Hello everyone, today we present you with a new type of article here at GND-Tech. We're debuting the first of a series of Build Recommendations that we plan on updating every few months or so to keep up with the ever increasing pace of new technology and hardware.

We're breaking the series down into four categories. The categories are Budget, Mid-Range, High End and Infinite Budget. Keep in mind, we are not sponsored so there is no bias to be found here, but that unfortunately means we cannot afford to actually buy all these components and ...

Complacency caused by lack of competition, corporate greed and poor decision making, low market demand due to ignorance, are all just a few reasons why certain computer hardware industries are so behind the times. In this article we will explore which computer hardware industries are lagging behind so badly, and discuss where they could and should be by now. We will be looking at industries relevant to PC gaming, so this is an article for gamers.



We talk a lot about monitors and display technology in general here at GND-Tech. Display technology in general is not where it should be, but computer monitors have it the worst. To those without much knowledge in this area, it would be beneficial to first read this.

Brief history lesson: LCD technology is what totally replaced CRT. This brings up the first issue; this shouldn't have happened. LCD taking over for lower end markets is fine, but it's not really suitable for any enthusiast gaming or movie/TV watching. A much better technology was proposed to succeed CRT, and that was FED or Field Emission Display. SED, or Surface-Conduction ...

Today's article is unlike others you will find on this site. It is no secret we write a lot. Today, we are writing less and instead presenting screenshots and videos. This article serves simply as a demonstration of some of the most spectacular visual art in video game history (mods included). Most gamers are too focused on graphics fidelity (while failing to understand and even see fidelity in the first place), opposed to art design and attention to detail. Too many only notice and focus on bloom, lens flare, and inaccurate depth of field, opposed to things like non-repeating environments and textures, materials processing, terrain formations, detailed and logical architectures with distinct designs.

Remember, this is just about visual art. Video games are an art form for other reasons too, such as their ability to tell stories in different, incredible ways, explored here. Furthermore, every game listed here isn't just designed around the set pieces like recent Call of Duty games are. So while they look spectacular, there is much more to them.

You know what they say; a picture is worth a thousand words. Behold the value of thousands upon thousands of words, as we present to you the visual art of games! All screenshots in this article are indeed unedited.



We are starting things off on quite the high point, on what is in my opinion the most visually mesmerizing game of all time. Obduction is Cyan's latest game, released in August 2016. We reviewed it here. They also created one of the most important games ever, Myst, and Obduction is likewise a pioneer in its own right.

Obduction shows why fidelity is still rather important. It wouldn't be as awe inspiring without its state of the art graphics technology powered by Unreal Engine 4.




Myst may have been the first game to argue that video games can be art. Its environment was made up of still images, but realMyst: Masterpiece Edition from 2014 is a full 3D remake with free roaming capabilities. An amazing improvement even if the graphics fidelity is far from top notch, but despite this its environments are jaw dropping and so imaginative.

So the version we are looking at is indeed realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. Behold.




Praise must be given not only to Bethesda Game Studios who created The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, but also the modders who brought its visuals up to standards seen years later. Morrowind has one of the most visionary, unique, otherworldly fantasy worlds in video game history; the island of Vvardenfell. See for yourself. The mods shown are listed here. Note that view distance and anti-aliasing can be improved further than what the screenshots, but even an i7 6700k running at 4.6 GHz with 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz RAM and a GTX 1080 struggle to run it! That's the downside of adding so many new graphics features to an old engine.


Now some of you younger gamers may understand why some people prefer the world of Morrowind to those of Oblivion and Skyrim.



The visuals of Dishonored were a thing of controversy. The press often praised its artistic attention to detail, but criticized its apparent lack of fidelity. Although as far as fidelity goes, it only lacks in texture resolution, and this was intentionally part of the art design. Textures are meant to appear "painted" and can look oily at times, really demonstrating this. Combined with its post-processing effects and lighting (which are still fairly advanced even by today's standards), it really does resemble the painting.

In order to look stunningly beautiful, Dishonored should really be played at larger resolutions ...

When discussing BioWare games, most people will cite either Mass Effect (more specifically the second game but sometimes the first) or Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn as BioWare's best. No doubt they are worthy of being brought into the discussion, but many forget Dragon Age: Origins, one of their largest scale, most ambitious, and least flawed games. Likewise, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic must also be brought into this discussion. But this article is dedicated to the nearly forgotten masterpiece that is Dragon Age: Origins.

All of the aforementioned BioWare games have a place on our RPG tier list. In fact, the BioWare game with the highest amount of role-playing is actually Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic which ranks in the prestigious tier 3 in that article. Dragon Age: Origins belongs to tier 4, while the Mass Effect trilogy resides on tier 5 (with tier 1 being the most role-playing). So some may ask, why do we find Dragon Age: Origins to be BioWare's best game?

There is more to an RPG than just how much role-playing is possible, and Dragon Age: Origins is more than a formidable RPG in its own right.



Dragon Age: Origins was released in 2009, after a very long development period. It is often referred to as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate; while they have the same kind of gameplay, Origins is much darker thematically and also far more story-driven.

It uses ...

After many years of waiting, Cyan's latest game is here. They created the legendary Myst franchise, with Myst itself being the best selling PC game for the better part of a decade. Times have sinced changed, and games such as these are unfortunately known only to a small minority of gamers.

Obduction is an Unreal Engine 4 based, partially crowdfunded first-person puzzle-adventure indie game, just like the Myst franchise. Myst was one of the most important, innovative games in the history of gaming; the first of its kind bringing forward groundbreaking visuals combined with unthinkable environmental design. It may have been the first video game to deliberately make the argument that video games are an art form. Obduction brings forward many questions, such as what has Cyan done differently? How have they changed over the years? Will it continue to innovate and blow our minds with pure visual bliss? Let us find out!



Obduction is available exclusively on Windows and OS X. It is one of many sub-genres unique to computer gaming. As with its spiritual predecessors, it doesn't have a whole lot ...

There are some unfortunate trends that single player game developers are following, and many excellent design concepts that aren't being used. In this article we will show you both sides of the equation.

It is no secret that most single player games today follow the same formula, falling into our "Don'ts" category and largely ignoring the things in our "Do's" category. But everything in our "Do's" category has been done in the past, but unfortunately they seem to be primarily a thing of the past now.

From storytelling to gameplay design, level design and sound design, we will be looking at a bit of everything. This is by no means a complete list of course; a complete list for such a thing can't really be compiled as game design involves creative, artistic work. But everything here should be considered by developers and publishers.

This article revolves around more story-driven single player games, not strategy games, and the concepts we encourage are vague enough to apply to many different kinds of games. Let us first begin with the "Don'ts" or the design pitfalls most games are falling into.

Beware that this article is filled with spoilers for various games. Also, special thanks to Charcharo for aiding with this article and adding ideas and examples.



This page contains design choices that are overemphasized or misused. We are not saying these concepts need to be abolished entirely. Except for one, which is the use of waves of enemies with infinite respawns. Non-stop enemies. It's excessively gamey and serves no purpose other than to add synthetic difficulty and to chew up time. Developers, never use this.

Now, let's look at the bigger concepts.


Let us tackle perhaps the biggest issue first. So many games now are emphasizing a cinematic approach, but rather than using cinematic presentation in a way that benefits the games, they are simply trying to copy movies completely and making huge sacrifices in gameplay, level design, and storytelling. These games try to get you to focus on the "cinematography" as well as the visuals and acting, and skimp on actual writing quality.

Another storytelling sacrifice is interactivity. Video games are an interactive medium, but these overemphasized cinematic games disregard this interactivity in favor of copying movies, thus you watch rather than play. Therefore, it is clear that these games ...

A few years ago we reviewed the Ducky DK9087 Shine 2, a keyboard that received universal praise. Since then, many new iterations of Ducky Shine have come up; currently we are up to the Ducky Shine 5 and are awaiting the release of the Shine 6. But one thing that bothered many people was the lack of tenkeyless (TKL) models—keyboards with no numberpad. The Shine 3 was the last of the Shine lineup to have a TKL variant.

Or so we thought. Ducky and Mechanical Keyboards Inc. have partnered up to deliver what many of us have been waiting for; a high quality TKL mechanical keyboard with RGB LED backlighting! To make things even more appealing, the MSRP is only $119. It is a Ducky OEM featuring the same lighting features as the beloved Ducky Shine 5, with the same case as the Ducky Shine 3. Can it live up to the hype? Let's find out.



The MK Disco TKL is of course available at the Mechanical Keyboards store which is where I purchased it from for $119 and free FedEx Ground shipping. For $10 extra I was able to add a full Ducky 108 keycap set, made of double shot ABS so I assume it is the same exact set used on the Ducky Shine 5.

Three business days later, it arrived. It was packed into a cardboard shipping box, with the actual keyboard box being tucked in sandwiched between brown paper. Bubble wrap would have been preferable due to the additional protection. The keyboard box reminds me of my previous ...