David Smith is the former games and technology editor at The AU Review. He has previously written for PC World Australia. You can find him on Twitter at @RhunWords.
Warcraft III has loomed large in my mind ever since its launch in 2002. A natural evolution of the real-time strategy games that birthed the franchise, Warcraft III turned the genre on its ear. The introduction of hero units, named characters more powerful than a typical soldier, made it unique within the genre. To see Blizzard…
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I like Dell’s range of XPS ultrabooks. They’re workhorse machines designed for portability and power in equal measure. The XPS 13 7390 iterates subtly on previous designs, projecting confidence in its look and feel. Spec sheet As work machines go, this one has a spec sheet with the works: a 10th Gen Intel Core i5…
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For some time now, there’s been a growing sense that Bethesda has lost the thread of what made The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series’ so great. If you’ve been feeling the same way, it’s likely that The Outer Worlds will be game you’ve been hoping they would make. Bethesda didn’t make it, but it sure feels…
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The last time I got to play with Sennheiser’s GSP range of gaming headphones, I came away rather unimpressed. Happily, I’ve found their revised design to be a great deal more agreeable. The GSP-370 range sits at the more affordable end of the scale for Sennheiser, coming in at about $350 AUD. As gaming headsets…
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Blizzard Entertainment have announced Overwatch 2 during their annual BlizzCon convention in Anaheim, California. The sequel to the team-based shooter that rocketed to global popularity in 2016, Overwatch 2 promises more heroes, more maps, more modes and a fully-flegded PvE mode. The newest PvP game mode is called Push. It features a large robot that…
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Blizzard have announced Diablo 4 at BlizzCon 2019. Marking a return to the series grimdark, gothic horror roots, the publisher debuted both a cinematic trailer and a quick look at gameplay. The game’s look has clearly been inspired by Diablo 2, taking a sincere and “reverent approach” to design. There’s no changes to POV or…
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The next expansion in the long-running World of Warcraft series is World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. Sylvanas has taken the crown of the Lich King, crowning herself the Lich Queen and doubling down on her seemingly endless downward spiral into madness and destruction. With the doorway to afterlife torn wide open, the expansion will allow players…
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Luigi’s Mansion 3 is exactly the kind of game to get your kids if they love Halloween. Uncomplicated in design and low on overall difficulty, it smoothes over any potential wrinkles with trademark Nintendo charm. It’s spooky in the ways that kids love and is always careful to undercut its low-grade scares with good humour….
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Only weeks ago, Naughty Dog announced that The Last of Us Part II would launch on March 20, 2020. This morning, creative director Neil Druckmann announced on the PlayStation Blog that the game has been delayed. The Last of Us Part II will now ship on May 20, 2020. “I know,” reads Druckmann’s post, “It was…
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the greatest role-playing games ever made. I knew that the first time I played it at a preview in January 2015 and it remains true now over four years after its release. CD Projekt Red’s masterpiece/labour of love operates at a scale that would make other genre…
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I’ve wanted to play a pick-up game of Dungeons & Dragons since attending the very first PAX Australia back in 2013. That inaugural year was the only time I’ve ever attended the show as a punter — by the time the show moved from Melbourne Showgrounds to Jeff’s Shed in 2014, I’d started writing here…
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Biomutant was extremely weird, and the PAX build was rather janky but that didn’t change one important factor: I think I love it. Biomutant is a game about survival as a tiny mammalian mutant that looks a bit like a koala. Surviving on what seems to be a version of Earth that suffered some massive…
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Months of rampant corporate hints, internal leaks, wild fan speculation and educated media guesses have paid off. Sony have announced that the fifth iteration of their dominant home console will arrive in time for “Holiday 2020.” It also officially has a name: PlayStation 5. PlayStation 5 launches holiday 2020: https://t.co/VuaxUVoBaR #PS5 pic.twitter.com/MPkKyRaHio — PlayStation (@PlayStation)…
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I went to an ASUS ANZ product briefing in Sydney last night. It was about three different shows crammed into one — industry mixer, product show-and-tell, influencer meet and cocktail party. There were popular YouTubers I had quite literally never heard of before. Except for Ozzy Man, I’ve heard of him. It was fun hearing…
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Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is the first major expansion for the popular MMO shooter since developer Bungie’s split from Activision Blizzard in January. Though Bungie has maintained a parade of events and updates for the game throughout 2019, they set themselves a rather high bar to jump over with the new expansion. Here was what Bungie’s…
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Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair gets a lot of things right, and chief among them: it proves that the character platformer genre, the long-dead moneymaker of the 16-bit era, can still engage and excite in 2019. The original Yooka-Laylee was considered by most to be a good if unremarkable 3D platformer. Created by many of the…
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I’ve heard it suggested that the Dark Souls series is a modern take on the Metroidvania genre, and I generally think that’s correct. There are many parallels, from exploration and frequent backtracking, specific save locations, the memorisation of enemy patterns, slow power creep and subtle environmental storytelling. Developers The Game Kitchen have taken this comparison…
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Dino Verano has a long career in games, working as a producer on numerous Activision titles. He’s also someone who understands the value of community in helping to polish and balance a game ahead of launch thanks to his prior career in quality assurance. Now a producer and team lead on Infinity Ward’s Call of…
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The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is a remake of the 1993 Game Boy title of the same name. In many ways, Link’s Awakening is an ideal game to remake — because it appeared on a system that many players today would never have owned, and has never been considered a must-play entry in the series, it will…
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Jaybird’s Tarah Pro wireless sport headphones are exactly what I need for my commute. That’s not really their purpose, they’re actually built for people who run a lot. I’m not talking about people who run a short 10k before work here, I mean they’re for people who run actual marathons. The closest I ever get…
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My relationship with Borderlands might be different from that of other people, I don’t know. What I do know is that, contrary to a lot of other games I tend to like, I don’t come to Borderlands for the story or the characters or the world. I show up because Gearbox Software makes an idiot…
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When most people think of Gears of War, they’re probably not thinking about high fashion. For games about blood and guns with chainsaws attached, jewelry seems like an odd merchandising vertical to explore — but finding an unexpected point of connection and running with it has become Xbox Australia’s signature approach to promoting new games….
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The common thread that runs through the Xbox’s two biggest exclusive franchises is that they are no longer being made by the developers that created them. The Halo series has been under the stewardship of 343 Industries since Halo 4, and the Gears franchise has been with The Coalition since Epic wrapped on Gears of…
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Ideally, a good expansion pack extends the life of a game with something new. That something new could be an addition to the story, a new area to visit, or new moves and mechanics. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne goes all in, throwing a truly staggering amount of fresh content at returning players. Here’s the thing…
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Have you been looking for a new place to play? Fortress Melbourne is a 2700sq.m spanning three entire floors of Emporium Melbourne dedicated to gaming of every kind. From esports to tabletop RPG’s, Fortress Melbourne has been purpose built to cater to gaming fans of any stripe. Seriously, take a look at the feature list…
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Nintendo were not messing around this morning. After announcing yesterday that a 40-minute Nintendo Direct broadcast was scheduled for 8am AEST this morning, the Big N followed through with an E3 level slew of announcements. There’s so much to get through that we’re just going to bulletpoint this and sprinkle some trailers. Ready? Here we…
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Untitled Goose Game, the goose-based civilian torment simulator by Melbourne developer House House, will finally launch on September 20. In development for nearly three years, the game caught the internet’s attention for its exceedingly irreverent pitch — you are a goose and you mess with the life of a put-upon farmer just trying to go…
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When I first started building my own gaming PC’s in 2002, the monitor was always an afterthought. It was the part of the build where you could reliably save a buck because as long as the refresh rate was high, you were in the clear. That’s not true any longer. Now, the monitor is as…
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With August winding up and the gaming release calender getting more and more packed, what better time to add another couple of free games to your teetering pile of shame? PlayStation have announced their PlayStation Plus lineup for September and it includes a PS4 classic and a 2019 title you may have missed. First up,…
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I really love the spirit of what Supermassive Games is trying to do with Man of Medan. The first episode in The Dark Pictures Anthology, a compendium of short-form video game horror stories, Man of Medan is cut from the same cloth as Supermassive’s 2015 effort Until Dawn but shrinks its scope and scale to better…
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