Sunday 7 February 2016

ASRock Fatal1ty H170 Performance Series

ASRock Fatal1ty H170 Performance Series

With Intel’s new Skylake chipsets and processors, there are a whole new range of motherboards to choose from. That goes for chipsets, too. This particular ASRock motherboard features an H170 chipset, rather than the more commonly talked about Z170. For a quick clarification on the differences… the Z series are the top-of-the-line commercial chipsets, with a few more features than the H. This includes overclocking. If you are a keen overclocker, Z is the way to go. You cannot overclock the CPU on an H chipset motherboard.

Asus MG24U

Asus MG24U

Having a great monitor is essential if you are a gamer. Well, it’s essential for more than gaming, but you cannot effectively play a game without a decent way of seeing visuals. So what defines a good monitor? Well, it comes down to a number of things, including size, resolution and colour reproduction. And Asus’ MG24U Gaming Monitor has all of those sorted out quite nicely.

At 23.6 inch, it’s a nice size, and it’s widescreen aspect ratio provides a great field of view while gaming. In addition, it’s a 4K capable monitor, meaning that it can deliver visuals at the Ultra HD resolution of 3840x2160… that’s a lot of pixels, and consequently a lot of clarity.

GX Gaming Scorpion

GX Gaming Scorpion Gaming Mouse

Genius has a long history of creating mouse products and other peripherals, and it is only relatively recently that they introduced the GX Gaming series to differentiate their gaming products from other devices in their stable. With the trademark scorpion emblazoned on the packaging, most of their devices have been names after the arachnid that forms their emblem, each with a different and exotic sounding name. But now they have released a set of peripherals all bearing the simple name of Scorpion.

Logitech K400 Plus Wireless Touch Keyboard

Logitech K400 Plus Wireless Touch Keyboard

OK, let’s be honest. You’re probably not going to use the Logitech Wireless Touch Keyboard k400 Plus for much gaming. You probably could, but you’re not going to. Not when it will work so well in your lounge, talking to your media PC as part of your remote control setup. And if you’re the kind of gamer that we think you are, you more than likely have some kind of entertainment setup based on a PC or console happening in your living room.

Hyper Light Drifter

Hyper Light Drifter

Hyper Light Drifter has no spoken dialogue or written story. A few lines of text appear during the opening moments to discuss small mechanics, but that’s the last time you see any words. The way currency works is not immediately apparent, because there are no numbers. You have to test your weapons and upgrades because no tutorial explains their function.

“The main motivation is we want to be subtle and implicit,” Hyper Light Drifter’s creator Alex Preston says, “Being explicit can ruin the mystery, or you can’t make the story quite your own.” Everything in Hyper Light Drifter is explained through animation and imagery, and everything is learned through player intuition and  experimentation. The result is a narrative led by emotion rather than transparent facts, and gameplay built on discovery instead of tutorial.