Power to the people

In Just Cause 3, Avalanche liberates the open-world genre from its shackles

Science can’t wait. We may technically be halfway through a mission, but who cares? Our PETAbaiting experiment is attempting to answer an important question for all mankind: what happens when you try to take off in a helicopter with a cow tethered to the rotor blades? The first attempt fails when we leave too much slack in the line, and after a couple of spectacular rotations the bovine is flung some distance from our vehicle. This time, we’ve gently tensioned the rope so that the animal carcass is dangling upside down next to the cockpit. The engine spins up, and the aircraft rises two or three feet off the ground, precariously rocking side to side in an increasingly violent manner, before tipping over entirely and exploding. Screen mildly reddened, Rico Rodriguez stands up unchastened from the tangle of metal and well-done steak, and brushes himself down.

QNAP TS-231+

Feature-rich and easy-to-use OS

QNAP’S TS-231+ is aimed at the SOHO market and is an upgraded version of the company's TS-231 two-bay NAS. This device has a faster processor, twice the memory, and SSD cache support, which is something of a surprise in a NAS in this segment. It looks identical to the TS-231, with the same dual Ethernet LAN ports (which support link aggregation) and three USB 3.0 ports, but surprisingly, the TS-231+ does away with the eSATA port found on the TS-231.

Fostex PX-5HS

Fostex has tweaked its active PX-5 pro monitor to tempt audio fans away from their passive boxes

Having had a good time with the MunroSonic EGG100 near-field monitoring system, I was intrigued to try another affordable studio stalwart vying for wider acceptance in the domestic hi-fi market. Fostex’s £649 active two-way PX-5HS standmount speaker fits the bill perfectly. Essentially it’s the Japanese company’s PX-5 pro monitor tweaked to ease out the optimum listening distance from strictly near field to a more accommodating 5-7 feet, making it a good fit for smaller rooms. Fun-sized it may be at less than a foot tall, but the PX-5HS plays it straight down the middle when it comes to its pro roots. The mains socket, on/off rocker switch and dual-function volume/tone control on the metal back plate of each conventionally slab-sided enclosure drop a strong hint that its two drivers are powered by individual onboard amps served by an electronic crossover network. A true active design, then, rather than a powered setup with a stereo amp housed in one speaker, a market sector proposition gaining favour among people who like to keep things simple, neat and tidy.

Audio-Technica AT-LP5

Does this do-it-all deck have what it takes to wow new and returning vinyl fans? Ed Selley takes it for a spin to find out

The rise and market share of music being purchased on vinyl appears to be pretty unstoppable. At a time when there’s an abundance of some of the most capable digital media players available at terrestrial price points, it barely seems credible that new users are buying into a product that offers the bulkiness, fragility and potential expense of vinyl, but here we are.

Sony NW-ZX2: Walk on the wild side

Having been driven almost to extinction by the iPod and smartphone, the Walkman is back. Ed Selley checks out Sony’s flagship

Few names in the industry have managed to possess as much standing with the general public as that of the Walkman. For many years, it was up there with Hoover as a term that’s more or less interchangeable with the item it described. The advent of the iPod (which neatly usurped Walkman to become a catch-all term for the latest generation of personal audio players) very nearly destroyed the name for good. The move from physical media to stored files saw Sony wrongfooted and its initial offerings fell somewhat wide of the mark. The moment when Sony released an iPod dock was a fairly graphic indication that the Walkman had lost the fight rather emphatically.

Revolution Software

The British adventurers celebrating 25 years in game development

This year, Revolution Software celebrated a quarter of a century in the videogame industry. Yet a decade ago, reaching such a milestone seemed unlikely. Despite the critical and commercial success of Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, it found itself in a financially parlous position. “At that point the recoupment model was broken,” the studio’s co-founder and managing director Charles Cecil tells us. So while the game’s publisher THQ gleefully informed Revolution that The Sleeping Dragon had earned roughly $5m in revenue, this was scant consolation for the studio, since the conditions of the publishing deal coupled with the cost of development had left it in the red to the tune of £200,000. Cecil managed to negotiate more favourable terms for the follow-up, Broken Sword: The Angel Of Death, but by then the company had become unsustainable.

Course and effect

Setting sail in Bossa’s mindblowing Worlds Adrift, a fully physical and persistent world that’s poised to change the MMOG’s tack forever

Scouring its official YouTube channel, it’s hard to grasp what Worlds Adrift is, never mind what it might represent. During our first hour at Bossa Studios, our interest is aroused, but a flying-camera tour around Adrift’s shattered, sky-bound islands fails to epitomise the titanic undertaking, in conjunction with tech startup Improbable, that Bossa is reluctant to label an MMOG. The innovations aren’t subtle, but rather so enormous as to demand a shift in perspective before their implications can be appreciated. As co-founder Henrique Olifiers and game designer Luke Williams mess about in the clouds, excitement starts to burn as if seeing Minecraft for the first time, and suddenly it seems a monstrous error of judgement that Bossa hasn’t shouted and screamed about these features in its marketing. But the team is worried. Worlds Adrift is such a dramatic departure from Bossa’s previous games, including Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, that anyone not watching live might reasonably call it faked.

LibreOffice: Mail merging

Nick Peers reveals how to save time and master mail merge in LibreOffice using a combination of Base, Calc and Writer

Anyone who’s had to write the same letter to many different people, dutifully substituting names and addresses for each one, will appreciate what mail merge can offer. (So will those too lazy to write names and addresses on envelopes at Christmas time). Thankfully, LibreOffice Writer possesses a tool that can simplify the process in the form of its Mail Merge Wizard. A mail merge works by taking a list of contacts and automatically inserting key information from that list into specific parts of a document – eg the address block in a letter, or the personalised greeting that opens it. The contacts list is maintained separately and can originate from one of three places: a database, a properly formatted spreadsheet or a CSV file.