PC Gaming

Discover the host of additions and improvements arriving with the free Update 39 base-game patch. The Update 39 base-game patch is now live on PC/Mac and introduces a series of long-awaited improvements and additions to The Elder Scrolls Online, completely free of charge for all existing ESO players.

With its latest AMD AGESA 1.0.0.7c BIOS firmware, MSI is introducing a new memory tuning setting known as "High-Efficiency" mode. This new feature supports pre-configured memory profiles for a set of popular modules on the market, offering higher bandwidth and lower latency through a set of optimizations. These optimizations mainly come from fine-tuned DDR5 DRAM timings and there are four "Memory Timing Presets" that are available for users to try out at any given time including Tightest, Tighter, Balance & Relax.

Intel Graphics figured out a unique way to step up performance of its entry-level Arc A380 graphics cards. While other companies prevent BIOS updates and generally discourage overclocking; Intel has given the A380 a free vendor overclock. With the latest Arc GPU Graphics drivers 101.4644 WHQL, Intel has increased the base frequency of the GPU. The driver installer includes a firmware update besides the driver. The A380 has a reference base clock of 2000 MHz, which boosts up to 2050 MHz. With the latest 101.4644 drivers (the new firmware), the base frequency has been increased to 2150 MHz.

Today, Samsung announced a partnership with NEXON to make The First Descendant the first title compatible with the HDR10+ GAMING standard starting with the Open Beta scheduled for September 19th. Seokwoo Jason Yong, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement.

NVIDIA already released an HDR10+ GAMING compatible driver last November, so GeForce owners are set. AMD and Intel still have to release a compatible driver. The new standard should also be compatible with consoles, but it is unclear whether The First Descendant will support it across all platforms.

CD Projekt Red is hosting a gameplay livestream for Cyberpunk 2077 later this week, where it will share more details about its next update.

During the stream, which will be hosted by CDPR's community managers over on Twitch, the Cyberpunk 2077 team will "discuss several features" that players can expect to see added to the game when this update goes live.

In addition, the developer will also share more about its Idris Elba-fronted Phantom Liberty expansion.

20 milestones packed with rewards & a whole new system of development trees!
🎁Learn how you can unlock milestones in Cities: Skylines II, how you can respond to your city's growing needs & how to use development points to build the city of your dreams.🏗️

Footage captured In-Game is not final and might change in time for release.

Signups for the latest closed beta are now open.

You have to give credit to Ubisoft for persistence: Another developer might've scuttled Skull and Bones ages ago, but Yves Guillemot and co. keep blowing into its sails, trying to propel it forward, and so it is that another Skull and Bones closed beta is coming next week.

For those just tuning in, Skull and Bones was announced in June 2017 as an open-world game of high-seas piracy, based on the seafaring bits of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, which came out in 2013. It was supposed to be out in 2018, but multiple delays have kept it from setting sail. In 2022 it looked like we were really and truly going to finally get our hands on it, but after a brief period of heady hope, a long-awaited gameplay reveal failed to impress, and just a couple months before the slated launch in November 2022, it was delayed again. And then, for good measure, again.

Welcome to Aveum, a world shaped by millennia of conflict and bloodshed. Its five kingdoms have been reduced to only two superpowers: Lucium and Rasharn. Between them lies the Wound, an infinitely deep chasm in the center of the world, its cracks dividing the kingdoms.

You'll play as Jak, an unexpected Triarch Magnus - an Unforeseen - who is thrust into the midst of mankind’s endless war for the control of magic, known as the Everwar.

With powerful magic-wielders and legions of soldiers on both sides of the Everwar, Jak and the elite Order of Immortals must uncover the mysteries of Aveum's troubled past, if there's any hope for saving its future.
Immortals of Aveum™ is a single-player first-person magic shooter releasing on August 22, 2023! There's still time to pre-order Immortals of Aveum and receive the Purified Arclight Sigil* – a unique blue Arclight sigil that increases Shred on Jak’s blue Strike spells, while also boosting the damage of his Shatter Fury spell.

This gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 soulslike has finally lifted its mysterious veil.

Since Black Myth: Wukong released its first trailer three years ago, every year on August 20th, the developer Game Science has shown something new about the development progress of the game. However, what's different this year is that we finally got to play it. Game Science held a large-scale Black Myth: Wukong hands-on event in Hangzhou China, inviting over one thousand players from all over the country to personally play the latest trial version of this anticipated action-RPG.

This 45-minute demo provided three different boss fights and a relatively complete chapter experience. It’s worth noting that after the event, the dev team made some adjustments to the trial version based on the feedback and suggestions received during the closed-door evaluation I participated in. As a result, my experience may differ slightly from what others experienced in Hangzhou and at Gamescom in Cologne.

This review and benchmark of the Fractal Terra (Jade) Mini-ITX case looks at the build quality, the ease-of-installation features, cable management, and design qualities of the new small form factor (SFF) case from Fractal. We also deploy our hemi-anechoic acoustic testing chamber for some initial numbers, run thermal benchmarks and comparisons, and talk about what kind of build makes the most sense with this case. The closest competitors would come from Formd and the DAN Case A4-H2O. We are working on the DAN Case ITX review next!

Paradox Interactive appears to be teasing a re-reveal of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 at PAX West in less than two weeks.

While the tweet doesn't outright confirm the presence of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, the Community Manager replied to that very inquiry made in the Discord channel with an 'eyes' emoticon, practically confirming it. After all, Paradox did say in the last official update that the game would get its re-reveal in September. The good news is that PAX West 2023 is scheduled at the very beginning of the month (September 1-4), so there's less than two weeks to wait now.

The update makes numerous improvements to gameplay and accessibility, and also fixes a range of bugs.

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The update adds functionality for automated quick time events, an under-acknowledged accessibility issue in gaming for people with RSI or other disabilities, so players will have the option to just push a button and be done with it.

The overall UI size has been adjusted to make it more usable on both PCs and Steam Decks, an inventory sorting function has been added that enables players to easily ditch unnecessary items while diving, and menu navigation has been improved to make it easier to get around in vertical lists.

Hamburg City Brix faced off against Diablo 4's hardest boss with a Barbarian build focused on the absurd interaction between bleed damage and "Caged Heart of the Barber," a powerful gem exclusive to season 1. The final blow, which was really a single tick of damage from the bleed, hit Uber Lilith for more damage than any other class can put out.

... Recently Netflix announced that it is going to start getting into the game-streaming business, albeit in a very limited beta to see how this all is going to work.

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Two games is not a catalogue and none of this remotely looks like the rollout of Google Stadia. But that might be the point. Perhaps this is Netflix not trying to immediately take on a larger catalogue filled with AAA titles because it watched Google fail so miserably at it. Instead, this dipping its toe in the water might be designed instead to see if Netflix can make this work for a more expanded catalogue. If so, that sounds prudent to me.

One of Call of Duty's longest-serving developers, David Vonderhaar, has left Activision and Treyarch.

Vonderhaar announced his departure on LinkedIn, promising that after 18 years with the franchise, the "energy" of the Call of Duty community "will always be a massive part of [him]".

Blizzard has opened up about the impact Overwatch 2 "review bombers" have had on the team, acknowledging that the "dissatisfaction" stems from "the cancellation of the much larger component of PvE that was announced in 2019 [...] that Blizzard ultimately couldn't deliver".

In a statement posted to the game's official website, Aaron Keller said that while being review bombed "isn't a fun experience", the plan was to "move forward" by "adding to and improving Overwatch 2".

The end of the world is coming home.

Baldur's Gate 3 has already sold over 5.2 million units on Steam alone, not counting GOG, according to the Belgian Embassy.

I challenge you to comment and correct my mistakes about the characters in overwatch2 visit now https://playstationcouch.com

#PCGaming

Pat Naoum’s puzzler, The Master’s Pupil, was made by one developer over seven years and countless brush strokes.

It was only a matter of time, right? While technical tricks like stacking a thousand explosive barrels or leveraging fall damage for Owlbear elbow drops are impressive in their own way, I've yet to see anything truly representing Dungeons & Dragons' frightening powergaming underbelly from Baldur's Gate 3's community. That is, until now.

This video talks about new tools added to the Open Source PresentMon initiative, adding the capability to monitor a new metric called "GPU Busy." In the video, we explain the rendering pipeline for frames, including discussion about game engines (e.g. Unreal Engine 5) CPU, GPU, and DirectX or API involvement in taking data and composing a frame presented to the player. This is a technical discussion with Tom Petersen, Senior Fellow (engineering) at Intel, who explains the new tools and how they can be used by end users and reviewers alike. As these are completely vendor agnostic and open source, we can apply these to reviews of all CPUs or GPUs (in Windows), and likewise the users can run PresentMon for all hardware at home. Intel hardware is not required. As background, PresentMon has already been around for many years now and is what many reviewers use for their benchmark and reviews process.

Since Intel launched its Arc GPU family, the company prioritized modern APIs including DX12 and Vulkan. Now that Intel has strengthened its performance within those, the blue team took a step back and focused on DX11 performance which has seen incremental updates over the quarters & at this point, Intel's DX11 performance is on par with its competitors.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, 18 Augustus 2023
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1353230/Bomb_Rush_Cyberfunk/