Tag Archives: PC gaming

5 Demos to check out on PC/Steam Jan 2024

January 5, 2024 Jeremy Say Leave a comment

As we move into 2024, what better way than to start the first weekend with some new games.

For those who want to save on some cash after the festive sales, exploring demos on steam is the perfect solution. Besides, this is a perfect way to try out new games and different genres to see if the vibes match.

In this article we will be listing 5 entertaining and diverse game demos on steam that you should check out. If we miss any great demos on Steam do feel free to write in the comments below.

Backpack Battles

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Prepare to fight off other players in this Tetris style fantasy inventory management autobattler game. Similar in mechanics to Backpack Hero, you will be buying items and strategically place them in your back to fight other real players to climb the ladder. With different styles of plays and heroes, this demo is constantly being tweaked and updated. A nice little strategy game to fill up your weekend.

Bopl Battle

Recently released Nov, 2023, Bopl is a fun couch/online battler similarish to Smash Bros. Have fun with changing the environment you can manipulate to literally crush your foes. Choose to attach rockets to fly islands away or set things on fire. The choices are many and they are all yours as you find new combos to use with or against your friends. There are no bots so bring a friend to play, Bopl supports up to 4 players.

Bread & Fred

Released earlier last year in May, 2023, Bread & Fred is a cute co-op platformer game. Playing as two penguins, your goal is to help navigate them up the top of the snowy summit. You will be timing your jumps and swinging each other across gaps hoping not to fall down the mountain. This game is great for playing with your significant partner or potential partner as the New Year starts off.

If you don’t have anyone to play with, there is a single player mode available. You get to play with Jeff, a pet rock. Only issue is you can’t blame Jeff if you fall, this climb is all on you.

dotAGE

Released recently in Oct, 2023, dotAGE is a fun survival roguelite turn based city builder. For those who love board games and resource management, this game should be right up your alley. Take on the role of the villager elder as you navigate and plan around Doom and Prophecies of the Apocalypse to save your village. As a bonus this works well on Steam Deck and has an active single developer happy to fix bugs in this game of passion 9 years into the making.

TEKKEN 8

Releasing soon on 26 Jan, 2024, TEKKEN 8 will soon be fighting it out with Street Fighter 6 for the attention of all fighter game players. In the demo you will be able to test out Story Mode, Arcade Quest, Super Ghost Battle, Player vs. Player, Player vs CPU, and Gallery Mode. You will have access to 3 stages, Urban Square (Evening), Yakushima, and Sanctum while playing with popular characters Paul Phoenix, Jin Kazama, Lazuya Mishima, and Nina Williams. Also there has been talks on the web that is might be possible to unlock the other characters to try out on the PC version of the demo.

Feature, Gaming

Need Some Mystery and Intrigue? These Games Will Scratch that Itch

September 16, 2023 Sharifah Hanani Leave a comment

Missing something? Seeking excitement at home? Look no further than these Detective Games.

1. The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Developer: SEGA
Platform: Microsoft Windows, MacOS
Price: Free to play

If you’re a fan of Sonic The Hedgehog then this is the game for you!

It is Amy’s birthday party! Things are swell and dandy until her beloved Sonic is murdered! From there it’s up to Tails and Amy to investigate this train murder-mystery theme party gone wrong and who’s the culprit among the guest. Look for clues, interrogate familiar faces, and piece together what has happened to find out who is the murderer.

This interactive novel, point-and-click mystery game is filled with many comical, suspenseful moments, and clues that will make you scratch your head. It’s bound to keep you busy as you venture forth in the game.

The best part of it all? It’s free! The game is free with no in-cost and if you are a Sonic fan it puts a twist to the normal platform with a fun twist.

Available on: Steam

2. Sherlock Holmes The Awakened

Developer: Frogwares
Platform: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S
Price: PC: RM 139, PlayStation: RM169, Xbox: RM156

Want something with more action and suspense then why not go for a classic with some monstrous additions?

Frogwares’s take on Sherlock Holmes isn’t like any other. It’s a bone-chilling game that will puzzle you as you delve deep into Lovecraftian lore. Play as Sherlock and his sidekick to investigate mysterious cases of missing people plaguing Europe and the United States with the horrifying Cthulhu at the core of it all.

This game is story-rich with a horrifying twist and suspenseful revelations at every corner. The amazing graphics will have you on the edge of your seat.

Available on: Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox

3. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy

Developer: Capcom
Platform Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Android, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo 3DS, Steam
Price: PCRM 69, PlayStation: RM 129, Google Play: RM 59.90

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Doesn’t any of this sound good to you? If you like Law and Order and other shows about lawyers, you’ll like this game

This is a visual novel series that fans of colourful characters and dramatic courtroom scenarios won’t want to miss out on! Play as Phoenix Wright and appear in court to advocate on behalf of your clients. But before that, make sure you know the case through and through as what you do and say could affect your outcomes.

Play all 14 episodes spanning the 3 games and become the best lawyer in court! With quirky characters and fun and exciting scenes, each one is more intense, and dramatic and will put your problem-solving skills to the test.

Available on: Steam, Nintendo Switch, Google Play, PlayStation

Accessories, Computers, Consumer Electronics, Gaming, Lifestyle, News

The Predator CG437K S Launches in Malaysia – Gaming gets Bigger

July 5, 2022 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

When gaming consoles start pushing the boundaries of gaming with 120hz refresh rate at 4K resolutions, TVs have to get better. The latest-generation TVs made with gaming in mind have to keep up with the demands and now we see TVs with 120hz refresh rate. The thing is 4K 120hz is not a new thing in the world of high-end gaming. It is the standard in high-end PC gaming.

4K monitors are hardly popular, but they do exist. There is a good reason for that. PC monitors are usually optimised for a rather restrictive seating position. You are usually no more than 2 metres from your display. That means display sizes cannot exceed a certain size. With most gaming monitors from 24-inch to 38-inch, you do not get anything beyond Quad HD in resolution, because the differences with 4K is hardly noticeable or worth the fuss over.

At the same time, if you do have the gear to push gaming at 4K 144hz though, you would want something that can keep up. For that you get this one, a 42.5-inch behemoth of a gaming monitor that outputs at 4K resolution and at 144hz at its maximum. It is basically the dream of every hardcore gamer out there today,

You are paying quite a premium for it, at MYR 4,699. 4K 144hz is just a starting headline number for you. Delve deeper into the monitor and it really sings, or rather, displays wonders.

You get two HDMI 2.1 ports, for you to plug in two PCs, two next-generation consoles, or a combination of both. Both HDMI 2.1 allows you to take advantage of 4K 144hz or 120hz standards. Of course, your cable needs to be able to handle that much data going through it too, so you might want to consider splurging on a good set of cable.

The monitor also acts as a KVM USB hub with USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, whis is rahter useful if you have multiple PCs set up with the 42.5-inch behemoth of a monitor. There is also a USB Type-C port that supports PD charging at 30W, which allows you to fast charge your smartphone.

On the business end, it has a display that pushes up to 1,000 nits of goodness into your eyes. The 1,000 nits’ brightness also gives it a DisplayHDR 1000 certification which also means that HDR images and videos should look rather good on the display. Additionally, colours should really pop as well with 90% DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage. At the same time, it is colour precise with Delta E<2.

Out the back, other than the ports, there is a mood RGB strip that you can synced with your music and other medias. There is also Acer ColorSense and LightSense technologies that allows the display to automatically adjust the colour temperature and brightness of the displayu according to the situation to protect your eyes. With ProxiSense, there is a proximity sensor that also detects the user’s presence in front of the display and dims the display to save power and to protect sensitive content from being displayed on the large format display.

Price and Availability

The Predator CG437KS is now available from Acer’s eStore and its online retail partners on Shopee and Lazada. You can get them from any of Acer’s authorised resellers too. As mentioned, it will set you back MYR 4,699. You can only get it in one colour option, black, as usual.

Computers, Gaming, Lifestyle, News

Valve Announces the Steam Deck – Proper PC Gaming in Nintendo Switch-esque Package.

July 16, 2021 Darwin Sucipto Leave a comment

When Nintendo Switch was first teased, the PC gaming market went a little wild. Independent manufacturers took bold steps and packed all they can into a package that resembles the Nintendo Switch running the Windows platform. Despite the fact that most of these devices packs a notebook PC APU with no discreet GPU, they sold them as handheld gaming devices. To be fair, those were good attempts to squish portable gaming devices (gaming laptops) to an even more portable size. In theory also, you get the best gaming experience that is PC gaming.

Obviously, cramming PC grade hardware into constricted space is no mean feat. Most of the handheld gaming ‘PCs’ are thicker than your college textbooks and are as heavy as a brick. You need to fit cooling fans, thermal management systems, storage, RAM, and whatever else you have on a regular laptop into the small package. On top of all of that, you need to fit the controllers too. We thought that we will never see the day a handheld gaming device that can run PC games looking like a Nintendo Switch anytime soon.

Imagine our surprise then when Valve came out to say they have made a handheld gaming device that runs all your PC games. While it should not be a big surprise, it did catch the world off guard a little bit. Valve is not new in creating console peripherals for the PC gaming industry though. They were also responsible for creating something called the Steam Controller a few years back, we never saw the product ourselves though.

Screenshot 2021 07 16 at 14 36 55 Steam Deck Hardware — Source: Steam Deck

The Steam Deck, they call it. It really looks like a Nintendo Switch that is permanently stuck to two third-party Joy Con controllers. You do not get the funky colours of the Nintendo Switch though. Instead, you get a completely gun metal black finish that gives it a more edgy look.

It is built to run the Steam interface on its 7-inch 720p (1,280 x 800) LCD display with 60Hz refresh rate. It is built to run games on your Steam Library on that exact same display at that resolution too. You can get better displays from smartphone devices today, obviously. The issue with better and faster displays is that it presents a very real bottleneck for modern PC games, so some level of sacrifice would be required on portable handheld devices.

Keeping the display running at full chat is an AMD Zen 2 architecture CPU (four-core, eight thread) that is also paired to RDNA 2 GPU (eight CU) custom APU for the Steam Deck. You get 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM that is non-replaceable. 16GB of RAM is ample though for a gaming PC. They even pack it with up to 512GB in an NVMe PCIe SSD format to keep things trundling along at breakneck speeds.

The controller layout does look a little weird because the D-pad lines up with the joystick. The layout is necessary though to fit the touch pads for a more intuitive navigation for the Steam Deck. The 7-inch display is also a touch sensitive display, if you really cannot figure out the controller navigation.

Source: Steam Deck
Source: Steam Deck
Source: Steam Deck
Source: Steam Deck
Source: Steam Deck
Source: Steam Deck
Source: Steam Deck
Source: Steam Deck
Source: Steam Deck

Obviously, the Steam Deck runs on Steam’s custom interface. However, it is also built as a PC complete with a dock and everything with proper I/O. That also means that you can run it as a PC on a desktop display or a TV if you really want to. It runs on Linux though, so you do not get the Windows experience here. Still, you can run third-party apps on Steam Deck, something you cannot do on any other gaming consoles.

Valve’s Steam Deck comes in three flavours when it is available later in December 2021 and beyond. These are not colour options though, rather three storage options. At the most basic you are getting a 64GB eMMC internal storage. A step above that is a 256GB NVMe SSD. At the top of the food chain is a 512GB storage option. All variants come with a MicroSD expansion slot, so you still can get a MicroSD card for more storage if you need to. Prices start from US$ 399 (MYR 1,676*) for the most basic version and tops out at US$ 649 (MYR 2,727*). Compared to the Nintendo Switch, the entry level price is still more expensive. At the top as well, the Steam Deck is approximately US$ 150 (MYR 630*) more than current generation gaming consoles. You do not get to bring around your Steam Library with you on the other consoles though.

*Approximately based on exchange rate of US$ 1 = MYR 4.20 on xe.com as of 16/07/2021

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