LibreOffice 5

Graham Morrison needs to find a collective noun for people who love word processors

We must admit. Despite their prosaic nature, and a tendency to be associated with open plan offices, we quite like office suites. This may be something to do with the Amiga, and the emergence of proper graphical word processors like Wordsworth and Final Writer. Even to our younger selves, opening the physical packaging around those (costly) products and patiently installing a single application off several floppy discs was exciting. To be then presented with a WYSIWYG view of your writing, as you typed, seemed revolutionary.

Logitech G920 Driving Force

Logitech attempts to reinvent the wheel once more

After a five year absence from the racing wheel peripheral market, Logitech have finally developed two successors to the immensely popular G27 racing wheel.

One of these is the Logitech G920 Driving Force, designed for PC and Xbox One. In combination with the Logitech G29, which is aimed at PlayStation 4 owners, these represent Logitech’s new range of racing wheels, designed to mix it up with the likes of Thrustmaster and Fanatec for those seeking the best way to play racing games.

Sync or swim

Bennett Ring examines how Variable Refresh Rate tech has changed over the last year

It’s been over a year since we covered the first Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technology to hit PC displays, in the form of NVIDIA’s G-Sync. A lot has changed since then, first with the Video Electronics Standards Association (better known as VESA) announcing that its own version of the technology, Adaptive-Sync, would become an optional part of the DisplayPort 1.2a specification. AMD then utilised Adaptive-Sync to launch FreeSync, its direct competitor to G-Sync.

Sorcerer King

It begins when you lose…

There’s a lot of games that follow a similar path, one well-trodden by many a classic fantasy novel. Struggling loner saves desperate kingdom from impending doom at the hands of a mighty dark lord. Sorcerer King starts as most of these tales, and changes the basic premise to something a little bit darker.

MISSING: An Interactive Thriller Ep.1

FMV games were a blight on the 90s. For every Tex Murphy game there was umpteen monstrosities unleashed upon the world that contained nothing but slumming actors hamming it up in front of a low budget green screen interspersed with some poorly animated shooting, flying or fighting sequences. A quarter century or so on from that dark time, FMV makes a brief comeback in the form of Missing: An Interactive Thriller. In many ways it’s very different from the FMV games of old, but in others, unfortunately, it’s all too similar.

Victor Vran

Not to be confused with Victor Garber

At first glance Victor Vran looks like another entry in the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing series of action RPGs, but in reality it’s a very different kind of animal. While there are similarities when it comes to the faux-Gothic seriousness of the story, the overall look of the game and the reliance on pop-culture references for humour, the way the two games play is very different. Victor Vran is about combat, not about character building. There are no classes, no skill trees or unlockable abilities. All skills are tied to equipment. What the eponymous character wears, wields and equips directly affects the way he functions.