Games Of 2017

Rick Lane forecasts the next 12months’ big hitters

Vive & Learn

Joe martin describes the pains and pleasures of using the htc vive’s room-scale virtual reality system at home

​Readers' Drives Spec-Edge

Inspired by Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Johan Nyman gave his components a splash of red and white paint, and assembled this gorgeous themed build

Asus ROG Strix Z270i Gaming/£184 incVAT

Costing £184 inc VAT, the Asus ROG Strix Z270i Gaming is the priciest Z270 mini-ITX board available.

Edifier R2000DB/£180 incVAT

Edifier makes a whole range of premium stereo PC speakers, with the R2000DB sitting roughly in the middle when it comes to price.

The 4k Multi-GPU Challenge

Ben hard widge teams uptwo xfx rade on rx4808gb cards to see if they can give you 4k gaming on a budget

The Fall And Rise Of White Wolf

Rick Lane looks at how one of the most eminent pen and paper RPG publishers is being reborn for a new, virtual generation.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition

If you spent over a grand on a Titan X card a few months ago then you might want to flip through the next couple of pages and pretend you haven’t seen them.

Cobra

Rick Lane speaks to David Braben about the changes to Frontier’s tech since the launch of Elite Dangerous.

Ryzen Is A Strong Comeback For AMD

But the CPU isn’t a critical component any more, argues James Gorbold.

Customised PC

Case mods, tools, techniques, water-cooling gear and every thing to do with PC modding.

Netgear Orbi Whole Home Wi-Fi System

Most high-end routers take a brute-force approach to improving Wi-Fi speed and range, adding more antennae, more frequency bands and the latest Wi-Fi standards. That approach works up to a point, but eventually even powerful routers run out or range. Of course, you can buy Wi-Fi extenders, extra Ethernet cable and access points, or use powerline networking, but Netgear has taken a novel approach with the Orbi that pretty much solves the problem.

The 4K Multi-GPU Challenge

Ben Hardwidge pairs up two Zotac GTX 1070 cards to see if they can properly handle 4K gaming.

Game Maker Studio2

Rick Lane speaks toYoYo Games about the all-new version of Game Maker.

Virtual World

Joe Martin discusses why some games work really well on VR, while others are better played on their original platforms.

Tekken 7

Justin Ohlsen took inspiration from Tekken 7’s volcano level to build this lava-themed modding project for Bandai Namco.

Fractal Design Define C

Fractal Design has been on a bit of a roll recently across every size of the case market.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB

According to the latest Steam hardware survey, the most popular PC gaming resolution (by far) is 1,920 x 1,080, accounting for 37.47 per cent of Steam users, while 2,560 x 1,440 is on just 1.81 per cent.

Whole Lotta Lore

Video games are obsessed with lore, but lots of world building doesn’t equal great storytelling, argues Rick Lane.

Could You Find A Lost City Using Just Your Computer?

Rick Lane investigates how a wealth of online tools and information has opened the door to history.

Resident Evil 7

Resident Evil has struggled with its identity for a few years. After the magnificent, genre-defining Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5 was basically the same game with better graphics and a cooperative mode. Resident Evil 6 was more ambitious, attempting to be four different games at once, but it was unfortunately about as successful in this goal as a man trying to juggle four different types of big cat. Resident Evil 7 represents yet another new direction, only this time Capcom has realised that ‘new’ doesn’t necessarily mean adding more stuff until the seams burst.

Hobby tech

The latest tips, tricks and news in the world of computer hobbyism, from Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Android to retro computing.

Asus ROG Swift PG258Q

Asus ROG Swift PG258Q

Antony Leather's Customised PC

Case mods, tools, techniques, water-cooling gear and everything to do with PC modding.

Joe Martin's Virtual World

What does a successful VR game look like? Joe Martin attempts to interpret the numbers.

Incoming

We take a look at the latest newly announced products.

Customised PC

Case mods, tools, techniques, water-cooling gear and everything to do with PC modding