L U C Y

653

32

1091 1091

7225

2004

Done

8/10

3

1263

It's tempting to hold up 2014's Alien: Isolation as the standard against which all Aliens games should be measured—smart, distilled horror where the cold, sterile order of a space station gets torn apart by body horror and unknowable primal threats lurking in the walls. The reality is that in the intervening 40-plus years since the original movie, the series has been equally shaped by gung-ho action and a fair bit of shlock, and just as you can far more easily enjoy subsequent Alien movies without holding them up to the original, you can enjoy Alien games without comparing them to the masterful Isolation. So with the right mindset, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is dumb explosive fun—a swarm-based action game that's derivative of both Left 4 Dead and Gears of War, but with a few nice little touches of its own. It has that competent mid-budget feel that's slowly becoming identifiable as publisher Focus Home's house style, which is actually kind of refreshing in a videogame series that's been so profligate in the past. It has sparse story and cheesy dialogue and NPCs who talk without opening their mouths (but not in that ethereal way that can be explained away as 'artsy'). Crucially, it's also very co-op dependent, and whether you have a good time or not will be dictated by whether you play alongside real people or the grey, voiceless bots that stand in for them. It makes all the difference. Set across four chapters of three missions each, the Fireteam campaign is a slideshow of distinctly 'Alien' environments—steamy metal corridors with emergency lighting, bases buried beneath slimy alien hive matter, and temples belonging to ancient cosmic civilisations. There's the occasional pretty vista, but your trip through these spaces is mostly flat and non-interactive, which doesn't make for the most exciting level design even if it is in keeping with the claustrophobic feel of the movies. You pull a few switches, grab some bits of heavily corporate lore, but mostly you blast away hundreds of aliens that come streaming out of every environmental orifice. These claustrophobic levels do have a function however: to heighten the balls-to-the-wall intensity as the walls and ceiling turn black with xenos, who swarm you like angry ants descending on a great big butt that's carelessly plonked itself in their nest. As you shoot into the dark mass, they will stumble and roll but continue to charge you with hive-minded ferocity. Even on standard difficulty you can quite easily run out of ammo or get overwhelmed, so that sense of urgency you'll feel is well justified. The corridor runs and endless alien harassment can get a little tiring, so it's a welcome change of pace when you reach the wave survival segments in each level. Here you have the time to gather yourselves, prepare your defences with turrets, mines and crowd-control gadgets, then trigger the encounter when you're ready. Set your defences up well, get your pals to cover different entry-points, and it turns into a thrilling survival experience. When you inevitably get breached, however, the mechanics can get a bit scrappy—there's no melee attack, you can arbitrarily leap over some waist-high walls but not others, and the stop-and-pop cover system is only really useful on the rare occasion you fight armed enemies. This is a game best played at a distance. Speaking of enemies, who knew that there was so much diversity among xeno species? Beyond the classic dark aliens, you have your sneaky Spitters, iridescent-brained Bursters, and red Prowlers who wait around corners to give you a cheap jumpscare and QTE event if they grab you. Gun-wielding synths appear at one point, giving you an excuse to use those cover mechanics, and even the wonderful Working Joes from Alien: Isolation make an appearance. It's all very goofy, of course, and I'm not sure many of these creatures will make it into canon, but it does its job of mixing up the threat and keeping you on your toes. There are several classes to choose from, and while there's plenty of crossover in their weapons and perks, each one also has a couple of unique abilities. The Demolisher, who gets to wield the series' most iconic weapons like the smart gun and flamethrower, has the ability to fire micro-rockets. The Doc can pop down healing turrets, while the Gunner has an Overload ability that speeds up everyone's firing rate. On higher difficulties, I particularly appreciated the more nuanced abilities of the Tactician, who has coil charges to slow enemies down, as well as a deployable turret that both shoots enemies and improves your defence when you stand near it. You can go quite deep with stacking abilities, huddling together to get buffs, and mix-and-matching perks to optimise your build. Most of the guns you procure from secret crates or the armoury between missions can be used by all classes, and the attachments you get for them stick to the gun rather than the class, so you don't need to assemble and reassemble them for different loadouts. One of my favourite quirks in Fireteam are the Challenge Cards, which you can play before a mission to make it tougher in exchange for more money and XP. You can add VHS-like scanlines that hinder your visibility, disable consumables, or even summon a towering alien drone to stalk you through the entire mission. Each player can pick one Challenge Card per mission, so you can stack them to screw around with things in a way that's both chaotic and rewarding. It gives you a lot of wiggle room to play around within one difficulty setting before jumping up to the next. But all the above comes with a serious caveat, and that's the human element. Without real people to play with, you're saddled with bots that make Working Joes look like charming and gregarious dinner hosts, and much of the spectacle, tactical depth and cooperation gets stripped away. For a universe in which androids make up some of the most compelling characters, it's a shame that the bots accompanying you have nothing to say. There's some well-written squaddie banter from HQ over the radio, and some chirpy NPC chats to be had between missions, but when you're out in the field there's a serious lack of personality for those playing solo The bots perform poorly too. Even on standard difficulty I found myself dragging them through the latter part of the campaign. And to top it all off, the online matchmaking system is torrid, only matching you with players who are at that moment entering the exact same mission on the same difficulty as you. You can't invite friends to missions that they haven't yet reached in their own campaign either. Presumably this is for spoiler reasons, but that really gives far too much credit to a threadbare story that you can largely ignore (you also can't play the Horde mode until you've completed the campaign). The matchmaking needs to be opened out in an early patch, because at this point the game is not ready for those looking to link up with randoms. At least Fireteam's most glaring problems seem fixable with some patches (and a couple of friends). Yes, it plays into the trashy rather than the artful side of its franchise, but it embraces it, doing a better job of capturing that action-movie intensity than most past efforts. Review Video:

Black Friday is nearly here, ready to brighten up our lockdowns with a vibrant display of neon-lit RAM sticks, shimmering backlit keyboards and the laser sensors of high-end gaming mice. There’s no better time for a bit of gaming-tech retail therapy. Razer, manufacturer of gaming laptops, mice and all things nice, is here to help us with our festive fun, offering up its latest hardware for low prices on Black Friday. And we’ve sifted through them to find a collection of deals that between them amount to the perfect setup for both hardcore gamers and those just stepping into the realm of PC gaming. Razer DeathAdder V2: This green-themed mouse continues Razer’s rich tradition of high-end ergonomic gaming mice. It’s the sequel to one of Razer’s best-selling mice, retaining that classic best-in-class shape while making some key improvements. When you click the DeathAdder v2, it’s more than just a mechanical action, with an infrared light beam registering your every click to deliver a response time of just 0.2ms. This new tech, known as the Razer Optical Mouse Switch, cuts down on those precious click times like never before. The Razer Focus+ Sensor inside this thing has up to 20,000DPI sensitivity, offering unprecedented precision. Razer BlackWidow: What’s a great mouse like the DeathAdder v2 without a mechanical keyboard to go with it? The Razer BlackWidow not only looks the part with its fully customisable RGB key lighting , which syncs up with in-game action (such as Ultimate moves readying up in Overwatch). The Green Mechanical switches offer perfect clicky tactility, giving you those precious milliseconds of edge in online shooters. The reinforced side walls offer that extra stability and protection from dust, liquids and fingernail clippings (that is something that happens to everyone, right?). Razer Kraken TE: Nothing screams ‘hardcore gamer’ like this goo-green gaming headset from Razer. The ‘TE’ in the name stands for ‘Tournament Edition’ - an apt moniker for a headset that shuts out the outside world and immerses you in its cocoon of THX Spatial Audio, delivering 360-degree positional sound that goes beyond the confines of 5.1 and 7.1. The headset distinguishes between in-game audio and voice chat, balancing the two accordingly. But if you want to fine-tune your acoustics, just use the Full Audio Control to tweak everything from game/chat balance to bass and spatial audio. And to top it all off, there’s cooling gel in the ear cushions - the ingenious feature you probably never knew you needed! Razer Goliathus Chroma: It’s easy to underestimate the importance of a good mouse mat, but once you get something like the Goliathus Chroma padding your palm, you’ll see why those hardcore gamers rave on about it. The micro-textured cloth surface ensures that every mouse movement registers just like you want, but the real magic here is the Razer Chroma lighting around the edge. This rim of light reacts to your in-game actions and alerts with its 16.8 million colour options, syncing up with your PC and Razer Keyboard lights too for a seamless display of reactive lighting. The Synapse software lets you sync the keyboard up with software like MSI Afterburner, ThermalTake and Hue lighting. Razer Blade 17 Pro: Saving the best for last, we present you with Razer’s latest top-end portable gaming rig. The Razer Blade 17 Pro features an almost unfathomable 300Hz display. And while there are few GPUs on Earth that will hit those kinds of frame rates on a 1080p screen, you can game assured that the RTX 2070 Max Q will come pretty close. The dream of playing Cyberpunk 2077 at searing framerates on the go may just become a reality... All this is supported by Intel’s 10th Gen i7-10875H CPU, which boosts performance in CPU-intensive games and ensures that the laptop can handle any amount of high-intensity multitasking you throw at it.

Id Software fans are speculating about what appears to be a new project in development following the discovery of an Australian Classification Board listing for something called Project 2021B. The game, which is rated M for violence and online interactivity, is a multiplatform "computer game" being developed by id and set to be published by ZeniMax Europe. If the odd title rings a bell, you may be thinking of Project 2021A, another id Software development discovered in January—also through the Classification Board website—that's being published by Bethesda. There are several differences, though. Project 2021A is rated R18+ for "high impact violence," and its media type is virtual reality, leading sites like TechRadar to predict that a Doom Eternal VR game is in development. 2021B, on the other hand, appears to be a conventional videogame, and its rating comes in a lot lower than either Doom (the 2016 version) or Doom Eternal, both of which were rated R18+ for high impact violence, and blood and gore. That's two full tiers higher than 2021B's M rating. (M and R18+ are separated by the MA15+ rating, which is given to games with "strong violence.") It's possible that there's a direct connection between the two projects: The former could be a completely standalone Doom VR game unrelated to Eternal, and the latter a non-VR version of the same thing. Some Resetera users are guessing that it's nothing to do with Doom at all, but is in fact a Quake remaster or collection for next-gen consoles. The 25th anniversary of Quake 2 is coming next year, after all.

7

1085 1085

1726

7195

Done

1257

Black Shampo/Soap

647

2002

Voted

The story of my first campaign in Old World, where I led my Greek civilisation to global domination, is equally the story of Rome, my greatest nemesis in this sprawling turn-based 4X. When I first encountered the Romans, they were extremely friendly, offering us gifts and hospitality, but it was a poisoned chalice—quite literally. A sickness spread, and Roman gestures of friendship were the source. I demanded justice and compensation; Rome only wanted war. It would take nearly 200 years until I got my revenge. It was not a single continuous war. The first conflict ended without much resolution, with the distance between our empires and the massive mountain chain that separated us creating some logistical difficulties. There were still battles, certainly, costing both of us more than faceless soldiers. Family members, revered generals and close friends also lost their lives. And between the wars were heated diplomatic meetings and more than a little bit of espionage, which again cost lives. I'll never forgive myself for sending my good pal Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, to infiltrate Roma, where he spent a couple of years before he was murdered. On more than one occasion, I even sacrificed my heirs to the eternal grudge. It's rather fitting that, after all that loss and rage, the fall of the Roman Empire also marked my victory over Old World itself. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Despite using the language of Civilization—from workers to wonders— it should be starting to become clear that Soren Johnson and Mohawk Games' take on the historical 4X formula is quite different to Firaxis's approach. You still build cities, conquer other ones, develop the tiles around them, and along the way determine the cultural and scientific destiny of your civilisation. So there are plenty of important similarities, which should not be a surprise given that Johnson was also the lead designer of Civilization 4, but Old World feels like a meaningful evolution. And an extremely welcome one. Something old, something new The most notable advancement is undoubtedly the importance placed on people. Like Crusader Kings, you are not an immortal ruler leading your people from the birth of civilisation all the way to the space race and beyond. Instead, your famous starting ruler will eventually die. When Philip II left this mortal coil, the empire passed to his son, Alexander, who'd become known as Alexander the Noble—sadly he didn't do enough to earn the 'Great' moniker—who then left it to his daughter, 40 years later. You've got heirs and succession laws to worry about, as well as a court full of potential friends and enemies. As the name suggests, Old World sticks to antiquity, slowing down Civilization's pace to allow characters to make an impression. It would be pretty tough to do that if every turn moved things forward by decades. Your friends and enemies will be hanging around for a long time, as long as something untoward doesn't happen to them. These courtiers, generals and other important folk grow and react, increasing their attributes to become more charismatic or disciplined while also picking up traits like 'wanton' and 'schemer'. They have affairs, illegitimate children, and can plot the demise of other characters, including the ruler. In the mid-game, I found myself playing a particularly talented king, beloved by his people and the triumvirate of influential families constantly vying for power and attention. His uncle, however, was decidedly not a fan. Years before, when I was playing as his father, I encouraged certain unpleasant traits in my son, which benefited me at the time. I had no idea I was creating a nephew-killer. When it came time to reap what I'd sowed, I had some regrets. Much of this plays out through engaging event pop-ups, typically giving you multiple options that depend on your traits and resources. You get to decide how children are educated, how you react to a diplomatic insult or what to do with the possibly magical sword that was just dug up—I opted for starting a cult and charging them admission to see the fancy blade. Often, you won't see the impact for years, so there's always a surprise around the corner. This all contributes to a sense that you are truly shaping your own civilisation, and in ways that go beyond changing some stats. Slavery, for instance, crops up in both Old World and Civilization, but how it impacts both games is quite different. In Civ 4, for instance, it lets you sacrifice part of your po[CENSORED]tion to rush a construction project. In Old World, however, it becomes a topic that's up for debate. You might find that your people have come to their senses and want to abolish it, encouraging you to toss out the grotesque institution. If only the UI did a good job of keeping track of this stuff. It can be jarring to go from the flavourful event text to the abstract, soulless numbers that the UI boils them down to. It's overwhelming, and it's just not that informative. Every interaction is made a little worse because it necessitates faffing around in discrete, counterintuitive menus that drag you all over the screen. Even after winning my first campaign, I still found myself getting occasionally lost, and I still don't know how to find crucial information on things like the spread of religion. The tutorial and encyclopaedia are also little help, choosing brevity and vagueness over clear instructions. There's so much more context and clarity in the event text, so I wish Old World's writers were a bit more involved in designing the interface, which could definitely benefit from their skills. Alone, the events and characters would have been enough to grab my attention. Civilization and Crusader Kings are two of the greats, and combining their philosophies leads to a game that feels tailor made to my interests. But Old World is filled with new ideas and ways of doing things, dramatically changing how you forge a lasting empire. Every unit has a specific movement range and room for one action per turn, but without Orders they can't do anything. Orders are a resource that you spend on giving units and characters—like your ambassador or spymaster—commands. Move here. Attack this loser. Steal research from this dork. As you start expanding and fielding more troops, workers and missionaries, you'll find yourself having to prioritise where to spend Orders each turn so that you don't find your tank is empty right when you're about to make a critical move. It's a strategic complication, but sometimes it can actually take the pressure off you. The system teaches you that it's OK to not take action this turn. You don't need to do everything in one go—you've got 200 years to kill. Orders are tied to Legitimacy, with a higher Legitimacy generating more Orders per turn. It's another abstract resource, spawning yet another wrinkle. See, you improve the legitimacy of your reign by generally being insular, promoting national unity and the people of your chosen Civilization above all else. Often, this means you have to treat foreigners with suspicion and take a 'strong' stance that will make the rest of the world rightly think you're a dickhead. It reflects how real leaders sometimes fan the flames of national fervour and encourage small-minded attitudes. You can, thankfully, still be an extremely effective ruler without pandering to the worst aspects of national identity. Some buildings—which, I should add, are constructed by workers rather than from the city menu, letting you embark on several construction projects at the same time—generate small amounts of Legitimacy that, over time, can give you a significant boost. That's something Old World excels at: always giving you more ways to achieve your objectives. Resource management is another example. On top of the abstract stuff, there's also more tangible resources like stone, iron, wood and gold, which are required for trade and, more importantly, construction. It's a hungry game that demands a healthy stockpile. If you're running low, however, you can simply spend gold to buy more; if you're out of gold, you can also sell whatever resource is abundant. Friends with benefits When your larder is looking a little sparse, you can also seek help from your fellow rulers. The focus on people benefits the diplomacy system immensely, as these are personal relationships that you're developing. Friendships with foreign leaders can be completely undone by the way an event plays out, but as always there are plenty of opportunities to repair the damage. More so in the late game, however, once you've unlocked the ability to employ an ambassador. Or you can just use espionage to steal from them. Sometimes the prerequisites do feel a bit restrictive, though, like alliances only being possible if you've got a diplomatically inclined leader. If diplomacy fails, you might find yourself heading to war. Combat is one of the places that feels most evocative of modern Civilization, which is unfortunate, because frankly I'm getting a bit bored of moving all these units around one by one, surrounding cities and slowly battering enemies. That's not to say it hasn't been improved, mind. For one, there's the undo move (or even turn) ability, which is such a blessing. You can undo literally everything in a turn, from declaring war on another nation to moving a unit. You'll never find yourself making unsalvageable mistakes from a misclick or miscalculation. You can also recruit generals from your court, which may have extremely handy abilities, like being able to heal units even in neutral territory. The AI is generally pretty good, too. A bit too risk averse on the default difficulty, maybe, but also smarter and more reactive. Enemies will retreat to heal up, take advantage of your weaknesses or injured units, and are less likely to be baited into obvious traps. We're not talking tactical geniuses here, but logical, rational enemies are still a boon. Unfortunately, it's still not great at capturing cities. It's just a bit slow and sometimes underprepared, but it gets there eventually. Throughout my time with Old World I kept coming across things that made me think "Why the heck hasn't Civ done this?" It has solutions to so many 4X niggles that have been around for ages. Take research, for instance. When you choose your next research project, the game produces a few offerings from a deck made up of all the stuff you're ready to discover. So instead of picking from the same list over and over again, it's slightly randomised, and alongside new techs are bonus cards that give you free gifts, like an extra unit or a big pile of resources. If you're in the middle of a war, do you really care about unlocking the magical power of mills? Instead, you can spend a turn or two on getting a free spearman, which will be much more useful in the moment. It's a shame it peters out a bit towards the end. The victory conditions, frankly, kinda suck, and mostly go unexplained. The primary method of winning is by earning 52 points before 200 years have passed, which you do by nurturing your cities and building wonders. If nobody gets to 52, the highest wins. You can also get an early win if you double the points of the next nation, but only if you're already halfway to 52. Then there's the Ambition victory, where you win if you manage to complete ten of what are essentially personal goals. If you don't complete them in your life, they become temporary legacy goals that your heir can complete, if they are fast enough. Finally, you can just wipe everyone out. It's all a bit perfunctory, and a lot more gamey than I expected. I was lucky that my first win happened right as I finally conquered my nemesis Rome, because without that it wouldn't have been remotely memorable. Despite its understated victories, Old World is a brilliant 4X, and one that I'd actually recommend over Civilization at the moment. It feels like a genuine step forward for the genre, boasting so many inventive, smart design decisions. And I can't believe I've reached the end of the review before even mentioning the exceptional soundtrack from composer Christopher Tin. Civ 4's Baba Yetu might still be my favourite of his pieces, but Old World is full of evocative orchestral and choral compositions. There's a lot to love here, and if you've got an itch to conquer the ancient world you absolutely need to give this a shot. Review Video: