Royce Wilson

[This media release has been provided by PR for The Game Expo and is presented by the GOA team for your information] The Game Expo (TGX) is dedicated to gamers, focused on the things gamers love to do, and the culture and creativity of gamers. The Game Expo is all about YOU, and everyone who loves games. This new home grown, Australian owned event will showcase gaming at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, putting gaming culture forward on Melbourne’s festive Moomba weekend, March 11-12, 2023. Tickets are on sale at www.thegameexpo.com You will get to dive into esports tournaments…

[This press release has been provided by Wargaming PR and is presented by the GOA team for your information] Monday 28th November — For the first time in history, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Milla Jovovich will team up together on screen! This December, the Hollywood celebrities will be guiding players in Holiday Ops, across the World of Tanks’ franchise on PC, mobile and console. The festive season is sure to heat up in World of Tanks PC, World of Tanks Blitz and World of Tanks Modern Armor! In the Holiday Ops cinematic trailer, Arnie and Milla are undertaking the most important…

I HAVE to admit I was surprised to see a Regency England setting for the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG; it’s such a strangely specific era and not one I associate with anything serious horror related. Whereas traditional Call of Cthulhu takes place in the 1920s, Pulp Cthulhu is the 1930s and 1940s, Regency Cthulhu takes players back to the early 19th Century in the days of ladies in bonnets, tea parties in garden gazebos, duels, and elaborate balls in candlelit ballrooms with dancing and arcane social rules. Historically the Regency era lasted from 1811 to 1820, but in a broader…

CHRISTMAS is coming and there’s still a few weeks left to source some gaming gifts for the special people in your life (or drop some hints about what you’d like to find under the tree yourself!) and as always, the GOA team is here to help with some suggestions. This time, we’re starting with general tech – stuff that certainly has gaming-related applications, but is also just generally useful around the house too! Here’s some of our gift ideas: AMAZON KINDLE 2022 If you know someone who likes to read, then the 2022 Amazon Kindle is likely to be of…

SOME years after their introduction, dual-screen laptops still remain almost exclusively the province of Asus – likely because they’re extremely good at making them. The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo series remains the king of the dual-screen laptops and I have had the chance to put the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 GX650 through its paces. I was particularly interested in doing so as it’s running an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processor rather than the Intel CPUs I usually work with. As with pretty much all gaming laptops nowadays, it performed very well and continues to prove that the dual-screen setup…

[This press release has been provided by LG and is presented by the GOA team for your information] SEOUL, Nov. 18, 2022 — LG Electronics (LG) has been recognised for the technological and design excellence of its latest lifestyle solutions, earning more than two dozen CES® 2023 Innovation Awards. These include three coveted Best of Innovation Awards for LG OLED in the computer peripherals, gaming and video display categories. Bestowed every year by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) – the organisation behind CES, the world’s largest annual consumer electronics tradeshow – the CES Innovation Award program recognises innovative consumer products…

IT’S hard not to be disappointed when a great idea doesn’t live up to its potential, but that’s what appears to have happened with Honey, I Joined A Cult. Honey, I Joined A Cult has been developed by Sole Survivor Games and published by Team 17 for PC and at first glance, looks very much like Prison Architect or Rimworld (it uses the same engine). It has a very different premise, however – you’re in charge of a dodgy 1970s-esque cult, looking to fleece your followers for all they’re worth, line your own pockets, and stroke your own ego in…

WHERE better than a medieval monastery to set a murder mystery? After all, it’s got everything – piety, devotion, strict rules, commentary on man’s nature vs spiritual calling, and a cast of fascinating characters. Umberto Ecco certainly saw the potential in 1980 when he wrote the classic novel The Name Of The Rose (which was turned into a film starring Sean Connery in 1986), and now the genre has received another worthy entry in the form of the video game Pentiment. Developed by Obsidian and published by Microsoft for Xbox and PC, Pentiment is a historical narrative adventure set in…

ONE of the realities of being a modern gaming household is that there are never enough power points, and never enough USB chargers available. The Mophie Speedport 120 4-port Gallium Nitride (GaN) Wall Charger offers an attractive solution to that issue, being at is heart a 240v to four USB port charger. It offers three USB-C ports and a USB-A port, for a combined power output of 120w. The top two USB-C ports are rated for 100w each and can run a PC laptop or MacBook, while the one below it is rated for 20w and the USB-A plug is…

[This media release has been provided by Sony PR and is presented by the GOA team for your information because it’s big news, but also it’s late at night and the only information we really have is what’s here] Sony Interactive Entertainment Australia has today revealed that PlayStation VR2 is officially launching on 22 February, 2023. PlayStation VR2 Sense controller charging station, designed specifically for the PS VR2 Sense controller, will also launch the same day. Pre-orders will begin on 15 November. Here is the PS VR2 lineup and recommended retail pricing for each product. Availability in each country is…

FEAR not, iOS owners! Games subscription goodness isn’t confined to Xbox, PC and PlayStation owners – you too can enjoy access to a diverse range of games as part of the Apple Arcade service. Here’s what’s coming to Apple Arcade for November 2022: Arcade Originals Football Manager 2023 Touch (Sports Interactive) Launching 8 November The global hit Football Manager series joins the Apple Arcade catalogue. Football Manager 2023 Touch is enhanced for mobile, with speedier seasons and a focus on the managerial essentials. Don’t build a team, create a dynasty in this unrivaled football simulation game that brings players closer to every…

TODAY is Halloween, and regardless of whether you like to get involved in dressing up and finding ways to make everything “spooky”, or just roll your eyes at the whole thing, it’s still a good excuse for a video game article! With that in mind, the team and I have put together some suggestions for horror games (which we have played ourselves) to enjoy for Halloween – although, as with all things horror, your mileage may vary as to how “scary” you think a particular game is… ALIEN: ISOLATION One of the scariest video games I have ever played;…

IN addition to writing a lot, I also love to read. I’ve had an Amazon Kindle of some form or another pretty much since they first launched in Australia, and they really have changed my reading experience – not to mention decreased the amount of clutter in my home (since I no longer need multiple bookshelves full of books I bought just to read once and haven’t gotten around to donating yet). The 2022 upgraded Amazon Kindle which has just been released brings three significant enhancements to the popular e-book reader. First, it now features 16GB of storage, which is…

[This media release has been provided by Double Jump PR and is presented by the GOA team for your information, and because our Editor in Chief is a big Kerbal Space Program fan] Private Division and Intercept Games announced that Kerbal Space Program 2, the sequel to the beloved rocket-building sim, will launch in Early Access on February 24, 2023 for PC on Steam, Epic Game Store, and other storefronts. Kerbal Space Program 2 will bring an array of content at the launch of Early Access for players to explore, including hundreds of new and improved parts to build a variety of…

IT seems hard to think of a more unlikely pairing than Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros and Ubisoft’s Rabbids, but like chocolate and peanut butter it turns out the two complement each other really well indeed, with a result that is far better as a combination than the sum of its ingredients. Mario+ Rabbids: Sparks Of Hope (developed by Ubisoft and published on the Nintendo Switch) is a spiritual sequel to the 2017 surprise hit Marion + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (which I haven’t played outside industry demos, because I didn’t own a Nintendo Switch at the time), and like its predecessor…

I AM reliably informed that Halloween is approaching, and that means it’s an excellent time of year to be enjoying spooky or horror-themed games on your computer – or IRL with friends via  Tabletop RPG. It doesn’t get much spookier than Cosmic Horror, and Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu TTRPG is by far and away the most popular horror RPG out there (and, last time I checked, the second-most popular TTRPG in general globally). It also happens to have one of the very best starter sets I’ve encountered, to the point that you don’t even need any other people to play the…

I AM a big fan of Sony bringing some of their most popular PlayStation games to PC, and am particularly thrilled with their latest addition to the line-up. As you may recall, I’m an enormous fan of the Uncharted games, and have long lamented their absence from my preferred gaming platform. No longer must I suffer an Uncharted-less computer, however, as Sony have just released the excellent Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection (containing both Uncharted 4: Among Thieves and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy) for PC. I’m not going to review the game(s) itself again – I reviewed the PS5 version earlier this…

[This media release was provided by Wargaming and is presented by the GOA team for your information, especially since a lot of us grew up in the ’80s and ’90s] October 17th, 2022 — The legendary G.I. JOE: Real American Hero toy line marks its 40th anniversary and World of Tanks is proud to join the celebration of this major milestone. In 1982, G. I. JOE  33⁄4 in. action figures arrived on toy shelves, delivering a new and adventurous play experience that has endured for decades. World of Tanks commemorates this milestone for the G.I. JOE franchise with new 3D…

IT’S a well-established fact that the average gamer in Australia is well into their 30s and that means that a lot of those gamers have kids of their own. Several of the GOA team (including me!) certainly do, and keeping our kids safe online (be it gaming or using the internet generally) and the online landscape has certainly changed a lot from back when most of us were teenagers. I, for example, was a teenager with dial-up internet access in the 1990s and Pirelli Tyre Calendar images were about as racy as it got, whereas kids and teenagers these days…

WHEN it comes to gaming monitors, bigger hasn’t traditionally always been better. I mean yes, if you’re like me and grew up gaming on a TV or PC with a 14in CRT monitor, living in the future is freaking great because all modern screens are like a movie theatre in comparison to back then. Sometimes, however, you need a truly epic screen. Not just widescreen – something bigger, grander, and more expensive. Enter the Samsung Odyssey Ark – a 55in 4K Quantum Mini-LED screen with a 165hz refresh, 1ms response, a 1000R curve, and an RRP of AUD$4,499 This is…