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.
Gaming headsets have reached an interesting tipping point. For years many of them weren’t worth the price of the box they came in. They sported ugly, heavy designs, poor quality materials and sound quality to match. But over the last five years manufacturers have — to my shock — begun to shift their focus towards…
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Game Bants is something new we’re trying here on The Iris, a pair of perspectives on the same topic, a conversation and a less formal review style. Our first crack at this style is a chat between games writer Leah Williams and games editor David Smith about the ancticipated MMO expansion, The Elder Scrolls Online:…
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The most exciting time of year on the gaming industry calendar is here again. E3 2018 begins at the end of the week and that means the announcement dam is about to break. For Australians, this typically means staying up late or getting up very early for the show’s eagerly-anticipated press briefings. 2018 is no…
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“Who’s downloading!?” is a common lament in any gaming household in Australia. The internet is already slow, download sizes are massive and the moment anyone starts downloading something, the speed drops out of the network and access across the whole house bottoms out. NBN chief executive Bill Morrow’s explanation for why NBN Co’s Fixed Wireless…
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I’ve said before that, when reviewing home audio equipment, the exterior design of any given product is not terribly important to me as long as they device in question sounds great. Friends, the Edifier Luna HD e25HD TV speakers have really put that personal philosophy to the test. As great as they sound, and they do…
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It’s been a rough first year for Destiny 2. Despite a strong launch, its first two expansion packs — Curse of Osiris and last month’s Warmind — mostly failed to impress the community. Bungie has some work to do if they want to restore player confidence and, if the trailer for the September expac, Forsaken,…
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I have a long history of dissatisfaction with desk chairs. I break them very easily, and its never because I mistreated them. I use them as a day-to-day work prop this is apparently too much to ask because within six-to-nine months, they’re sagging and bent in ways that suggest my 95kg frame is much heavier…
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I have bloviated at length on this website about my upbringing as a Sega kid. While the SNES dominated the market, those of us who chose the Sega life knew we had a machine with true gems among its library. The arcade-centric counterpart to the SNES’ far broader appeal, the Mega Drive did its own…
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After Bethesda appeared to tease a new entry in the Fallout series yesterday, the internet flew into speculation mode. What was it? There’s no way it could be Fallout 5, it’s too soon for that. The general consensus was that Bethesda was going to announce a Switch port of Fallout 4 in the same manner…
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Quantic Dream’s newest cinematic, choice-based adventure title Detroit: Become Human hit store shelves this week. Adored by our reviewer and reviled by others, the game was always going to be a polarising one. To capitalise on the hype surrounding the game and its story about humans treating androids as awfully as they treat each other,…
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I’m going to assert something here in the intro par, something that I cannot prove but that I have suspected for a while. I think Blizzard is working on, at the very least, a Warcraft 3 remaster and I think Battle for Azeroth is the latest in a series of significant hints that the series’…
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Hardware and peripheral maker Razer have made a name for themselves in the gaming PC market in the last decade, giving competitors like Alienware a run for money with high-end hardware and sleek exterior design. Another year means a product refresh and the 2018 Razer Blade is here. At 15.6″ and 0.66″, it’s Razer’s thinnest…
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It doesn’t take long for a laptop, even one in the gaming tier, to start feeling long in the tooth. On the PC, there’s no upper limit on the hardware required for optimal gaming performance, and this is often to the laptop’s detriment. Razer’s Core series has been trying to find a workaround for that…
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There are certain games that fall into a category I like to call “My Dad Would Love This.” Games in this category typically revolve around war or military history, maintain some degree of simulation and are full to bursting with digital recreations of real world military hardware. Now, after eight years of ongoing development, World…
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If you’re a researcher, it must be fun when PR comes to you with a dopey pitch. I’m sure the Centre for Disease Management and Public Safety at Melbourne University had a great time with Xbox ANZ’s pitch for a study to promote State of Decay 2. Its focus: “How would cities in Australia and New…
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Shadow of War‘s latest expansion, The Desolation of Mordor cuts right to the chase. “Baranor is mortal and carries no Ring of Power. If he does, his story is over. Be careful.” Tackling Shadow of War without Talion’s impressive array of Celebrimbor-backed super powers is an interesting spin on the game’s existing format, pivoting into…
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Destiny 2‘s first expansion, Curse of Osiris, wasn’t a complete disaster but it sure as hell wasn’t a good move either. Already losing players to battle royale juggernauts of PUBG and Fortnite, Osiris cost the game a lot of momentum after a strong launch. A good chunk of content and activities were placed behind Osiris’ paywall and…
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There is an easy way to tell if State of Decay 2 is going to be your thing or not. How do you react when you realise a game feels like bloody hard work? Do you dig in or do you check out? If you tend to dig in, then chances are you’ll find loads…
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After being delayed earlier in the year, The Crew 2‘s release date now creeps ever closer which means its time to start those good, good server stress tests. That means a chance to play a little bit of the game early starting on May 31 when The Crew 2‘s closed beta officially opens. Signups for…
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A couple of days ago there was a rumour go around that Microsoft was planning to announce a controller for players with disabilities and limited mobility. Conventional controllers have long been a problem for players with the motor faculties required to deal with all those buttons. For them, and happily, the wait for a first-party…
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Gaming headphones have come such a long way in the last couple of years, particularly those of the wireless variety. Gone are the days of terrible sound and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it battery lives. Now, if you aren’t providing premium quality sound, no-one wants a bar of you. HyperX has always seemed to be a gaming peripheral maker…
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JBL’s BAR line of soundbars has been due for a refresh for a little while now, and they’ve known it. Good news, the new wave arrives in Australia soon. Here’s what you can expect to see and hear when they hit store shelves.
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Last week, Walmart Canada inadvertently spilled the beans on what appeared to be a number of high profile (and mostly still unconfirmed) E3 announcements. Among them was Rage 2, a sequel to id Software’s oddball post-apocalyptic shooter from 2010. Rather than go dark until E3, Bethesda spent a few days teasing an announcement and then…
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Esports fans: Gfinity Esports Australia are hosting the FIFA 18 Global Series Qualifier tonight and you’re not gonna want to miss it. Four Aussie players are in the mix, all fighting to preserve their spot on the road the 2018 FIFA eWorld Cup.
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We love it when esoteric Australiana finds its way into our entertainment. Take World of Tanks for example. After unleashing the AC1 Cruiser MK1 Sentinel into the game back in 2016, Wargaming now turns to another Australian tank — the Centurion Mk. V, the shuddering workhorse deployed in the Vietnam War. And you can play…
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Dragon’s Crown Pro is kind of a lot. A remaster of Dragon’s Crown, a breathless love letter to the side-scrolling fantasy beat-em-ups of the Golden Axe era, the original both succeeded in its mission and managed to piss a lot of people off with its simplistic gameplay married to some of the most absurd character…
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To say that Amazon’s Kindle Oasis is one of the nicest e-readers I’ve ever used would be to undersell it. Amazon are so good at building these devices by now that there’s almost no room in the market for anyone else. But, for good or ill, it’s also quite clear that Amazon have taken their…
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With Heroes of the Storm‘s Dark Nexus event now in full swing, players are getting to see a side of the game they’ve never gotten a piece of before — one with lore, one that attempts to explain the bizarre confluence of characters and events that make up the game’s central conflicts. With so much…
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A non-trivial amount of my time as a teenager was spent playing Black Isle Studios RPGs. The entry point for many into the Forgotten Realms campaign setting that is the focus of Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons, games like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale remain important industry touchstones. The foundations they laid for creating complex…
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It’s been a while since I wrote a review where I was heavily critical of a pair headphones, much less a pair of Razer headphones. But the time has come once more to be a bit hard on a pair of well-meaning earbuds.
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