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Plantronics reveals GameCom 780 7.1 headsets/GameCom 380 headsets

Plantronics met with PC Gamer today to talk about their new headsets, the USB 7.1 Dolby Pro Logic II GameCom 780 (and their lower-priced stereo GameCom 380, with analog jacks rather than USB). The 780 and 380 are both set for US release on January 15th. At launch, they’ll be available at retail in Best Buy stores nationwide, or—if you prefer shopping via mouse and keyboard—you can snag ‘em online through Plantronics.com/us or Amazon.com. The 780 will set you back 80 clams, while the 380 will cost you $50. Read on for more details!

Crusader Kings 2 preview

Loading Map Sprites… Loading Sounds… Loading Databases… Loading The Complete Works Of Shakespeare. That last message doesn’t actually appear on Crusader Kings II’s loading screen, but having just spent a day backstabbing dukes and undermining monarchs, I wouldn’t arch an eyebrow if it did.

It’s almost impossible to partake of this medieval RTS (Royal Tribulations Simulator) without finding yourself enmeshed in the kind of court plots and factional feuds that make The Bard’s history plays such rattling good yarns. You might start out all sweetness and light, but before long you’re bedding your brother’s wife, Macbething your best friend, and doing a Richard the Third on your incarcerated nephews [Eww! – Cockney Ed].

King Arthur 2 preview

Scotland: a lawless, barren wasteland populated by giants and wolves… at least according to King Arthur 2. The game’s 15-hour prologue campaign is set on England’s northern border, and sees you uniting tribes of settled Roman soldiers to defend Hadrian’s Wall against the hordes of savages that periodically attempt to cross it.

The first King Arthur was a game of great ideas that weren’t fully realised. It fused Total War’s combination of turn-based and real-time strategy with RPG-style characters, spells and quests. The second game isn’t about changing that formula, it’s about refining it. Neocore have paid careful attention to criticism of the first game, and at every stage they’ve fixed, improved, upgraded and expanded on what went before.

Star Wars: The Old Republic hands-on

I’m a telepathic warrior-diplomat in a skirt, and my best friend is an eightfoot lizardman with a stick. Take away the big words, and the fantasy of inhabiting the Star Wars universe is an odd one: yet in my case it’s something that has survived nearly fifteen years of dodgy movies and hit-and-miss games. You could write three paragraphs of deeply personal insults and I wouldn’t mind as long as they flew past me in giant yellow letters accompanied by a horn section.

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action hands-on preview

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action simultaneously attempts to recreate and reinvent the king of the tactical RPGs, Jagged Alliance 2. After a few hours with a preview build, I’m surprised at how well developer Coreplay has manged to square those contradictory objectives. Back in Action looks a great deal more fun and elegant than I ever expected, and I quickly got over my skepticism about its attempts to fix what was not broken. However, I also saw signs that it is hamstrung by its faithfulness to its predecessor, and has also cast aside some features that seem crucial to a good a tactical game.

Prison Architect preview

After six years of on-and-off development, Introversion’s bank-cracking sort-of-a-heist game Subversion has been cancelled. “I was on holiday in San Francisco, and I’d been thinking quite a lot about Subversion and what was going wrong with it,” explains Chris Delay, the designer behind Uplink, Darwinia and DEFCON. “Three things then happened: we took a tour around Alcatraz, which was such an atmospheric place to visit. I then made a connection to a prison mission in Subversion.” Players were going to be breaking out one of their team from a fully simulated jail. “I imagined turning that on its head – let the player build the prison and setup the security. In other words, I wanted to build Alcatraz, not escape from it.”

Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes beta key giveaway

Ahh the sweet smell of player-on-player carnage. If you enjoy raw team-based action, then take advantage of our Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes beta giveaway. Just click the link below and follow the directions at the bottom of the post to get your key. NOTE: You must register at GamesRadar.com in order to receive a beta key! Their next event starts on November 23rd, just in time for Thanksgiving. I recommend mixing the mayhem with some spiked eggnog. Turkey could work, too.

Claim your key!

Exclusive first hands-on with the new righteous defender of Wrath of Heroes

Tanky, melee-DPS hybrids are the best. You get the adrenaline rush from charging into the frontlines of battle, mauling your enemies face-to-face—but, if you become the enemy’s new target, you won’t immediately crumple like an armor-clad stack of wet paper. In a nutshell, that’s Aessa: this never-shown-before hero in the free-to-play Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, which lets you skip leveling to get straight into the MMO-style PvP action. We got some exclusive hands-on time with this High Elf hero, who’s equal parts altrustic protector and honorable face-smasher. We’ve got her full ability list, gameplay footage, and tips for the next big brawler in the Wrath of Heroes closed beta.

Exclusive reveal of the new M.M.O. 7 gaming mouse from Madcatz

Building off the massive popularity of the Cyborg R.A.T. 7 (PC Gamer’s highest-scored mouse ever at 98%), Madcatz gave us—and sister mag Maximum PC—an exclusive peak at the newest addition to the R.A.T. family: the M.M.O. 7.

And in other PC gaming news…

Grand Theft Auto V has been announced! Here’s what we know:

….

Okay, so no-one actually knows anything about GTAV, but that doesn’t stop us from speculating wildly, so let’s make up some crazy ideas:

• GTAV: Concrete Misery continues the gritty realism of GTA4, and will be set in a pastiche of Baltimore in an obvious parody of The Wire.
• GTAV: Foiled Again will return to the cartoonish roots of Vice City, and will see you play as a costumed supervillain. Reaching the highest wanted level will get you hunted down by Batman.
• GTAV: Modern Warfare will be set in a middle eastern conflict. You play a corrupt soldier trying to ransack the town he is supposed to be liberating.
• GTAV: Grand Theft Stagecoach will be set in the past, you play Jack the Ripper in Victorian London.
• GTAV: Milton Keynes will be set in Milton Keynes. It will be as boring as that sounds.
• GTAV: IN SPACE will be set IN SPACE.
• GTAV: Retro City will be an isometric turn based strategy game. Fans will be outraged.

 
Check inside for a free roaming felonious selection of PC gaming news.

Hands-on with Natasha, Rusty Hearts’ new markswoman

Take one part Diablo and one part double-dragon, mix with two parts anime action cartoon, and blend. That’s a rough recipe for free-to-play action-RPG Rusty Hearts, a game in which a half-vampire with a good soul joins and leads a rebellion against a tyrannical vampire overlord. Rusty Hearts’ sensibilities are anime to the core, and they complement its hyperkinetic action-RPG gameplay. But one thing has been missing: over-the-top bullet ballet. To fix that oversight, Perfect World Entertainment is introducing a new character on October 25th: Natasha Borzenkova, a bombshell who dives into the action with dual pistols and a slew of firearm-related special abilities.

From my time previewing the character, Natasha is all about footwork and combos. While you can glide through dungeons on the easiest settings just by shooting everything, you get no style points for doing that, and Rusty Hearts grades players not just on how many enemies they kill, but how artistically they do it. Why shoot someone in the face when you can kick-flip him, then juggle him in mid-air with a series of shots from her twin revolvers? This is a game that rewards players who take the time to linger over a battle in order to play with their victims before dispatching them. And Natasha has a lot of ways to play with her kills.

Minecraft 1.9 pre-release impressions

The Minecraft Adventure Update turns out to be a campaign of smaller patches. Minecraft 1.8 overhauled the terrain engine, tweaked combat and added empty villages. A pre-release version of 1.9 puts people in those towns, adds a weird new mushroom land, and puts new monsters and structures in the Nether, Minecraft’s hell dimension.

I’ve been playing around with it – here’s what it’s like.

DXHR: The Missing Link DLC preview

Often, the bit where a game takes away all your weapons and abilities sucks. The main exception is Deus Ex: you wake up in a cell, a hacker lets you out, and you’re forced to use anything you can find to break out of a high-security Majestic 12 facility. It worked because the game itself was so good: there were clever uses for something as simple as a fire extinguisher.

The Missing Link is a very obvious reference to that section. It takes place during an event that’s skipped over in the main game: you sneak aboard a cargo ship bound for Singapore, and we cut to when you arrive. The Missing Link sees you waking up a captive on that ship, all your items gone and your augmentations disabled. You’ve got to escape, or you’ll be transferred to a Belltower prison on arrival.

The good news is, it feels a lot more like Deus Ex’s improvised escape section than the clumsy equivalents in lesser games. There isn’t really any bad news.