Sunday 17 January 2016

MSI GS70 Stealth Pro

MSI GS70 Stealth Pro

The quest for thinness seems to grow far beyond the confines of the mobile phone space these days. With Razer leading the charge with their premium Razer Blade line of gaming laptops, every manufacturer with a gaming segment seems to have come up with their own version of the best, slimmest gaming PC out there. Of course, this is no different for MSI, with the latest refresh of the GS70 Stealth Pro, now sporting Intel’s latest Skylake chip. Does this incredibly svelte gaming machine deserve your hard earned money?

Into The Wild

Hinterland game studio

The story of Hinterland, a team of developers who left city life behind to make The Long Dark, a survival game set in a remote Canadian wilderness.

Survival games are bigger than ever on PC, but it’s a saturated market. For every DayZ there are dozens of unimaginative, derivative zombie games released to exploit this sudden surge in popularity. Sitting quietly among all this chaos is The Long Dark. It’s a survival game, sure, but one that follows its own path, making no attempt to ape its peers. It’s a philosophy that mirrors that of the studio making it. And the result is one of the most interesting, stylish and understated survival games you can play today.

Total War: Warhammer

Total War: Warhammer

The Creative Assembly talks about Orcs, the campaign map and the art of making a faction

In the grim darkness of far Horsham, there is only Warhammer. This time I’m at The Creative Assembly’s top secret headquarters (it’s the giant building opposite the church steeple), to see Total Warhammer’s campaign mode and to talk to the team about how they build a faction.

First off, Al Bickham, the avuncular voice of Creative and one-time writer for this magazine, talks me through the campaign map. At the time of writing, Total War: Warhammer has entered alpha. But for Creative Assembly, that term means something slightly different from other studios. It means that the game is up and running, and feature and content complete, but still needs lots of work – and any of those elements could still be changed or dropped.

Oppo R7f

Oppo R7f

Ever since Xiaomi burst onto the scene with its affordable yet powerful Mi line of phones, Chinese manufacturers have grown from strength to strength and are now every bit as desirable as the more established brands like HTC or Sony. Now, with the release of the midrange R7f, Oppo has further cemented the notion that one no longer needs to shell out top dollar for a stylish metal phone with a razor-slim profile.

The question is, should you shell out for the R7f?