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NAG LIVE Podcast #49: GTA VI Pricing, SteamOS, and Anime After Hours

Talking Tech with Julio from Rebel Gaming

MSI MAG X870E Carbon Max Wifi Review: Overclocker’s Dream
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Beyond All Reason

Beyond All Reason: the (free) return to total annihilation warfare

James Francis·25 March 2022·2 Comments

#TRENDING ON NAG

Silent Hill 2 Endings Explained: A Deep Dive Into James Sunderland's Haunting Journey

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed Review – Shell Shockingly Bad

#WATCH NAG

Join Regardt and James every Friday at 1pm where they talk gaming, tech and everything in between. Regardt is solo today, so jump in on the chat, and become the co-host.

Veteran's Vault: Retro Games on demand

In this week’s podcast, we kick of the chaos with the hottest topics of the week. We look at the latest in gaming, technology, and pop culture, including GTA pricing, SteamOS updates, and upcoming events like Anime After Hours. This is the perfect show for gamers, tech enthusiasts, and pop culture fans alike.

Check out Arc one here: www.animeafterhours.com

//ABOUT NAG
Video games, esports, sci-tech, entertainment, pop culture, and a few things in between.
Web: https://www.nag.co.za/
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discord: https://discord.gg/A875FffCUS

The NAG LIVE Podcast #49: GTA VI Pricing, SteamOS, and Anime After Hours

You may have come across Rebel Gaming while hunting for PC parts in South Africa, or more likely, while lurking in one of those community threads where someone asks where to buy a graphics card without having to sell a kidney, and three people immediately reply, “Speak to Julio.”

It’s a level of trust that takes years to build and in this week’s podcast, I sat down with Julio from Rebel Gaming to talk about how he has grown his business from a side hustle into a full-time online business.

We then jumped into the current state of PC component pricing, especially RAM and storage, which has gone from affordable to outright ridiculous.

We also spoke about the future of PC gaming hardware, from small form factor builds and all-in-one gaming machines to Steam Machine pricing, consoles, second-hand parts, and why the traditional desktop PC is not going anywhere just yet. Julio’s view is simple: compact machines are interesting, but for PC enthusiasts, the upgrade path is still king. A console gives you convenience, whereas a PC gives you unlimited possibilities.

There was also plenty of practical advice for anyone building or testing a gaming rig. Julio recommended 3DMark for benchmarking and OCCT for stress testing, with Cinebench also getting a nod from the chat. We discussed Windows 11 bloat, undervolting, and DLSS 5 too. It was as the full menu of tech talk, so tune in and enjoy.

You can find Julio at Rebel Gaming www.rebelgaming.co.za

//ABOUT NAG
Video games, esports, sci-tech, entertainment, pop culture, and a few things in between.
Web: https://www.nag.co.za/
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discord: https://discord.gg/A875FffCUS

Talking Tech and Retail with Julio from Rebel Gaming

If you are looking for a high-end motherboard for your AMD AM5 gaming rig, we’ve got an early hands-on sample of the MAG X870E Carbon Max Wifi motherboard.

It’s aimed at overlockers, with a very cool feature built-in, just for pushing your CPU to its limits.

This motherboard sits on the upper end of the range and it’s an incremental update to the MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi version. The Max in the name signifies that there’s more to this motherboard than meets the eye.

Check out the video for all the details.

//ABOUT NAG
Video games, esports, sci-tech, entertainment, pop culture, and a few things in between.
Web: https://www.nag.co.za/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nagcoza
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nagcoza/
discord: https://discord.gg/A875FffCUS

MSI MAG X870E Carbon Max Wifi Review: Overclocker's Dream

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This week’s Veterans Vault was all about Steam Next Fest, which means James and I had far too many demos to look at and nowhere near enough time to play them all properly. Before we got into the games, though, we spoke about full-motion video games. I spotted Nowhere to Run on the Steam Next Fest games list and to be honest, I am keen to check it out.

Getting back to our Top 10 Steam Next Fest list, James kicked things off with Over The Hill, a charming off-road driving game that looks like MudRunner went on holiday and came back with softer colours, a calmer attitude, and a nice little physics engine tucked under the bonnet. It is all about taking a 4x4 through rough terrain, using a winch when things go badly, and discovering whether you are an outdoorsman or just someone who likes the idea of owning recovery boards.

I then brought As One We Survive to the table, a top-down post-apocalyptic survival game that initially looked easy to play, until James started reading the details and we realised it may actually want to hurt us. No magic health packs, bandages to stop bleeding, sleeping to heal, weapon maintenance, survivor management, base building, and all the Project Zomboid energy a person can handle.

From there, James showed us Wind Runners, a slick arena-based shooter with side-scrolling DNA, aircraft acrobatics, missile volleys, boss fights, and roguelite progression. It is fast, polished, and appears to understand that sometimes all you really need from a game is a tiny plane, far too many enemies, and a screen full of explosions.

My next pick was DDoD, a top-down co-op shooter with a post-apocalyptic industrial-zone mood, Diablo-like pacing, Stalker-ish atmosphere, and, most importantly, giant slugs.

James then showed us Deer & Boy, a beautiful cinematic side-scroller about a boy and a deer making their way through a wordless adventure. Think puzzle-solving, stealth, and visual storytelling that will probably make you tear up a little.

Then came 1666: Amsterdam, which carries some serious development history thanks to Patrice Désilets, one of the key creative minds behind Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and early Assassin’s Creed. This is not Assassin’s Creed in a different hat, though. It is a witchcraft-infused action-adventure set in Amsterdam, with investigation by day, demons by night, and a playable cat, because apparently the pitch was not already interesting enough.

We also looked at Inseco, a grimy first-person point-and-click horror game with old-school pixel art, insect nightmares, body horror, and a strong nope atmosphere. It also led us into a proper discussion about generative AI in game development, where it can help smaller teams create more ambitious work, and where it still falls flat, especially when AI voice acting cannot quite deliver the human performance a scene needs.

Screenbound was another standout for us, it is a wonderfully odd puzzle-platformer where you control a 3D character in the world while also controlling a 2D character on an in-game handheld. It is basically a game inside a game and playing it on a Steam Deck may cause several layers of reality to fold in on itself.

Veteran’s Vault: Steam Next Fest, The Biggest Top 10 List We've Ever Done

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