Adventure Game Studio

Rick Lane speaks with Wadjet Eye Games about the most prolific game engine you’ve never heard of

While the majority of engines are designed to cater for a broad range of game types, Adventure Game Studio is entirely focused on a single genre – 2D adventures in the vein of those developed by LucasArts in its heyday. Yet unlike SCUMM, which was evolved to be used by a very specific set of people, AGS is a one-stop design shop intended for everyone regardless of skill level.

Microsoft Windows 10 Home

We haven’t enjoyed your behaviour, Windows. You’ve spoiled what could have been quite a lovely past few years for desktop PC users. Now go home and think about what you’ve done, and don’t come back until you’ve learned your lesson!

Admittedly, there were some contrarians who liked Windows 8 on the desktop, but they’re the same sort of masochists who pop up in online comment sections saying that Prometheus is the best Alien film, or that Metallica’s St Anger isn’t really that bad. Whether a few people liked Windows 8 or not, though, it was generally a disaster for desktop users, with many PC makers still having to offer Windows 7 as an option when ordering. But now Windows 10 is now finally out, and Microsoft promises that it’s learned its lesson.

Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7

Boards from Gigabyte’s Gaming range now sport a predominantly red and white colour scheme, giving the Z170X-Gaming 7 a great racy look, with a huge white plastic shroud covering much of the left side of the PCB. Hidden under this shroud you’ll also find a multi-colour lighting system that’s configurable in the EFI. There are PCI-E slot metal shrouds too, which also look fantastic, and Gigabyte has included silver SATA cables too – whether you like these touches depends on your taste, though, and some folks may find them a little garish.

Asus Maximus VIII Hero

While Asus’ new Hero lacks the metal PCI-E slot shrouds included with both the Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7 and MSI Z170A Gaming M5, Asus has finally changed the red and black colour scheme of its ROG offerings.

The Hero’s heatsinks sport an elegant dark grey coating, while the board has red details and a black PCB. The large plastic shroud that covers the I/O panel also extends down to the audio circuitry and gives the Hero a racy look that’s a little subtler than the Gigabyte board. In addition to the new colour scheme is RGB lighting control, which enables you to alter the colour and lighting mode of the chipset heatsink’s LED using a downloadable software program.

Integrated graphics

Can Intel really take on AMD when it comes to integrated graphics? We pitch Skylake’s IGP against the GPU in AMD’s latest Kaveri chips to find out

Intel has reportedly made a lot of progress with its CPUs’ integrated graphics and, let’s face it, this wouldn’t take much, but can Intel really take on AMD at its own game? To find out, we’re testing the gaming performance of the GPU in AMD’s A10-7870K against the one in Intel’s new Core i5-6600K. In addition, we’re also testing the Core i5-4690K to see how Intel’s integrated graphics have improved during the transition from Haswell to Skylake.

Roccat Nyth

With its extremely customisable shape and feature set, even including the ability to 3D-print your own parts using your own designs, or templates available online, Roccat’s Nyth isn’t your average gaming mouse. Included in the box are two hot-swappable sides to change the shape. The first is a slimmer one that’s well suited to claw and finger grips, while the second is a fuller, hand-filling one that’s comfortable with a palm grip. Switching from one to the other takes seconds as well, thanks to the magnetic design. However, they could do with a rubber grip applied to the sides to help combat the low friction on the mouse’s main body.

Mionix Castor

Mionix’s peripherals have picked up lots of Custom PC awards in the past, and its mice in particular have rarely failed to impress us. They generally offer excellent comfort and ergonomics, plenty of features and reasonable prices, and the new Castor looks set to continue these trends. At £60 inc VAT, it isn’t bad value for money, although the Logitech G402 is a fair bit cheaper at around £40 inc VAT.

Venom BlackBook 15 U02507

Venom hails from Melbourne, Australia, but the firm is making a global push by offering free worldwide shipping on its laptops, with a single price in US dollars. The BlackBook 15 is its flagship machine, and the U02507 model sports an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M GPU. This chip has a 924MHz core and 1,280 stream processors, using the same GM204 core as the range-topping GTX 980M. It also has 3GB of dedicated memory, which is fine, although Nvidia does produce a version of this core with 6GB of RAM.

Hex Gear R40

The custom case scene is a growing one and, with the likes of Parvum Systems carving a small but popular niche for unusual enthusiast-orientated cases, UK-based Hex Gear has now joined the fray too with its new R40.

Now, though, the case is readily available to everyone via Hex Gear’s website for a slightly eyebrow-raising sum of £200 inc VAT. However, when you pick up the box, you immediately understand the price. The case sports a huge amount of aluminium – an expensive material, which makes up the side panels, several internal fittings plus the four large curved profile sections. Just the latter weigh in at 3kg, while the case in total weighs a hefty 14kg.