepting the quest, you are tasked with the duty to eliminate the foe, or foes, that resulted in their demise. There is no real benefit to the game for this except for a little more EXP and some resources, but it does add a nice little feeling in your gut knowing that somewhere, out there in the world, you helped someone like you in the game – it’s not multiplayer but it’s nice.
So - what’s stopping you? Grab your axe, board your longship and let’s go a Vikingr in Ireland!
Like the base game, we award the Wrath of the Druids expansion a berserker score of 9 out of 10 stars!
The customization does not stop there, the Claymore 2 can be used both wired ( via a USB-C connector) or wireless ( via 2.4GHz). If cable management is your thing then simply pull the dongle from its hiding spot at the back of the Claymore 2 and pop it into a USB slot and enjoy the smooth 2.4GHz wireless goodness. If you prefer to be more "connected" simply slot the USB-C connector into the Claymore 2 and keep going!
As if all of the above was not enough, put the finishing touches on your masterpiece with Aura Sync which will allow for all Asus products (and other brands that support Aura Sync) to seamlessly integrate RGB sync across all devices.
Mechanical, as well as optical switches, are constantly evolving and therefore many brands decide to use the same switches as other brands just for simplicity. The bigger brands tend to take those designs and break them down and build their own, this is what Asus did. Introducing the ROG RX optical-mechanical switches. When the ROG RX switches were first announced, many people discussed how similar the personal design of one of the other major competitors was. Asus was very quick to denounce this and assure us that the ROG RX switches are completely reinvented from the base up as well as when it comes to actuation force and design.
When I received the Claymore 2 Asus did advise that I should use the keyboard for some time just to get used to the feel before passing judgment. From the moment I tapped the first key, I was instantly in love! The ROG RX Red switch is their Linear and swift switch that allows for the utmost precision and super-fast response time due to the optical triggers. The red linear switches only need to travel 1.5mm for the switch signal to be made and at an initial weight of 40g needed to press the key, it lays perfectly in the space of being a feather-light switch that will prevent accidental triggers by running your fingers over the keys. To avoid the dreaded double trigger Asus has also set a 10ms break in triggering.
For those who want less technical speak, the ROG RX switches feel like typing on clouds, the keystrokes feel extremely light while still feeling true and creating confidence in your strokes, this is due to the wobble-free design that Asus has employed. The Red Linear and Swift keys also allow for a mechanical feel, with the accuracy and response of optical while not sounding like teeth chattering away like some of the other brands of keys strive to achieve. The Red Asus keys were an instant sell to my wife she said that me working or gaming no longer sounded like I was banging on a typewriter. Thank you Asus, happy wife happy life :)
The more features crammed into a device the more the power consumption, and naturally, as the Claymore 2 is wireless it is only natural to be worried that battery life might be a problem. Once again Asus has thought of everything and they fitted the Claymore 2 with a 4000mAh battery that is capable of delivering 47 hours of nonstop gaming even with RGB turned on. During my time using the Claymore 2, I admittedly had the RGB on static, with brightness set to 75%, but I comfortably cruised past the 47-hour mark with around 20% battery life left in the tank. Asus reckons that with the RGB turned off the Claymore 2 is capable of grinding out 144 hours of battery life on a single charge. That is phenomenal!
If you were to find yourself running out of battery life Asus has built a fast charge function into the Claymore 2. Simply connect it via the USB-C connector to your USB-C port on your PC, toggle on the fast-charge feature by using FN+F12, and within 30min of charging you will be able to get a solid 18 hours of use from it ( with RGB turned off).
The Claymore 2 has so many nifty tricks up its sleeve that I could easily just keep going on about the USB passthrough that is found on the front of the keyboard. Or the onboard profiles that you can assign to the keyboard even when you are not connected to the armory crate. The vast amount of RGB lighting modes can be chopped and changed as easily as flicking between keys, not to mention the personal lighting effects you can create to complement your setup with the help of wireless Aura Sync!
Logitech has had some, er, "interesting" designs for some of their peripherals in the past. The G Pro sticks to the sleek and professional, "ready for business" look with no frills. Just a sleek plain keyboard without the Numpad. Featuring the synonymous illuminated G logo on the top left and only two soft-touch keys to the right, the G Pro epitomizes the less-is-more mantra. The two soft-touch buttons that can be found on the right of the keyboard are to turn off the RGB and the other is a game mode. For those who are not familiar with the game-mode button, it is to ensure that you do not accidentally Alt-Tab out of your game as well as disabling the pesky Windows key.
Measuring in at only 36cm x 15cm x 3.5cm it is definitely a small, compact, and attractive keyboard. The G Pro comes with a USB-C cable that features the same hooks that you can find on many of the Logitech G devices. The cable is also braided which does help if you are planning on traveling with the G Pro. Unfortunately, unlike some of its competitors, it does not come with a travel case so keeping the box would be a clever idea if you are planning to take it traveling.
The G Pro that we had for review was indeed a GX Blue and compared to the G915 TKL we had before, which was the GX Red version, the Blue switches really are rather loud. This departure from the usual Romer-G switches and more towards the Cherry-like GX switches is definitely something the pros have obviously asked for, and who are we to argue with the pro's they certainly know better! There is not much to say about the mechanical switches and that is not a good nor a bad thing. If you are familiar with the Romer-G switches or the Cherry variants you will know exactly what you are in for when you grab your G Pro keyboard.
The Logitech G Pro keyboard does not come with many features that many other keyboards have. I mean, you don't even get a Numpad, so what were you expecting? But instead, the magic comes in the ever-reliable GHub software. Considering that the GPro is aimed at the tournament players programmable keys and macros are still available, but are not really a focus. The RGB and macro settings are all much like they have always been. The thing that really sets the GPro apart is the fact that you are able to set one profile to the keyboard's internal memory. This means that even when plugging this keyboard into a PC without any 3rd party software, the keyboard will remember your settings and have them active. This is wonderful for the tournament and esports players.
The only negative that I could find with the GPro keyboard is the lack of media keys. For someone who is using this keyboard for only gaming, it is perfect but if you are planning on hopping between gaming, work, and the odd media, the media keys, with the volume wheel like the G815/G915 has is a welcome addition.
Since the GPro arrived on the scene it has arguably been the keyboard to which all other epsorts-focused keyboards have been measured. Most have performed well but very few have been able to trump the all-powerful GPro, which has gone from strength to strength with the latest addition, the GPro X. Paired with the best switch to suite your style and the GPro becomes a giant amongst mere mortal keyboards, the wired setup allows for the quickest response time and the switches provide solid and uniform feedback that allows for the greatest confidence when hitting them The GPro is not going to make you a pro, but when you are looking to gain those little inches, the GPro is definitely one to give you a few.
If you are in the market for a premium, esports-orientated TKL keyboard the Logitech GPro is definitely the way to go. Sleek and minimal in design it fits straight into any setup be it for work or play. Pairing it with the correct switch is however extremely crucial as if you end up with the Blue switches and you are planning to use it in an office environment, you will have some unhappy co-workers.
All seems like a pretty straight forward process in the first couple of minutes after landing as you set out to gather data from the beacons that were launched an undisclosed amount of time before you arrived. On locating the second beacon and radioing to the ship holding all of mankind’s remaining hope and what it needs to survive (both in people and resources) is when you encounter something the likes of which humans have never seen – the Anomaly.
Without giving too much more away – the Anomaly is one of the main issues that mankind faces on Enoch and is the sole cause for turning a pretty simple recolonization of a planet into something that is “game worthy.”
During this mission, you are critically injured and put back into cryo so that your life may be saved. Not all goes to plan and you are woken sometime later to a world rife with chaos and a long way off from the hope and dream of those that had set out from Earth.
Combat can seem a little repetitive as you fight wave after wave of enemies in a dungeon-delving way but can still throw some massive curve balls at you just as you think you are mastering a particular type of enemy.
Square Enix took “be aggressive” to heart when building the combat mechanics into this game in more than one way.
Firstly – you need to kill to heal while in combat. With that being said, it’s not just any kill that will heal you. You have to kill in the way that your class was made to kill, Technomancer won’t heal with close range kills and Trickster won’t heal with cross-map headshots, no matter how spectacular it was.
Secondly – you need to move! Early in the game, you will find yourself feeling like you are playing Gears of War with the moving from the cover-to-cover type of combat. But getting stuck behind cover can cost you dearly. Enemies are constantly on the move and if you don’t do the same, you will very quickly find yourself surrounded or stuck in a corner and unable to roll or dodge your way out of it (these are the ultimate spray and pray moments).
The class I chose was Trickster and quickly abandoned my usual assault and sniper loadout for one better suited to a close-range kill healing class – high fire rate rifles and shotguns. My build also focuses on speed, weapons damage and support abilities, rather than HP, armour and damage abilities.
After soloing the game for a while, I joined up with some friends who also had the game and co-op definitely increased the fun factor of the game exponentially (because we all know what it’s like when the squad is online) and the game automatically adjusts to allow for each player.
In the co-oping, we did run into some issues where we tried adding someone new to the game but they weren’t able to join us as they were still busy with the prologue according to the game, when in fact they were quite far past it. This was fixed by quitting to lobby and adding him through there. While easily fixed – we did waste a lot of time trying to figure out how long the prologue actually was and why he wasn’t able to join us.
Opening the box of the Mediabox Maverick you are met with a surprisingly sleek and light. Unlike many of the consoles, *cough cough* this little powerhouse is no eyesore and can easily be placed on your tv cabinet, and no need to try and hide it. It is generally square with rounded edges and is generally the size of ones' palm. The little Maverick might be small in size but what lays underneath the hood is impressive. On the side, it features two USB ports, one being USB 3.0 and the other USB 2.0. As expected an HDMI out and an Ethernet input, some AV stereo jacks, and most surprisingly an Optical SPDIF output for those who want the best possible audio quality. What all these ports mean is that you can link up quite a number of devices to this little powerhouse!
The Maverick comes with a new and improved remote from its predecessor. Very similar in design but functionality, in general, just feels better. the sleek and glossy remote fits comfortably in your hand and having dedicated buttons for Netflix, Youtube, Prime Video, and Google play has you hopping onto the couch and watching before you are even fully settled into your seat. As if these shortcut keys are not enough you can also control the Maverick by voice using the Google assistant that, coming from a Siri user, is REALLY good and accurate in understanding what I want to watch. Simply tell it "Open New Amsterdam in Netflix" (yes I watch New Amsterdam, don't judge me) and the Maverick will have you covered!
I am sure that most of you are more interested in how it works and how it performs rather than what numbers it has under the hood. But for those who are interested, here we go! The Mediabox Maverick features a 2.0GHz quad-core CPU and a Mali-G31 850MHz GPU, what that equates to is a device that runs Android 9 Pie OS while being able to effortlessly manage 4kp60 H.265 and 1080p60 encoders which will ensure that you can watch on-demand and live TV at astonishingly good quality. I used the Maverick on my ancient 55inch Samsung Plasma and I have been contemplating replacing it for quite some time. Thanks to the Mediabox Maverick I have a new love for my old TV and that is thanks to the crisp and colorful images the Maverick displays! The Maverick is also capable of HDR and 4K videos so if you have the hardware that can display it, the Maverick can show it!
On the Mediabox Maverick box, they make a very bold statement, they say it's hassle-free to set up. This is no easy feat as some people are rather technologically challenged so to test Mediaboxs' theory I decided to ask my wife to get our Netflix and DSTV Now up and running. I gave her the remote and left the room, couple of minutes later she triumphantly called to say its good to go, hassle-free setup, check!
Those who have used devices that run Android TV before will find themselves right at home on the Mediabox Maverick. Unlike many cheaper products, the Maverick UI feels premium and works that way as well. It is minimal and smooth and very responsive. From the home screen, where many apps are included straight out the box, such as DSTV Now, Spotify, Showmax, YouTube, RedBull TV, Netflix, and more, but if you still want more, adding any of the other apps are as simple as a few clicks. Mediabox promises that the device is fully supported locally, which means if you had issues with installing or non-functioning apps ( I am looking at you Mediabox Ranger) you can contact the support and they can remotely install or fix problems you might have, or for those who put the "hassle" back in the "hassle-free" setup. Chrome-cast is also built into the Maverick so if you are watching a YouTube video on your phone, or watching something on your PC, you can easily cast it over to the Maverick and enjoy it on a bigger screen.
During my time spent with the Mediabox Maverick, I spent a lot of time between Twitch, Netflix, Showmax, and DSTV Now and I could hardly find any issue apart from a single issue when using Netflix. When in Netflix and watching an episode of any program, the volume keys on the remote don't work, minimizing Netflix and volume up on the home screen works fine but then you need to navigate back, fortunately, Netflix picks up where you left off but this does get annoying but definitely not a dealbreaker!
The TurtleBeach Stealth 700 Gen 2, like most TurtleBeach headsets, do cater for those who wear glasses and the slight indentation right where your spectacle arms go should work wonderfully, allowing minimal sound to escape through those openings. Although the earcup foam is really thick they are also wide, which means the space for your ear is not that big, TurtleBeach has tried to make them fit better by making the opening angled so that your ears should sit inside better.
The boom mic sits on the left ear. It flips up and down, but personally, I feel it could flip down a bit further as I tend to pick it up in my peripheral vision. The mic can also be angled in to sit closer to the face. The rest of the controls, which include the volume roller, a chat mixer, a mode and Bluetooth button, a flush power button, and the USB-C connector for charging.
I have had my trepidations about the comfort of TurtleBeach headsets and the Stealth 600 Gen 1, for one, felt terrible when wearing them. Not so much the fit but the mesh earcups were extremely rough and caused significant irritation around my ears. When the Gen 2 versions came along I was very happy to see that the mesh on the earcups had been changed which dramatically changed the comfort. The Stealth 600 Gen 2 was comfortable, nothing to write home about but not terrible. During long sessions the Stealth 600 would get very warm around the ears, that would be my only immediate complaint. So on to the Stealth 700 Gen 2, we go...
The first thing I notice regarding the Stealth 700 is the clamping force. The headset clamps really tight and that explains the need for the really thick earcups. You need them to counter the clamping force. Some might not like the clamp but personally, I like it as it lessens the force on the top of your head. Fortunately, the Stealth 700 does not weigh too much so there is nearly no hanging pressure on the top of your head and generally it doesn't feel like you are wearing a big headset. The thick earcups do a good job of passive noise suppression but not to the level where you might not hear someone speaking to you. The earcups are also noticeably cooler than any of the previous headsets and wearing them for extended periods of time should not be a problem.
Something to take note of is the fact that the Stealth 700 Gen 2 might come across as a little bareboned. The Stealth 700 Gen 2 makes use of the TurtleBeach Audio HUB which is an app that you can load on your smartphone and use to control many of the settings of the headset. The app itself is rather empty and the moment, but for good reason. The Generation 2 headsets from Turtle Beach are aimed to be cross-generational Headsets, meaning they will work on Xbox One and PS4, as well as Series S/X and PS5. Due to this TurtleBeach has decided to leave features such as surround sound out as the new consoles all feature it natively.
A nice feature of using the headset with the app connected is that you will be able to take calls and listen to voice notes etc straight from the headset which is specifically handy when you need to chat to that pesky telemarketer mid-game! The battery life is also not something to scoff at. turtle beach reckons that the Stealth 700 is good for 20 hours of playback on a single charge, this seems to be an underestimate because during our review we comfortably went past the 20-hour mark with battery life to spare.
The Stealth range also incorporates two forms of connectivity. For Console, the Xbox version uses the Xbox Wireless technology where on PS it uses Bluetooth. Both very acceptable connection methods. On PC the dongle can be used for the 2.4ghz wireless signal or if your PC features Bluetooth, you can decide to go that route as well. Either way, there is no reason the Stealth 700 won't work for you!
Lastly, the microphone quality is surprisingly good. When chatting in discord without noise cancellation active in discord the mic is still crisp and clear and picks up very little background noise. Switching over to the console where there is less software to make devices sound good, the result was very similar. Voices did seem slightly "further away" on console compared to PC but once again it is better than many other headsets
The Stealth 700 Gen 2 is a wonderfully comfortable and easy-to-use wireless headset. The simple plug&play setup and good out-the-box audio is something that users who don't want the fuss of setting up and connecting extremely cumbersome equipment would absolutely love. The Stealth 700 Gen 2 might not be everyone's cup of tea in terms of size and fit but it does sit really snug and the build feels absolutely on point. Considering the features that are crammed into this headset, wireless connectivity, Bluetooth, great audio, and the ability to work seamlessly with the new range of consoles, suddenly the slightly steeper price doesn't seem so bad...
When the Stealth range initially launched there were phenomenally groundbreaking in the features they brought to the table as well as their price. The package looked so good that one could forgive a few simple flaws. A couple of years down the line and with a second-generation being launched one would expect similar leaps and bounds in terms of bang for your buck, and this is where the Stealth 700 Gen 2 currently falls short. Featuring all the features that made the Generation 1 so wonderful and only adding cross-generation support in a price range that will make you think twice before you buy could really hurt the Stealth 700 Gen 2.
I chose Nomad and started on the outer limits of Night City where I was to meet a contact to help him smuggle something through the checkpoint and into the city.
Enter Jackie.
Jackie is the guy who becomes your friend no matter which game line you chose, but your meeting with him will vary. He becomes your hombre and partner in crime as you both set your eyes on the “major leagues” and becoming one of Night City’s most renowned.
Soon after you meet Jackie is where the pawpaw hits the fan, and you are thrown into the thick of it as you fight your way into the city (Nomad background) and find a place to lie low to lose the heat.
The game then cuts through a few scenes as you see yourself, V, and Jackie doing jobs and earning street cred for yourselves as you get higher and higher profile jobs. It is because of this success that one fixer, by the name of Dex, phones you up and offers you a spot on the heist of a lifetime. The one that will set you up in the "major leagues" and send you straight into legend.
This first heist acts as the intro to Cyberpunk 2077 as you learn all the bits you need to learn and get introduced to a whole bunch of lore that will come in handy for later on in the game.
Without giving away too much of the storyline for those of you who have not yet had the privilege of playing this game, the heist goes balls up in a big way and ends with a bang.
Welcome to Cyberpunk 2077...
It is here that your story truly starts, and you are introduced to Johnny Silverhand (Keanu – you’re breathtaking). Your and his story are intertwined in a glorious way and, of course, you have vendettas to settle – as any good story should.
With each update, the game seemed smoother and the controls less clunky, still a far cry from what I am sure people were experiencing on the X or the next-gen consoles, and of course - in RTX glory. But this game was still fun, and I kept coming back for that reason – which in my books, is more than enough. With the latest update, my game has been running smoother than ever with almost no hiccups. My game does still struggle a little in high render areas where there are lots of lights and people and then things will take a second or three longer to load than they should, but I am positive that this is due to my device and am hopeful that this too will be addressed in the next big patch.
All in all, I do believe that I am not experiencing the full glory of Night City-based mainly on my older Xbox but even with that, the game still runs very well and is a heck of a lot of fun to play.
And with the recent announcement of a FREE DLC for Cyberpunk dropping in the next few months, there are even more hours of game time to convince you to spend the money and hit the streets.
I definitely give Cyberpunk 2077 a solid 8 out of 10 stars as it’s one of the most captivating and fun games I’ve played in a long time.
In terms of buttons, the Pro X Superlight features the normal left- and right-click buttons that, according to Logitech, won't suffer the same fate that so many other GPro's have suffered. The dreaded double-click of death. Logitech has said that the switches have been redesigned and they are sure the dreaded double click issue has been solved. During my time spent with the Pro X Superlight, I can confirm that I did not have a single clicking issue, that originated from the mouse itself that is, my bad reaction time is another story! The clickable wheel that features a really good looking white accent is wonderfully weighted and just grippy enough to not go on a roll if your finger happens to slide by it. There are two inside thumb buttons that protrude enough for your hand to quickly learn where they are. Even with smaller hands, like mine, I never felt like I had to adjust my grip to ensure I reach the thumb buttons.
Flipping the Pro X Superlight over you will be greeted with the power slider, as well as really large skates, the white plastic skates that adorn the bottom of the Pro X Superlight are there to help this piece of tech slide and glide as smoothly and effortlessly as anyone can possibly hope for. There is also a compartment that can be opened that has space for you to store your USB dongle when traveling. And if the large skates were not enough already, Logitech sends a spare compartment cover that serves as another large skate, no need to worry, the extra skate doesn't add any weight to this feather-light mouse.
The second tab is the option for you to reallocate your buttons to do certain things. If you would prefer your right button to not be aim-down-sight you can easily change it out with another button. This feature runs hand in hand with the next feature, which is the ability to create profiles for each and every specific game you play. If you have an extremely intricate button setup for your favorite game, but that setup does not work well with your other games, Logitech has you covered. Ghub is capable of picking up which game you are currently playing and it will automatically switch to the relevant settings that you have saved.
It is very clear that the Pro X Superlight is aimed at the more serious gamer and the esports player and probably the FPS crowd more specifically. For that exact reason, I thought it would be best suited to test the Superlight in games such as R6 Siege, Escape from Tarkov, and Battlefront 2. The first and most obvious thing that you as the player need to get used to is the weight. It is extremely light but once you have gotten to grips with how easily it moves and slides but it is scarily accurate. The sensor is so accurate and dependable that within a few hours I found myself turning my DPI setting down from 1000 to 600 and instead of small movements I opted for more sweeping arm movements, the results were tremendous!
The accuracy during gunfights in R6 Siege improved my confidence tremendously and I found myself taking on long-range engagements more comfortably. Any person who has spent some time in escape from Tarkov knows that it is not simply just a shooter, although shooting is what will save your life. And the Pro X Superlight did save my bacon more than once in a space of 4 to 5 raids. The ability to scan the surroundings and simply flick to where you spot your enemy and being exactly where you should be has allowed me to pull the trigger first on numerous occasions!
Logitech has taken the benchmark for lightweight wireless mice and moved it once again! Not only has it made a 63g monster that is capable of retaining all of the premium builds and feels it was capable of cramming all the needed features and superb performance into that same package. The Pro X Superlight might look identical to the GPro Wireless but the Pro X Superlight is much more than just a GPro Wireless on a diet. It is testimony to what Logitech stands for. Taking a great product and constantly improving on it and perfecting the near-perfect. The pricetag is what might cause most people to rather consider a different Logitech mouse and with fair reason. The Superlight is not cheap, and with competitors like, the Razer Viper Ultimate sitting in similar price ranges with more goodies in the box is a true competitor's choice. If you prefer bigger mice that weigh nearly nothing is definitely the mouse you need, and yes, it WILL improve your aim, Promise!
Would I buy one, in a heartbeat!
The mic on the G2 II is detachable, which I have my own personal reservations about (ie. misplace) with a small little windscreen over the mic sensor to help eliminate the noise from the heavier breathers out there. The mic itself is easily moved around to get the best placement for comfort and clarity – both very important when barking out orders to teammates as you dominate the playing field.
The G2 II boasts 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound which fully immerses and gives the player game critical sounds to boost skill that extra virtual skill tier. This headset does not have vibration feedback but it really doesn’t like the bass and all other sounds come through crisp and clear.
The headset volume and mute function is easily controlled on the on-cable controls with the cable stretching far enough for you to rage back from the keyboard with little risk of ripping something off your desk – but with this sound, rage should happen less.
The 50mm drivers mean that the ear cuffs are large and comfortable with their soft leatherette padding which blocks out almost all the annoying background noise that can feed the wrong information to us.
The mute function is easy with just the click of a button with a small LED indicating muted or unmuted.
One shortfall of the headset is once again the software. Now being easier to find as it is not my first time with this rodeo. I had hoped for the software for the G2 II with it being called “Edifier Gaming Center.” These hopes were dashed as soon as I double-clicked though as the same outdated-looking control center opened up before me with very limited controls and things to do within the program. Adding to my frustration was the fact that I need a whole new program installed on my PC, which is exactly the same, for the same brand of headset. This is not a problem if you only own one – but when reviewing, you tend to have more than just one headset and so multiple programs with the same function is a little tiresome.
The software again is a big let down as I was once again left with a bitter taste for not being able to do more and personalize my experience even more.
So, all things considered, I give the G2 II 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound Gaming Headset from Edifier a solid 8 out of 10 stars.
The ear cups have a metal mesh finish with an RGB ring on the inside of each cup. The RGB is simplistic enough to keep the G4 looking classy but also - it is RGB. So, it’d fit in with most RGB crazy PC builds.
Edifier has opted for the retractable mic for the G4, which slides neatly up into the left ear cup when not in use. They have also included an RGB strip on the mic which is an easy way to see if your mic is muted or not.
The controls are easily found on the cable, with the cable itself being long enough to plug into any hard-to-reach USB port without feeling like you are hamstringing yourself.
The G4 also includes vibration feedback in the headset which, at first sounded and felt weird, but after playing with it for a bit, the responsiveness of the vibrations is not just hearing, but giving a feel to that 7.1 virtual surround sound, added to the responsiveness of my in-game reactions.
With me being a bit of an entry-level audiophile, I was skeptical of the choice of 40mm drivers over the 50mm drivers that I have become used to in other headsets. But the G4 has shown that sometimes dynamite really does come in small packages, with their drivers putting out some decent, good quality sound in music and gaming alike. The bass does feel a bit lacking in the headset and I did sometimes struggle to hear it in important game-clutch situations and in more subtle-bass music.
The first time I used the G4, I immediately put it through the bass test of Skrillex and it seemed to blow my mind away – but then, the next time I used it, it suddenly didn’t anymore. After some fiddling, I realized that the vibrations were turned on in that first, out-of-the-box experience and I had since turned them off (the thought of my ears vibrating was a bit much for me). So - flicking the vibrations back on, I got that same deep bass feeling again. The G4 really does bring new meaning to “Good Vibrations.” Again – I am fully aware that vibrations in headsets is not for everyone, in fact, I am still not entirely convinced of it myself, but do not write the G4 off just for having it.
The mic quality was good with people I spoke to not complaining once that they could not hear me, or of the dreaded in-game echo. I am also a fan of the retractable mic, as removable mics come with their own issues (losing it or temporarily misplacing it being a big one) and the traditional mics that flick up and out of the way can catch and break as well. With the G4 having a retractable mic, it also means that you really can position the mic well to maximize both comfort for yourself, as well as clarity for your teammates.
One big downer for me with the G4 was its software.
I felt that the software was not easy to find as it did not initiate with the plugging in of the device and had to be sourced from the Edifier website. Once you know where it is, it is easy enough but living in the world we do with plug and play, this did add to set up time a bit. The software itself also left much to be desired in my opinion. It felt a little more like something you would find on Windows Vista rather than a modern gaming headphone driver software. The software is very limited in use and the only thing you can do with it is a basic EQ.
From the moment I placed the Razer Naga Pro in my hand, the first thing that came to mind was the fact that this mouse will get a large number of mixed opinions. The Naga Pro will by no means be a generally-loved or generally-hated mouse. No, it will have a cult following as well as many haters. The design and grip will not be to everyone's liking. The Naga Pro is not much different from the previous generation of Nagas. It is a big mouse that sits rather wide in your palm, filling most of my hand. This might not be ideal for those who prefer the small mice that can be easily thrown and flicked around a mousepad. Each side of the Naga Pro is dressed with ample sized textured grip areas on both the inside and outside. But one of the most prominent things I found was where my pinky finger ended up. The Naga Pro has a finger rest on the outside of the mouse, allowing for your pinky, or ring if you have larger hands, to rest off the mousepad. At first glance, I thought that this could be really annoying and would hamper my way of handling the mouse, but with time spent on the Naga Pro I found the finger rest to be a feature I now search for in every mouse I review.
Taking a closer look at the mouse. Topside you will find the standard left and right buttons. A scroll wheel in the middle that has a faintly ribbed feel which does feel good under your finger. The edges of the scroll wheel do light up faintly with the RGB but nothing too drastic. Just below the scroll wheel, there is a DPI up and down. If I have to be extremely critical this could have been a single dpi button and maybe a profile button, but this is me knit-picking! Flipping the Naga Pro over will show the power toggle, which when in the middle is off, sliding it to one side will give you a 2.4GHz wireless connection, flicking to the other side is a Bluetooth connection. The profile switch is also situated close by and last but not least there are the skates. At first glance, the skates seem like normal plastic pieces. But once you start sliding the behemoth of a mouse around you can instantly feel how those skates do work! The Razer Naga Pro does not slide the way you expect. This monster is light and nimble.
What truly makes the interchangeable side panels so great is that they are swappable on the fly. Simply pull the one you are using off, and slide the other one in place, the strong magnets will do the rest. And there you go, the RGB will take over and Razer Synapse will automatically detect the side panel and apply your settings for that panel.
Did I mention the neatly tucked away space to store the USB dongle that you can reach when popping off the side panel, clever Razer!
Apart from the Razer Nagas obvious features, the side panels, it still has a couple of other tricks up its sleeve. Starting with the 2.4 GHz wireless connection. Razer claims this to be the best wireless connection ever, saying that there is less than 1ms delay in their connection. Whether this is true or not we can't prove it but what I can say is that it is really good, I mean REALLY good! Many other reviewers have noted that they do have issues with the 2.4GHz where it would drop away or fail to connect at times. For the whole time that I spent with the Razer Naga Pro, I did not have a single hiccup. It was simply splendid. One of the other advantages of 2.4GHz wireless is that it uses significantly less power than other connections. Razer claims that with your RGB turned off, you can squeeze an amazing 100 hours of battery life. I did not ever measure exact hours but even with RGB set to ambient awareness I easily kept on fighting and gliding for a couple of days. Maybe I have been spoilt with the Razer Viper Ultimate, but charging your mouse with a conventional cable doesn't quite cut it anymore. Fortunately, the universal charging dock (sold separately) can charge your Naga Pro as well.
The next feature that is easily overlooked due to the fact that nearly all of this generation of Razer mice feature it, is the optical switches. Gone are the days of using green, yellow, blue, brown, and every other color of the rainbow -switches. No, we have reached the time of the optical (queue the epic music). Not only are they even faster and more accurate than any of the mechanical switches, but they also sound and feel perfect. Even going back to my Viper Ultimate Pro felt different and strange. Optical switches are, simply put, the next big thing that could happen to mice and keyboards.
The Razer Naga Pro might seem like it is designed and intended for a very specific audience. And you won't be wrong to think of it that way. Hell, I felt exactly the same way. But once you start using the rather large Naga Pro you will find that it is not intended for one audience only, in fact, it has every single genre of gamers in mind. From the MMO and RTS fans to the FPS players, the Razer Naga Pro is more than capable to tackle literally any game you throw at it. Simply flick the side panel off, using the Green force have the mouse attach its own new side panel and keep playing as nothing has happened. Although the Razer Naga Pro might be a big mouse, that some more hardcore FPS players might frown at, thanks to the wonderful skates it glides and slides like a mouse half its size.
If you are in the market for a mouse and you are looking for an all-in-one mouse, the Razer Naga Pro is literally the mouse you have been waiting for. Great wireless, spectacular buttons, mindblowing side panels that cater for anything and everything and comfort, that once you are used to, will redefine what comfort is to you. Simply put, I can't really think of a mouse I would rather have as my go-to mouse. As long as you can stomach the hefty price tag...
The DeathAdder V2 Pro drops the, often excessive, RGB to show that it means more esports-business than many of the other Razer hardware. The only source of RGB comes in the form of the standard Razer emblem found on the palm area of the mouse. The scroll wheel, which also features ribbed textures, features no RGB and is less protruding than some of the other Razer mice on the market. This creates a much sleeker look which suites the fluent lines of the DeathAdder V2 Pro.
Flipping the DeathAdder V2 Pro over will show one button that allows you to flick between profiles that can be set. A second slider allows you to choose the way you want to connect your Deathadder to your PC. The DeathAdder V2 Pro can connect to devices via Bluetooth which is great if you want to use it on devices that don't support USB dongles to be connected. Another option is the wired method. Using the supplied braided USB cable, called a Speedflex cable in the Razer house, a cable that just oozes premium. Lastly, but my preferred method of connection is using the Razer Hyperspeed which uses 2.4Ghz technology to eliminate the most input lag possible. You will also see two golden pegs, these can be used to charge the DeathAdder V2 Pro via the Razer charging dock, which is sold separately.
The DeathAdder V2 Pro comes with the new optical switches that swap out mechanical clicks for the speed-of-light opticals, in layman's terms, optical is faster and better! The optical switches are also rated for a mindblowing 70 million clicks! Most of the newer Razer mice have started using the Focus + sensor. This new sensor is able to handle DPI settings from as low as 200 all the way to 20 000. As a user, you are able to set 5 DPI steps via the Razer Synapse app. The Focus+ sensor boasts a resolution accuracy of 99.6% which is mindblowing for a sensor that is capable of being that accurate at 650 IPS (inches per second). Did I mention it will be accurate up to speeds of 50G's, your mouth is hanging open, not mine! As if that wasn't enough, Razer boasts even more features such as Smart Tracking and MotionSync to improve accuracy even more.
When reviewing new headsets or mice, there is usually an adjustment period, which, especially in FPS games, can have a devastating effect when playing seriously punishing shooters such as Escape from Tarkov. When I jumped into R6 Siege and EFT I did so with the expectation of seeing my performance drop significantly. When this did not happen I was very surprised. The DeathAdder V2 Pro has such a comfortable feel to it that it feels more natural than even your daily mouse will feel. While playing Siege I found my aim to be great and the way the DeathAdder moves across the mousepad will have you looking down to see if you actually have anything in your hand!
The new Call of Duty game, produced by Treyarch, sees us going back to the Black Ops series which, in my humble opinion, is among the best Call of Duty games. Now some might immediately be put off due to the direction that the Black Ops arc took with Black Ops III and even with IV (which was released after the “boots on the ground” promise) but Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (referred to as Cold War from here on out as that is a mouth full of a name) takes us back to the days of Mason and Woods with some plausible deniability action in the true Black Ops style.
Multiplayer – as has been the staple for Call of Duty games since the start, the multiplayer menu sees all the game modes we know, like Team Deathmatch, Free For All, Hardpoint and many others. Cold War does, however, have a few unique game modes that sees teams battle it out across a handful of well-designed and intricate maps. On top of this - customisable loadouts, weapon skins, new operators, clan tags and emblems are all still there, along with the information about your skills that you don’t want to look at but need to see.
And for those of you who are wondering, no – there’s no Nuketown… yet.
Zombies – once again, some very sinister experiments have gone horribly wrong (or incredibly right depending on which side of the fence you’re standing) and Zombies have been released back into the world. Take on wave after wave of the undead horde alone, with friends or in a public queue and send the undead back where they belong. Learning from it’s past, Cold War Zombies has objectives that can be followed to unlock the underlying story in Die Maschine and find out exactly what those evil scientists were getting up to behind the iron curtain.
Also, hidden within Zombies, is a game mode called Dead Ops Arcade. This game mode has been sneakily tucked away in Black Ops games since the original Black Ops in 2010. As this is a “hidden feature” in the game, I’d rather just let you try this one out for yourselves. I will say this though, if you’ve played Dead Ops Arcade in any of the previous Black Ops games, then this one is definitely worth it.
Warzone – Call of Duty’s very own Battle Royale mode sees it’s second rendition come to life with Black Ops Cold War and, like with Modern Warfare, it will be free to play and stand almost as its own game within Cold War. If you’re still playing Modern Warfare Warzone and are worried about your future with that game, Call of Duty have assured us that Modern Warfare will still be getting updates for a long time to come.
The download size of the game sits neatly under 85GB (come one Modern Warfare) with the total size being broken up into optional “data chunks” which you can choose to keep or remove from your storage to better manage your space.
With exception of the compulsory base game size of 21,7GB, the optional data chunks are as follows;
- Campaign – 38,7GB
- Multiplayer – 15,3GB
- Zombies – 3,6GB
- Dead Ops Arcade – 6,2GB
- Content Packs – each of these are only 10.1mb
This is well played by Call of Duty as players who never make use of Zombies or players who have completed the campaign can choose to uninstall those chunks from their storage and save on precious hard drive space. This is especially cool for Warzone only players who do not have access to the other modes and so they can then just have the base game and Warzone installed.
What this looks like for future update sizes, I cannot say. But it is looking a lot better than the massive updates we’ve had to put up with on Modern Warfare.
One minor issue I did experience with the graphics of Cold War was during the cinematics. Now this issue is not really game based, but the fault more so lies within outdated and underspec hardware.
During cinematics, because of the high quality of the graphics, my xbox would really battle and what I was watching would become jumpy and laggy and the audio would often complete long before the video as I then had to suffer in actual silence as I watched till the end of the cinematic. This didn’t happen all the time and I did find on longer cinematics that my xbox eventually caught up and everything was smooth and synchronised. My old boy apparently just needed some time to catch his breath for all the hard work I was making him do.
Although irritating, this minor issue is really not game breaking in my opinion and still makes the game well worth it.
The game plays incredibly well across all game modes and each needs its own strategy and skillset to really excel at it. Gone are the days of sprinting and going Gung-ho on everything and anything that moved.
Focussing in a little more on the multiplayer game mode now - once I knew where to expect people and what angles I could get shot from, my stats significantly improved as I was able to make the key movement decisions needed that only come with map knowledge and game specific experience.
The comfort does not stop there. The earcups are lined with soft flexible memory foam cushioning that offers a comfortable fit and helps with sealing off the outside world as well as not causing too much heat after wearing them for extended periods of time. The new headband system that Logitech has adapted to for the G733 is simply fantastic. Many other brands have been using it for quite some time, allowing for the weight of the headset to be spread across a band over your head rather than using a single contact point as "traditional" headsets do. The headband makes the G733 feel like it's floating above your head and only attached to your head at the earcups. If for some reason, the headset doesn't fit quite right, the headband can even be adjusted to sit more snug, well done Logitech! Did I mention the headband elastic is reversible if the already funky colour doesn't quite suit your mood for the day?
Although the straight and square design is rather new to the Logitech roster (copying more of the Astro look than Logitech) it is made from all plastic rather than the more carbon and metallic bits are seen on other high-end Logitechs'. The plastic is strong and durable but it always will bring in a sense of cheapness even though, in this case, it is not the case. Being plastic also allows the G733 to be made in bright and beautiful colours such as black, white, grey, and a beautiful blue. The front rim of the earcups is embellished by an RGB strip that acts as two programmable areas for RGB.
Below the mute button, there is a volume dial, this dial can turn endlessly both ways and adjust your PC's main volume. So when turning you should get the volume level displayed by Windows. The last button on the rather barren G733 is the power button, hold to switch on, hold to switch off, a short press will have a lady tell you the battery level in your ear, nice!
The aspect that has really made me fall in love with Logitech is how amazing their Ghub software is, and the resulting performance you get from the headset. The G733, thanks to the Ghub software, can compete with headsets that are much more expensive, due to the customization levels introduced in the Ghub software.
The G733 features virtual surround sound thanks to DTS. The virtual surround sound that is featured with most Logitech headsets is some of the most accurate I have experienced in any stereo headset. Some other well-known brands seem to sound more like an echo than actually true spatial sound. After tinkering with the surround sound there is more equalizers and settings to fiddle with until you have tweaked the audio to just what you want. If you can't quite tweak it your way, why not simply download a preset that someone else has made and uploaded to the Ghub. Quick and simple, find a setup you think might work and download it and test it out. This is an approach more companies should take. I have become a snob because of this feature and setting my own equalizers have now become somewhat of a pain.
The recent addition of Blue Voice in top-end Logitech headsets is tremendous. Suddenly your Logitech headset can replace the likes of a separate stand microphone thanks to the amazing tech crammed into a small headset mic. Not only can you set your microphone equalizer to allow you to sound perfectly crisp and clear, but there are also presets such as AM Radio, broadcaster, FM radio and presets for soft, loud, high and low voice types! If anyone has ever told you that your voice would not suit radio, the Blue Voice tech can make you sound like you have the sweetest voice on earth!
The Logitech G733 is a wireless headset, and with that comes certain "problems" when it comes to the audio performance. When there is no audio playing, even at low volume, there is the normal hum. Not a big deal, but to someone who believes in wired is better, this can be very annoying. Fortunately, the G733 makes up for this slight flaw with exceptional audio quality. With the extremely powerful equalizer that can be tuned to make nearly any form of music or in-game audio sound perfect, we were hard-pressed to really find something wrong. So to be completely unbiased I decided to give the G733 to a few people to give their opinions in terms of audio. The G733 is fitted with the same 40mm drivers as the G Pro X which is still our favourite all-time headset. For this reason, the G733 sounds nearly exactly the same. Mids are spot on with highs being at the verge of being too high. Lows are firm and strong but can become slightly muddy when the mids are truly working hard. This was only slightly noticeable during some intense BFV firefights.
The Logitech G733 soundstage is clearly taken from the G Pro X which is intended with esports in mind, hence the stage is smaller and closer than other headsets. This is by no means a deal-breaker because when I took them for a spin in Horizon Zero Dawn the vast openness and gusts of wind perfectly gave the sense of a massive open area.
In this version of Assassin's Creed, the usual Brotherhood vs Templar battle is, of course, raging in the shadows (cue the motto) with the Templar order being the undisputed stronger party in the start of the game as it's wretched hand stretches across continents and its influence can be seen everywhere. In Valhalla, the names of the factions look a little different with the Brotherhood going by "The Hidden Ones" and the Templars going by "The Order of the Ancients."
I like it.
Eivor is a devoted and skilled Viking warrior who takes on a lot of the responsibility of establishing a new home for the Raven clan in England. He also is not afraid of death as he can be heard many times in the game making statements about destiny and his death being woven into the fabric of time.
As a bonus, Eivor is almost fully customisable as you can choose from a variety of hairstyles, beard styles and tattoos to create your own personal look.
England is a stark contrast to the snowy expanse of Norway but has its own beauty in all of the well-designed areas. The land is as diverse as the people fighting over it, with green hills, swamps and forested areas being broken by small villages, stone walls and Roman ruins. The weather in England helps add to the effect with thick fog and bursts of rain making it all the more realistic.
One thing that needs to be commented on, with my playing this on the original Xbox One (here's to hoping I get a Series S or X soon) the graphics, although not as great as they would be if experienced in all its 4K glory, are still incredible. The game does favour frame rate over graphic quality though and so I did notice that in times of "high-render" the quality of what I was seeing would drop ever so slightly so as to keep the game running silky smooth. Now some might not like this too much, but I don't really have an issue with it.
The gameplay focuses more on turning your foothold of a settlement in England into a stronghold of a homestead and securing allies in different territories than it does on taking down the members in the Order of the Ancients. You can, of course, focus in on the Hidden One's missions and eliminate every Templar scum that you can, and you will get some cool perks for doing this, but if you choose to just go a vikingr then you will only eliminate those Templar that sit where the interests of the Hidden Ones and the interests of your settling in England align.
Along with this, Viking (to raid) is a massive part of the game as you storm monasteries, army camps and strongholds from your longboat, burning and pillaging as villagers and monks flee in terror, flailing arms included. All so that you can take the hard-earned resources back to Ravensthorpe and further build and establish your Viking Homestead in England.
So, overall. I give the 12th, latest and best (in my opinion) Assassin's Creed title a whopping 9 out of 10 stars.
OK OK AMANDA... I'll do this properly. So little hope is a game based on the choices you make, and all these choices affect the 5 characters you play as, while on their way to a field trip their bus has an accident, as in crashes not soils its chassis. This game picks up right off the bat and throws players into a world of misery, fear, and confusion. How do I know this I enlisted someone very near and dear to me a one Dalal light, she helped me interpret all the symbols and even some details other will miss, and hearing her chuckle and then say “well let me tell you one thing right away, someone is not going to have a very good day”, this didn’t set me up well to play this game. I pressed on, only to hear “oh I wouldn’t go that way not with that there”. And after politely thanking and sending miss light on her way I carried on, with a greater fear of the unknown than before.
The game pushes players in 1 direction, both literally and figuratively, a dense fog shrouds the town and any attempt to go backward is futile, the fog simply swallows you up and sends you facing the other way. The players are constantly haunted by noises and quick glimpses of distorted figures in the background, creating a constant tension of what’s going to happen next.
Little hope was a bustling town back in its day, major factories being the town's lifeblood, but when the factories were closed down, the town was deserted and became a ghost town. In more ways than one. The town, even before its heyday, has a dark history. During the witch burnings of Salem, Little Hope did its fair share of witch-hunting and much to miss lights displeasure… Wait, when did you sneak back in? Uhm the brutal murders of supposed witches.
The Dark Pictures Anthology has a rather large focus on the character relations that you can build or break by way of the decisions you make. These actions do not only have a single effect on the storyline. Upset someone now, and have that consequence resonate back to bite you later. This makes every single decision, be it made with the head or the heart, have a massive cause and effect on the story. You will also be persuaded by the demons of your past or the past of a past life… Or the past of a past life’s past life? Ghastly distorted disfigured and mangled visages of what was once human and it's up to you to make the right choices or face the consequences.
And if the game itself isn’t creepy enough, you will periodically meet “the curator” a mildly pleasantly unpleasant person, who will talk you through your choice as the game goes on, being a little more than cynical of your choices if not very judgemental in his opinion….he offers “tips” if you can call them that from time to time but don’t expect a clear-cut answer it’s a riddle within a mystery.
It's up to you to get the 5 lost souls through this horror town to hopefully a good ending, hidden throughout the game are postcards with pictures which provide the player a small vision of what may or may not come to pass, based on your decisions made up to that point, I cannot say if they help or not. But that’s all on you...
The visuals of the game are stunning if not eerie, the music will always keep you in a state of unease, when those violins start up the hairs on the back of my neck start doing backflips… Even if nothing happens… At that point anyway. The fog always there, always foreboding, spurring you on and keeping all the horrors and nasties hidden until the time is right. I kind-of just scared myself there. Little hope has a wonderful if you can call it that, way of building tremendous amounts of suspense. Be that with the eerie soundtrack or perfectly placed silences. If you don't turn in your chair a few times during this game there is something wrong with you.
During this night you spend trying to save these 5 characters you will learn so much about the witch-trails in general. And especially the horrors that would be the reason for so many innocent people to be put to death. Just like the curator will mention on several occasions, nothing is quite what it seems. And that statement rings true throughout the terror-filled night. Whether you care to listen to the voice of reason, or rather dig a bit further, maybe lend an ear to a creepy little girl, you might just make sense of this nightmare.
The Dark Pictures Anthology is so good at telling an intricate story that they are able to take a story, that at first, seems like nothing makes any sense, and have you piece the blocks together to help you experience one of the most "aha" moments ever just before the credits roll...
Logitech has also spoilt the user by supplying every connection type known to man. As standard, the G432 has a 3.5mm connection but supplied, is a splitter that splits audio and mic separately. Along with this splitter is the DAC, a USB device that your 3.5mm jack plugs into. This is a nice touch by Logitech ensuring the headset can be used in any possible way. Not many manufacturers include these adapters in more budget orientated headsets. Good job Logitech!
Although the G432 does suffer from a few minor design flaws that affect comfort, like the loose-fitting earcups, these are all up to user preference. Personally, I think they are reasonably comfortable and don't get too hot when wearing for long periods of time. A colleague however had no issue with the loose earcups but was more concerned about the heat buildup after wearing for a couple of hours. So overall it is an even split.
When you connect via the DAC is when the G432 comes alive and the wonderful GHUB shows its true capabilities. The G432 features a virtual 7.1 surround sound thanks to DTS. Setting this up is simple and has you listening to an audio track and adjusting all the speakers accordingly. Using it in games such as Rainbow 6 Siege and Escape from Tarkov game me such a distinct advantage due to the games focusing a lot on audio. In games such as Mafia Definitive edition, the hustle and bustle of the 1930's city really come to life when you walk down the street and people are speaking and cars are buzzing past.
This is not the only feature. Equalizers are completely customizable and if you are not happy with your personal settings you can simply download someone else profiles from the GHUB community. Noise reduction on both the microphone and the audio is great. Especially if you have a noisy household and you don't want to torture your party members with barking dogs or moaning children. The mic quality is really good for its price range but it is definitely more aimed and multiplayer communication rather than any form of streaming or production worthy efforts.
Well, prepare to be underwhelmed. Graphically Dirt 5 is lackluster at best, with switching between graphics and fps modes not making an impacting change at all. Fortunately for Dirt 5 games are not all about graphics, right? Well, Dirt 5 definitely makes up for the above in its variety.
The career mode in Dirt 5 will have you putting your proverbial pedal to the metal for a significant time. In theory, there are 75 tracks in total. yes some of them are reversed versions of each other but 75 is still a big number. The thing that I found made the campaign so much fun is the fact that the sheer size of the career is broken into many small pieces. None of the races or modes feel too long that you find yourself getting bored. In the same breath, I have to say I immediately turned the difficulty up a notch as to give me a fight all the way to the chequered flag.
In Dirt 2.0 the job is simple. Get from the start to the finish as quickly as you can without destroying the car. Dirt 5, being the quirkier brother, throws in a few fun "challenges" to spice things up. Drift for X amount of time, or trade paint in the air, each race will have these challenges. Complete them and it will add towards your reputation and a few other categories which are needed to unlock more car customizations.
Dirt 5 has a respectable lineup of cars. Compared to the likes of NFS or Forza it might fall slightly short but respectable none the less. NFS has its over-the-top car modifications and Forza allows you to tune every last centimeter of the vehicle, Dirt 5 does not do the same, actually, it doesn't allow you to customize your car, performance-wise, at all! Dirt 5 is more about aesthetics. As you progress through the career mode and complete more of the side missions as mentioned before. You will unlock decals for your vehicle. Some of them in form of stickers to slap literally anywhere on your car. Others will be wraps for your vehicle allowing you to customize your ride to your heart's content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4iQzwrVdT8
What this means is that each vehicle and I use vehicles because not all contraptions are cars, there are buggies and other off-roading abominations have a specific rating. It is rather simply put. Performance and handling. Closer to A-rating the better. The thing that I was slightly upset about is the lack of variation when it came to how the cars felt when changing between classes of cars. This might upset the more die-hard racing fans because it removes the learning curve for each vehicle, but on the flip side, it allows for a much easier pick-up-and-play experience!
A major game feature is the tech menu, offering a range of gadgets, abilities, weapons, and hacking skills all this is unlocked with tech points scattered around the map, each item on the menu can be upgraded to make it more effective, which can be set to each operative to switch up your playstyle or tackle the task at hand. Another major feature is the combat, now I did play the 1st Watch Dogs and sadly missed the 2nd. DONT JUDGE ME AMANDA!!!! But the combat for Watch Dogs: Legion is based around attacking, grappling, and dodging which can be followed up with a counter-attack its proper street fighting bruv. Combat can be made easier by using an operative with a melee weapon or a nice little gadget I call the "punchy zappy face breaky" thing.
My personal Favorite is definitely the remote control spider capable or hacking terminals, getting into tight spaces, getting you into otherwise inaccessible rooms distracting enemies, and scaring the living daylights out of people on the street, yes my little pet spread TERROR... I mean go get me access to that server over there I need to check my Twitter feed messages.
the storyline follows our ever neighborhood hacking community Dedsec being framed for major bombings all over London by the group known as Zero-day, who have no other agenda than just trying to watch the world burn. Albion takes over and basically eliminates almost every criminal enterprise except 1 clan Kelly, so you have some major factions who aren't particularly friendly towards you, unless, you recruit one of them. YES people you can recruit the enemy to your cause, but you will need to buy the special tech ability to deep dive into their profile and find something that you can help them with to turn that frown upside down and join you, now you have a recruit who can walk almost freely around that factions area, just avoid the other guards and cameras and drones.....so everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mOVusuXl7E
The game doesn’t limit how you play, maybe you’re like me who likes to sneak around set traps and bring out the inner Sam Fischer in you, or walking right up to some git and bashing em in the face yeah? The help will have thought the game will be from the lovable robot AI Baggly who will help you accomplish all your missions, from getting Intel to finding a location to hacking a laptop and wiping someone's debt..... think I need a Baggly....But 1 thing was REALLY confusing to me.... playing many different open-world games like GTA....being forced to drive on the right-hand side of the road and now I'm on the LEFT like I'm weirded out by this, even driving on the left side IN REAL LIFE, like I can’t wrap my head around now driving on the correct side of the road!!! It’s maddening!!! Well, it is to me anyway... AMANDA I SAID STOP JUDGING ME.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqh4BX8-VR4
One of the big problems we had with the Gen 1 Stealth 600 was the fact that the earcup cushioning, although soft, was scratchy and after wearing for an extended time would become itchy and extremely hot. We are pleased to say the earcup cushioning has been substantially improved. It now features a leatherette cover which is lovely on the ears. Like the Gen 1, the earcups are designed to accompany users who where spectacles, this has always been a very nice touch from TurtleBeach. Although all of these mentioned improvements have improved the comfort dramatically, the only problem we found in the comfort department is the size of the earcups. The Gen 1 Stealth 600 headsets were exceptionally small earcups. If you have regular-sized ears, you might have had problems using the Gen 1 Stealth 600's as over-ear headsets and rather use them as on-ear. With the Gen 2 however the earcup size has been increased, not quite as much as might be needed, but improvement is good. The earcups are on a swivel which is nice to have the headset "mold" to the wearer.
The headband, like in the the Gen 1, slides easily to adjust to nearly any sized head. The foam on the headband feels good and after some serious game time, we didn't experience any sore heads from a headband. The mic might feel abit too cheap but fortunately, the mic and the headset can handle some punishment.
When it comes to features, that is where the Stealth series, in general, falls flat. It is a bare-bones headset featuring little to no creature-comforts. This is all ways to keep the price tag to the lower end of course so it is a catch 22. The Gen 2, however, does have a flip to mute mic now which when extended will activate the mic and when flipped up, you will be automatically muted. The Gen 2 mic also features larger and higher sensitivity which makes an already clear mic sound even crisper. It also features mic monitoring feedback, which is a nice feature for a budget wireless headset. No more accidental shouting over the mic in the middle of the night!
The standard features are all here, the volume wheel is situated under the earcup. right next to the volume wheel is the chat-audio mixer wheel. Which should be a standard amongst all headsets but for some reason, it is not yet! Last but not least there is a power button, charging port, and audio preset selector. The TurtleBeach Stealth 600 Gen 2 connects via Bluetooth using a dongle that comes with the headset. you simply plug it into your console or pc and turn on your headset. Once connected the dongle, as well as the headset, will give you a light and audio queue respectively. What needs to be mentioned is that only the PS and PC version of the Stealth 600 require the Bluetooth dongle, if you are using the Xbox version, thanks to the Xbox Bluetooth the headset connects directly to the console.
During our time spent with the Stealth 600 we jumped between titles like R6 Siege, Warzone, and some Apex Legends. What we all agree on is that the audio quality is brilliant. The Stealth 600's punch way above their price class and makes things sound the way we think they are intended to. At first I did find myself fumbling with the buttons setting the wrong setting, but once I memorized the positions the controls are rather easy to manage. Battery life on the Stealth 600 is rated at a decent 15 hours on a single charge. I charged it when I received it and my rough calculation says that 15 hours sound like an easily achievable mark. This however is the same battery life as the Gen 1, which is a little disappointing seeing as there was no improvement made in that department.
When Crash Bandicoot debuted back in 1997 it had good competition in the linear-platforming genre in the likes of Croc. Since then the Linear-platform genre has become less popular with other titles like Super Mario Odyssey opting to go towards a more open-world sandbox nature. Crash Bandicoot 4 has stuck with what made it successful all these years later. A more refined, albeit linear, level.
Fans of old will be happy to see that their furry friend still bounces, spins, and crashes ( get it...) through vibrant and colorful spectacles that we call levels. Fans that are new to the Crash Bandicoot franchise will quickly be drawn into the box smashing fun. In short, Crash Bandicoot has not missed a beat in the time he has been missing.
Starting up the game the first option you get is whether you want to play Retro, or modern. I would suggest going with modern as Retro will have you only receiving limited amounts of attempts and retries where modern gives you endless lives and checkpoints, trust me, you will need them!
Not much has changed in the formula for Its About Time from the previous games. It's About Time still focuses on players needing to let Crash run down a hallway, crashing, smashing, and bashing their way through boxes and bad guys all while collecting items. At times the perspective might change with Crash running away from the camera rather than towards, as well as the occasional side-scrolling stages. Mix in a few boss battles and you have the general play of Crash Bandicoot. This might seem a bit mundane and old for the current crop of gamers seeing that we have games where you need to invest serious time and brainpower to play, but It's About Time just feels right!
It's About Time has added a good few aspects to the Crash games to give this one some more flavor. The boss battles are really intense and where one wrong move, much like the other stages, will have you reset to a previous checkpoint. Another large and challenging introduction is the ability to use masks that grant you temporary powers. The normal protection mask will have you absorb one hit from an enemy that would usually have killed you. The other is a kind of time-shift mask that when activated will have you "phase" objects in and out of existence allowing you to traverse the environment. Need to jump across a large ravine? Phase the block in your way, out of existence, but be careful, the platform you need to land on is also phased out now... This leads to a lot of mid-air swearing as well as even more button mashing. Other masks grant abilities such as slowing down time, manipulate gravity, and make Crash move ridiculously fast!
Something that It's About Time does well is despite the fact that we are in 2020, it is purposefully stuck in the '90s. A time that bad jokes and attitudes were plentiful. Not exactly to everyone's taste. Hence the dialogue and cutscenes might not be to everyone's taste but it does definitely deliver a good story, although you will find yourself skipping cutscenes. Not because they are bad, just due to the fact that you are bound to see them a few times.
Luckily Crash is not alone in this fight to save the galaxy. He has 4 other characters that are all playable and bring their own abilities to the table. Coco and Crash are nearly identical apart from looks. Tawna, Dingodile, and Neo Cortex will bring new abilities to platforming and will have you replaying levels that you have previously completed. Tawna has a grappling hook you can use to get to faraway platforms. Dingodile can vacuum up TNT boxes and shoot it back at enemies. And Neo Cortex can blast enemies with his ray gun and turn them into platforms to jump from.
The developers have made a good quality of life changes to the franchise. Apart from the before mentioned Retro and Modern mode, there are more subtle changes. One for subtle but very nice one is the introduction of small shadows of where your character will land when jumping. Previously you would have to rely on some questionable depth perception and luck. Now, having a clear indication of where your character is heading, if you are more sadistic, this option can be turned off.
Keeping with the '90s where co-op was kind due to internet technology being sketchy at best for the lucky few who had. Pass & Play is a pseudo local multiplayer where each time you die or reach a checkpoint you can pass the controller to a fellow player. Not quite multiplayer but it does add a fun way of getting players that are not good at platforming to have some fun while having a better player help them through the tricky parts.
Crash Bandicoot 4 It's About Time is an expensive game, there is no mistake about it. The is around R1 199 for the disc version. This is a bitter pill to swallow considering the other big titles that are inbound. But for those who are unsure whether to spend the hard-earned money on your favorite orange marsupial, I can honestly tell you it is worth it. It's About Time will have you spending hours upon hours trying to capture every last gem, and discovering every last secret level. The replayability is amped up even more post-credits with the N.Verted mode which mirrors the layout of the original levels but masks them in a visual filter that will make you sweat all over again!
Now – with all that being said about the glory of the original game, Mafia I did come with its fair share of issues. It was not alone though, as most games from that era experienced similar limitations in what was known and possible within the realm of technology that existed then.
And so, 2K did something that a lot of other developers have done before them – take a classic and try and bring it into today’s era of gaming.
And they did a damn fine job of it too… mostly.
Voice Actors – 2K recast a lot of the voice actors in the overhaul of Mafia I which was met with a mixed bag of opinions. A large portion felt that the voice of the game’s protagonist, Tommy Angelo, was not quite up to the sound of the character he is made out to be in the game. Personally – I had no issue with his voice and thought it sounded fine. My struggles came in more with a certain Detective who keeps buying you coffee. His Irish accent just wasn’t doing it for me, and I can’t quite place my finger one why that is. I just know that I didn’t enjoy hearing him speak during the game’s many cinematic moments.
Driving – driving mechanics in the original game was very clunky and unresponsive. In the Definitive Edition however, the driving mechanics are a lot smoother and easily mastered as you send 1930’s vehicles sideways through intersections while missing old ladies, other vehicles and trams all taking up space on the roads and sidewalks of the city.
NPCs – the change to the way the NPCs react with the player and the environment is probably one of the biggest (second to visuals) overhauls that the game underwent. Like most NPCs in games from around 2002 (and some even today) where NPCs were more like mannequins and crash test dummies that didn’t really exhibit realistic human behaviours, the NPCs interact a lot more “human-like” in the Definitive Edition. Both with the player, as well as with each other and the playable environment.
Visuals – as expected in a remake/remaster of a classic, a drastic improvement in graphics and visual aspects of the game to bring it to more modern standards is a given. Can I just say, 18 years and a few generations jump have done Mafia I good. The textures of the game have been smoothened out and rendered well, even on my OG Xbox One console. Light and shadows move well while driving and walking and the visual aspects of the cinematics look good. Although some emotional face movements seem to have fallen away a bit (too much Botox in the code?).
It must be said that not all is fantastic in the visual department though. While driving or fighting, some surfaces occasionally take a bit longer to render in, causing a “shadow flash” effect as it snaps into existence. This also sometimes happens with cars that suddenly appear to fall in front of you or get caught up in some mystical obstacle in the middle of the road.
Apart from these changes to the overall look and feel of the game, not much else has changed in the Definitive Edition as it is a remaster of an old game, and not a remake. The story is mostly unaffected and unchanged, apart from a few added or altered lines. So, players returning to the game should not expect a new experience, but rather a remodelled experience of a classic. Think putting a fresh spray and wax on that classic car.
The game is also a lot less repetitive than Mafia III, where I felt that missions were very montonous and were all the same run, gun and kill a boss type of play but he world of Mafia III was more open and exploring between tasks was always a temptation. Mafia I’s missions came with a little more variety, which was helped a long by the deep story being told throughout the game of the rise of one immigrant cab driver to power and prominence in the "family" in the early 1930s.
The game really does focus on storytelling and so I often caught myself falling into getting from task to task to focus on the story. This is very different to my usual play style which is look everywhere and anywhere and take ages to get to task. With this aspect semi removed from Mafia I, I felt that the game could feel a little linear at times.
I did still enjoy playing the game a lot and really enjoyed the more relaxed feel I got from it. Whereas I often feel a little more tense after competitive gaming, Mafia I Definitive Edition really brought me back to the kick back, put your feet up and relax type of gaming that is sometimes so needed in a busy world.
With all that being said – if you have played Mafia I before, I wouldn’t recommend getting this one unless you are a fan or collector as there is no change to the story. You would essentially be buying a good book with a new cover, which there’s nothing wrong with. Just not if you’re only interested in the story.
If you haven’t played Mafia I before then I would suggest this for the great story telling and modernising of a classic game. As well as the relax game sessions that are so needed.
Overall, I would give Mafia I: Definitive Edition a solid 7 out of 10.
The G102 weighs in at 85g which is a good weight for the size. Not too light but not too much resistance when flicking or dragging. Logitech has embedded the Mercury sensor inside this little mouse. According to Logitech, the Mercury sensor is a gaming sensor, which gives you control of the sensitivity from 200 to 8000DPI. Many of the more premium mice might have the ability to go to 16 000 DPI but realistically one would never need a DPI setting much higher than even 2000. Where the G102 does make up for the lack of DPI is in the polling rate. This means the G102 reports back to the PC up to 1000 times per second. This is the main reason why the G102 movements and clicks feel much more instantaneous.
When using it for gaming the G102 performs really well with the scroll wheel having enough resistance to give you a good bump when it jumps over to next slot which is great when switching between weapons in most games. There is a distinct feel when rolling the scroll wheel which will eliminate possible bumps causing scrolling to happen.
According to Logitech, Lightsync is described as follows: LIGHTSYNC technology immerses you into the action with automatic, game-driven lighting effects that react to many popular games. LIGHTSYNC will blast light to match in-game explosions, approaching enemies, damage taken, healing is done, new worlds visited, and much more.
What this means is that many of the newer titles, much like Razer Synapse, links with the Logitech GHub and syncing up with Lightsync can make the RGB features of all Lightsync compatible items, link up to create a colorful vista of lights that don't only make things look pretty but actually serve a purpose. Like acting as health bars, or directions to your next objective.
On the G102 there is an RGB Halo that wraps around the palm area of the mouse as well as the usual G emblem that is both capable of supporting up to 16.8 million colors as well as a host of presets that can be defined in the Ghub. My firm favorite on the white G102 is the rainbow effect. The white G102 simply allows the colors to really pop and I found myself wanting more "halo-like" RGB bands around more of my peripherals... I think I might have become one of... them... RGB fanboys...
Logitech's GHUB software does what most other software packages do, but its packaged in a sleek, easy to use program. Adjust your DPI settings by predefining 5 steps that can be jumped through by simply hitting your DPI button found in front of your scroll wheel. Assign macro keys to the two inner thumb buttons by simply jumping to the assignment screen and selecting what you want those keys to do. You can even take it one step further and let Ghub recognize the game you are playing and let it switch between macros you have assigned for each game. This means taking some time, in the beginning, to set it all up but from there on, simply jump into your favorite game and have all your abilities at your fingertips.
Another bummer for MMO fans is the lack of on-the-fly Macro recording which makes casting a vast array of spells or attacks in quick succession rather cumbersome. Roccat's AIMO RGB is described as a clever system that adjusts the RGB lighting to what you are playing. I agree that the colouring is interesting although I can't quite put a finger on what it is using to decide its colouring. On the Roccat Kone AIMO mouse the lighting is bright and really beautiful, the Horde, however, is hardly noticeable in a well-lit room.
The left and right mouse buttons are not placed next to each other like most mice are. there is a strip of brushed metal dividing the two keys which adds to the straight and square lines that dominate the Kain design. At the top of this brushed metal piece, there is a DPI button, neat and square, elegant yet functional use of a button that has hampered many brands in their sleekness of design. Not to mention the scroll wheel that protrudes the brushed metal strip. The left and right mouse buttons
The sleek and smooth design of the Kain AIMO range and lack of any rubbery grips makes for a very appealing look but the smooth finish can, for some, make the Kain feel slippery. With the Kain 122 weighing in at a middle-of-road 89g ( Kain 200 weighs 105g) meaning it is light enough to be able to whizz it across your mousepad without feeling like you have nothing in your hand, and not sacrificing the feeling of quality. Unlike many of the bigger brands, the Kain-range has no weight adjustment, although I think Roccat got the weighting just right.
Roccat has taken the mouse-click and thought about how to improve something we have taken for granted since the birth of the gaming mouse. By simply repositioning the switch to a more natural location, the new Roccat Titan switch feels more distinguished and more precise. The buttons are also hinged giving it a cushioned feel when clicking. Although the Swarm software is not nearly as refined as Ghub from Logitech or Synapse from Razer, it is extremely straightforward, and apart from a small struggle we had to save DPI settings to the mouse, Roccat Swarm was extremely straight forward and provided great explanations of what each setting would do.
Both the Kain -122 and the 200 feature phenomenal thresholds for acceleration with the minimum being 40g and the maximum of 400IPS (inches per second). Basically said, even if you have superhuman flick ability in your favorite shooter, you will not be able to blame the Roccat Kain 122 or 200 for not being able to keep up with your speed.
Kain 200
Some of the features that set the Kain 200 apart from its wired brother, is obviously the wireless part. The Kain 200, in wired mode looks identical to the Kain 122. When using it as a wireless mouse the cable simply unplugs and can either be plugged into a dongle, that can be placed near to where you are using the mouse, or the wireless receiver can be plugged straight into a USB port. The Kain 200 uses a 2.4Ghz range for best-uninterrupted performance while stretching the battery life on its 1000 mAh battery as far as possible.
For myself, who moves between peripherals on regular intervals for review purposes, but also try and keep a high level of skill in games like Rainbow Six Siege and Escape from Tarkov, changing a mouse can have a devastating impact on your performance. Your mouse is your weapon and like soldiers, we spend many hours honing our skill with our weapon of choice, suddenly switching it out with another generally makes you play and aim worse. My regular daily mouse is the legendary Logitech G903 lightspeed closely followed by the amazing Razer Viper Ultimate. Both premium wireless mice. The Roccat Kain 122 or wireless 200, can easily hold its own against the likes of these two heavyweights. Jumping into my favorite games with the Kain 200 was an absolute blast. I hardly noticed any adjustment time and the Owl-eye Sensor is fantastic feeling extremely accurate and true. With its lesser focus on RGB and gadgets and more emphasis on creating a great experience while not being overly flashy, Roccat has created a spectacular mouse!
If you are looking for a mouse, wired or wireless, that sits more in a mid-range price category while competing and beating many of the high-end gaming mice out there, then the Roccat Kain-range is definitely worth taking a look at. If it is good enough for the Doc, to cause Violence, speed and momentum, then it is surely more than adequate for all of us!
PC hardware is no different, but as a general rule of thumb, bigger is better. Gaming keyboards were the keyboards that featured the most buttons and gadgets and even displays. Endless amounts of programmable keys and USB ports galore. With the increase in eSports and general competitive gaming to the masses so has the demand for more dedicated competitive keyboards. Queue the 60% keyboards!
The Huntsman Elite, Razer's flagship keyboard has a list of features that is difficult to envision fitting on to a keyboard. USB ports, media controls, volume dials, wrist rests, and the list continues. The Huntsman Mini, however, is a stripped-down, bare-bones version. Only sharing the name and optical switches from its feature-laden brother.
The Huntsman Mini is clearly targeted to take the fight to the Ducky One keyboards and boasting impressive dimensions of 30 x 10 x 3cm it is definitely placing itself firmly in the fight. The slightly raised keycaps allow for the Huntsman Mini's RGB to really show its true ability. The keycaps themselves feel really solid and premium to touch and the cheeky font, when illuminated, looks really nice. For the more keen-eyed, there is a subtle Razer inscription on the lip of the keyboard, and no more bombastic illuminating Razer logo.
Looking to the bottom and the back of the Huntsman Mini, you will find the usual "For the Gamers by Gamers" pattern across the back. The braided USB C-type cable, which is also interchangeable with other type-C, slots perfectly and clips in and out with ease, without feeling flimsy or like it might disconnect and the slightest tug. There are also two sets of feet to raise the keyboard, 6- or 9 degrees respectively.
So you have the Razer Huntsman Mini but now you need to use your arrow keys or the delete key, what do you do? Luckily Razer was merciful and provided for a Function key ( Fn) and adequate amount of side-printed functions. These keys can easily be seen from a seated position and when the Fn key is pressed all illumination will be killed off and the function-binded keys will light up in white. Apart from these keys you can do other things like changing preset RGB effects, do macro-binding or even use media keys using the Fn key.
When typing the optical switches, even though not mechanical, still give you a pleasant sound and resistance. Just enough to give a sense of confidence when pressing but not too much to make it a pain. The biggest pain with 60%'ers is to use some of the keys that are readily available on normal keyboards, you need to use the Fn key, so as mentioned before using the Huntsman mini for writing and office work could be a little more cumbersome.
Moving to gaming, like what the Huntsman mini was intended for, it is fantastic. For the first time, I have enough space on my desk to try turning my keyboard more towards the vertical orientation as many pro's do. The new orientation does a lot for comfort and I would recommend it to most. Something that I had to get used to is the short travel of the keys, (3.5mm) this had me moving sooner than anticipated and often losing gunfights while playing Rainbow Six Siege. This has become a normal situation by reviewing peripherals and getting used to new mice and keys regularly.
The happy-medium of firm, yet soft, when it came to keypresses was greatly appreciated while playing Escape from Tarkov where the slightest accidental keypress can be the end of your raid. Resting fingers on keys have often had me blowing my team, or myself, up with accidentally thrown grenades. The Huntsman Mini keys are firm enough to provide rest for weary fingers without causing unpleasantries ingame.
The Razer Huntsman Mini uses the same software as all the other mice and keyboards, Razer Synapse, is a rather simple to use software allowing you to tweak everything possible on the hardware. But, seeing as the Huntsman mini is aimed at esports, Synapse is not needed for everything. Although small, the Huntsman mini has space for 5 onboard profiles which include keybinds and RGB settings.
What it lacks in lavish designs it definitely makes up for in features. It packs a 34inch, QHD, 21:9 aspect ratio (3440x1440), 144Hz, and 1ms response time. With a list of features like that its tough to not get excited. Did I mention it's curved? And it features Adaptive sync, which means Gsync and FreeSync are both catered for.
But it does not end there, seeing as it is ultrawide, it allows for multiple inputs, these can come in the form of either HDMI (x2) or Display Port (x2). With more than enough USB ports to cater to nearly every possible device, you may need to connect.
The game needs the following minimum specs to play on your system;
OS: Windows 8.1 or newer
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 @ 2.4ghz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 64000 @ 2.4ghz
Memory: 4GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 420 or ATI Radeon HD 5570
Direct X: Version 11
Storage: 32GB available space
But, of course, better specs will mean better performance and high quality.
The game then allows you to toggle between legacy and remastered graphics at any time during the game by hitting the space bar. I almost broke my space bar in the first 10 minutes as I was smashing that thing to see what it looked like back in 1999 and what they’ve changed.
I must say – this is probably one of the best remaster upscales I’ve seen as the game is smoother and much better quality and the difference is VERY visible, even to the most graphic blind gamers out there. Being an RTS game – don’t expect super realistic shadows and nature, but rather see an RTS game looking like it should in 2020.
I personally feel this was done so well as the remaster team at Petroglyph Games included members of the original dev team from Westwood Studios.
Playing through the campaigns of both of the titles included in the Remastered Collection, I was reminded again of the old school grind of games as walkthroughs on YouTube didn’t exist back then and so I again chose to push through and beat levels by figuring it out myself and saving often. So, if there are walkthrough and “game hack” methods on YouTube and other services, I don’t know because I haven’t checked. And that is the best way to play the game in my humble opinion.
The overall playing experience of the Remastered Collection has been tweaked and doesn’t feel as “clunky” as a lot of older games do feel when you replay them. Missions are challenging and require some tactics and strategy. Rushing through them will often result in a mission failure (I saw my fair share of these while playing the more challenging missions) or in a sub-par result.
Based on nostalgic value alone (which by now you would see is quite high for me), I’d give them Command & Conquer Remastered Collection a 12 out of 10.
But based on a fair play of the game and taking all things into fair consideration (including nostalgic value), I would give this game a solid 8/10.
The guys over at EnerGhack were super generous in sending some my way for me to test and try. And test it I did, as you’ll soon see, as I put it through the paces as I used it through a very busy time of my life and pushed EnerGhack to its limits, as well as my own, as I experimented with it in other areas of my life that fall outside of gaming.
While most energy supplements claim to help you with reactions, focus, endurance, energy and hydration while gaming, EnerGhack takes it a step further and out of the realm of gaming and makes the claim that it will help you with studying, gym and other high energy activities.
So, I took this statement are really put it to the test.
Luckily this drink came at a very busy time in my life (as you will see in a bit) even though lockdown started in South Africa and things were meant to quieten down a bit, in my life – it was the opposite.
So, I used the product in the following scenarios to see how it would help;
With all coffee shops and that being closed at this stage of our lockdown in SA (not that any would be open at 2am), the only source of extra energy I had was the EnerGhack that I brought along with me – and it REALLY did help. The minute I felt the drowsiness of a long day kicking in in the early hours of the morning, a few sips of EnerGhack really snapped me out of it and kept me going for an extra hour or so.
Overall, EnerGhack really did deliver on what they said they would and in all of the scenarios and times that I used the product, no jitters or slumps were experienced and I wasn’t left with that weird artificial sweetener taste in my mouth.
While we're on the topic of taste – the flavours of EnerGhack are all incredible in their own way but mixing them literally blew my mind as the flavours merged and worked in ways my brain could not even comprehend. I even let my wife have a few sips and her exact words were “you can taste that it’s an energy drink but its not gross at all,” which is all the proof you need knowing that my wife absolutely hates the taste of other energy drinks.
Currently, EnerGhack comes in four flavours. These are Raging Raspberry, Blueberry Bomber, Tropical Pineapple and Cosmic Lemon.
Of all the individual flavours, Raspberry and Pineapple definitely came out on tops in my books, and the mix of the two is very high up on my list of favourite mixes.
Being fortunate enough to have access to the full flavour range, I experimented with various different flavour combos and my favourite mix is definitely Lemon/Pineapple, followed closely by Raspberry/Pineapple. I even went as far as to mix all 4 flavours into one and, while not bad at all, it just turned into a “just fruity” flavour and definitely didn’t feature on my list of need to try again combos.
I do hope that new flavours will be added to the menu soon like hint hint mango, litchi and guava.
Your thumb has got more than enough work to do though. Another two programmable keys are neatly tucked in the side of the mouse where your thumb can easily glide up to use them. These buttons are perfectly placed and feel natural to press. The third thumb button is an accuracy button which drops the DPI dramatically while holding the button pressed. This is great when doing fine positioning in design work or when you need to get that perfect aiming accuracy in your favourite shooter. The only problem with this button if you have smaller hands is that you might not be able to reach it without adjusting your grip. This is not a mistake on Logitech but merely an example of how certain mice suite certain hand sizes as well as grips.
For myself, with smaller hands, I found the size of the G502 to be perfect. In the past, I have reviewed many smaller mice which do come in much lighter than the G502 but after extensive time spent using them, I found my hand would often ache. The G502 has the perfect height in your palm and resting your hand on the mouse will have your fingers naturally land on the buttons, in my book, that's a win!
Turning the G502 and clipping off the magnetic bottom end shows you where the vast options of weights can be placed. The G502, even when not weighted, still comes in at a hefty 121g, for some this might be the deal-breaker already! Add in all the supplied weights and you looking at 139g. The difference is that you can place the weights all around the mouse. Making for many options such as weighting it front-back or side to side.
Another massive upgrade in terms of longevity for nearly all of the Logitech items is the change to Omron switches. Omron, being Logitech's own design bolsters the click life from 20 million to 50 million, that is a lot of clicks before they might give in.
The G Pro is also fitted with the durable Omron keys that are rated for 50 million clicks. This gives the G Pro even more of an advantage over the competition. The Omron switches allow for an extremely fast actuation as well as moving back to a position just as quickly. Meaning clicks are more precise and more on time.
The choice in heavy or light mouse choice is very much up to the user, but the Logitech G Pro wired comes in at a measly 83g. Some might consider this too light, and at first, I would have to have agreed. But giving it some time, and getting used to how easily it glides across the mousepad I can now understand why many would prefer the lighter mice.
When I first started using Logitech G Hub I found it to be cumbersome. But after comparing it to some of the other brand offerings I came to realize that it was actually one of the easier packages to use. Using it on the G Pro was not going to add fireworks and unicorns to the functionality of the mouse. Instead, the G Pro is rather bare when it comes to the software. The Hub allows you to tweak your DPI settings, calibrate the G Pro to the mousepad that you are currently using, and lastly customize the RGB effect of the swooping strip that hugs the bottom half of the mouse, as well as the Logitech emblem that will sit firmly in the centre of your palm when using it. The RGB options are rather limited but generally, the colours are extremely vibrant and bright.
I took the G Pro wired for a spin while playing some games such as Rainbow 6 Siege, Escape from Tarkov, and Assassins Creed: Origins. In games like Origins and other slower-paced RPG titles the G Pro did come up lacking compared to the G903 which I use as my daily mouse, the G Pro lacks the extra buttons which come in handy when casting spells and using potions in games such as World of Warcraft. Switching over to first-person shooters is where the G Pro really shines. The extremely accurate sensor and masterfully crafted Omron keys make aiming and clicking heads an absolute dream! Once I found my sweet spot in terms of DPI, my accuracy started climbing dramatically and I was feeling like a casual king.
The game starts its introduction with a well-planned money heist with enough of a take that everyone involved could retire early and very happy.
However, as you guessed it - this is not the case!
Through massive betrayal and being forced to take a bit of a rest – as being shot in the face might require, Lincoln sets out on the world’s biggest revenge quest. Our friendly neighbourhood protagonist recruits the help of a CIA agent who he worked closely with in Vietnam and the two start on a path to not just kill those responsible for the betrayal, but to completely dismantle their kingdom from underneath them one brick at a time, plunging their world into instability the likes of which they've never experienced from their lofty thrones.
Unfortunately, this is another game that takes on the well-worn path of revenge but it does so in a unique way that almost brings a breath of fresh air into it, with snaps of real life (looking at least) clips of a court hearing to delve deeper into the slaughter that was Mr Clay’s takeover of New Bordeaux.
Before I give away the whole game (this isn’t a walkthrough), lets looks a little closer at what MAFIA III is.
From the start up
The Definitive Edition is not a remaster of the game, as I originally thought, but rather a repackage of the game into one collection in anticipation of the remaster of MAFIA I releasing later this year.
The repackage includes the base game of MAFIA III and all DLCs, as well as the Family Kick-Back pack which gives you a few exclusive cars and weapons to make use of in the game.
But is it really exclusive if everyone has it? Asking for a friend…
The total download size of the game on Xbox is around 56gb and can be yours for the low low price of R549 (at the time writing), or you can own the entire Mafia Trilogy for R999.
Not too shabby hey?
The Setting
As said above, the game is set in a fictional version of New Orleans, known as New Bordeaux. 2K has done a great job at providing us with a huge playing space and each area having it’s own unique flare and style, as well as each of the mafia in those areas having a slight twist to them.You really have everything from man eating alligators and red-necks brewing moonshine in the Bayou to classy upmarket suburban areas with pompous denizens with flashy cars and beach front homes.
There is no fast travel system available in game and so the map must be manually traversed (we recommend finding a car). This can sometimes be a tad tedious, but I learnt to love the drive with good music and classy drifts, enjoying the ever-changing city in each of the different areas. The game is well rounded off with a difference in the areas during the day and at night, and a full weather cycle.
Gameplay and Controls
The controls of MAFIA III are fairly easy to master with it having a very similar vibe to other criminal type open world games. You play in Third Person and control camera angles with the right stick and movement with the left. This allows you to move in one direction while quickly having a look down an alley or through a window without being too obtuse.
Combat is challenging but manageable as standing in the open will result in you getting gunned down. Moving from cover to cover is a must - obviously. Firing from cover is quite easy as using the aim control will automatically cause Lincoln to stand up or peer out of cover while aiming down sight. Aim assist can be adjusted from full snap on to nothing at all.
Gameplay is quite broad with various missions and collectables to go find spread out across New Bordeaux and there are a few races and just generally interesting places to go check out.
Building up your team and seeing how they start to benefit you, especially if you put a little time into building up their rackets, is a nice addition to this game as it does give the gamer that little bit of motivation to focus on something else other than just plodding along the main story line.
One aspect of gameplay that I personally found lacking was the actual variation in the main mission types. After taking my second area and starting on the third, I already got that dreaded gamer’s Deja vu feeling of the same monotonous gameplay. This feeling only heightened as I played on through the story and actually started to detract from a fairly captivating and well written story of revenge, albeit a bit of a cliché storyline.
The missions really did fall into a creative rut with every mission being attack this hot spot and this one, do a few cash steals or destroy stuff to a certain value, defeat the lieutenant who came in to check what’s up and then defeat the boss once you removed all his lieutenants from the area.
You’d think after 4 or 5 of these, the lieutenants and area bosses would wizen up and not walk into a well "defended area" that fell straight into the plan of our highly trained and incredibly motivated hardened killer.
Cars and Driving
Although I could’ve included this section under gameplay and controls, I feel it deserved a section of its own as the driving and cars in MAFIA III were really a redeeming factor for the game in my opinion.
With there being various types of cars and styles, I often found my car …ahem… shopping took a little longer as I’d find a model that I liked, drive 100 metres and see it in a better colour and slam on brakes to get that one rather. This did lessen substantially after I unlocked a certain benefit that would bring some really good-looking cars right to me. This did then result in my spending way too much time and hard-earned money in Big Rick’s Custom Auto getting my cars kitted just how I liked them and purring like a kitty.
And then returning later again after winning more stuff in the different races scattered across the map.
The driving in this game was really enjoyable as you learnt to time the drift perfectly around an intersection and learnt when the drift needed just a little more gas, a brake or a hand brake to successfully complete depending on the car, road surface, speed and sharpness of the corner you were attacking. The sense of absolute satisfaction I got from nailing the perfect drift on this game time after time really kept me coming back for more and I really didn’t mind the long trips between places once I had this down. In fact, I’d sometimes plan the long route on purpose just to enjoy the car a little bit longer.
And the classic tunes coming through the radio, especially on WNBX, definitely helped set the mood and contributed to my sheer enjoyment of driving on this game.
Final Thoughts
Although the game did fall into a bit of a monotonous grind in the missions, I found there were still many aspects of the game that kept me coming back for more and actually made me think less of the same type of mission I was playing for the thirtieth time. So, although the monotonous factor is one big negative factor for me, there were lots of little positives that helped redeem the game and turn it into an overall enjoyable experience. The main ones of these definitely being the tunes, cars and driving.
I also enjoyed the break away from the traditional Italian Mafia of the previous two games with the twist of Lincoln growing up as an African American on the streets of a very prejudiced era and carving his own type of justice to the Italian Mafia.
Just one final word of warning before giving my final rating of the game.
To accurately represent the times, MAFIA III does have a lot of racial and sexist slurs and stereotypes as was common in the 60’s. 2K does give a nice explanation as to why they went with this route in the opening of the game. On top of this, profanities and nudity is about a dime a dozen and coupled with the slurs and violence, this really is a game that is made for the older crowd of gamer.
With all that being said and balanced in my brain. Taking the good and the bad, as Will Thatcher’s dad taught me, I give this repackaged version of MAFIA III a solid 7 out of 10.
Before we dive into the details of the MBX4K Ranger here are some of the technical specs:
The stand of the AOC CQ27G2 has a wide-V footprint which fortunately won't take up much of your desk space. The stylish silver finish compliments the rest of the screen tremendously well and the cable management hole has more than adequate space for keyboard, mouse, and any other cables you might need to have neatly managed. The stand also allows for a wide range of movements of the monitor. Before we get to that, it is worth mentioning that the AOC CQ27G2 is fully VESA capable, with the 100x100 mount. The stand allows for the monitor to be raised by 130mm and provides -4° to 21.5° of tilt and 34° of swivel adjustments. Being a curved display, these angles and adjustments should be able to satisfy the fussiest of monitor-adjusters... (do you get those people?)
The connections for the monitor, which are as follows:
All are situated at the bottom of the monitor and face down, for wall mounting purposes. From the moment I pulled the monitor from its box to start assembling, the general feel of the packaging and the product in hand is that of quality. The AOC CQ27G2 feels solid and well built. Other monitors, such as my personal 27inch 144hz QHD monitor from another well-known brand, in the same price range as well, feels quite flimsy and like it might fall over if its bumped. The AOC CQ27G2, however, does not come with built-in speakers. Most would not find this to be a problem as, generally, the built-in speakers as very underpowered. The CQ27G2 also comes standard as both G-sync and Free-sync capable.
The CQ27G2 boasts a 1ms response time that, in today's terms, has become the standard if you want to call your monitor a gaming monitor. For those who don't know, response time is the time it takes for a single pixel to go from grey to grey. Along with this, the AOC delivers this in 144Hz. Refresh rate refers to how many frames it can produce within a single second. Regular monitors generally output between the 60-75hz range. If you have not experienced 144+Hz I would strongly suggest you try it. Once you see the silky smoothness of 144Hz you will never want to go back.
G-sync/Free-sync are ways that AMD and Nvidia stop screen tearing to occur. Both of these technologies will allow your GPU to sync its refresh rate with that of the monitor creating perfect sync between the frames that your GPU delivers and the frames your monitor displays. In the past, as well as with more budget monitors, they generally only support one or the other. Which can cause a headache when changing GPU's or if you don't research before you buy.
Monitor panels are a thing of great mystery, as I have come to learn during my research. You have 2 general types of panels. TN panels generally struggle with angles, colors, and contrast, but they tend to be fast, and as many may say, in this case, speed is worth a few sacrifices. VA panels, on the other hand, drop the speed and focus on picture quality and reproduction. Then you get IPS, the best of both worlds apart from their singular drawback... Price!
Even though the CQ26G2 has a VA panel, I was immediately blown away when I fired up Assassin's Creed Odyssey! I have never experienced colors and lighting to pop so spectacularly. Never have I experienced a sunrise or sunset, apart from the real thing, on any monitor! This might just be because it is my first experience with a VA panel but, man oh man am I hooked! Games with vibrant colors are close to unrecognizable when displaying on the AOC CQ27G2. With the research I have done, I have discovered that curved panels, like the CQ27G2, are prone to having uniformity issues across the panel, I conducted a simple test of moving a black box across the screen and apart from the slight variant in color here and there it is hardly noticeable.
The G815 is extremely thin, at a measly height of only 22mm, Logitech had to do something drastic with their keycaps to get it this low. And that is what they did. Logitech partnered with Kailh to produce a new switch, departing from the previous Romer-G's, and what they created is the GL switch, which comes in 3 variants, clicky, tactile and linear. This new partnership has allowed Logitech to create a low profile key that allows for lots of travel while not compromising the low profile design, the best of both worlds. To give you an idea of the travel of these switches compared to normal Cherry switches. The cherry switches have a travel of 4mm compared to the 2.5mm of the GL.
Next to the ever-present Logitech emblem sits four M-buttons, these are profile keys. The G815 can store up to 3 setups on the keyboard itself, meaning you can quickly jump between games and, with a press of a button, your macros will be switched for that game. To make it even better is because the presets are saved on the keyboard itself, you can unplug it, take it to a friend, and have your presets with you instantly.
The G815 features 4 media buttons situated under the roller wheel which controls volume. The wheel might look strange at first but it has a premium feel and allows for the slightest volume adjustments. Neatly hidden at the top of the keyboard is also a USB-port. This is very nice when you want to plug an external or a wireless dongle for your G Pro wireless mouse. It is however only USB2.0 so don't expect fast transfer speeds.
The GHub is also where you will find the key-bind options for your macros. This is a pretty straight forward process with the Ghub detecting games that you play and giving you options of what you would possibly want on these macros. Thanks, Logitech, didn't even know I needed my meds on macro when playing Escape from Tarkov.
The Viper Ultimate, as the name suggests, is the top tier Viper. It is wireless thanks to Razer's own Hyperspeed technology. I was skeptical at best, of the wireless technology having, as they say, the same performance as wired. I first went wireless on my own G903, so logically i will compare the Viper Ultimate to that. And I am pleased to tell you the statements are correct. I cannot distinguish between wired and wireless with the new tech. It is simply astounding.
Razer has really taken it to the next level, the new sensor, called the Razer Focus + Optical sensor, that is being used in the Viper is rated for 20 000DPI. Personally I think its no need to have a sensor that can go higher than even 10k DPI. I have never played on DPI settings higher than 1600, but that might just be personal preference. Another spec that Razer brags with is the 650inches per second tracking speed. It is really tough to describe what it feels like but when taking the Razer Viper out of its cradle and you start to use it. The accuracy level is un-rivaled. At times it felt like my cursor was attached to my eyes rather than my hand...
The Viper also makes use of the Razer Synapse software which can take some time to get used to and for newer users, the software can be rather daunting! With a little bit of tinkering though, it works really well and allows for tremendous customization especially if you use more Razer products. Another of the features that should be mentioned is the fact that you can calibrate your Viper for the specific mousepad you are using. This lets the sensor know what type of surface it is being used on and therefor adapts and tracks better.
Some people might argue the fact that the G305 only offers wireless through the dongle, and not through Bluetooth like many of its counterparts and even lesser productivity mice within the Logitech stable. This means you won't be able to use the G305 with tablets, mobile phones or some gaming consoles. But at the same time, this just proves the point even more. The Logitech G305 is content to be what it is.
Even though it might come across as rather mundane and boring, the G305 still boasts the Hero sensor, which is one of the best optical sensors around. Although in this version it is only capable of 12 000 DPI.
RGB has become all the craze lately, with everything, including the kitchen sink (or toaster) featuring RGB. The Deathadder, although, more reserved, also feature a two-zone RGB setup, one being the scroll wheel the other being the large Razer logo which will mostly be covered by your palm during use. Setting up the RGB can be easy, or slightly more complicated depending on how in-depth you want to customize. If you are not too phased, using the Razer Synapse program will give you 5 quick effects such as Breathe, Static, Reactive, Spectrum and Audio Cycle. If customization is your thing you will need to download Chroma effects from the Razer website. Using Chroma effects you can customize to your heart's content. Having more Razer products obviously will make Chroma effects even more powerful.
The left- and right-click buttons are where another big part of the magic happens. These are no mere mechanical switches. No, they are optic switches. That means instead of a button being pressed to make a mechanical switch, these click buttons use light to activate. There is a constant source of light that, when clicked, breaks the beam of light causing the mouse to register the click. What this means is your clicks are literally registering at the speed of light... Let that sink in...
The two inside programmable buttons can be programmed to act like any button on both your keyboard or mouse. This is especially handy when things get hairy in-game or you simply need to page back through your browser. If you are someone who prefers to play MMO's then obviously having only 2 programmable buttons on the mouse is a bit of a letdown.
Within 20min I could feel the difference. I felt more spritely and energetic. Both of these feelings obviously help for a more focused mind as well as I felt a lot less drained by midday compared to my usual day. Which, by that time, I would have been on my third coffee. Mixing the X Gamer with 500ml of water also helps for the fluid level intake which I am really bad at. By 2 pm, the time the energy drinks usually start to wear off and you start to feel run-down and shaky the X Gamer was still going strong with absolutely ZERO negative feelings. On the contrary, It actually made me feel like drinking water instead of more coffee. This might be due to the slight parchedness it leaves in your mouth. All I did was fill up my shaker with some H2O and off I went.
The pricing is also decent with Takealot coming in at prices ranging from R499 to R749 at the time of checking. This might feel like a steep price to pay. But considering what you pay for your Seattle coffee on the way to work... X Gamer makes a lot more sense!
I thought about this for a moment and it really inspired me, most people who have serious accidents feel defeated by life and then find the strength to carry on, which in itself is inspiring, but my now good friend Mr.T, which I will now code name him, took a greater step forward and found a way to carry on gaming without the help of expensive custom made controllers or voice-activated software, he mastered the art of holding an XBOX remote in one hand and playing games.
I asked Mr.T if I could interview him, he agreed, but my greatest challenge was, what questions to ask? Do I ask about the accident? Do I ask what he misses most? Then I thought why ask about the negative side of things.
Let's ask this LEGEND the same questions I would ask anyone, with 1 or 2 being less of. So asking questions which show the world that once you’re a gamer, you're ALWAYS a gamer, showing that spirit and passion never dies and we as gamers are never alone in our struggles, we may be toxic at times, we may rage, we may relay in great detail what explicit things we've done to someone's female parent… But if it came down to it we would all support one another, lifting each other on our shoulders and giving them the drive to carry on….. and someone like Mr.T, he showed me that never giving up on what we love most is a good way to keep doing what we love most.
https://youtu.be/MHxyAPAYM1Y
Were you a gamer before your accident?
- Yes, I used to play more PC games in the beginning, but after the release of the XBOX 360, I only then got into console gaming.
HA hear that “master Race”
Why did you want to keep gaming?
- After my accident, I did not immediately take up gaming again, but due to boredom I tried until I could handle the controller, and have never looked back.
When “screw it” just won’t do.
What were the obstacles you had to overcome to keep gaming?
- The biggest obstacle physically was getting the controller to work for me since I play with a standard controller. Mentally it is the worry that what you do is bringing the team down.
If you’ve ever seen him play Siege, you'd think he was MNK.
What is the greatest challenge you still face as a gamer?
- Because I move the right analog stick with my index finger, I am unable to make some of the quick / finer movements.
My thumb likes to think it’s a pinky from time to time…
What games do you enjoy playing?
- I play mainly co-op or party games since I game with my cousin. I hate playing alone. When it comes to genres or types, I really cannot choose, if it is interesting, I will play it.
There is nothing better than jamming with friends….
What’s your all-time favorite game?
- That is a difficult one to answer, but for the past few years, I would have to say Rainbow Six Siege.
YES FOLKS SIEGE….and why??!?!?!!? Because siege is life
When you’re not gaming what do you like to do?
- Read manga or watch YouTube / Netflix.
Man after my own heart
Do you get any help when you game?
- I sometimes ask my cousins to play parts of games if I struggle, but it does not happen often due to them being in different towns.
I still need help, I'm yet to make it off that damn bridge in Darksouls…Don’t judge me
What game moment made you rage the hardest?
- I cannot remember really, but know that Crash Bandicoot has made me rage quit and switch the console off.
Ahhh yes, the one who started it all…..stupid spikes traps EVERY TIME I JUMP THEN YOU GO UP!!!!!!
Fellow Gamers lets all raise our remotes, our mice? Mouses? Whatever you pc people call them and our phones, yes mobile gamers we include you too, and salute a fellow gamer, through sheer will power, determination and a bit of boredom found his way home and took back his place in front of the monitor, screen, Full HD 292-inch tv with crisp refreshes and crystal clear sound and….. sorry Takealot shopping is NOT your friend when trying to make a point, *AHEM* welcome back gamer, you will always find a place on my squad and a spot in my party chat and above all else… my Respect.
Razer, after releasing the Huntsman in 2018, to great response, has now made the Huntsman more esports inclined with the Huntsman Tournament Edition. Let's dive into the Huntsman TE and see why this is the option you need to look at when looking for an esports keyboard.
The biggest thing to remember about having a ten-keyless keyboard is the fact that there is no Numpad, for those of you who are constantly punching numbers into a spreadsheet, this is not the keyboard you need or want. Like all Razer products, it features loads of RGB and linked with the ever-evolving Synapse which, in my opinion, is probably the best peripheral software around. After spending a lot of time playing around in the Synapse software, fiddling with macros and lighting effects, as well as setting up profiles for the Huntsman, of which you can store 5 of them on the keyboard memory so you have your profiles with you even when you don't have your pc, I decided to leave it on ambient awareness. This mode lets the keyboard mimick the colours that are displayed on the screen.
An easy way to compare is that the Huntsman will type even when you are merely thinking of typing. For twitch gaming, which means games where reactions play a big role, the 1.5mm actuation makes the world of a difference and I could see the improvement in my gameplay once I got used to the light actuation point. For those who will be using the Huntsman for typing, expect many moans and even more backspaces for all the unwanted double letters. I started the review with the Huntsman and quickly reverted to the Blackwidow due to all the typing errors.
The Huntsman makes use of optomechanical switches. For those who are not clued up, this means when you press down on the key it interrupts a lazer underneath the switch. This has two main advantages, firstly it means there is nearly no latency, providing the quickest input possible. Secondly, it means there are less moving parts which mean that the keyboard should last substantially longer. Esports players are particularly hard on their hardware, similarly to players who tend to rage often, the Huntsman comes prepared for such user and should be able to withstand some serious punishment.
Once created, you get to select your starting area and are given a choice of three safe locations in low level areas. Perfect for a keen, yet inexperienced novice mage just starting out on his own. I selected Raincourt to the east and started my journey.
The opening sequence is quite strange as your newly selected appearance is forged from the fire in a rather odd and disturbing manner. It's all over rather quickly, leaving your brain reeling with so many questions...
Getting the hang of the game is simple with the tutorial quest giver standing right in the starting area with a giant glowing exclamation mark floating over their head - convenience is key.
The tutorial quests give you a quick and rough knowledge of the game and give you enough skills to start you off. These include foraging, harvesting, cooking, combat, and crafting.
You are not bound to these quests and can head off on your own right away or at any point of your choosing. The quests are not long though and quite easy to complete so I'd recommend getting them out the way and earning some free XP for levels early on.
At lower levers, your buildings are limited to wood with very simple decorations. Stone and other fancier building materials are unlocked at higher levels. Once you've put in a decent chunk of time and earned the levels, the buildings that you can make are really quite spectacular.
The game does not have set buildings and you can build whatever your mind and your resource allows you to. From starting off with a simple hunting shack with a cooking fire to a beautiful castle with ramparts and towers and quidditch type pitches (yes - you read that right).
Thrones are vital when building something you'd like to keep as they assign ownership of the building to you and your house and items and doors cannot be opened by anybody not in your house. THEED3 and myself got quite lucky in a PvP server and were able to steal a well established building from another player who had not yet put a throne in, saying they weren't impressed is an understatement! Thrones also stop the building and items from decaying over time, which is a rather nice feature when trying to build a more permanent establishment for yourself our your house.
I feel that I need to give this game two ratings.
So, as a single-player game I give this game a 6/10 as it really is more focused at online play but is still enjoyable on your own.
As a multiplayer game, which will be my more official rating as it is an online game, I give Citadel Forged with Fire a rising 7,5 stars out of 10.
I say rising as this game as only recently made the move from PC only to multi-platform and I feel like they've done a fairly decent job of it. With one or two tweaks to the game, namely to menu navigation and controls, this game could definitely rate higher (provided they don't break anything else in the process).
With that being said, I don't feel like the issues I have mentioned are game-breaking and are valid reasons to deter anyone from buying this game.
If you are into any of the mentioned movies and game styles then Citadel is definitely a game you would enjoy.
Remembering what the game was like back when you started off with a wagon and a dream, you find a place to settle and begin your adventure, you would need to ensure you have enough food for your people, then construct various building to satisfy the needs of your people, be it a granary to store their food, a barracks to protect them from pirates and then an aqueduct to help them fight fires, and so much more but those buildings were necessary to keep just 1 city happy….the name of the game is to expand your empire and have many cities across the globe. Each city will need some attention to ensure its continued growth and happiness, but more cities mean more revenue and more revenue means easier gameplay so be ye benign or malign? Good or bad? Tax your people heavily or let them prosper under minimal taxation, the choice is never permanent you can always adjust the rate later.
All the while your expanding your empire and finding new resources and areas of interest, other nations are doing the same, the moment you meet another nation's unit you will be introduced to their leader, now civilization is quite humorous with whom they have running each nation, for example Cleopatra is the leader of Egypt, Queen Elizabeth for England and Teddy Roosevelt for America and there are a whole host of other nations that will either play nice….or wage war. But for the most part everyone is quite friendly, and the scale of friend or foe is often decided by the Strongest nation, which brings us to one of my favorite parts of the game, NOT IMMORTAL COMBAT (TM patent pending), but yes the combat system, I'm still talking old school CIV here people I haven’t gotten to the juicy sweet nectar that is CIV 6 yet, besides constructing buildings to keep your cities happy, you will need to train Military units to defend your cities, AHAAAAA there's a twist ladies and Gents, another main focus of the game is to progress through histories various eras, from stone age to bronze to modern and beyond, you will be given a list of options to research each with its own benefits and unlocks a certain building or unit to create furthering your advancement. And with advancements comes the wonders of the words, which can be built in a city and have a certain aspect greatly boosted, didn't I mention city aspects? No? well ok then ill take your word for it, cities have different aspects which help it flourish, production, culture, faith, and gold are what makes or breaks a city, as your citizens will demand that each aspect be fully attended and if not, then the city will start to lose momentum in development, "LET THEM HAVE CAKE", I'm sure someone famous said that, and I'm sure everyone was happy, who doesn't love cake?
The map is navigated by a “tiled” map, which means, adjacent hexagonal tiles make up the map and movement was determined by how may “tiles” would/ could be crossed, more advanced or mobile units could move farther than normal ones allowing them to traverse the map quickly,
In its 8 bit style combat was pure and simple my block with a picture of a man on a horse versus your block with a picture of a man with a bow, the attacker would connect the blocks and the system would calculate who would win, this is based on the units attack power and damage, whichever unit was stronger would generally win, not to say that you will ALWAYS win, I remember being a highly advanced nation with tanks and planes and feeling pretty good about myself, I come across this poor little village on my now almost dominated continent and I thought to myself “puny insect I will now crush your insolence with my mighty tank” and my tank then perished to a bow and arrow unit….. I knew exactly how all the crew on the Deathstar felt, I continued to nuke the town twice for good measure.
And if world domination isn’t your thing then you could try the peaceful way and sign peace treaties with all your fellow nations, indulging in trade and exchanging technologies, and betting the lives of all nations, but this too could crumble if your “Allies” gain the upper hand and decide to destroy you instead, always make sure YOU are the strongest nation, other nations will follow you and dare not challenge you. The peaceful way is also less troubling in the sense that no one really wants to be friends with the bully, they will scold you and resent you for being a warmonger….I Just remind them why I’m top dog and they all play nice again.
There are in my opinion 2 objectives in the game, either destroy all other nations OR be the first civilization to advance to the space age, where you colonize the stars with your nation’s people. Both are acceptable ends so go with whatever you feel is right, even if it means smiting an entire nation right off the face of the earth, obliterate their history and wipe their existence from memory!!!! Or be the good guy and help everyone to the final stage of space exploration.
Now that we have the basic game idea lets skip leaps and bounds ahead to CIV 6 and all its glory, the game stays true to its roots with there being multiple nations and eras to advance through, expanding quickly and developing new technologies, BUT and this is a huge but, haha I said butt, they did something amazing THEY UPPED THE GRAPHICS, *gasp*, who would’ve thought, well yes we all knew we would be seeing, in my opinion, a very visually stunning game.
The map is littered with various resource tiles, some are basic and some are luxurious which means they are a valuable trading commodity, but you will need the basics in order to survive Farms and mines to produce food and production points, the higher your production points the quicker it is to construct buildings or train units, this is vital to advance quickly as slow-moving cities fall behind in the ever going march of time. The in-game system alerts you to a certain problem within a certain city, for example, you will be told if there is insufficient housing for your people or not enough food, or if the people get……bored…well not bored per say, but they will demand more amenities or stuff for them to do, now I know how my mother felt, “MOM I'm hungry”, “MOM I'm bored”, excuse me I think I need to call my mom.
The combat system has also been vastly vamped up and now is very entertaining to watch, your units are no longer blocks smashing into each other, they are now, actual representations of their “real world” counterparts, be it units with clubs that run towards enemy and swing like pro stars, or musket men who fire their flintlocks, it is very fun to watch the units fight each other. There are 3 kinds of units which are pretty obvious given what they are, Ground, Aerial and naval, let it be noted that your ground units can traverse the sea but will be at a combat disadvantage. But apart from the basics of the combat, there are other actions your units can take such as, Fortify, which anchors the unit in place boosting its defensive rating, or if your unit has just emerged from a skirmish then you can Fortify heal, where the units will starting regenerating lost health, or they can “sleep” which just makes the unit inactive in place but whenever you require them to follow another instruction you can simply “wake up” the unit and they will be available to move again.
Military units will also have a range which they can attack from, your melee units will need to be adjacent or next to the tile which the enemy is on, ranged units (pending unit) will have a range of 1 or 2 tiles, however, the tiles must follow a straight line, this means you can’t attack in a J or L Pattern, this makes the player think strategically about unit placement to make use of all units available.
Not all units are available immediately even after unlocking the technology for it, some units require a certain resource and in the upper techs, a specific building, once the technology is unlocked that resource will appear on a tile on the map which you will need to build on to utilize it, you will need horses to be able to create cavalry, iron to create knights, and so the list continues.
The game also allows you to run a certain style of government, which then allows you to put in place “policies” which are a whole lot of cards detailing certain benefits to your empire, it can be military, diplomatic or economic. And each type of government allows you to put into place one or more of a certain kind of policy, this allows you to promote your play style and boosts areas which you need to further your agendas.
A very critical in-game mechanic, in my opinion, is trade, you can trade with other nations for resources, works of art or even straight-up cash. You can also make demands of your “neighbors”, demands of whatever they have that you want, Why you bully me? This can lead to growing a relationship or starting to turn one into a reason to declare war. Besides trade there is another thing you want that your enemy has….information, you will need to train a spy (later game unit) who you can send to infiltrate an opposing nations city, while stationed they provide you with a view of the map which your “host” city occupies, and can be given certain missions to accomplish, be it, steal funds or technology, steal works of art, or create a rebellion within the city, All of which provide you with an upper hand.
And all this can be made that much more fun in multiplayer, challenge your friends to a world domination race or face off in world war the likes of which will shatter the stars and forever scar the friendship you once had, "AMANDA!! PLEASE TRADE SOME URANIUM WITH ME, I NEED IT FOR A UHHHH...CERTAIN PROJECT IM RUNNING".
With all the strategies, unhappy citizens, impending doom of a nuclear strike and the crippling NEED to keep ahead of all other nations, you can’t help but lose yourself in this timeless game, “just 30 minutes and I’m done” will be the most spoken words on your lips followed by “I started at 5, HOW THE HELL IS IT MIDNIGHT” which is accompanied by “ITS MIDNIGHT!! GET TO BED!!”.
Right, let's ask the hard-hitting questions. Is the game entertaining? a sound yes. Is the game replayable? Most definitely and circumstances are always different. Is the game for everyone? I would really have to say yes.
The enjoyment of the game and the visuals and the sheer replayability of this game earns it a well deserved 9/10 stars
Another huge thanks to PRIMA INTERACTIVE for the sponsor of this game and a chance to relive a childhood long forgotten
Generally, sniper games or even missions would have you creep around and kill off the enemies as you come across them. Upon reaching the intended target you would "eliminate" them and then you would be done. SGW Contracts takes a different approach. Firstly, you will need to choose your approach carefully, stealth is non-negotiable. But your approach can determine how much interaction you will come across. Many of the missions require you to not only eliminate the target but often retrieve intel, or even sabotage a facility. This will have you not only working from behind the scope but thinking about the effect your shot will have on the rest of the mission. This approach often leads to fewer bullets fired which creates intense moments of manoeuvring past enemies instead of engaging! Once your objective is complete you now need to be extracted, this is where your planning comes into play as well as a harsh and brutal punishment for those who think they are able to fight their way out. This is where the large maps can become a hindrance which will see you often backtracking vast distances and hiding and watching for long periods of time. I guess they don't call it GHOST warrior for no reason!
As in most sniper games, pulling off an incredible 1000m headshot on a driving target doesn't just happen. it takes timing, precision and lots of science. While the optics of your gun does provide amazing amounts of info regarding wind and trajectory of your bullet there are still many elements that you will need to contend with, and in this lies the magic of SGW Contracts. Not only are these elements that make this game extremely difficult to play, but it also makes it extremely satisfying when everything works out! The over-the-top kill cinematics of a bullet penetrating a skull and having the brain explode out the back does feel slightly out of sorts in a game that has very dark and moody tone. But it does serve as a relief when the cinematics happens the moment you pull the trigger signalling that you have hit your target.
Being a "ghost" level sniper does, however, come with a few perks. You are provided with a visor that serves as communication between you and your "handler" as well as a host of other gadgets. From the usual bombs and c4 to drones to help mark out enemies and even remote turrets that enable you to perform multiple kill shots at the same time.
SGW Contracts is by far the prettiest in the franchise and playing it on the top tier console or a capable PC will have to checking out the scenery fairly often during your hiding and backtracking to exfiltrate.
With the last outing, Payback, NFS seemed to have found their way back slightly. This placed a large amount of pressure on the next outing, being HEAT. NFS Heat is a fantastic game. With great and vibrant environments that, mostly, feel living and lived in. A really new and fresh day/night mechanic and Police chases that are not simply run away from with pure speed. But where it lacks tremendously is with the cringy cast they selected.
Palm City, the area that plays host to NFS Heat is basically one giant nightclub. With blinding amounts of neon lights, and a seemingly ever-present bassline which possibly explains the narcissism of the characters... Even though other titles like Forza Horizon has done the party-vibe before NFS Heat feels a little too aggressive and in-your-face with it. You are a rookie on the scene in Palm City. After selecting your avatar from a good couple of options and customizing him or her to give them the personal feel you will be tasked with getting cash to spend on your gifted clanger of a car, as well as improve your overall rep in the racing scene. What follows is a rather familiar formula of doing races, smashing billboards and competing in a few drift challenges to build up bank and rep, cringy I know. I found the first few levels to be somewhat slow until hitting enough rep to continue the story.
The races in NFS Heat have two distinct, but contrasting, personalities. By day, races are organized and planned with barriers and the needed all set up and ready to race. These races generate money for you as an aspiring racer. But it is during the night when Heat truly shines. These races are more raw and visceral and these races act as XP races to boost your level so you can unlock cars, races and upgrades. Although, at night you are not the only ones out on the streets. The police turn-up their patrols and bring out their most powerful and aggressive cars. Whether you are simply taking a cruise or mid-race if they spot you they will come after you until you either shake them or they ram you into submission.
Another aspect of the night racing that really adds to the drama is the fact that your rep earned at night only "banks" when you turn into a garage. Meaning that if you get busted by the police before being able to do so, all your hard work of grinding is lost!
The underground-series made NFS famous for the over the top styling and modding. Since the franchise has stuck with the modding and Heat is no different! The majority of the stable of cars in Heat will look rather familiar to players of Payback. One of the great additions is that Ferrari have decided to get back on board and they brought a large ensemble of cars to add to the garage! Toyota, however, has once again decided to skip this outing leaving us wanting some Supra goodness, both mk4 and mk5!
As is par for the modding-course, all the JDM classics from the '90s are here (apart from the Supra). Supercars are in abundance and big American muscle can be found all over! Many European monsters and even some fast Volvo's! There are definitely cars for everyone! These cars also have every fine little detail that their real-world counterparts have. And they look especially great in the rain, as does most of the world of Palm city. With the slightest detail such as raindrops running down body panels and windscreens.
The cars' handling has also been reworked from previous titles. Drifting can now be initiated by taking your finger off the throttle and then ploughing it through your controller to start your skid. For the driver craving more the "realistic" feel this can be troublesome for the times you actually need to feather the throttle through corners. Luckily this setting can be changed back to brake-for-drift. For the first time in an NFS game, the feel between FWD, RWD and AWD can actually be experienced in the way cars handle, even if its only slight!
Engine swops, as in Forza, is one of the key modding features in Heat. This takes away some of the performance ceilings that many cars hit rather early in their tuning life! But what really caught my eye was the way you can tune your exhaust note. Want it loud, brash, tinny, or just want it to sound like a run-of-the-mill daily, you can tune it! The livery system is back and as good as before. Style your car the way you want it. From a classic black on black to the way out pearl paint with minute rims and even those who are into the stance scene, heat has styling options to suit everyone!
PVZ, as I will now lovingly call this little gem, is a very entertaining 3rd “person” shooter, actually, the first impression was that if the original Plants vs zombies and Overwatch did the BOW CHIKA WOW WOW….this would be the result. You have attackers, defenders, and support for healing. Not only could you be an army of sun guzzlers but brain munchers too (no Offence to any plants or zombies intended), the cleverly designer characters each with their own unique way of attacking, which gives players options and freedoms to pick and even swap out as often as they like, need a support? BOOM change, need a tank? BOOM your welcome, need coffee?.... uhh ok so the game can’t go that far but I’m sure if you ask someone REALLY nicely that could be arranged.
There is a campaign mode where you can take your soldier (be it plant or zombie) and complete tasks assigned by a very power-hungry 1 eyed sunflower, or take you hand to the PVP scene where you can go all out with friends, randoms, even that REALLY angry neighborhood kid who’s always eating peoples mailboxes and just have a blast. The game gives you upgrades for your character and its up to you to decide how you want to upgrade, focus on defense or attack perks or bolster your healing abilities, there's a perk to match every playstyle, and the customization is one of the best features, as you can take the very innocent looking pea shooter and turn them into…..an even more innocent looking sea pea!!! Which looks like “finding Nemo” found a new hobby, shooting the undead with vegetables!
Delving a bit further into the teams and their soldiers, the plants side has quite an entertaining line up, we have the classics which are our pea shooter, chomper and our sunflower, and then we have some quirky additions like the naartjie…..or orange…..anyway this soldier has a shield and walks around like some vitamin c friendly spider mech, and one that I found quite entertaining was the acorn and oak soldier, with his little rapid-fire head-mounted gun he storms the field and when enough isn’t enough, He plants himself (SHOCKER) and a few seconds later emerges from the earth atop a very bulky tank like oak (and not the okes from the club ne), and then rains hell with cannon fire. I found myself drawn to the snapdragon, a plant as its name suggests is a fire breathing dragon, funny, I thought plants hated fire, who would’ve guessed.
On the zombie line up, we got control of a superhero? Zombie….is he still a hero though? AMANDA!!! GOOGLE IF A SUPERHERO DIES AND COMES BACK AS A ZOMBIE ARE THEY STILL A HERO? Right the “hero” zombie is more focused on melee attacks and like the CQC, we also see the football zombie, who’s traded his kicking boots for a freaking football launching Gatling gun!!!! And when he needs that “kick”, see what I did there, he literally kicks a smaller zombie which explodes, the zombies have also kicked up the tech a bit with a space cadet zombie, which can link with other cadets to form a space STATION for serious damage output, and the zombies have also seen fit to recruit a healer, a doctor of sorts which his little healing gun which he fires normally or fires a shot which sticks to a surface providing healing at a distance to himself…cl
ever for something without a brain.
The visuals of the game are very eye-pleasing and the combat mechanics are simple and easy to use, the gameplay is smooth and all the audio cues are spot on, a very well thought out game and delivers on a lot of fun action-packed moments, coupled with confused screaming as you get flanked. Would I recommend the game? Yes, would I say it’s for everyone? YES, even my kids had lots of laughs watching me play this game, is it replayable? Very much so with all the characters and 2 teams, you can enjoy it time and time again.
SO with armies thwarted and the battleground littered with my enemies what would I rate this game a very entertained and well-earned 8 stars.
With a huge shout out to PRIMA Interactive for the sponsor code, I will be forever entertained burning my enemies with my plantable pet dragon.
I am fortunate enough to have access to both Xbox One and PS4 consoles and spending more time on my Xbox, the charging station that Apex Interactive sent me was a welcome sight! PDP does make cost-conscious products. To most companies, cost-consciousness means a budget product at a budget price. For PDP this is not true! Their range of controllers and headsets tick the quality box as well as the budget box!
PDP also provides two rechargeable battery pack that simply fit inside the Xbox One controller the same way normal batteries would fit. The cover is then replaced by the provided PDP cover which has an opening perfectly slotted to provide great contact between the battery pack and the charging station.
With the PDP battery pack connected the Xbox One controller feels slightly heavier than it does with standard batteries but the weight difference is hardly noticeable and the result is worth the extra few grams. During the time I spent using the PDP ultraslim charge station I put in multiple gaming sessions that lasted more than 8 hours, save for a few bathroom- and snack breaks and the batteries did not skip a beat. In fact, I hardly got past the 50% mark that the Xbox provides to show controller battery level.
At the start of this game, 
The Outer Worlds can easily be compared to the likes of Fallout when it comes to gameplay, which for the most of the time, that means it has rather strong and serious undertones. The gameplay and mechanics certainly take most of its ideas from Fallout. Where it does differ from the Fallout series, is in its storytelling and how it incorporates satire EVERYWHERE! The story and dialogue choices, which are the heart of the storytelling and decision-making that really makes The Outer Worlds great. But drawing too much from the tongue-in-cheek games like Borderlands, does make some decisions more difficult to make. Not knowing whether the dialogue is meant to be satirical or seriously did creep into a fair amount of choices made during my playtime.
Missions or side missions can be tackled much like in Fallout. You can either try to talk your way through them if you have enough skill points on charisma and persuasion, fight your way through, all guns blazing, or try to avoid any type of conflict by sneaking around the enemies.
Although the game tries to make it seem like these decisions have real consequences, unfortunately, they don't do THAT much apart from making certain factions like, or dislike you more which in turn will make them treat you less kindly when interacting with them.
The Outer Worlds_20191016111537[/caption]
The above mentioned are the only slightly negative things about The Outer Worlds. Let us start with the skills and upgrades and abilities. In other games, you will find yourself dumping all your earned skill points into a few skills, such as strength, dexterity and vitality. Skills such as chemistry and charisma are often almost pointless. In The Outer Worlds, this is not the case. Quite the contrary. You can build an almost completely non-combat character that will still be able to fight wildlife and marauders, who don't like to reason but be able to almost talk your way out of any situation. This opens up for tremendous amounts of replayability.
The loot, inventory and upgrading system is another feature that really makes The Outer Worlds shine. While there is a vast array of weapons and armour to loot across the many planets in The Outer Worlds, each item can be customized itself. This will encourage you to try a host of weapons and find which work best for certain enemies. Found a weapon that you really like? No need to worry, weapons can be upgraded in many ways, damage, elemental damage and more, making even one of your trusty old weapons relevant throughout the game.
Any type of work is always better with a friend. In the Outer Worlds, these friends come in the form of companions. There are a total of 6 companions to be found throughout the game. These companions each have a skill tree and skillset of their own. Meaning each companion will be useful for different situations. Are you the type that shoots before you ask any questions? Pair up with a companion that has good charisma and you might not have to shoot quite as much. Need someone with good creativity and lockpicking, maybe your companion can help with that!
Some of the skills that your main character can learn have a passive effect on your companion which means you need to take great care when applying those skill points. Not only can these companions be kitted out from head to toe, but they each also have their very own personality and back story. As the story progresses and you find yourself moving to different planets, so the companion story arc evolves as well which makes exploring their story and missions fun and satisfying in their own right!
Although I reviewed The Outer Worlds on the original Xbox One, it still looked wonderful, colours are bright and vibrant, the worlds all look so contrast and the way each towns design and feel just add to the message they are trying to send is splendid. Player models and faces are some of the best I've seen from a game of this type!
At its core, The Outer Worlds doesn't change much from the recipe that Fallout has created, and that shouldn't bother many people, in fact, it should welcome a few of those who are hesitant about this game. What does help its cause is the stellar performance when it comes to the story and the narrative. Not only does it provide a great compelling story which I WANTED to follow and see through to the end. It gives you tons of quirky and fun moments within the story. To go with that is the brilliant cast of characters that you meet and come to love or hate as you go through this game.
After much look into my pitiful balance screen which outlines all expenses and all income, it details animals and crops, machines and buildings, which helps you see what area is benefitting you and which are taking more resources than bringing in, I looked into another menu which was very interesting, this was the contracts screen where other farmers are paying for a specific farming process, such as $2567 to cultivate my land or $6845 to harvest and deliver to a select destination, this allows the player to generate income whilst waiting for their own produce to be ready. By the time ide gone over the relevant screens my crops had become overridden with weeds….and no NOT the “special crop” kind the crop-killing kind!!! Armed with the knowledge of what to do…thank you tutorials… I was prepped and ready only to discover….I did not have the required equipment to do so, so I find the button which brings up the “buy menu” which is VERY well detailed and broken down into categories of buildings or vehicles or vehicle attachments and even trailers for transport, I found myself…. A little short on funds, now on your finance screen there is an option to make a loan of $5000 every time you press the button….but this leads to some serious repercussions…..like debt…. Ok so not SO serious but it will require you to pay interest on the loan until it’s fully paid back….which can eat into profits or savings quite quickly.
So I took the lesser road and allowed the weeds to grow….this greatly reduces the output of the field and less produce is harvested. So I soiled away….no wait that sounds more like fertilizing…..err I Toiled away and generated enough funds for my new weeder, yay, now fully equipped for the next run I began the process at this point was my 3rd run on this specific field, this field would now require lime, and of course, a new piece of equipment to distribute it over the field. My funds dwindling as each new machine arrived and between jumping between my harvesters and my tractors things got abit…..chaotic. BUT have no fear the game gives you an option when inside a machine to hire a worker who will complete the task that the machine with current equipment attached is assigned to, I shed tears of joy at this point, now with 1 worker plowing and another planting, I again had the time to investigate another avenue. Animals, yes folks, chickens, cows, horses, sheeps…sheep? Those Woolly things that give me the heebee jeebees, so I decided to dip my toe in and buy a giant chicken farm with 200 chickens…… seemed simple enough, just had to feed them wheat and let nature take care of the rest. Suddenly a cardboard box popped up on the side and I was so excited, enjoy the small victories in life people, I grabbed the box and systematically started to fill up my shed space until I had the means to transport the boxes to a buying location….bought myself a little pick-up truck or Bakkie to our local ouens, and loaded box after box until I was full up and I checked my stock screen to see who would give the best price and set out, only to shatter my dreams, not knowing that you kinda have to wait until the box was FULL of eggs…instead of 50 boxes containing 1 egg.
I'll draw my personal vendetta with this game to a close and give you what you actually came for. The game its self is visually appealing and there is a great sense of calm as you play, a great game to play after a 10 game loss streak, the in-game radio offers some really complimenting music from rock to pop and my personal favorite electro, which I kept playing all the time, the fields are yours, to the fullest extent that you can buy a plow and expand your fields, sell them, cultivate them or scrap them to make way for an animal pen, a bigger silo or a farmhouse.
And there wasn’t only 1 kind of farming either, you could tackle agricultural, livestock or even forestry each with its own requirements, be it food or the appropriate equipment, livestock to have different needs, chickens need food and their food bowl cleaned from time to time, horses need to be trained which increases their worth. So the player is given options and is not bound by 1 they can have multiple and spread their wings far and wide and really enjoy the multitude the game has to offer.
The options menu gives you control over a vast array of options like volumes and the norm but also some options also allows you to speed up time, switch off certain problematic aspects of the game like the need to weed the fields and stop crop destruction, and yes for those of you reading this, I, in fact, did drive over my field look back and want to jump out my window, this allows the player to enjoy an even simpler experience where you just want to farm and make money without too much hassle.
There is a wide variety of branded vehicles to choose from and there is a piece of equipment to suit your need, you can buy a very basic cultivator which covers only a small area, to a highly sophisticated one that basically plows the whole planet in 1 go, which is nice as you can start and finish a process quickly and minimize time wastage and maximize profits sooner, there is also a feature which allows you to lease a piece of equipment instead of buying it, this allows you to use it for its intended purpose without it costing too much or if you just need a quick trailer rental to take produce to a destination.
Some of the equipment can be customized, with colors or bigger/smaller wheels, a bigger engine or even special attachment arms for wider dispersal, this has a small price tag to it but getting the right equipment for the job can save you more in the long run. The weather too has an impact on your farm, like that you can’t harvest during the rain which can be both beneficial and more so aggravating as your harvest and cultivation period gets delayed until it stops.
Above all the main features there are some well-placed details like the miscellaneous section where you can buy a high-pressure hose to keep your machinery clean, you can buy decorative items like sheds and more which adds those final touches to really make your farm a farm, and my favorite and it was worth every penny….bought a dog house WHICH CAME WITH A DOGGO!!! That was the clinching factor for me, me and my doggo lovingly named “Sprrriitz”, tended to our farm with love, care, and tennis balls.
The Multiplayer option is also quite entertaining, I mean what's better than farm shenanigans with your buds? Draw crop circles, have tractor races and harvesting competitions! Bring your friends and really turn a profit, as many hands make light work, I Think we the EAX team should take a swing at this….I can’t promise much farming will be done but I can guarantee with undying certainty that there will be countless laughs and mistakes……I personally will see to that (insert evil grin meme here).
The game starts off a bit slow but as you buy more and expand the game becomes busier and busier as you try to manage all your fields, animals and equipment, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and will continue to play it. And once I’m a master of my craft ill start from scratch and switch on some of those options and test myself…….so never….but I digress, the game is visually stunning and the ever-present sense of peace and tranquillity really allowed me to get into it without much struggle and I would recommend it ONLY to those with patience…..as this game is all about taking your time and going through the full harvest cycle to reap the best quantity of crops you can. To my loving wife whom I made watch me play, to get an outsider's opinion, thank you, your ideas and planning really helped me get the best management out of my farm…and your constant laughter at my failed planter lines never ceased to fill me with unbridled rage and torment. But you complimented the game's beauty and simplicity, the diversity and the freedom to make the choices that you want to make.
Would I recommend the game? Yes, would I say it’s for everyone? No, can I honestly say I enjoyed it? Without a doubt and lastly, does it have re-playability? Undoubtedly. There are many ways to improve and change, there is great satisfaction at starting from nothing and then being full-fledged with the biggest and best of everything, seeing the success of your hard work coming to light, and I loved the great sense of accomplishment after a full cycle and then getting that big pay-off. Based on a lot of factors I'm happy to award Farm Simulator 2019… a strong 8/10 stars.
Now if ya’ll excuse me, I gots ta harvest ma taters….. AMANDA fetch me ma boots….its harvest time.
Logitech has been known to make real spectacular headsets. From the space-age look of the 6 and 9 series to the more toned down 4 series. The G Pro range takes some design cues from both these and lands firmly in the "perfect" zone. Logitech built a gaming headset with the style and grace as if it came straight out of the 1940s! The G Pro X screams class, without raising its voice. The first, and a most obvious sign that Logitech was being serious with the G Pro X, was the exclusion of any RGB. The flat leather headband is generously padded ensuring hours of comfort. With the simple imprint of PRO on top. Beautifully rounded pill-shaped earcups with a matte black finish around the sides, and flat metallic discs on the ear. Adorning these metal discs is a simple and smooth Logitech logo. The earcups are attached to the headband by strong, solid metal arms which hive the earcups more than enough movement to ensure very good and comfy fit over and around your ears.
Logitech fits these earcups with leatherette as a standard, but provide microfibre alternative if you prefer them. The microfibre ear cushions are very soft and comfortable and can easily be used as the default ear cushions. For those who are familiar with the Astro A40 and A50, the ear cushions are exactly the same. The leatherette cushions, however, are spectacular, not only do they feel really good on, but they also improve noise cancellation tremendously.
Looking at the G Pro X you will instantly see it to be a premium headset, picking it up confirms that. It does have some weight to it but even after long hours of gaming they never seem to feel excessively heavy. The clamp of the G Pro X does, however, feel rather tight at first, but after a few hours of tuning the fit, they become so snug that you forget you have them on.
Another great feature is the equalizers. Logitech, being esports conscious, has given you the ability to download the equalizer presets from some of your favorite Logitech sponsored esports athletes. If you are struggling to find the right mix for Dota2, or need that extra edge when it comes to CS: GO, there will be a preset equalizer for that! And if none of them work you can create your own and upload it so others can use yours instead.
Finally, we come to the main feature. The new microphone. First off, the G hub gives you a feature to record a small voice clip of yourself. Then it lets you free with all the Blue Voice presets and knobs to play with. It has preset settings for a few major presets such as streamer, broadcaster, etc. If you need to sound beefier, there is a preset for that, needless background noise, there is a button for that. The options are virtually endless. In all honesty, the microphone quality is so good that I am envious of the people in my party. Speaking to a person in real life sounds worse than this!
Don't forget about the wonderful carry pouch they supply, for when you need to take your G Pro X on the road!
During games like Apex Legends and Destiny 2, I was equally impressed with how even though there is utter chaos on-screen, the sounds are precise and clear and every crack of a bullet and pin-out of a grenade can be distinguished! The only place the Pro X does become more "normal" is when it is not being used in conjunction with the Logitech G Hub. Using it while playing Xbox did not show up its faults, more so, it shows you that the headset is decent without the magic software. Still delivering top-notch clarity and distinguishable tones but unfortunately no Blue Voice mic.
Trine 4 predominantly focuses on using the 3 characters and their abilities to solve puzzles. Using the thief and wizard, predominantly, you can solve most of the puzzles laid out before you. On the odd occasion, you might need the knight to reflect or deflect things that block your path. There are however a few combat stages that are scattered across the stages. These, unfortunately, do nothing for the game and I found myself wishing them to be over rather than enjoying them. They are also rather straight forward. Simply select the knight and bash and deflect until you have defeated all the enemies.
Trine 4 has the most beautiful and vivid maps and areas that I have come across in a long time. The forests, caves and even dilapidated castles are all spectacular and lovely to see. Even though it is a 2.5D scroller, the backdrops feel alive and vivid. From the birds flying overhead, or the spiders and other animals crawling past in the background, all seem so natural. This gives Trine a wonderful sense of fantasy, much like I felt while watching the Harry Potter series. A sense of a truly living world happening around you. To add to this lovable and enjoyable setting is the way the game challenges you but without frustrating you. There are areas where you will get stuck for a few minutes but they do not hold you back long enough to get you frustrated. I found myself enjoying the odd challenge here and there. The respawn system is also extremely forgiving which will see your fallen comrades not stay downed for very long.
While spending around 12 hours in Trine 4, I never once experienced a "game over". Trine does not try to have you fail. It does not need to keep you playing for longer by making you struggle. It relies on its wonderful storytelling and fun, yet challenging puzzles to keep you hooked. And hooked you will be.
As if that wasn't enough. You can also party up with a friend and have a second character, constantly, by your side. This will see you fly through many of the puzzles but also have the game adjust itself to make it a little more challenging. All in all the game has great replayability if you want to give it a bash solo, or with some mates.
The six different race modes to choose from are Touring, Stock, Tuner, GT, FA and Invitational. Each mode coming with its own set of cars and, with those, its own unique set of challenges and fun in racing them. Each game mode ending with a “Showdown” event that puts the player to the test in the hardest and most challenging races of the mode.
One very awesome feature that GRID 2019 has is the FA mode or rather the Fernando Alonso mode. This mode allows you to race in a wide range of cars from grippy almost go-kart type cars all the way through to actual F1 cars as you challenge Alonso himself to a showdown. Rumour has it that if you beat him, you can choose him as your teammate in races. Hopefully, he’ll be a beneficial teammate – but more on that later.
Each race earns you credits, as well as losing some in costs depending on your racing style (mine is rather pricey). These credits can be used to buy other cars to race in other modes or to have more cars, and better cars, to choose from in your favourite events. My recommendation here would be to focus on one or two events out the gate and build up a bit of a monopoly before branching out into the other modes and spending too much of your credit but credits are pretty easy to earn so its up to you how you manage your budget.
GRID is available to own on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows. And will be available to stream on Google Stadia when that is released later this year.
These classes can be upgraded using cybernetic implants, accompanied by a host of high and low tech weapons, you are sure to be having some dismembering-fun in no time! What really struck me was how each of these weapons and armor that is at your disposal has an effect on the movement and flow of your rig. When you are using the Operator rig you feel like you can chain attacks together and bounce between enemies like Spiderman, but on the flip side, you can be sent flying across the battlefield with a single blow.
Blocking and injectables are both new systems that improve Surge 2 dramatically. The blocking and parrying system feels like it has been directly taken from For Honor. For those not familiar with this system, it does take some getting used to but once you are comfortable, it is extremely robust and very rewarding. The block and parry system works extremely well when using the goliath class with its extremely slow attack speed. Guessing the attacking direction correctly will see you parry and counter which is extremely satisfying when done correctly. The newly added injectables also add a whole new dimension to the fighting dynamic. Even though two goliath classes are identical, applying a variety of injectables can because both these Goliath builds to be completely different. This increases the replay-ability of Surge 2.
Executions are very clever and satisfying. As before, you need to target specific body parts and once you have done enough damage, you can dismember that limb. The animations for these dismemberments are spectacular. But what makes it truly great is the way it integrates into the looting system. In Surge 2 most of your loot is collected from downed enemies. Instead of this loot just being random, the way you fight the opponent will determine the loot that they drop. Looking for a very specific piece of armor? You will need to find an enemy wearing that exact piece of armor and dismember it. This gives the player reason to go and hunt down specific enemies. At the same time,it puts an interesting take on the looting and grinding aspect because it puts less emphasis on grinding until you find the item you looking for and rather has you exploring until you find someone with that item.
With the story being told via NPCs and recordings that can be picked up, and the game allowing you to explore areas in any order, the story can become disjointed if you wander into an area and get plot details out of order. When the dust settles on Surge 2, the general feeling was that the incentive of gathering stronger loot is more than what progressing the story was. This is not a negative point but it is something to be aware of if you are looking for a more story-driven RPG.
Borderlands is a franchise known for going against the grain, and the opening moments prove that. Unlike other sequels changing from the predecessors, Borderlands is so confident in itself that it dares to be familiar. This shows how confident gearbox and Borderlands are with themselves as well as this installment in the franchise. And it is with good reason that they are. From the opening moments you will be met with the usual Borderlands story, you are vault hunter, tasked with helping Lilith, a Siren from the previous installments, to find vault across the universe before the calypso twins (Anti-heroes and twin brother and sister) find them and DESTROY THE UNIVERSE(queue dramatic music). Not to mention the utterly hilarious jokes and jabs that are strewn across the wastelands of Borderlands.
This is part of what makes Borderlands so great, instead of changing up their whole game they keep the things that is loved by the fans and tweak the things that can only improve the experience. The shooting has been completely reworked to give a more enjoyable experience as well as giving the movement system a more fluid feel. You can now traverse obstacles easily. Graphically Borderlands 3 has taken its unique cartoon-styled graphics to a new level. Fewer reds and oranges and a whole lot more color! Borderlands 3 is lovely on the eye with lots of bright new colors and even MORE weapons. As if the weapons, you will be hard-pressed to find a game that has a wider variety of truely "original weapons" . Ranging from your run-of-the-mill shotguns to seriously interesting alien tech that instead of reloading, you throw at your enemy and explode on impact.
Gearbox was also very proud to state that they boast " 1 billion guns", they might have crooked the books slightly by giving nearly identical guns a different name and slightly tweaked stats. But what they have done well is to give each weapon manufacturer a distinct feature. Vladof guns have 2 different firing modes, the guns that the children of the vault don't need reloading they overheat and need to cool down. All of these tiny elements help to sell the illusion of an endless amount of weapons to find. Borderlands 3 takes it a step further, Each weapon has its own character, whether you have your revolver hammer cooking or the chatter of the assault rifle as it sprays lead, or the red hot barrel of your shotgun after slaying a team of skags. These little things make you appreciate what Gearbox and Borderlands 3 have achieved with this long-awaited installment.
Borderlands has always been known for the wonderful split-screen action and endless hours of looting and shooting you can have with a buddy, or 3. Borderlands 3 is no different. When you join up with a buddy online, the party leader can choose whether loot is evenly shared amongst each other, with each player only seeing his or her own loot, or it can be a free for all, fastest looter wins. Borderlands even jokes about that! Everything is lighthearted in Borderlands. There are also a couple of new modes : Mayhem mode, which is a wave-like mode where enemies become increasingly tougher with the reward of increasingly stronger loot. True Vault Hunter mode (the new game plus) and circles of slaughter (true horde mode) and Proving grounds which resembles Diablo 3 rifts. With all these modes that can be played solo or with friends as well as taking them on with each of the 4 vault hunters, you will be playing Borderlands 3 for a long time to come!
Again, with my limited experience in the realm of basketball games, my lack of skill was made obvious when I was dabbling in the Play Now area. I chose my favourite team - Golden State Warriors and had a normal 5v5 match against the Philadelphia 76ers. The learning curve of this game is huge and my fingers felt stupid on the controller as I button hacked trying to figure out what I was doing.
A quick look in the control settings showed me what I needed to know and I was able to play with at least answering all the shots that were taken against me.
The graphics are very impressive, with big basketball stars being very easy to spot and recognise in-game (if you know who you're looking for) and the fluidity of gameplay is smooth and responsive.
2K has done a fantastic job in drawing the player into the game with realistic crowd cheering, good and fair game commentating and well place "highlight" shots of impressive gameplay moments, like dunks and 3-pointers.
Attack all depends on your positioning and timing as well. Drive the ball up close to the hoop and go for a layup, standing in the zone will result in a 2-point jump shot and the further you are from the hoop you are, the trickier the shot (of course). If you try and shoot while being pressed - your shot will be blocked or missed, try to layup with a bigger defender standing over you - slapped down and left looking like a deer in the headlights with all pride thrown out the window.
A little more guidance through this part of the game would've been much appreciated but the hints that 2K did leave did not tell enough for the new and inexperienced players to fully grasp what they were doing there.
Being pretty chuffed with the 6foot4 digital version of myself, I started the career mode and was in for a good time.
You pick up the story in a crucial semi-final match, where you are the captain and hero of your college. This match is impossible to lose as the score jumps miles ahead of your opponents while you are benched during parts of the match. At the end of the match a teammate gets injured which results in him losing his scholarship. You choose to do something about this and sit out of the final - which your team loses, and you fall from grace and try to earn a spot at the NBA Draft. You go through a process known as the NBA Combine, which allows scouts to properly evaluate and assess potential talent for the league. You are asked to do various drills, which help you learn the controls of the game, and then play in a few scrimmages to increase your chances of being noticed and drafted.
During this process, you are given choices to increase your rep or your skill. Choosing the one, will result in a decrease in the other and allows the game to decide your path forward as you tell it what kind a player you want to become - chasing the fame, or looking to be a NBA great.
I was able to work my way up from a "late 2nd round" to "solid 1st round" pick, even though I made some serious blunders during the Combine, including completely fluffing my vertical standing jump and some of my shooting. The pressure is high during this part and I definitely cracked under some of it.
Luckily - I got the invite for the Green Room and was drafted in the first round.
GO WARRIORS!
Special thanks to Prima Interactive for supplying us with a review copy.
The Blackwidow only shows its true colours, pun intended, once you turn on the Chroma. And with the addition of all the new features to the Synapse 3 software, Chroma has no reason to be restricted to only a keyboard or a mouse. Your whole gaming- rig and room can now partake in the Chroma effect. With the addition of Philips Hue, home integration is a reality when gaming, add in the game integration with games such as Apex Legends enjoying integration as a standard, and Chroma becomes fantastic
The Razer Blackwidow is a fan-favourite for good reason. it has fantastic build quality, feeling solid and well built. Razer also puts its green switches to good use in the Blackwidow, stating that it even has reinforced sidewalls on every key to ensure there is no wobble when pressing down on keys. The green switches provide a good balance between tactile feedback as well as being clicky. The Green switches are also rated for 80 million keystrokes, so don't expect them to give up on you any time soon. Typing and gaming both feel divine on the Blackwidow, keystrokes feel confident and strong under your fingers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffvneEPgPqk
Another way Razer has marketed the Blackwidow for both work and play is the exclusion of the dedicated macro keys. Instead, they use their very own Hypershift. Hypershift allows you to assign any key of your choosing to a secondary function. Don't worry if you have different macros for different games, the Blackwidow has onboard storage for a host of macros which you can simply flick through when needed. If you are scared of losing those macros due to someone highjacking your Blackwidow and changing your fine-tuned macros, Razer even provides cloud storage for your macros. This allows for quick and easy setups when moving between PCs or Blackwidows alike.
The only letdown in the comfort department is the fact that the earcups do not have the ability to swivel. This causes some troubles with finding a snug fit and also creates leaks which don't help when trying to achieve passive noise cancellation. But, this can be solved if you do a few minor adjustments and find the sweet-spot in terms of position on your head.
When gaming on PC, the same was experienced but this can easily be adjusted by simply applying an equalizer which then made the tone balance much better. Unfortunately, on console, there are no equalizers to be used. The Razer Kraken, however, does have really good spacial sound. Playing games such as R6 Siege and Apex Legends on both console and PC. I usually use an Astro A40 TR which uses an external amp, allowing for massive amounts of customization to try and use sound to the best advantage possible. The Kraken obviously does not have all the gizmos the A40 TR has but it does a great job of indicating sound direction on both console and PC.
The Razer Kraken retractable mic is nothing out of this world. it does the job and it does it well. It gives clear voice to your party without any frills. The lack of mic monitoring is a letdown as most of the competition in this price range do provide monitoring.
Greedfall makes its intentions known from the first mission. Get onto the ship for your voyage to the new world. Sounds simple enough. It is not, you have a few loose ends to tie up before setting sail. The governor has not yet boarded the ship, still too drunk from the stupor he had the night before. Time to put on your detective hat and find him. Treading around Serene and asking fellow patrons is not a simple and easy way. Asking the pub owner of his whereabout will lead you to either repairing the broken furniture from the governors rowdy night or simply pay to have them replaced. This simple mission shows that Greedfall is not going to bombard you with "fetch and carry" missions or simplicities like other RPGs. No, it has deeper dialogues where speaking too much or too little can change the perspective of the interaction completely. Greedfall at its heart is a detective game and a rather good one!
Once you reach the island of Ter Fradee you will discover that there is more than 1 faction trying to colonize the island. The main reason for you heading to Ter Fardee is to find a cure for the illness that plagues Serene, as well as your mother, called Malichor. It is not long that you will realize that characters are not divided between the traditional good- and bad guys. Greedfall weaves a terrific story with tribes and factions having their own unique traditions and nuances and even views on actions and what happens throughout the game. This goes an extremely long way to really flesh out the story and make it believable. Greedfall also does not use the well-known morality system, meaning players will need to make choices based on their own moral compass. This is very refreshing as sometimes the "right" for of justice is not always the justice that fits the crime.
Greedfall is by no means a happy place like many other RPGs try to portray. Greedfall takes on some heavy subjects in the quests which I have not often seen touched let alone peeled open as Greedfall does with its superbly written quests. Some of these sensitive topics include colonization, religion and politics. And without the moral system, these topics mixed with personal opinions and views can bring out interesting story arcs.
Facial animations certainly did impress when you compare it to the Technomancer, not Witcher 3 levels just yet but leaps and bounds in the right direction. But alas, this is overshadowed but the rather clunky way the NPC's move. Greedfall tried hard to give characters individual feel, by even introducing dialects and accents for the natives. Although the voice acting is of really high quality and there is tons of dialogue to work through, there are times that the accent was dropped and picked up at a later stage.
But as a whole, Greedfall does well to draw you in and keep you glued to the story and actions of characters around you, even if they do, at times, lose their "life-like" aspects to a robot-like movement, or lipsync being out. All small things that a simple patch can fix.
Your team members, which you can swap out, all have unique traits in battle as well as in social environments. Having the correct party member with you at the right time can be beneficial on both the battlefield as well as when trying to pull information regarding your next quest. Each team member can be equipped with weapons and armor as well as trinkets etc. Changing clothes do change your character's appearance aesthetically which is always nice.
But one of the aspects that will have majority of RPG fans rejoicing is stats. Everything that you can pick up or equip will have stats. With stats comes proficiency, which Greedfall does by means of skills and traits. Want your player to be better at blunt weapons, equip more points to blunt weapon mastery. Want to be a better lock picker (which I suggest you focus on), apply more points to lock picking.
Combat, apart from the clunky mechanics is genuinely great and enjoyable. Whether you are going up against a challenging boss or slaying grunts, combat is not something I found myself wishing would pass. Instead, I enjoyed using my musket to etch away at armor until I could wield my sword and dish out a flurry of damage that even Zorro would be proud of. Then there is a whole magic system that I have not even tried out yet!
Your squad members, however, cannot be controlled much, they tend to do whatever they deem necessary which in most cases is not the needed thing. This is a little disappointing in a way because this also creates a lack of a tactical aspect for Greedfall due to your squadmates automatically engaging the enemy when you are trying to sneak past.