<![CDATA[ PCGamer ]]> https://www.pcgamer.com Tue, 27 Aug 2024 10:31:20 +0000 en <![CDATA[ Star Wars Outlaws review ]]> Ubisoft has the reputation of a trend-chasing collection of studios that make the same types of open world games over and over, but not enough people talk about the cool, unexpected, or just plain weird little touches its games have that no other massive publisher would ever greenlight.

NEED TO KNOW

What is it? An open world Star Wars game from Ubisoft where blasters rule and lightsabers drool.
Release date August 30, 2024
Expect to pay $70/£60
Developer Ubisoft Massive
Publisher Ubisoft
Reviewed on RTX 2080 Super, Intel Core i9 9900KS, 32GB RAM
Multiplayer No
Steam Deck N/A
Link Ubisoft Connect

I'm talking about the good stuff, like Assassin's Creed Mirage's robust codex of ancient Baghdad museum pieces, Rainbow Six Siege's overkill destruction engine, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora's ambitious exploration mode that turns every waypoint into contextual directions so you develop a real sense of mastery over the planet's geography. I'm talking about designing an entire Watch Dogs sequel around the concept of plucking any citizen off the street—randos with simulated interests, relationships, and schedules down to the hour—and turning them into the protagonist.

Star Wars Outlaws is both sides of Ubisoft: it's conventional and safe in ways that really get on my nerves, but it's also ambitious enough to be more than just a third-person shooter in a sandbox. Outlaws is a game where nearly every story mission involves crawling through a vent that leads to a ladder that leads to a hallway. It's also a game with a reactive reputation system that matters, ludicrously detailed cities I didn't want to leave, and maybe my favorite open world side activity ever.

Street urchin

One of those good ideas is Kay Vess, Outlaws' wide-eyed protagonist with a background that reads like every D&D party's rogue: She grew up on the streets of Canto Bight (the casino planet from The Last Jedi), running jobs and taking scores from a young age. Kay is smart and arrogant in a Solo sort of way, but she's also less impulsive and slower to solve every problem with a blaster. She's instantly likable, and scores extra points with me for having nothing to do with lightsabers or the force. There's a distinct lack of self-importance to Outlaws that I appreciate. This game doesn't cover any important backstory or even attempt to juice up Kay's importance in the canon—she's an unimportant speck in a galactic war she couldn't be less interested in (Outlaws takes place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi).

Star Wars Outlaws

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Outlaws' best moments tend to happen between quests when I'm walking through a city looking to make some Credits or spend everything I just earned. I love how easy it is to fall into the scoundrel roleplay in Outlaws—picking up odd jobs, shopping for obscure blaster parts, playing arcade machines in a cantina, betting on races, cashing out in Sabacc.

Man, I can't stop thinking about Sabacc, easily Outlaws' strongest minigame. It's basically simplified poker where every player tries to make the smallest possible pair, but with variables that add surprising depth. Special cards, like one that copies whatever card is next to it, can save Kay from a bad draw at the last second. Players can also play special medals that trigger instant effects, like forcing all players to throw another chip in the pot or preventing them from drawing more cards. You actually have to collect these medals in the world by tracking them down at vendors or stealing them from vaults. Kay can even employ her pet Nix to glance at other players' cards through a timing minigame.

A lot of effort for a minigame, right? That's something I picked up early about Outlaws: it takes its side stuff seriously, so much that I was often more invested in my Sabacc deck (it's Gwent all over again) and pile of incomplete sidequests than Kay Vess' main story. Well, that and food.

It felt kind of silly at first to "control" something so basic as biting down on some corn, but the whole sequence was so warm and inviting.

Each of Outlaws' four major cities has a unique street food spot where Kay and Nix can take a break from all the vent crawling and skull cracking to sit down and have a meal. I expected the interaction to be as quick as buying anything else in Outlaws—that I'd press X on a picture of an alien steak and Kay would get +2 damage for an hour or something. Instead, I was treated to a three-minute interactive cutscene starting with the droid chef cooking and presenting the dish: Che Mosska, described as "slow-grilled sweet mosska on the cob, freshly picked from the steppes of Toshara. Served with mashed deikko root and jera peppers." It looked delicious, but it wasn't nearly over yet. I watched Kay and Nix eat every part of the meal, chiming in with quick-time events for bites and scoops.

It felt kind of silly at first to "control" something so basic as biting down on some corn, but the whole sequence was so warm and inviting. Watching the way Nix sniffed each element of the dish before scarfing it down, and how Kay intentionally backed off to let her little pal eat as much as she wanted, told me everything I needed to know about their relationship: They're inseparable. They love trying new things together. They'd do anything for each other.

I've never seen anything quite like it in an open world game—the closest I can think of is spooning soup into Arthur's mouth in Red Dead Redemption—but it still wasn't done. Nix collapsed backwards with a full belly and satisfied grin as the Che Mosska became a new gear slot, a "Nix Treat," unlocking her ability to kick away grenades in a firefight. I was already happy to have dropped 200 Credits on the adorable slice of life, but like so many elements of Outlaws, worldbuilding feeds directly into progression.

Star Wars Outlaws

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Rogue ones

I wish I had as good of a time with the story as I did goofing around in cities. Outlaws' main thread follows Kay assembling a crew for a heist, the spoils of which would allow her to clear the bounty on her head and finally live free of the Empire. It's a fun Soderbergh-style setup, but it flattens out early on and never really picks up. A majority of the main quests are spent looking for potential crew members, not actually interacting with them, so once they finally join the Trailblazer, they become silent NPCs with only occasional ship chatter. The only consistent voice in your ear is ND-5, a prequel-era droid assigned to Kay by the heist's architect to help.

ND-5 and Kay's relationship was the most disappointing, as most of their interactions are brief radio calls where Kay asks the more experienced ND-5 for scoundrel advice. Occasionally they touch onto the topic of ND-5's autonomy as a droid—Outlaws picks up this thread later down the line as a major story beat, but by that point I wasn't buying it. Ubi just doesn't give any part of its ensemble enough time in the spotlight for me to care about them. Maybe Ubi should've let me split a meal with my crew, too.

Playing Outlaws sometimes felt like two different games. When I was working through sidequests, it's like I was playing a scoundrel simulator where Kay is a cool, mysterious thief-for-hire taking jobs from anyone with enough Credits to pay. Once I got around to the main quests, Outlaws switched to Star Wars Uncharted mode: Climbing up rocks, shimmying ledges, jumping across gaps that are supposed to be suspenseful, but aren't. It's really weak stuff, and Ubi makes you do a ton of it as part of big setpiece missions with beautiful backdrops of crashed Imperial ships and droid factories.

It's not a sin unique to Outlaws, but these platforming sequences play like Ubi was terrified that I might not know exactly where to go at every moment. Climbing routes are linear and obvious, with very little puzzle variety to break things up. Apparently every planet in the Star Wars galaxy is littered with powerful fans that can only be turned off by shooting a little pylon.

There's yellow paint splattered everywhere you're supposed to go, which would usually kill even the slightest sense of pathfinding through these one-note climbing puzzles, but Ubi included a clutch option I've never seen before—turning on "Exploreer Mode" erases most of the yellow paint from climbable surfaces and tones down the contrast on the bits of yellow that remain. Without the paint, I occasionally had to walk around a room a bit, scanning the walls for feasible handholds. I can respect that's annoying to some, but I consider it good, immersive game design. Searching is a skill, just like it is when I'm looking out for alternate paths in Deus Ex or foraging for a specific flower in Breath of the Wild. If games are going to keep using this same ugly yellow paint to signal me where to go, I'm a big fan of getting the option to turn it off.

Star Wars Outlaws

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Scoundrel school

When Outlaws isn't doing a Naughty Dog impression, it's a pretty good stealth game. I'm still surprised by just how sneaky the game is, and not just because it has a crouch button and tall grass. Most open world games these days have stealth, but they're not stealth games. Outlaws is an exception: Kay Vess is portrayed first and foremost as a thief, not a gunslinger, and most of her moveset revolves around dropping as few bodies as possible. She knocks guards from behind like you'd expect, but she can also signal Nix to pull a guard's attention, sabotage alarms, or trigger explosive distractions.

The spaces Kay sneaks through are classic Ubi compounds: multi-level, mostly outdoor arenas with guards hanging out just far enough away from each other that I never felt like a confrontation was forced. Which is good, because Kay only has one ranged knockout option. Her blaster has a single-shot stun mode that will knock out any basic guard, but it has a long cooldown. When I think about the last decade of open world games (many made by Ubisoft) that instantly undercut the drama of sneaking by giving me a silenced pistol that turns off any human obstacle, Ubi's restraint here is all the more impressive. Outlaws pushes me to play it more like Thief than Dishonored.

Nix functions more-or-less like your phone in a Watch Dogs game, extending your reach across rooms so Kay can stay hidden. With the dedicated Nix button, she can press buttons, hold down levers, or fetch a dropped Stormtrooper blaster in the heat of a fight. It's a really neat and flexible system, though it's not as fleshed out as I hoped it'd be after earlier preview sessions. It turns out all the interactable bits of environment I encountered early in Outlaws—explosive barrels and smoke canisters—is pretty much all you ever see. That's a bummer, because both essentially do the same thing in stealth (cause a ruckus). With the exception of some useful Nix modifiers, like an upgrade that lets her distract multiple guards at once, Outlaws' stealth doesn't evolve all that much after the first couple hours. I loved sneaking, but by hour 20 I could feel a rut forming under my feet as I distracted guards and sucker punched Stormtroopers the same exact way in every mission. Outlaws would benefit from borrowing just a bit more from Ubi's rich legacy of stealth games.

It got so tiresome that I eventually started picking fights for fun, and I learned I don't dislike Outlaws' shooting as much as I did in an earlier preview. Once I turned off the aggressive aim assist, I had a decent time lining up headshots and swapping between the three main blaster modes: basic plasma, Ion for droids and shields, and Power for a charge-up shot that drops almost anything in one hit. Some caveats: I had to crank the difficulty up to really feel the heat, and there are some later-game upgrades and gear that can turn Kay into a tank (more health, damage reduction, damage buffs). I mostly avoided those, and instead pursued gear that made Kay's footsteps quieter.

Star Wars Outlaws

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Go out and get it

"Pursue" is an important verb in Outlaws. Ubi has devised one of the more unique upgrade systems I've seen in an open-world game, ditching a leveling system for essentially a galactic scavenger hunt. As part of the main story and optional sidequests, Kay meets "experts" that unlock new abilities in every discipline of outlaw-hood: a mechanic that offers Speeder upgrades, an ex-syndicate gunslinger with blaster tips, a gambler, a mercenary, a slicer that blows the hacking minigame wide open. The fun part is that none of these abilities are free—they all have a checklist of simple challenges locked behind them (straightforward stuff like "headshot bad guys" or vague stuff like "make Nix happy") as well as a special crafting material. Sometimes that material can be purchased from a merchant deep in syndicate territory, but often you'll have to lift it from a gang stronghold, imperial base, or elaborate cave puzzle.

PERFORMANCE

star wars outlaws

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

The pre-release build of Star Wars Outlaws was a bit of a rollercoaster on my machine. I aimed for 60fps at 1080p with my mid-tier specs (RTX 2080 Super, i9-9900KS, 32GB RAM, 8GB VRAM) and DLSS set to Quality, but Outlaws struggled to keep even a steady 30fps for the majority of the week I played it. Smaller indoor spaces were OK, but unsurprisingly, large outdoor areas like Toshara's open world were the worst. Then one night after resetting my PC, something changed: Outlaws could easily keep up with the set 60fps target wherever I went, and all the stuttering I'd experienced previously was gone. Everything's been smooth sailing ever since. Read our full performance analysis for more.

Ubisoft Massive hand-made loads of compounds and one-off spelunking zones (mostly on the planet new to Outlaws, Toshara, and Tatooine) specifically for these expert quests, with very little geographical overlap with its loads of regular jobs and sidequests. Not every new ability is a winner (several of them are just max health upgrades), but each of the nine experts had one or two fun new toys I immediately wanted to play with, like smoke bombs, a backflip maneuver for my ship, or magnetic dice for cheating at Sebacc.

Experts feed in nicely to the "scoundrel fantasy" that Ubi has been selling Outlaws on since the beginning. It wasn't just talk: Kay's progression is cleverly linked to the network of underworld contacts she cultivates as a freshly hatched criminal, sidestepping some of the disbelief that we usually have to suspend with videogame power-ups. Why can Kay suddenly hack better? Not because she's level five, but because she met a master slicer who showed her some moves. Is Kay an accomplished speeder mechanic? No, but she knows a guy who knows a guy.

The same goes for basic upgrades. The rarest materials needed to supe up Kay's blaster, ship, and speeder can be stolen from highly-guarded areas, or you save up credits and just buy them from a shady vendor in gang territory. That is, of course, if that gang likes Kay enough to let her through the gates.

star wars outlaws

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

It's who you know

Running in parallel with Kay's expanding roster of experts is her dynamic standing with Outlaws' four syndicate factions: the Pykes, Ashiga, Hutts, and Crimson Dawn. Every city is occupied by at least two factions, with the turf wars between them setting the stage for Kay's sidequests that constantly ask her to choose sides.

It turns out a motorcycle that can just hover over most obstacles is pretty boring.

And I do mean constantly: lots of sidequests and every basic job (steal this, hack that sort of stuff) end with a last-minute opportunity to stab your employer in the back and sell the score to the other side. These choices never have any real story impact, so don't go in expecting David Cage levels of narrative bending. Instead, jobs are a means to make some cash and balance the reputational scales. Early on, it was easy to keep one side happy and the other one not too unhappy, but at one point in the middle of the story, three out of four factions hated my guts. It was mostly my fault: I'd slowed down on doing jobs so I could focus on the story, which just so happened to feature loads of missions that tanked my rep.

Ubi does a decent job of weaving the consequences of your syndicate standings into quests. Getting in good with the Hutts gave me carte blanche on its chunk of Mos Eisley, which I exploited to easily steal loot from under Jabba's nose for the other gangs. Kay really does have no allegiances to anyone but to her crew, which makes her more of a scoundrel than we ever saw Han Solo become.

The simulation has a light enough touch that having bad reps never disrupted my progress, but letting too many factions hate me at once did make it a pain to navigate the open world at times. With no minimap or other visual reminder, I often accidentally rode into hostile Pyke or Crimson Dawn territory and got shot at immediately—annoying.

star wars outlaws

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Flying nowhere

Outlaws has proven a confusing game to follow from start to end, because it's fun, but the two things I was most excited to do before playing it—riding the speeder through the open world and piloting my own ship—ended up being the most forgettable parts of the journey. Ubi still hasn't figured out how to fill the empty spaces between points of interest.

Kay's squirrely speeder is tricky to control at first, and you can tell a room full of designers had to think hard about how a motorcycle with no tires or friction would actually move. Getting the hang of its wide turns and wild acceleration was neat, but there's just not much else to it—weirdly, vehicle combat is limited to Kay's mark-and-execute move, no normal aiming allowed like in a Rockstar game. That killed any desire I had to make a scene and try to fight the law, so I mostly just held down the throttle and gunned it straight for waypoints. Acknowledging that my hunger for friction in videogame traversal is a bit extreme (I turn Death Stranding to its hardest difficulty and refuse to use the assistive exosuits), it turns out a motorcycle that can just hover over most obstacles is pretty boring.

At least the speeder has a clear purpose. Kay's ship, the Trailblazer, gets the shortest end of the stick. Yes, the cool take-off transitions between ground and space are cool, but there's little reason to enter orbit if you're not headed to a different planet. There aren't many places to go in space. Toshara has the most with piles of scrap, a space station, and asteroids cluttering the area, but I've maybe spent 20 minutes total doing stuff there. Only one or two main quests heavily involve space combat or docking in a space station. It's mainly uneventful side jobs that call Kay to space—picking up lost cargo, killing a few pirates. It's a significant chunk of Outlaws that goes underused, but having played Starfield, at least I know it could be worse.

Outlaws is everything good and bad about big-budget open world excess. There's so much going on between its main quests, sidequests, gear quests, rumors, treasure hunts, and contracts, and yet fundamental fun videogame stuff like getting from place to place falls flat. One hour I'm totally engrossed eavesdropping on Stormtroopers plotting to fix the Fathier races, and the next I'm moaning at yet another boring climbing section.

I wish Outlaws took bigger risks with combat and doubled down on stealth opportunities, but dammit, roleplaying a scoundrel is some of the best fun I've had with anything Star Wars. Behind every forgettable story beat is a little bit of that Ubisoft magic.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/star-wars-outlaws-review Qze2fZU2RuYazJLWoHtsYR Mon, 26 Aug 2024 12:37:58 +0000
<![CDATA[ Keychron K2 HE review ]]> The Keychron K2 HE combines two interesting things in a keyboard: magnetic switches and wood. Alright, that may seem like an odd combination, but that’s at least part of what makes this ‘board such a compelling choice for its $140 asking price. 

First of all, let me address the wood on the sides of the K2 HE. This is part of the special edition package which I have here, and by jove is it lovely. It’s a natural rosewood that feels excellent if you’re weird and stroke the sides of your keyboard, and adds an aesthetic that I didn’t know I needed. Far too often, mechanical boards offer a very similar design with a mean black metal or plastic case, so to see something different with this K2 HE is especially welcome. 

It’s got an almost Scandinavian quality to it, and come to think of it, would pair beautifully with a Fractal Design North, the makers of whom are, of course, Swedish—hej to you, too.

Besides the gorgeous rosewood edges, the K2 HE’s build quality is sublime. It is otherwise plastic, but offers some of the sturdiest I’ve tested on a keyboard at its price point. It’s solid and rigid, while also coming with no deck flex even if you tried to tear it to pieces. A 966g weight also keeps it especially hefty for a board with this small of a form factor, and it dwarfs the older K2’s sub 700g mass.

K2 HE specs

A Keychron K2 HE gaming keyboard with a wood finish and white keycaps with RGB enabled.

(Image credit: Future)

Switch type: Gateron HE Double Rail
Keycaps: PBT, double-shot
Lighting: RGB, dimmable on keyboard and controllable in software
Onboard storage: None
Extra ports: USB-C for charging
Connection type: Wireless - Bluetooth/2.4 GHz receiver
Cable: USB Type-C/USB Type-A, detachable
Weight: 966 g/2.13 lbs
Price: $140

The keycaps here are also lovely, with their taller OSA profile leaning into a more retro aesthetic that matches the rosewood finishing nicely. They’re comfortable to type on, being slightly rounded, and are comprised of doubleshot-moulded PBT plastic for an extra dose of quality finishing. I should also shout out the beige accent keycaps for the Esc and Return keys, which are a lovely touch, and the convenient I/O on the left side with selector switches for Windows or Mac operation and for connectivity method between Bluetooth, 2.4 GHz wireless, or wired.

And now to deal in the second part of that odd combo: the magnetic switches. These are right on trend with what we’re seeing with other keyboards from an array of manufacturers, with Keychron opting to go for Gateron Hall effect switches in the name of providing as snappy inputs as possible. These are Gateron’s new double rail Hall effect switches, which offer no real key wobble and benefit from being increasingly stable under finger.

For those unaware, Hall effect magnetic switches are slightly different to your standard mechanical options. In essence, it means they work via a magnet as opposed to more standard means. A magnet is sent down the switch’s stem to a sensor, where an input is then registered—there isn’t a defined actuation point with them, as such. This means that you can change the actuation point for each switch, so you can have snappy inputs for games, for instance, to provide you with a bit of a competitive edge.

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A Keychron K2 HE gaming keyboard with a wood finish and white keycaps with RGB enabled.

(Image credit: Future)
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A Keychron K2 HE gaming keyboard with a wood finish and white keycaps with RGB enabled.

(Image credit: Future)

Customisation of said actuation points is handled with Keychron’s Launcher software which is actually a web-based configurator that runs in a browser window. This keeps life especially easy, and means the K2 HE can be customised on both Windows and macOS without a hitch. Here you can not only fiddle with actuation points on a scale from 0.5 mm to 3.8 mm of the switch’s total travel in super-precise 0.1 mm increments on a per-key basis, but you can also adjust RGB lighting to single colour and choose from a range of other presets. You can also remap keys and record macros, too. It’s especially easy to use, and wonderfully refreshing to see in a world where peripherals software in some cases might as well equate to bloatware at times.

Back to the switches themselves, though. The switches felt responsive for both day-to-day productivity workloads and for messing around with bots in Counter Strike 2, where you certainly feel the speed of adjustable actuation points. For the WASD keys and weapon select keys, I set the actuation point as high as possible (0.5 mm), and it’s almost as if you barely need to breathe to register the input.That’s especially useful in quick draw scenarios where you need to bring a weapon out or throw a grenade as quickly as possible. 

They are also pre-lubricated, so benefit from being as smooth as you like. It also has the knock-on effect of meaning that the K2 HE, much like the dearer Keychron Q3 Max, sounds gorgeous. It’s probably one of the best-sounding keyboards I’ve used with a creamy sound profile (God, I hate saying that) accompanied by no case rattle or ping.

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A Keychron K2 HE gaming keyboard with a wood finish and white keycaps with RGB enabled.

(Image credit: Future)
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A Keychron K2 HE gaming keyboard with a wood finish and white keycaps with RGB enabled.

(Image credit: Future)
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A Keychron K2 HE gaming keyboard with a wood finish and white keycaps with RGB enabled.

(Image credit: Future)
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A Keychron K2 HE gaming keyboard with a wood finish and white keycaps with RGB enabled.

(Image credit: Future)
Buy if…

✅ You want a keyboard with style: Keychron’s K2 HE impresses with its fantastic build quality and its ounces of style, helped along by its use of rosewood in the special edition model.

Don't buy if...

❌ You don’t want Hall effect switches: If the speediness of HE switches aren’t what you need, then the standard K2 is a fantastic choice for just shy of half of this HE model. 

Technically, the K2 HE is also hot-swappable, although much like the Endgame Gear KB65HE and Wooting 60HE+, the choice of switches you can swap in is minuscule. Not even all of Gateron’s other Hall effect switch models are compatible.

Elsewhere, the K2 HE also benefits from excellent wireless connectivity across both Bluetooth and its bundled 2.4 GHz wireless receiver. It worked on either method without an issue on both Windows and macOS, while pairing with the Fn key and 1, 2, 3 or 4 on the number row is convenient. The 4000 mAh battery inside is also rather large for a keyboard of this size, and powers the K2 HE for up to 72 hours with the vivid backlighting on. Turn it off, and that rises to 240 hours, which is excellent endurance.

So, the Keychron K2 HE then. This is an excellent keyboard that brings a lot of style to proceedings while also feeling responsive with its Hall effect switches. It brings a lot of noteworthy improvements against the standard K2 that has lived on our list of the best gaming keyboards for several years. At $140 for this special edition, it’s a compelling choice for those who want a blend of style and substance, as opposed to the traditional dilemma of picking one over the other. Against other HE boards too, you’re getting the benefit of more interesting looks, convenient wireless connectivity and simple software. That seems like more than a fair deal. 

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https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gaming-keyboards/keychron-k2-he-review h9eUACKmXEHWNKCU9mNFa8 Sat, 24 Aug 2024 11:00:56 +0000
<![CDATA[ Elgato Facecam Neo review ]]> The maker of our current pick for the best webcam, the Elgato Facecam MK2, has recently released a brand new Facecam. The Facecam Neo is aimed a little lower in the market than the MK2 and retails for $50 less at $99 USD. This can get cheaper if you bundle it, positioning the Facecam Neo as a hefty budget friendly contender.

As with the rest of the Neo range, the Facecam is packaged in a basic white recycled box. It comes with a matching monitor stand complete with transparent front lip for screens, and has a braided USB cable hardwired in. Pulling the pill shaped camera out of the box, the first two things I noticed were how light it feels, almost like empty plastic, and the mechanical notch for the privacy shutter. 

Sadly, the shutter doesn't feel satisfying to move. It is very easy to use and feels noticeably different when it's in and out of place, so at least is unlikely to be in the wrong position accidentally. Plus, the cover slides in front of the lens, but behind the main housing, which should keep it safer during travel. 

This camera is also completely devoid of a mic, which I think is excellent. Webcam mics are never good and are usually too far away to begin with. By not having a mic, Elgato has saved me a tonne of frustration, be it from my programs choosing it as the default mic, or having just another device listening in. No mic plus a privacy shutter means you can leave this cam plugged in and don't have to worry about yet another digital spy or accidental embarrassment. Plus the LED is large and remains on whenever the camera is active.

Facecam Neo specs

Elgato Facecam Neo set up on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)

Supported resolutions: 1080p60, 1080p30 HDR, 720p60, 720p30, 540p60, 540p30
Optics: Elgato AF Lens
Focus: Fixed (30 - infinite)
Field of view: 77°
Sensor: CMOS sensor 1/2.9-inch
Connection: USB Type-C
Dimensions: 88 x 32 x 40 mm
Price: $100 USD | £100 | $170 AUD

All in all, It's a huge step up from a tab of electrical tape over the lens. 

The Elgato Facecam Neo pumps out 1080p at up to 60 fps making it more than enough for most streams and meetings. It's not the best choice for video with those specs but still does well. 

For a light little webcam that can fit easily into most settings it's very capable. It does a great job of colours and skin tones but tends to lean just a little towards oversaturation, which ramps up when it tries to compensate for low light. I've plugged it into a few PCs with different software and it's been seamless every time. However, you might want to grab Elgato's free camera hub software to get access to all the features. 

The hub has controls for many things, like zoom and brightness, which can be saved to the camera to then be used in other apps. Most of these I was able to leave on auto quite happily, but this was also the only way I could see to enable the much sought after HDR setting.

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Elgato Facecam Neo set up on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)
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Elgato Facecam Neo set up on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)
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Elgato Facecam Neo set up on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)
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Elgato Facecam Neo set up on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)

Enabling HDR will restrict you from 60 fps to just 30, but will make a huge difference if you've got bright lights like windows messing up your shot. I can have a bright window behind me and still be nice and clear as opposed to creepy shadow creature. I just wouldn't recommend using it in all scenarios.

As well as losing out on those 30 frames, I found at my well lit desk, turning HDR on didn't look any different and would really mess with the autofocus. The focus became very sluggish and sometimes would be stuck at a blur, unable to focus at all. The autofocus isn't particularly snappy, generally speaking, which has bothered me occasionally, but it at least usually gets there within a few seconds max, and then holds it well until drastic changes.

Thankfully, with HDR on and a big window behind me, more like what it's designed for, I didn't have this issue. So in that sense it's not really a problem but does raise some questions about the autofocus. There are also options to turn the focus from auto to fixed in the software, which might be a workaround if you need it. Unfortunately, all of this means you might actually need the Elgato camera hub to make changes. Being able to save settings to the camera is a huge help here, but it makes me wish it had profiles, or even just a button for toggling HDR. The good news is the app is free and easy to use, so this shouldn't be a huge barrier.

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Elgato Facecam Neo set up on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)
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Elgato Facecam Neo set up on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)
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Elgato Facecam Neo set up on a desk.

(Image credit: Future)
Buy if...

✅ You're after a simple plug and play camera that is easy to travel with: Not only is it lightweight and small, I've tried this on PCs, laptops, and even my iPad and it just immediately works. Plus, using HDR enables it to thrive with awkwardly backlit environments.

✅ You specifically have to contend with bad window lighting and want a reasonably priced HDR camera: If your desk setup is permanently backlit by a window and you want a reliable camera that can handle it, the Facecam Neo has you covered.

Don't buy if...

You've got a really well lit desk setup: Something with a snappier autofocus or higher resolution might be a better choice here, depending on the budget. 

While wonderfully versatile, if you're wanting a dedicated webcam to hangout at your already well lit station, the Facecam Neo may not be the best choice. You could swap out some of that versatility and go for something with a fixed focus made for desks, and a better sensor that might deliver a higher quality image, like the Elgato Facecam MK2. Or even go for something fancier and 4K if you wanted to make videos as well. This isn't necessarily the webcam I'd recommend first for a single, already well lit, desk setup.

Instead, this is a camera that will work fairly well even if you are plagued with horrible light. It only takes a few tweaks to have it working well at a purposely lit streamer's desk as it does to have it in an awkward office. It's lightweight, small, works immediately with all the software I've tried it on (including FaceTime on my iPad), and without also trying to be a mic. Plus, 1080p at 30 - 60 fps is still more than enough for streaming and video calls. 

Those are some pretty big wins, especially for under $100 USD. It all comes together to make the Facecam Neo a smart choice, especially if you've got harsh light or use this cam on different setups easily.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/webcams/elgato-facecam-neo-review VHKtvaw8kf7zvULkUwSarc Fri, 23 Aug 2024 11:00:24 +0000
<![CDATA[ PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter review ]]> Ever since Sony launched the PS VR 2, with its handy do-it-all USB-C plug, back at the beginning of 2023, PC gamers have been wondering when they'll be able to use it too. It seemed so obvious—just plug it into a spare USB-C port on your PC and let SteamVR do the rest.

Of course it's not quite that simple. After years of waiting, Sony has finally released an adapter, possibly the most boring-looking PC peripheral set loose on the world in the past few years, that you'll require to use your $500 headset for your  $500 console with your  $1,000+ PC. It takes a USB-A connection and a DisplayPort plug from your PC, and a power feed from the wall (would a USB-C power plug have hurt, Sony?) and provides a single USB-C for the PS VR 2 unit to plug into. 

It's deeply dull, just a black square with a captive USB cord rather than the sleek white design that characterises the PS5 and PS VR 2. It's so plain that I resorted to photographing the power brick in an attempt to add some visual interest to this review, but that's a black block too. It's almost enough to make you long for RGB. 

The plastic finish has a texture to it that's going to collect dust. And while I'm not one to shy away from an obvious joke, it might be better to keep it in a drawer rather than on a shelf. 

PC adapter specs

PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter

(Image credit: Future)

Connection (to PC): USB Type-A, DisplayPort 1.4
Connection (to PSVR2): USB Type-C
Connection (to controllers): Bluetooth 4.0 or later
Dimensions: approx. 79 x 79 x 17 mm
Price: $60 | £50

The choice of DisplayPort 1.4 is an odd one, as HDMI sockets are much more common (DisplayPort being an open standard may have something to do with it) and you may find yourself picking up a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter in order to use the PSVR adapter—although Sony says this won't officially work and it needs to be a native port, something that rules out most gaming laptops. It feels a bit like you're using an outdated piece of equipment that requires multiple adapters strung together to coax into life, though it's still better than the six or so USB cables early Oculus Rift headsets, with their extra sensors, required.

You'll also need Bluetooth to connect the Sony hand controllers to your PC. It needs to be Bluetooth 4.0 or later, which most PCs powerful enough to think about VR should be able to manage. The official compatibility list for USB Bluetooth dongles is very small though, just four products long, and Sony has decided not to incorporate Bluetooth into the adapter, which it could have in order to make it as much like a PS5 as possible. 

Your GPU also matters, with Sony recommending a GeForce GTX 1650 / Radeon RX 5500XT or later (the RX 5700 is about PS5 level, though opinion on that varies wildly), and this needs to be paired with a Core i5 7600 / Ryzen 3 3100 or better. These specs sit between those for the Valve Index (lower) and the Meta Quest 3 (higher), though the specs for the games themselves are more important and will outstrip these basics.

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PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter

(Image credit: Future)
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PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter

(Image credit: Future)

Inside, you'll find the thing that sets the PS VR 2 apart from the Quest and Index—120 Hz OLED screens. They're not quite as high-res as those in the Quest 3, or as fast as those in the Index, but the fact you get vibrant colours and proper blacks (all the reasons OLED gaming monitors get pushed so hard) should help make the PS VR 2 one of the best, if not the best, PC VR headsets available today. 

The instruction manual in the box is little more than a folded piece of paper, but setup means installing the SteamVR and PlayStation VR 2 apps in Steam, which are both free, and you'll need a game or two as well. Half-Life Alyx is pretty good. Next, you pair the hand controllers with your PC's Bluetooth, which involves holding down two buttons on each controller and pairing through Windows Settings. They connected immediately on a laptop packing Bluetooth 5.4, which is encouraging.

The system I used to test the PS VR 2 adapter was the one with the biggest GPU available to me, the GeForce RTX 4090 in the ludicrously expensive Acer Predator Helios 18. It doesn't have a full-size DisplayPort socket, however, so I used an adapter from a USB-C port in exactly the way Sony says not to do. On first launching the PlayStation VR 2 app in Steam it runs an install script and downloads some .NET components, then goes through a setup checklist that ended for me with a 'the DisplayPort cable is not connected' message. 

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PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter

(Image credit: Future)
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PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter

(Image credit: Future)
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PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter

(Image credit: Future)

This turned out to be because it wasn't: the cable had slipped out of the USB-C adapter, and pushing it back in produced a 'connected' screen. Suck it, Sony.

Firing up Alyx, I'm reminded of just how good VR can be when it's done well. At the very beginning of the game (it leaves you in an empty space for a worryingly long time while it's loading, which led me to wonder if it was all working correctly—a 'loading' message wouldn't have gone amiss) when you're standing on your City 17 balcony watching the pigeons and Combine scurry about, there was some jerking in the complex scene as the frame rate tanked. 

This passed after I teleported inside, and while there were occasional glitches in frame rate, everything from that point on passed fairly smoothly, including bringing up the menu to save the game, and the SteamVR overlay. My major issue with the PS VR 2 is that I seem to be constantly adjusting it to sharpen up text, prevent the rubber surround from squishing my nose or poking me in the eye, and striking a balance between the centre being in focus or the edges being blurry.

Buy if...

You already have a PS5 VR setup and want to broaden your games library: There are maybe five PSVR2 games worth playing and a plethora on SteamVR.

Don't buy if...

You're looking for a PC-specific VR solution: At least not yet. 

The great thing about the PlayStation VR 2 on the PlayStation 5 is that it just works. It connects over a single cable, which is a generous length. You press a button on the hand controllers and they connect first time. And the software is excellent, allowing you to pop up an overlay any time you like. It's a bit finicky about space, preferring you to play every game standing in the centre of a football field, but that's true of many VR options. In my experience, the PC adapter and Steam VR come pretty close to replicating this, though Steam seems less concerned with furniture positioning.

There are horror stories online about Bluetooth not connecting, hand controllers freezing, DisplayPort errors and more. For me, it all worked first time, though I was using a monster laptop to test it with. 

Any recommendation of this as a PC VR system is going to come with a lot of the word 'if'. If you already own a PS5, and if you already own a PS VR 2, and if you're really into VR games, and if the selection on PlayStation isn't giving you everything you want, and if you have a good enough gaming PC, then this adapter is a much better idea than buying a second headset. It might, however, be one firmware update away from being the best PC VR hat, and if Sony can iron out any connectivity glitches and keep the price down, there's no reason why it couldn't ascend to that crown.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/playstation-vr2-pc-adapter-review vkWwYjXZtHNrm3nes6FtnD Thu, 22 Aug 2024 14:09:01 +0000
<![CDATA[ MSI Crosshair 16 HX review ]]> Bearing in mind that the MSI Crosshair 16 HX's RTX 4060 sits at the low end of Nvidia's current generation of portable GPUs, you might be wondering how it can justify a £1,600/$1,750 price tag. The answer is "with difficulty". There are a few reasons this gaming laptop might actually be worth considering at that price, not least the magic of a high-wattage GPU, but can it live up to the competition?

The MSI Crosshair 16 is not a subtle looking machine, at all. It's chunky and a little bit funky, with a cyberpunk-style engraved design on the back, chamfers around the keyboard, hatching above it, and translucent WASD keys that shine through showing the mechanism underneath. Those keys forgo the pudding top design of the others, and while they're not specifically unattractive, I would have appreciated a black legend on them since the white is a little difficult to see.

I appreciate the Crosshair's keyboard layout, though, which pushes the numpad aside in favour of the important bits. I've ended up pressing FN a lot instead of the left arrow due to the placement of the directionals, but it's far nicer to type on than a lot of squished gaming laptop keyboards I've tested. 

The keypress also feels closer to a low profile mechanical key switch than your average membrane, with good pop to the actuation. The only real problem I've had with typing or playing on it is the sharp edge on the front. It makes it a little awkward if you're sitting lower than the laptop. Otherwise it's a relatively curvy machine compared to something like the Gigabyte Aorus 17X with its super-sharp aesthetic.

Crosshair 16 HX

MSI Crosshair 16 HX gaming laptop

(Image credit: Future)

Model: Crosshair HX D14VFKG-002UK
CPU: Intel Core i7 14700HX
GPU: Nvidia RTX 4060 (140 W)
RAM: 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR5-5600
SSD: 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 (WD PC SN560)
Screen: 16-inch | 2560 x 1600 (16:10)
Refresh rate: 240 Hz
OS: Windows 11 Home
Weight: 2.5 kg | 5.5 lb
Dimensions: 359 x 266.4 x 27.9mm | 14.1 x 10.4 x 1in
Price: £1,600 | $1,750 (closest spec) 

Looks aside, it all feels very sturdy. Opening and closing the lid there's hardly any shake, and I love that the screen sits slightly forward as the bit protruding behind it makes for a good handle when you want to shuffle into a different room without closing the lid. Despite being heavy, it still feels supremely portable. The 76 minute gaming battery life lets it down a little in that respect, but it's still 20+ minutes more game time than others in its weight class.

While RTX 4060 gaming laptops are common as muck, ones that go up to 1440p are a little more rare, let alone a spicy 16:10 aspect ratio at 2560 x 1600 pixels—objectively the best aspect ratio according to our Dave. The reason being that the RTX 4060 is generally better suited to 1080p gaming. 

Pit the MSI Crosshair 16 HX against lower wattage RTX 4060 machines with 1080p panels and it'll outdo them nine times out of ten in the GPU-centered benchies. That 140 W GPU lets it push the envelope as to what you can achieve with low-end, current-gen Nvidia graphics. And although that means it runs a little hotter due to the extra power under the hood, it's pretty good at dissipating that heat without sounding like it's taking off. 

Compare it to something of a more identical spec, price and panel like the Legion Pro 5i Gen 9, and it's clear where MSI concentrated with the Crosshair. It might not match the kind of frame rates that the Legion pumps out, but it's a much more balanced machine. A better bandwidth on the RAM and higher refresh rate for the same price would make any hot blooded gamer lean toward the MSI.

The problem is that, even when gaming in 1080p the Crosshair still can't make the most of the high refresh rate. And while the MSI Crosshair still performs admirably, even in its native resolution, there's a feeling that the 240 Hz refresh rate panel you've paid extra for is a little wasted.

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MSI Crosshair 16 HX gaming laptop

(Image credit: Future)
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MSI Crosshair 16 HX gaming laptop

(Image credit: Future)
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MSI Crosshair 16 HX gaming laptop

(Image credit: Future)
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MSI Crosshair 16 HX gaming laptop

(Image credit: Future)
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MSI Crosshair 16 HX gaming laptop

(Image credit: Future)
Buy if...

You want to play RPGs in middling res on the fly: Supremely portable and great for playing open world games at a steady frame rate, the Crosshair delivers for RP gamers.

You don't mind uninstalling a bit of bloatware: From Norton antivirus, to Arc in-game overlay, GOG and Battlenet, you might have to do a purge when you first open the lid.

Don't buy if...

You're a competitive gamer: You'll likely be wasting the refresh rate at any resolution, and gaming at 1080p all the time is going to make you wish you hadn't splurged on those excess pixels.

You live in the US: The closest spec I could find for folk in the US is the Monster Hunter version, which adds another $150 for more (lower speed) RAM, and some pretty decorations. Probably not worth it unless you're a massive fan of the series.

For a few hundred less, you can bag yourself a Gigabyte G6X that often outperforms the Crosshair at 1080p, even with its 105 W GPU and a last-gen Intel CPU backing it up. Sure, the battery life isn't anything to write home about, but at least you aren't paying extra for a wasted refresh rate. But then, if you want to play games in a higher resolution you don't have that option at all without plugging in one of the best gaming monitors.

At the end of the day, the MSI Crosshair 16 HX is a joy to use, bar an initial session of uninstalling bloatware. The speakers are a little tinny, and the edge is a little sharp but these are all very tolerable qualms. And while it really shines in productivity and CPU-heavy tasks with its 14th gen Intel processor, and reaches over 100 fps in plenty of games, its major imbalance comes with throwing too much speed at a laptop that's ostensibly competitive, but really is better suited for RPG heads.

If you just want a steady 60 fps to see you through at 1440p+, or see more of your Excel spreadsheet between gaming sessions with a taller panel, the MSI Crosshair 16 HX might be worth a punt. But what you don't need is to pay extra for a 240 Hz panel meant for competitive gaming that your GPU can't make the most of.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gaming-laptops/msi-crosshair-16-hx-review Liois7MQogG3yyrQijdrti Wed, 21 Aug 2024 11:56:14 +0000
<![CDATA[ Tactical Breach Wizards review ]]>
NEED TO KNOW

Three arcane military types sit in a brightly-lit, lovingly detailed cafe.

(Image credit: Suspicious Developments)

What is it?: A bombastic, turn-based game about military mages with a tightly-written story.
Expect to pay:  $19.99/£16.75
Developer: Suspicious Developments Inc
Publisher: Suspicious Developments
Reviewed on: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, AMD Ryzen 7 5800 8-Core Processor, 16GB RAM, Force MP600 SSD.
Multiplayer: No, but there is a level editor and sharing system.
Steam Deck: Playable
Link: suspiciousdevelopments.com 

There's a phenomenon observed among most tabletop roleplaying (TTRPG) groups: As you play together, falling into each other's rhythms, two things start to happen. Firstly, your capability for sincere storytelling reaches new heights; secondly, your ideas grow increasingly unhinged.

Tactical Breach Wizards, a turn-based tactics game by Suspicious Developments Inc, captures the essence of a seasoned TTRPG group and distils it into around 18 hours of absolute malarkey, heartstring-pulling character stories, and yes—defenestration.

Tactical Breach Wizards is far from XCOM in a robe and wizard hat. Instead of long-term battles, it zeroes in on the 'breach, clear, repeat' loop of bite-sized combat puzzles, and gives you more tactical tools than you could fit inside a bag of holding. It's what's scribbled in between the margins, though—the story, the characters, and the stream of top-tier party banter—that really makes Tactical Breach Wizards soar.

Be kind, rewind

(Image credit: Suspicious Developments)

Tactical Breach Wizards is not a game that's entirely interested in consequences—instead, it's invested in making you feel like the biggest genius this side of the Bay of Teeth. Living with your mistakes is for people without magic, after all. Owing to navy seer Zan Vesker, (a man who occasionally does a prophecy, but can mostly see just one second into the future) your actions in Tactical Breach Wizards always be reset, as long as you don't click the "end turn" button. 

Missions are split up into three phases: the action phase, the foresee phase, and your enemy's turn. In the action phase, you plan out how your team's going to react. In the foresee phase, you watch how that all pays off, and during the enemy's turn, they get to move their pawns around, giving you a new set of circumstances to puzzle your way through.

(Image credit: Suspicious Developments)

Playing on the game's intended difficulty, I never found any of its challenges insurmountable—what teased my brain, however, were its optional in-mission challenges. These can be anything from "Defenestrate Steve Clark, traffic warlock" to "Deal with all enemies by turn 2." 

You can replay these missions to tackle the extra bits later, and they're not mandatory, but there's a good reason to complete them as soon as you can: fashion. Completing challenges earns you Confidence, which lets you unlock outfits for your squad—severe necromancer Banks had some of my favourite outfits, including a wild west gunslinger look, two hoodies, and drip that would make the grim reaper envious.

Nailing these optional objectives is imminently satisfying, too, and it's owed to the sheer flexibility you have to piece together some buck-wild combos.

Power Word: Wombo

(Image credit: Suspicious Developments)

Each character in Tactical Breach Wizards is brilliantly put together, fulfilling a niche that synergises with their compatriots in various ways. As you unlock more perks, you go from barely being able to knock three guys out of a window to an unstoppable breaching machine.

For example, Vesker the Navy Seer and Banks the Necromedic (she can revive people, but they have to be dead first) work nicely together. Vesker can use False Prophet, which summons a clone that (with all his perks unlocked) fires its assault staff at an enemy whenever anyone, including other clones, hits them with a basic attack—and while each clone only gets one potshot off per triggering strike, they all trigger off each other, leading a volley of gunfire that melts just about anything. 

Once they've earned their keep, Banks swoops in with her 3x3 attack (upgraded with a perk to increase its instant damage) and deftly kills them. This is a very smart strategy and not a horrible betrayal of your clone buddies because of a perk that refunds their mana cost as long as they die before the end of the turn, allowing Vesker to summon a fresh batch of helpers next round.

By the time you've got access to six maxed-out agents, you're pulling off absolute nonsense every single turn.

Storm witch Jen Kellen and riot priest Dall Sabin also make great partners. Jen has a chain lightning attack that knocks people around based on its angle of entry, strewn between three (and eventually six) targets. This can link to enemies, allies, and objects—including Dall's riot block, which she can throw down just about anywhere. 

Dall can also swap herself with allies and enemies. Essentially, this means she can manipulate enemy positioning to make the best use out of Jen's chain lightning, punting enemies out of windows or into objects for massive colliding damage. Simple tools that make you feel like a Harvard graduate when you get a triple kill with one well-angled bolt.

(Image credit: Suspicious Developments)

Usually, turn-based tactical games irritate me because they have hyper-specific solutions to any one situation—and while Tactical Breach Wizards does have the occasional puzzle box level, it has just as many stages that saturate the field with foes and let you figure out your own solution.

My only real complaint is that, while you can replay older missions with your full kit, the game feels like it's missing a NG+ option, bar ratcheting up the difficulty and going through every mission one by one again. There are some post-game challenges, but I swept through them in a handful of hours without much trouble.

By the time you've got access to six maxed-out agents, you're pulling off absolute nonsense every single turn. It gets to the point where it feels a smidge unfair. I played the game on its normal difficulty, though I did try some of its endgame missions on hard with a maxed-out crew—and while I certainly had to get more inventive, I wasn't sweating too much, especially with the pressure of completing its optional confidence goals taken off.

Mind, the game's coming released with both a comprehensive level editor and the ability to share them with other players—so who knows, some wunderkinds might assemble the endgame nightmare I've been craving.

The saving grace of the game's slightly-undercooked replayability (which is only a problem because I want more of it) is its story, which completely caught me off guard.

Friendship is magic

(Image credit: Suspicious Developments)

Tactical Breach Wizards is a very funny game. Characters quip with each other in snappy, well-written ways that send up the absurdity of its setting tremendously. For example, in the very first mission, both characters take a moment to puzzle over a druid mafia Great Oak in a ghillie suit. "Isn't it already a tree?" your companion asks, to which you can reply: "Maybe they wanna be mistaken for a sniper."

Few opportunities are wasted for a good gag. Every mission complete screen comes with a joke objective that usually pulled a cackle out of me. And while that might sound exhausting on the face of it, Tactical Breach Wizards breaks up its comedy with bouts of laser-focused character writing.

It presents itself as a high-octane action military romp with its tongue firmly lodged in its cheek—and it absolutely is that. But it's also unfailingly sincere, with character development that somehow manages to be great despite the limited time allocated to such things in your average tactics game.

(Image credit: Suspicious Developments)

The story is told via pre and post-mission cutscenes, but it's also delivered in quick conversations before every door breach, Anxiety Dream missions that delve into a character's specific psyche to unlock high-powered perks, and a cute little corkboard map that helps you literally string things together. 

One-on-one conversations between your party members, meanwhile, flesh them out. Every character gets to be explored, with attention devoted to their personal shtick, insecurities and tragedies—elevating what would otherwise be a very competent action flick into something memorable.

Playing it straight

(Image credit: Suspicious Developments)

The one word I keep coming back to when thinking about my time with this game is "sincerity". Tactical Breach Wizards is a tight, well-designed turn-based tactics game, but it's executed with both an earnestness and enthusiasm that's impossible to ignore. 

Its mechanics are well balanced, but will always drop balance in favour of letting you pull off dumb and cool manoeuvres. It's a game that trades in nonsense and irreverence while managing to be thoughtful, and my 22 hours with it—which include completing all optional confidence goals and dream levels—were spent utterly spellbound. 

If the worst I can say is that I simply want more of Tactical Breach Wizards, that's a sign we've got something special on our hands. If you like tactics games and character-driven stories, the only crime this game commits is leaving you hungry for more of both.

Disclosure: Tactical Breach Wizards' developer Tom Francis was an editor at PC Gamer for 10 years, leaving in 2013 after the release of his first game, Gunpoint. We assign writers and editors who do not have personal relationships with Tom to any coverage of his games.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/tactical-breach-wizards-review GqKT5ke6iHTTqDp2Ux4VKW Mon, 19 Aug 2024 17:00:00 +0000
<![CDATA[ Geekom AX8 Pro review ]]> As I hefted the AX8 Pro from its packaging, my first impression was of a pleasing weight and density. My second was: "Holy CRAP this thing is small!" 

I'm not kidding, the AX8 Pro is an absolute marvel of miniaturisation. Measuring just 11.1cm x 11.7cm x 3.8cm, it's the most compact mini-PC we've tested by some margin, And within this tiny frame is housed one of the latest and best AMD APUs. 

Featuring eight cores and sixteen threads, the Ryzen 9 8945HS is a great little chip. In stress-testing, we saw it draw a peak of 65 W, boosting from its base clock speed of 4 GHz to a healthy 5.2 GHz, with a peak operating temperature of 92 °C under sustained loads. That might feel a bit on the balmy side, but it's still eight degrees short of the CPU's 100 °C TJMax rating, the point at which throttling kicks in.

Paired with this fine silicon is the Radeon 780M iGPU, aka RDNA 3, and this is probably the last generation of chips we'll see it in. AMD's upcoming, AI-branded Zen 5 mobile APUs will feature a Radeon 890M GPU with RDNA 3.5, and our Zen 5 laptop testing so far shows how strong that is. But until they hit the mainstream, the Radeon 780M is still the most reliably performant iGPU around, bettered only by the leap in performance—and commensurate cost—of adding a discrete mobile GPU into the mix, which we see in the likes of the ASUS ROG NUC.

AX8 Pro specs

Geekom AX8 Pro mini PC

(Image credit: Future)

APU: AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS
iGPU: Radeon 780M
Memory: 32GB DDR5 5600Mhz SODIMM
Storage:  2TB M.2 PCIe Gen4
Wireless: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
I/O: front: 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 3.5mm Headset jack
I/O rear: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x USB4 Type-C, 1USB 3.2 Type-C, 1x 2.5G LAN, 1x USB 3.2 Type-A, 1x USB 2.0 Type-A
Price: $899 | £949 

What this all adds up to is a powerful, do-it-all mini-PC, a machine you can use equally for work and pleasure, with desktop-chasing productivity chops and muscle enough to run most games well at 1080p. A lot of its gaming performance hinges on that Radeon 780M, so it's no surprise to find it trades blows with previous-gen APUs equipped with the same iGPU, such as the Ryzen 7 7840HS and Ryzen 9 7940HS, and on the Intel side, the Arc-wielding Core 9 Ultra 185H.

Indie and older games are where the 780M shines and there's oodles of fun to be had at 1080p with medium graphics settings. In our testing we found Subnautica running nice and smooth at 55-75 fps, Stray at a similarly svelte 52-75 fps, Soulstone Survivors between 80 and 120 fps, and Doom Eternal at a gore-slick 70-80 fps. 

Moving to more modern and demanding AAA titles at 1080p, using medium detail settings and FSR set to auto where the engine proffers it, the AX8 Pro holds its own against those aforementioned peers, and sometimes exceeds them, but never pulls ahead by more than a nose. It puts in a solid showing with Total War: WARHAMMER 3's battle and campaign benchmarks, achieving 42 fps and 33 fps respectively. Forza gets you an unflinching 46 fps. Homeworld 3's tough benchmark sees an average of 39 fps, while Cyberpunk 2077 enjoys a healthy 51 fps.

There are quieter mini PCs out there, but this thing is so compact, I'm genuinely staggered that it doesn't sound like a Lilliputian Airbus.

Under heavy loads, the AX8 Pro's cooling solution gets a bit blowy, but it's the sound of air being pressed through fan-grills; there's none of the whistling whine so common with small, high-RPM fans. You're hearing the airflow generated by the mechanism, not the mechanism itself, and while it's initially quite noticeable, it's a sound you can mostly zone out. There are quieter mini PCs out there, but this thing is so compact, I'm genuinely staggered that it doesn't sound like a Lilliputian Airbus.   

Some furtive noodling around the BIOS reveals three fan modes which you can switch between to alter the cooling and sound profiles. Shifting between Quiet, Normal, and Performance modes does indeed alter the max fan speed and associated volume, but in testing we discovered that it also alters the TDP, with the fan curve shifting to match lesser or greater wattage limits and their adjuvant heat generation, so the label ‘fan mode' doesn't quite paint the full picture.

Running Prime95 to stress the chip and using HWInfo64 to measure the changes, Silent mode saw the CPU draw 51 W to hit a max turbo speed of 5.1 GHz and a max temp of 83 Celsius. Normal mode draws 59 W, which gets you 5.1 GHz at 89 °C, and Performance mode pulls 65 W to hit the CPU's max clock speed of 5.2 GHz and pushes the temperature to 92 °C. Our shrink-wrapped AX8 Pro retail sample was set to Performance out of the box, so all the benchmarks above were conducted in this mode. 

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Geekom AX8 Pro mini PC

(Image credit: Future)
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Geekom AX8 Pro mini PC

(Image credit: Future)
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Geekom AX8 Pro mini PC

(Image credit: Future)

TDP changes can affect performance of course, so our final test was to rerun Cyberpunk's benchmark in all three modes and note the performance changes between the different wattages. In Quiet mode (51 W), the game saw an average of 48 fps, and the fan remained very quiet. In Normal mode (59 W), the game achieved 51 fps, and the raised fan speed was more audible, but level and ignorable. In Performance mode (65 W), it performed no better than Normal, achieving the same 51 fps in Cyberpunk but noticeably hiking the fan-noise to a prominent level. Other games may or may benefit more from the jump up to 65 W, but if so, it's hard to imagine a significant level of uptick. Our recommendation would be to drop the fan mode to Normal and leave it there.    

In performance terms, the average frame rates achieved by the AX8 Pro are what we've come to expect from mini-PCs running games on the Radeon 780M at 1080p. Assuming any Ryzen APU paired with the 780M isn't run at an undercooked wattage, it makes for a fairly level playing field between such chips and devices in terms of games performance. There's no denying that the AX8 Pro's Ryzen 9 8945HS enables it to achieve higher frame rates than its peers in some titles, but incrementally so. And that's no surprise as, on paper, AMD's 7th-gen and 8th-gen Ryzen 9 mobile APUs appear identical. 

Both the 7940HS and 8945HS boast eight cores, achieve a turbo clock speed of 5.2 GHz, they both have the same L1, L2 and L3 cache sizes, they're rated by AMD to run at the same 45-54 W TDP, and they both lean on the Radeon 780M for gaming. Same transistor count, same everything, as far as I can glean from AMD's spec-sheets, which read like a cut-and-paste job. Geekom's implementation here, which pushes the CPU to operate above its stated TDP-rating of 54 W, is most likely what gives it that minimal performance edge. But the fact remains, you're paying a huge premium here for a slightly newer CPU which is effectively a rebadge of the previous generation, and in most titles there's no performance difference at all.

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Geekom AX8 Pro mini PC

(Image credit: Future)
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Geekom AX8 Pro mini PC

(Image credit: Future)
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Geekom AX8 Pro mini PC

(Image credit: Future)
Buy if...

✅ You demand the dinkiest: It's tiny. You could literally slip this thing in the back pocket of your jeans.

You want great performance at 1080p: An excellent all-rounder with power enough for gaming at 1920x1080 

Don't buy if...

❌ You're on a budget: The price tag is just shy of a grand, and there's no barebones option.

You want a silent performer: With a powerful APU in a tiny case, the fan needs to hustle 

One of the attractions of mini-PCs is the fact that they grant snappy general-computing and 1080p gaming power on a budget, and the AX8 Pro is objectively not a bargain compared to the prices of its competing stablemates. Plus, Zen 5 APUs which wield the new RDNA3.5 iGPU, aka the Radeon 890M, are beginning to trickle into devices.  The talented Mr. Ridley found that even in a lower-wattage notebook scenario, the Radeon 890M grants a tangible performance uplift over the 780M. It's going to be interesting to see if that performance is further improved at the kind of TDP levels offered by boxes like the AX8 Pro. So if you're thinking of dropping this amount of money on a top-end mini-PC, it might pay to wait just a little longer.

If you want the smallest PC on the planet with a highly performant APU, the Geekom AX8 Pro is just that. But be aware that you can spend considerably less and achieve near-identical results.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gaming-pcs/geekom-ax8-pro-mini-pc-review uh677hrhvD27UFrWMjBCEH Mon, 19 Aug 2024 10:52:23 +0000
<![CDATA[ Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers review ]]>
Need to Know

What is it? A roguelike deckbuilder where you try to cheat at blackjack.
Release date August 8, 2024
Expect to pay $15/£12.80
Developer Purple Moss Collectors
Publisher Yogscast Games
Reviewed on ASUS ROG Ally
Steam Deck TBA
Link Official site

Game developers have clearly been spending a lot of time at the casino lately, and not just because they’ve been laid off by our wonderful, flawless industry. They’ve been taking casino classics, stripping out all that annoyingly life-ruining gambling, and transforming them into fun roguelike deckbuilders. Just this year we’ve had a smart new spin on roulette with Bingle Bingle, and ace poker riff Balatro might as well have deleted all the other games on my PC.

Now we have Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, a roguelike deckbuilder take on blackjack. It’s a game with its tongue so far in its cheek that it would be in danger of losing that tongue if someone were to punch it in the face. Unfortunate, given that this fun, clever card game is often face-punchingly frustrating. What’s the warranty on a Steam Deck that’s been thrown repeatedly at a wall?

If you’re a living saint who knows nothing about the sinful world of gambling, blackjack is a game wherein you and your opponent take turns drawing from individual decks of playing cards. You’re both trying to get a score that adds up to 21. Make a number that’s 22 or higher and you bust, meaning you’ll almost definitely lose, unless your opponent is courteous enough to bust too. So the trick is knowing when to quit. If you have an 18, is it really worth risking drawing another card?

D&DG’s first twist is that you have a consistent pool of 100 health to worry about, and every time you lose, you take the difference in score as damage. Say your opponent has hit 21 and you’re on 18. If you stick with that, you’ll take 3 damage. But if you risk drawing another card and bust you’ll take a massive 21 damage. Ouch!

You also can look at your draw pile and your opponents' draw pile at any time, like the world's greatest card counter. Get into the habit of doing this, as sometimes it provides a strong hint of your chances and other times outright confirms whether you’re going to win or bust.

(Image credit: Purple Moss Collectors)

That’s a decent system to build a roguelike deckbuilder around, and more interesting cards soon mix things up. Like one that lets you steal a card from your opponent, suddenly turning their winning 21 into a pathetic 11. Or one that deals three damage to yourself but gives you five points of shield against future attacks. Or the brilliant 0.5 card that only rounds up if you’re below 21 in your final score. That one has done so much for me that I’m leaving it everything in my will.

Charming presentation helps the learning curve go down easy. In an old tavern that "reeks of ale and addiction", you start off playing drunks, janitors, and bards. Survive long enough and you can move up to the fancier floors, or descend into the dark and vile basement, where your first opponent is a literal rat. Later you explore a VIP area with crypto-shilling celebrities, and a head office where parts of your deck are laid off to protect the bosses bonuses. Brutal.

While a few more quips for each character wouldn’t have gone amiss, there’s still enough fun dialogue here to raise a smile, and some of the cards are sublimely silly. I’d love to see how long someone would survive playing blackjack in an actual casino with an SD card, a PS1 memory card, and a legally-just-distinct-enough-from-Pokémon card. Others cheekily reference Slay the Spire and Balatro, which is… brave. Do you really wanna risk inviting comparison to the best of the best?

This gambling house is also running every scam under the sun. There’s overpriced loot boxes, cryptocurrency you can buy and have to sell before the value plummets, a bored ape NFT card, roulette, slot machines, three card monte, etc. It’s pretty good at satirising most of this stuff while still keeping the game fair…

Joker in the pack

(Image credit: Purple Moss Collectors, Yogscast)

A proudly ridiculous game then, but play long enough and serious strategies do start to emerge. Chopping and changing your deck to make hitting that precious 21 easier is an obviously smart goal—filling mine with 10’s and 0.5 cards is going to work someday, dammit. There’s also plenty of nasty stuff for sabotaging your opponent, like a card that can burn one of their cards out of the game. Or a card that ‘locks’ one of their cards, forcing them to play it every hand. Cards like this become essential against the late-game opponents, something you learn through frustrating trial-and-error.

You have runs where the gambling gods smile down upon you and everything seems to go right. You then have runs where Satan seems to be dealing. But too often you have runs where the game just slows to a crawl.

Stalemates are very possible and incredibly tedious. At one point I managed to screw myself by burning my opponent’s deck until it contained only two cards: a pair of 10s. That meant they scored 20 every turn automatically, and the best I could do was chip away one damage at a time whenever I could get a perfect 21. That’s an extreme example, but far from the only way to trap yourself in a miserable battle that stretches on forever until you’re longing to turn the deck on yourself.

(Image credit: Purple Moss Collectors, Yogscast Games)

The game begins with four starter decks, each entirely one suit (hearts, spades, diamonds, or clubs), with different suits granting different bonuses when you get a 21. Hearts restore health, spades create shields, diamonds win you more chips, and clubs hit harder. Fine in theory, but because each starter deck is still the same set of basic numbers and face cards, they mostly play near-identically until you unlock a few more cards in a run. That means things get repetitive fast.

What makes things worse is that the health-restoring hearts deck is just so much more valuable than the other three options. Health is a nightmare to restore otherwise, relying on either the right card appearing in a run, incredibly stingy taverns, or some overpriced "loot boxes" that give you a card and restore a miserable 2 health apiece (ha ha ha I guess?). Beating an area boss with only three of my health points remaining should be exhilarating, but it isn’t when the first opponent in the next area easily picks me off.

Yet, despite all that moaning, I’ve sunk 20 hours into it so far. True, that’s because the tyrants who run PC Gamer force me to play the games before I review them, but I’m also going to dive back into it after my professional obligations. Because this feels a few patches away from being yet another deckbuilder great—and the developer has already announced that it's got a balance update in the works to make the early going less punishing. But for now, each failed run ending with a reminder that "The House Always Wins" (ha ha ha) feels just a little too accurate.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/dungeons-degenerate-gamblers-review werSAozVL9cCPSXFZhWzYZ Fri, 16 Aug 2024 17:06:49 +0000
<![CDATA[ Black Myth: Wukong review ]]> These animals may not have thumbs, but they sure have hands. Tony the Tiger studied the blade just to carve my ass into a Jack-O'-Lantern and I'm not even mad about it; in fact, I'm impressed. The entire zoo is out for blood in Black Myth: Wukong, a stunning action game clearly inspired by the Dark Souls series but distinct enough that calling it a soulslike doesn't do it justice.

Need to Know

black myth: wukong

(Image credit: Game Science)

What is it? A beautiful and challenging singleplayer action RPG based on a Journey to the West.
Release date August 20, 2024
Expect to pay $60/£50
Developer GameScience
Publisher GameScience
Reviewed on RTX 4090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer No
Steam Deck N/A
Link Steam 

Dark Souls never let me stick my tongue out as a giant frog and slap my enemies around with it. It never let me create a posse of clones to punch an evil pile of rocks back into the ground either. If Dark Souls is a trial, Wukong is an adventure. Or if you want to be accurate about it, it's a Journey to the West, but the animals have health bars. Wukong imagines a version of the classic Chinese story where a fox upgrades your healing potion. If anything about it is truly like FromSoftware's games, it's how much it lets its rich world speak for itself.

Wukong doesn't waste time trying to establish why there's a forest of wolf men or why you're serenaded by a man without a head. It opens with hero Sun Wukong laughing in the face of a council of gods who immediately punish him so hard it takes hundreds of years for him to be reincarnated as a level 1 monkey. Journey to the West isn't required reading before playing Wukong, but doing so might make its world considerably less opaque. Even so, I had no troubles appreciating its eccentric cast of talking animals who are either so amusingly pathetic you pity them or so self-serious it's like you barged in on their third act.

Surprises like a gigantic frog leaping out of tall grass and a serpentine dragon clutching me in its teeth far above a frozen lake lured me forward—every level is a series of bizarre vignettes crash landing into a seemingly straightforward quest. Wukong is overflowing with boss fights, which isn't actually as intimidating as it sounds. The difficulty of these encounters is so uneven that you never know what to expect. You might stumble into an oversized rat and come out unscathed, but need to fully lock-in to defeat a raging bear. Many of the bosses celebrate the spectacle rather than demanding your sharpest reflexes.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / GameScience)

Wukong gently pressures you to take side paths that lead to treasure or sidequests that will beef you up for what's ahead.

A similar ethos applies to the sections between those big fights. Wukong's level design begins extremely linear, almost to the point of constricting its combat into one big highway of enemies, but it gradually opens up after the first few hours. You go from bonking wolves in a forest to tiptoeing past skeletal snake men. In its second chapter, every kind of rat shows up to snipe you from rooftops or set you on fire with clouds of gunpowder. Wukong gently pressures you to take side paths that lead to treasure or sidequests that will beef you up for what's ahead.

In a desert area, I cleared out some shield-bearing hedgehogs and jumped down a bridge to find a man who had been turned into a rock begging for help. When I returned with an item he asked for he laughed at me for being gullible enough to fall for his trick—a classic 16th century joke! Suddenly I could lock onto him, so I smacked him a few times and he gave up a spell that let me parry attacks by turning to stone.

Instead of dropping you into a meat grinder of tricky enemy placements between each boss like so many soulslikes, Wukong lets these open sections breathe so you can soak up its world before moving into the next big battle.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / GameScience)

When the fights do get tough—and some of them definitely do—Wukong's flexible skill tree and upgrade systems keep most of them from feeling like brick walls. At any shrine, Wukong's version of Dark Souls' bonfire checkpoints that respawn nearby enemies, you can move your skill points around to invest in a number of powerful magical abilities. Investing in Immobilize gave me a tool to freeze enemies just before they landed a hit so I could heal or retaliate. Maxing out the duration of a spell that transformed me into a wolf with a flaming polearm was like having a second life for multi-phase bosses. While I wouldn't quite call them builds, Wukong has plenty of ways for you to almost nullify the nastiest parts of a fight so you can survive it. Its spells are so strong that I suspect some players will opt to fight without them, like all the Reddit ascetics who proudly refuse to use the mimic tear in Elden Ring.

But doing so will rob you of the most satisfying elements of Wukong's combat. Aside from some minor damage upgrades to your staff, you don't have an inventory of weapons to choose from. You do, however, have an inventory of creatures to choose from. Special enemies found throughout the levels drop their spirits which can be equipped for a passive buff and a devastating signature attack, like morphing your head into a giant hammer or turning into a swordsman for one clean slash attack. Combat is largely about creating openings in an enemy's attack patterns with your spells and buying time with dodges until they're back online.

Most fights are a dance of cartwheels, somersaults, and puffs of smoke as your monkey man assumes the form of various beasts that you collect like Pokémon. Once you find the rhythm, you go from playing as a warrior to a magician.

A rough start

(Image credit: Tyler C. / GameScience)

Nothing is more frustrating when that flow is broken by something you can't improve with a little better timing or prediction. In the review build of the game, a stuttery frame rate and the occasional crash ended a few early battles prematurely for me. Wukong is yet another game plagued by the curse of graphics shaders tanking performance so badly that instead of swapping your skill points, you're swapping video settings to find a combination that'll get you through the next section, and no amount of raw GPU grunt can power through it.

Although Wukong has fairly linear environments, they're dense with beautiful detail, like a sunbaked desert with gnarled trees or a forest of glowing leaves. It's a shame that I had to muddy any of it by knocking down my settings to medium on a Nvidia RTX 4090. It fixed my issues without tarnishing too much of the gorgeous views, but there's a chance the experience could be even worse on launch day for people with way less extravagant graphics cards.

The handful of deaths from the game's poor performance couldn't sour how impressive Wukong is as an action game that isn't content with living in FromSoftware's shadow. It may have a lot of the signifiers of a soulslike, but it wields its difficulty in a more playful, approachable way. Wukong shirks a lot of the punishing difficulty synonymous with the soulslike genre, positioning it as one of the best games to recommend to anyone who has avoided them or for those who aren't fond of how grim they tend to be. Bosses that bookend each chapter are the closest mirrors to ones you'd find in Elden Ring, but you can skip usual moveset memorization and trial-and-error with patience, dodging around until you're comfortable with going in. Checkpoints are never more than 30 seconds away from the bosses too. The rewards at the end of each chapter are striking little animations—one of which is a stop-motion parable about a man who saves an injured wolf—that make your effort worth it.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / GameScience)

Wukong is one of the most joyful action RPGs I've played simply for how lovingly it treats its world and characters.

Those scenes reinforce the exuberance with which the game's developers drew from such an iconic work of folklore. GameScience has imbued Wukong with a staggering amount of creativity. Aside from the performance issues, the biggest disappointment comes from outside the game itself: Last year, an IGN report described in detail a history of sexist remarks from GameScience's leaders. The studio has declined to acknowledge the allegations in recent interviews, and while I didn't find anything within the game that reflects an extremely regressive view of women (although there just aren't many in the game), the behavior tarnishes what would otherwise be an effortless recommendation.

Wukong is one of the most joyful action RPGs I've played simply for how lovingly it treats its world and characters and, by extension, how much it clearly wants me to love them too. It worked: Punchy combat aside, I wanted to keep working through each area to meet another weird little creature with a mysterious quest or to get jumped by another animal who learned MMA. In a pool of games about fallen kings and sad dragons, it's delightful to play an action game that isn't obsessed with being dour and where the best solution to the most grueling fights is to use as many fun abilities as you can. In a year with the tremendous Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, I never thought I'd play a game that veers in such a wildly different direction but manages to reach similar highs, even if it lacks the sheer scale and build complexity as FromSoftware's masterpiece.

Wukong is its own beast and if it has to be labeled a soulslike, then I think we're going to have to come up with a new definition. There's nothing else quite like it.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/black-myth-wukong-review toKXAekutiRUpB5ULe5VNB Fri, 16 Aug 2024 14:00:23 +0000
<![CDATA[ LG UltraGear 32GS95UE review ]]> The new LG UltraGear 32GS95UE is not perfect. And yet it does a pretty comprehensive job of blowing every existing 32-inch 4K gaming monitor based on Samsung's QD-OLED panel tech into last month. Wait, make that last year.

The thing is, LG's take on the high-refresh 4K OLED gaming monitor riff isn't on a totally different level to those QD-OLED panels. In fact, it's very similar. But it is undeniably and unambiguously—even if ultimately pretty marginally—better. Hold those thoughts.

On paper, the LG UltraGear 32GS95UE is very similar to the likes of, say, the Alienware 32 AW3225QF, Asus ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM, Samsung Odyssey G8 OLED G80SD, or MSI MPG 321URX. Whether it's the 32-inch panel size, 4K native resolution, 240 Hz refresh or 0.03 ms response performance, LG's OLED monitor looks like a dead ringer for that quartet of Samsung QD-OLED panels.

LG's 275 nit full-screen brightness rating is actually a little brighter. But that's a "typical" rating, with LG rating the panel at 250 nits "minimum". If it's a close run thing in theory, full-screen brightness is the one area where you might have come into this review with some doubts.

UltraGear 32GS95UE specs

LG UltraGear 32GS95UE

(Image credit: Future)

Screen size: 32-inch
Resolution: 3,840 x 2,160
Brightness: 275 nits full screen, 1,300 nits max HDR
Color coverage: 98.5% DCI-P3
Response time: 0.03 ms
Refresh rate: 240 Hz (480 Hz 1080p)
HDR: DisplayHDR 400 True Black
Features: LG WOLED panel, Adaptive Sync, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 2x HDMI 2.1
Price: $1,399 | £1,300

That's because this LG monitor inevitably uses the WOLED panel technology from sister company LG Display, the subsidiary of the sprawling LG empire that makes the actual OLED panels which go into everything from monitors like this to TVs, phones, watches, cars and the rest. And the one metric by which LG WOLED tech has fallen short previously, is full screen brightness.

If that's now at least on par with Samsung QD-OLED, this particular 32-inch 4K beauty has something none of the Samsung-powered competition currently offers, namely a Dual Mode functionality which uses pixel doubling to essentially run as a native 1080p panel but with an extremely quick 480 Hz refresh rate. 

The idea is to provide the best of both worlds. You get both full 4K capability for ultrasharp and detailed image quality in games and which also benefits things like font rendering day to day, plus the ability to run 1080p at sky-high frame rates and ultra-low latency, just without the need to interpolate a 1080p image over a 4K panel. Doing the latter always ends up looking soft and a little blurry compared to a native 1080p monitor of the same size. What's not to like?

Other highlights include 98.5% coverage of the DCI-P3 digital cinema color space, Nvidia G-Sync compatibility, DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification, plus HDMI and DisplayPort connectivity along with a USB-A hub. In fact, really the only notable omission is a USB-C port.

Depending on your point of view, that may or may not be an issue. But at this extremely lofty price point, it hardly seems like an onerous expectation. Moreover, it's something of a pity given that the 4K resolution and pixel density, not to mention mostly excellent color accuracy, means this monitor does such a stellar job of bridging the void between gaming and productivity.

(Image credit: Future)

It's not quite up there with Samsung's Odyssey monitor for sheer physical desirability.

Put simply, it would be nice to able to have both a proper gaming rig hooked up via DisplayPort and a laptop running in single-cable mode and picking up a desktop keyboard and mouse, all courtesy of USB-C. Odds are, if you can afford this monitor and you're into gaming, you'll also have a laptop to hook up via USB-C.

With that USB-C themed pico-rant squared away, that's the pre-game considerations covered off. Oh, with the exception of design and ergonomics. In truth, that aspect of the LG UltraGear 32GS95UE is somewhat forgettable, which is why I almost did forget. The slim bezels on all four sides of the panel ensure a slick, contemporary look, while the broad stand adds a touch of individuality. And it's certainly well put together and offers plenty of adjustability including rotation into portrait mode, if that's your thing. But it's not quite up there with Samsung's Odyssey monitor for sheer physical desirability.

But what, then, of the actual image quality? I'll tease you no longer. Here's why this LG is better than those Samsung QD-OLEDs. First, it doesn't suffer from the slightly warm color balance of those 4K QD-OLED monitors. Second, the panel doesn't turn slightly grey in bright ambient light, again as QD-OLED panels do and thus marginally detracting from contrast performance and black levels. Third it does or doesn't do all that while absolutely matching if not bettering the QD-OLED competition for full-screen brightness.

Now, those factors may not immediately seem like an absolutely overwhelming roll call of advantages. But we're talking about very expensive displays, so even a small edge matters. More to the point, those wins come with no discernible downsides. In other regards, this monitor is at least as good.

(Image credit: Future)

The net result is a ridiculously enjoyable monitor to use for just about anything. The best bit is probably the HDR performance. There's a particular sequence in Cyberpunk 2077 that's a great test of peak brightness. It's an underground bar scene, mostly dark and moody. But the actual bar is surrounded by banks of neon lights. And they absolutely, positively sizzle on this monitor. It's the most impressive rendering I've yet seen.

HDR video looks stellar, too, and really delivers on the whole High Dynamic Range premise. The contrast, the bright highlights right next to inky darkness, these are things that LCD monitors with local dimming just can't compete with.

They can't compete with the speed, either. Pixel response is essentially a solved issue with these OLED monitors. It's questionable whether you'd be able to tell the difference were they any faster. Of course, the 240 Hz refresh ensures very low latency, provided you have a GPU powerful enough to drive this monitor at high frame rates. And you can improve can lower the latency yet further with the aforementioned 1080p mode.

Quick side note on that subject: The Dual Mode feature works slickly. There's a button on the bottom bezel you hit to jump between 4K@240 Hz and 1080p@480 Hz modes. The screen does blank out and the display will resync with your PC, but it happens fast enough. So, the big question is whether you'd mistake the 1080p mode for native 1080p on a 32-inch monitor.

The answer is no, you wouldn't. For sure, it looks a bit better than 1080p interpolated on a 4K 32-inch panel in the usual manner. And, in game, the experience looks closer to native than it does on the Windows desktop, the latter being really pretty fugly. But there's still a softness that belies any true pretence at native rendering. So, it's a welcome enough feature viewed as an extra. It just doesn't quite deliver on the dual-native premise.

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LG UltraGear 32GS95UE

(Image credit: Future)
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LG UltraGear 32GS95UE

(Image credit: Future)
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LG UltraGear 32GS95UE

(Image credit: Future)
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LG UltraGear 32GS95UE

(Image credit: Future)
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LG UltraGear 32GS95UE

(Image credit: Future)
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LG UltraGear 32GS95UE

(Image credit: Future)

Were this monitor glossy it would probably look even better. But as it is, it's still my new favorite OLED monitor.

Oh, and one last thing. Throughout all of this, we haven't touched on something that's typically fairly critical on an OLED gaming panel, the panel coating. Horror of horrors, the LG UltraGear 32GS95UE doesn't have a glossy anti-glare coating, something that normally I'd say was a substantial disadvantage on an OLED monitor.

But somehow, the matte coating is just fine. Is it a little "glossier" than a typical matte finish? Possibly. But either way, the sense of contrast and inky black levels, not to mention highlight dazzle is barely, if at all, compromised. Consider my glossy-panel prejudices largely, if not quite comprehensively, dismantled. Oh, okay, were this monitor glossy it would probably look even better. But as it is, it's still my new favorite OLED monitor.

(Image credit: Future)

A shout out, too, to both full-screen brightness and SDR content handling. Regarding the former, you can set the panel at either constant full-screen SDR brightness around 250 nits or allow it to vary according to how much of the screen is lit up. The latter has been a bit of a distraction on previous monitors with LG OLED panels.

However, this one is bright enough, full-screen, that it doesn't dim infuriatingly if you open up a large white app window, like a text doc or webpage. In fact, I think it works best in variable mode, which allows it to go that bit brighter most of the time. LG has also managed the calibration of SDR content in HDR mode very nicely. So, you can realistically run this thing in HDR mode all the time. Short of pro-level content creation, there's no need to jump between modes.

(Image credit: Future)

But wait, one definitely last thing. Font rendering is just fab on this panel. Again, it's down to the 4K native on a relatively small 32-inch panel. The pixel density is plenty to cover up the non-standard subpixel structure of these OLED panels compared to conventional RGB LCD monitor.

Buy if...

You want the best 4K gaming OLED out there: LG has done it. This monitor is better than the entire Samsung QD-OLED horde.

Don't buy if...

You want value for money: At $1,400, this is a ridiculously pricey panel, even taking into account how good it undoubtedly is.

As for negatives, if you really must insist the panel color balance has the very slightest green tinge. It's very minor and not as apparent as the overly warm skew of those QD-OLED alternatives. But for the record, it is there.

All of which means this is one heck of a monitor. It's an HDR killer, the SDR handling and brightness is good, the pixel response is ridiculous and the Dual Mode is a nice little extra even if it isn't quite as advertised. The only thing missing is that USB-C interface, which I can forgive. What's harder to wish away, however, is the price.

This is definitely my favorite 4K OLED monitor. But does that justify the monstrous $1,400 price? After all, you can get a 32-inch 4K OLED for $900, fully $500 less. In the end, it's a personal call. If I could easily afford the extra money, I'd cough up. But if the added $500 was any kind of stretch, I'd be in quite the quandary. I really would.

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https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gaming-monitors/lg-ultragear-32gs95ue-review KzYym7jhXWE43qxxh2U5Lg Fri, 16 Aug 2024 10:36:34 +0000