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.
Bad news, PS3 and PSVita owners. You won’t be getting any more free games out of Sony’s PlayStation Plus program. Don’t stress to early though, these changes won’t go into effect for another year.
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It only took me a little over two hours to knock The Station over but I’m stilling idly thinking about it whenever I’ve nothing else to occupy my brain. For a game this short, there’s a surprising amount to unpack once the credits have rolled. It’s not perfect — the edges are rough like shark’s…
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SXSW Gaming is a relative newcomer to the sprawling media show-and-tell that is the annual South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. A work in progress, the SXSW Gaming is out to prove in 2018 that it can compete with other gaming trade shows, starting with its lastest tournament and panel lineup update.
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Those who grew up in the 80’s and early 90’s will remember the heady days of the video game arcade. Magical places full of light and noise and games you couldn’t play anywhere else. Going to the movies meant visiting the arcade next door, and I would beeline for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet. Streets…
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With voice assistant speakers now creating a stir in the market with Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Home Pod and more, it was only a matter of time before the Google Assistant wave arrived. Arrive it has, and Sony is leading the charge with their LF-S50G Wireless Speaker.
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Typically deployed as its flagship model, Huawei’s Mate series has improved again in 2018 with their newest devices, the Mate 10 and the Mate 10 Pro. We’ll be focusing on the Mate 10 for this review, and how it compares to earlier models like its cousins Mate 9 and P10.
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“In search of incredible,” reads Asus’ current company tagline. Incredible isn’t really the word one reaches for when pulling the Asus Zenbook Flip 14 from its box — its the same brushed metal shell Asus have come to favour among the laptops that make up their professional kit. Where the Flip 14 really excels is…
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Onrush is looking like one of the year’s most entertaining arcade racers. The new trailer spots everything you could possibly want in a destruction derby style racer — crashes, explosions, crazy stunts and people on rocket powered motorbikes.
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PAX Australia is returning to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in 2018. The show’s organisers have confirmed October show dates for this year’s event via the official PAX Aus Facebook and Twitter.
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Gfinity Esports Australia have announced the first two clubs to join their Gfinity Elite Series Australia City league. The newly minted Sydney Chiefs and Melbourne Avant will move the long-running argument over which of Australia’s two largest cities reigns supreme into the esports arena. It’s Melbourne though. Everything’s better here. Obviously.
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Earlier this month we saw the rather surprising news that Nintendo was finally allowing their mascot Mario to make the trip back to the big screen for the first time since the disastrous 1992 Super Mario Bros. film. Not to be outdone, Sega have reminded everyone that their own 16-bit-era mascot Sonic the Hedgehog is…
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The long-awaited Discovery Tour by Assassin’s Creed: Ancient Egypt content drop for Assassin’s Creed Origins will arrive tomorrow. The update bringing with it a feature that many players have asked for since the series inception — the ability to learn more about the game’s painstakingly recreated Ancient Egyptian history using its interactive setting.
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With March now looming in the middle distance, Xbox have announced the titles that will be going free across their network this month and it follows a similar trend to last month — something for the grown ups and something for the kids.
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I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing gaming headphones on this site. They are rarely paragons of the form — gaming headsets are heavy, often lean into bass to the point where it obliterates higher end sound and have a cheap build quality that doesn’t align with their purpose as long-term audio solutions. I say…
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Broadly speaking, whenever a game receives an expansion pack, they tend to take that word”expansion” rather literally. Typically what they bring to the table is more of everything you could already do in the base game. More units, more characters, more places to visit, things to do. Civilization expansions take a very different approach. They…
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Australian and New Zealand players who think they’ve got what it takes to play in the Overwatch League can put their skills to the test when the Overwatch Contenders league touches down locally next month.
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With the Overwatch Puppy Rumble now in full swing, it seems like everyone’s getting in on the Lunar New Year and Year of the Dog shenanigans. Xbox are the latest to board the doggos-in-cosplay train and you’ve got to see what they’ve come up with. I mean, its dogs dressed up like video game characters….
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With Stage 2 of the Overwatch League’s inaugural season set to begin next week, Blizzard have announced a few changes to their broadcast lineup stemming from viewer feedback across Stage 1. This means a few timeslots are going to change. What does that mean for you, ANZ viewer?
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Boy, Bayonetta 2 is … a lot, isn’t it? There’s so much going on with this game that I barely know where to start talking about it. Maybe let’s start with the fact that its been re-released on the Nintendo Switch and go from there.
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You ever sit down with a game, settle in with it, familiarise yourself with the controls and prepare for the inevitable hook that will lead you on your quest? My experience with Fe was fine right up until the part where the hook was supposed to arrive. It never did. Forty minutes after booting the…
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Among consitituents of the PC master race, one of the most contentious hardware purchases remains the wireless gaming mouse. The pitch is attractive — super precise aiming and high report rates without the need to drag a heavy cable around — but often clashes with what a battery can actually offer. A regular daily gaming…
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Amongst the litany of genre revivals going on in the indie games space right now, there’s one or two that are appearing more than others — Metroidvanias and ultra-hard, skill-centric platformers. Both are born of genres with audiences long-starved starved for content, and it means that interest is high. But, if I may, there’s a…
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If you’re a bit of an iOS apologist like me, the only Android devices you’ll find even halfway agreeable are the ones that closely ape the iPhone. This more or less describes Oppo’s R11s, the newest and midrange smartphone handset from a manufacturer who’ve made an art of cloning Apple’s phone for the Chinese market.
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With Stage 1 of the Overwatch League now complete, and with trades and player buys now in full swing ahead of Stage 2’s launch next week, we’re starting to see squads announce the newest additions to their lineups. The Shanghai Dragons are leading the Stage 2 charge with the signing of the OWL’s first female…
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By now its fairly common knowledge that Rare’s upcoming multiplayer pirate title Sea of Thieves would be launching on Xbox One and Windows 10. The question for PC owners after seeing the game in action during the recent beta, particularly those on lower spec machines, was “can my machine ever hope to run this thing?”…
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For independent game devs in Sydney, the dream of having a version of Melbourne’s The Arcade to call their own is still a pipedream. Be that as it may, The Studio Incubator, a communal media work space opening in March, might be the thing that fills the gap until such a place arrives.
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Yeah Disney’s biannual company expo D23 has just wound up its first stop for 2018 in Japan, dropping a slew of trailers for Disney properties and many major company announcements. Among these announcements are a number of high-profile additions coming to Disney Parks across the world including some of your Disney-Pixar faves, a ton of…
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Review enough games for a living and eventually you’ll come across one that feels like it has everything going for it — looks, concept, the lot. The Deer God falls squarely into this category. On paper, it has the makings of an indie darling. In execution, it is a muddled little game that doesn’t seem…
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One of the rarer finds in PC gaming peripherals has always been the combination of mechanical keys and a wireless keyboard. The two schools haven’t played well together historically and a lot manufacturers stopped trying to blend them into a single board years ago. Too much input lag, not enough flash, not enough clack. Gamers…
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Independent game developers in Australia, particularly those at the beginning of their careers, find themselves stuck for ways to connect and network. In a games industry as small and tight-knit as Australia’s, connections are the best step a person can take toward landing a job in the local dev scene. Networking events are a semi-regular…
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