Asus has grown into one of the stalwarts of PC gaming, offering high-end hardware ranging from graphics cards to sound cards, monitors to motherboards for generations. Seeing that they had a knack for this ‘gaming hardware’ stuff, in 2006 Asus launched the Republic of Gamers (ROG) line of products, which have included monitors, graphics cards and—most pertinently—high-end gaming laptops. Since then, ROG has been a go-to brand for gamers.
The new ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE gaming laptop, powered by the latest Intel Core i9 processor, is set to lead the line as the company’s latest flagship. To sync up with its launch, Asus is also releasing SCAR Runner—the first major DLC for Asus’ gorgeous (and totally free) first-person shooter ROG Citadel XV, which came out last year. The game, which marked the start of the ROG Saga, is set in the vast cyberpunk metropolis of Goeman City—all neon signs, smoking sewer grates and steely architecture—where a criminal underbelly thrums beneath the synthetic lights.
The DLC moves away from the wave-shooter focus of the base game towards parkour, following a mysterious character called ‘X’ as he runs across rooftops and through laser-filled hallways of Goeman City to track down an agent; It’s a race against time, as your contact holds information that could prevent an imminent city-wide disaster.
The game will require both well-honed gamer reflexes and a sharp mind if you’re to complete your task on time. SCAR Runner is big on the puzzles, which may resonate with fans of classic first-person puzzlers like Portal. Some of the puzzles will even break through the fourth wall of your laptop screen and require you to explore the very chassis of your Strix SCAR 17 SE to solve them (though Asus reassures us that you can still play through the game without these cryptic clues).
True to form, Asus is pushing at the limits of how we experience videogames.
And there’s no better way to push these limits than on the ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE, a laptop that makes the most of that At the heart of this laptop is a 16-core Intel Core i9-12950HX CPU – a 65W beast capable of up to 5.2GHz boost speeds that will top up those framerates and breeze through any amount of multitasking and browser tabs you accidentally leave open on it to deliver an amazing game experience. The combo of a 360Hz/3ms screen and a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU will let you leap between those rooftops with liquid-smooth abandon. You can buy the ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE at Asus (opens in new tab).
The Sweepstakes
Or perhaps you’d prefer to be in with a chance of procuring all this power for free? From May 30th through June 30th, all you need to do is play the new SCAR Runner DLC through Steam to be entered into the sweepstakes (remember that you need the free base game, ROG Citadel XV, to play it). You can find out more about the competition through the official event page.
There’s always something new emerging from Asus’ labs – whether that’s trailbazling tech or, as the case may be, the latest entry in a promising new games saga. To keep up with the latest goings-on, head over to the ROG Facebook or Twitter pages. To see what’s happening at Asus, you can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook, or head over to their official news page (opens in new tab).