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2017 was a busy and eventful year for gaming, containing lots of good and lots of bad. This year we also saw the debut of a new breakthrough title that smashed records for most simultaneous players, topping the Steam charts. We also received impressive sequels and incredibly lackluster ones, perfect remasters, letdowns, almost a little bit of everything, and in this article we will cover it all!

Every page is dedicated to a single award. There are no new awards this year, so as usual we will begin with our two Mod of the Year awards starting on the next page. You may notice some missing awards, such as Best RPG (which shouldn't be a surprise by now) and Best Story/Writing. The reason for this being, we could not agree on a game being worth those awards, especially the former. That's right, Divinity: Original Sin 2 does not have nearly enough role-playing nor did anything else this year including Torment: Tides of Numenera, as both games demonstrate in their design (quest design and writing mostly) that they are AFRAID of role-playing. We have high standards here at GND-Tech unlike the rest of the gaming industry, after all.





This award was contested between two exemplary overhaul mods, some of the most impressive ever made in the history of gaming. They are Misery 2.2 for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat, and GMDX v9.0 (which stands for Give Me Deus Ex) for Deus Ex. We ended up choosing the latter for its polish and added features and improvements in all areas of the game.

GMDX is the reference overhaul mod for Deus Ex, bringing this one of a kind masterpiece game years into the future with excellent graphics overhaul (including a DX10 renderer), sound overhaul, gameplay improvements without changing the core gameplay, AI improvements, UI and HUD customization, everything one could hope for from an overhaul mod. Yet it does not add too much, as some people feel that Revision mod does. The level design has added props and attention to detail but the layouts are unchanged. New ammo types and weapon mods have been added, but the originals remain. AI has been improved significantly, ...

Intel has recently released Coffee Lake, which includes the 8th gen Core i3/i5/i7 processors and the Z370 motherboard platform. Supplies are still low, so not everyone has theirs yet. Luckily a couple of us here at GND-Tech managed to buy a Core i7 8700k early for retail price, allowing us to bring you this article!

Overclocking Coffee Lake is hardly any different than Kaby Lake/Skylake or Haswell and the related HEDT models. You will want a decent Z370 motherboard, as lower end motherboards often lack overclocking ability or proper VRM cooling. The hardware used for this guide is listed below:

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus X Hero Z370 Wi-Fi AC
  
• RAM: G.SKILL TridentZ RGB 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 CL16
  
• Processor: Intel Core i7 8700k delidded
  
• Processor Cooling: EK Phoenix MLC 360mm

As usual for Intel, only models ending in 'K' such as the Core i7 8700k are overclockable, and you will want to delid your CPU especially ...

A Home Theater PC (HTPC) is bar none objectively the best way to watch movies, TV, any video in the best possible quality, much like how a PC is bar none the best platform for gaming. Throw away or sell your consoles and standalone blu-ray players, and get started with an HTPC if you haven't already! While an HTPC with low end hardware won't have significant benefits in picture quality, the unparalleled functionality more than makes up for it. But in this article, we focus on the configuration and capabilities of a high end HTPC.


Some might ask why bother setting up an HTPC opposed to using a standalone player, game console, or smart TV. A smart TV still has its place as a media center, but game consoles and standalone blu-ray disc players are completely useless in every single facet. The reasons to use an HTPC are:

1. Less devices

...

This is an article we've been meaning to make for a while. We present to you a list of 50 of the coolest guns in video game history! This is a bit of a throwback article since most shooters today only have plain, unoriginal gun design. Things that make a gun stand out to us are not only its sound effects, creativity, and originality, but its use of the game engine's technology to create spectacular effects as well as multiple functionalities that are somewhat logical and incredibly fun to use.

Without further ado, let's jump right into the list starting on the next page. Each gun has at least one video to demonstrate its powers and functionality. Many of the videos do involve using in-game cheats, since many of the featured guns are not accessible until late in the game and we may not have save files at such points in the games.





The perfect crowd control weapon for the agile pilots in Titanfall 2, the Smart Pistol deserves our nod. It can easily decimate scores of grunts and specters and there is something very cool about the way it does it. It may seem as a cheap weapon, but it is surprisingly balanced this time around, at least in the game's multiplayer.

A unique concept in a unique game that despite how strange it sounds is damn satisfying to use.



The ZICS-C Shotgun had to fight hard for this spot, as we were really looking for a special multi-barrel shotgun that could fire one barrel at a time or all of them at a time, while being unique in some way. We found it with this gun, featured in Shadow Warrior.

By default it has two barrels, but can be upgraded to have four. This combined with the fact that you can fire each barrel at once, or all at once, and the additional upgrade capabilities within the game, are why we chose the ZICS-C over similar shotguns.



The Lightning Gun from Unreal Tournament 2004 is an excellent high risk, high reward weapon that is very satisfying to shoot due to the game's particle effects and sound effects. As the name implies, it fires a lighting bolt. This lightning bolt is incredibly fast and perfectly accurate, and it is one of the most powerful guns in the game, the high reward. The downside is its very slow rate of fire, the high risk.

One headshot kills an unshielded opponent, and two shots anywhere else will kill an unshielded opponent as well. This gun requires a lot of skill to use, namely excellent accuracy. Anyone without a good enough skill level attempting to use this gun will be met with failure, especially in close range.



The Drakk Laser Rifle is one of the cooler laser guns in video gaming, featured in Unreal II: The Awakening. It was closely contended with the Type-12 Laser Carbine from F.E.A.R., but the Drakk won because it has two firing modes while the Type-12 only has one, and because the firing mode both weapons share is overall more awesome with the Drakk.

The primary firing mode shoots a deadly laser beam. One quick, accurate shot with an awesome sound, enough to kill regular enemies in one shot. Things get really cool with the secondary fire mode which shoots a continuous laser beam that burns into surfaces. That's not all though, since if we just stopped here then this secondary fire mode is the same as F.E.A.R.'s Type-12 and many others.

What makes the Drakk even more awesome is that 1-2 seconds after you shoot something with the secondary blast (which leaves very obvious markings), the area you shot bursts aflame, as shown in the video above, adding even more killing power to this already deadly weapon.



The Vampire Gun from Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion is another high risk, high reward weapon with cool effects. It is a wrist-worn creature, like something out of Half-Life.

Firing it at nothing drains your health, by sucking the blood out of you. Firing it at a living creature at medium range (its maximum range) will drain health from both you and the target creature. It is only effective at point blank range, where it drains health from the target creature and gives it to the player. When draining an opponent's health, you see their physical model shrink and deplete, which is a reason ...

Linux continues to grow more popular all the time, and it is continuously becoming a more viable gaming platform thanks largely to Valve, Epic Games, Unity Technologies, and game studios such as Croteam, Frictional Games, New World Interactive, Beamdog, 4A Games, Firaxis, and the rest who consistently support Linux, and of course also thanks to the GNU community and developers behind Ubuntu, Mint, and other constantly evolving Linux distros.

Why game on Linux, you ask? Some people just don't want to use Windows, because Windows is a laughably insecure operating system, now with forced spyware and updates causing all sorts of issues in Windows 10 (my favorite is breaking sound card drivers and/or DTS and Dolby encoders so that I can't use surround sound). That, and because most modern Linux desktop environments, ...

In any discussion about the greatest video game RPGs of all time, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is bound to be mentioned, and rightfully so. Arcanum is a steampunk fantasy RPG released by Troika Games in 2001, making it perhaps the best debut for any video game studio. It is the sole occupant of tier 2 on our video game RPG tier list, meaning only one video game RPG has more role-playing than it (that being Fallout 2). Troika Games was formed by ex-Interplay employees, so much of Fallout's brilliance is on display throughout Arcanum.

Arcanum is an isometric 2.5D game that lets you choose between real-time combat and turn-based combat. Off hand I cannot think of another RPG that gives you such an option. Its superior quality and 190 page manual might make the educated RPG fan think it comes from a pen and paper RPG, but it does not. It is an original video game RPG, one of the best of all time in this regard again not unlike Fallout and most of all Fallout 2.

It is set in the world of Arcanum which consists of a massive continent and several off shore islands. It is almost completely open world with only a few locations not being accessible until you advance to a certain point. The world of Arcanum resembles a parallel 1800s United Kingdom in which magick exists but is being replaced by steam based technology, making for a very unique setting and intriguing conflict. It plays off of its setting well as we will soon discuss, taking advantage of the literary intrigue it presents in the form of story and quests, and also taking advantage of the setting in the ...

Like any industry, gaming tries to take advantage of an uneducated consumer base. One of the most common ways this is achieved is through a sort of "Get Rich Quick Scheme," whether it is by releasing an Early Access game and never finishing it, or by releasing an initially good (or even great) game and then coasting on this popularity by diluting the content and releasing half-assed copypasta sequels every year.

In this article, we will explore games/franchises that demonstrate these "Get Rich Quick Schemes" as well as the continuous diluting of content and rushed unfinished releases. It is no coincidence that this article is positioned closely to the release of Call of Duty: WWII.




Battlefield began as a PC exclusive franchise, starting with Battlefield 1942 and then Battlefield: Vietnam. After this, they alternated between objectively severely dumbed down console exclusives and also more excellent PC exclusive Battlefield games. This senseless alternating ended with Battlefield: Bad ...