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Gamescom 2019 - Want to play Gears of War 5 on PC? You can skate by with an older rig.

Microsoft definitely wants its games to be played by as many people as possible, and that means flexibility. The Coalition has scaled Gears of War 5 across a myriad of PC hardware configurations, including older setups. Minimum specs sit at an Intel i3 Skylake/AMD FX-6000 series or equivalent, a GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon R9 280 with at least 2GB VRAM, and 8GB RAM. Expect 720p resolution or thereabouts at lowish settings. The game also clocks in at 80GB of hard drive space.

The recommended specs are likewise flexible. For performance around the 1080p 60FPS mark with marginal settings, Gears 5 needs an Intel Core i5 Skylake (assuming i5-6400 to i5-6600K are included), a GeForce GTX 970 or Radeon RX 570 with 4GB of VRAM, and 8GB of RAM. Again we don't know the perf The Coalition is targeting with this spec, but expect this to be 1080p optimized.

Gamescom 2019 - Squall Leonhart's moody angst is coming back, this time with better graphics.

Square Enix today announced its hotly anticipated Final Fantasy VIII Remaster is coming quite, quite soon, complete with infamous one-liners, the beloved Draw system that made battles last for 20 years at a time, and those delicious cafeteria hot dogs Mr. Dincht oh-so-loves. The FF8 Remaster is due out September 8, 2019 on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch, and we're betting it'll be the most dashing remaster at the party.

All jokes aside, I'm ecstatic to see Square Enix give Final Fantasy VIII some love. All eyes are on the new Final Fantasy VII Remake (and for good reason, it looks damn good), but we can't just toss Selphie and her PAHH-TAYY!s under the rug. The Remaster isn't a fully-fledged remake, but instead features enhanced visuals, more streamlined FPS and performance, and some time-saving built-in cheats like a no-encounter mode, unlocking all GFs, abilities, and maxed out magic, and full ATB and HP gauges for easy battles.

Gamescom 2019 - Ubisoft today confirmed the titanic scope of Watch Dog Legion's now-playable characters.

Watch Dogs Legion could change gaming forever. You can literally play as every character you see, whether it be an old lady who's secretly a spy, or even a high-level enemy boss. The game's dystopian London is a playground where you can cherry-pick the city's best, brightest, and weirdest and fold them directly into your party. Thanks to Watch Dogs Legion, NPCs have changed from Non-Playable Characters to Now-Playable Characters. But just how many Now-Playable Characters will Legion offer? London is home to millions of people and they can all join your crew.

At Gamescom 2019, Ubisoft confirmed Watch Dogs Legion will have millions of playable characters that you can choose. "Luckily, our city is filled with millions of people and any single one of them can be your next recruit."

Gamescom 2019 - Square Enix finally released gameplay footage for its new Avengers game, and it looks pretty good. What were they waiting for?

There's been a lot of doubt about Crystal Dynamic's new Avengers game, primarily because we had a lot of promises without much footage to back it up. There's also the live service worries of 4-player online co-op and cosmetic microtransactions. But today at Gamescom the studio unveiled a lengthy 18-minute playthrough that shows each of the five Avengers in action. The result gives me more confidence about the project, which I initially doubted as a messy live-game/story-based hybrid.

The result exposes Marvel's Avengers as a highly cinematic game with a strong emphasis on action and combat. The experience is very movie-like and makes you feel like you're playing an extension of the films; there's QTEs, high-octane explosions as you fly through areas, titanic setpieces that provide dramatic backdrops for the chaos you help unleash. Everything looks and feels very linear and there's lots of perspective-shifting, at least in the A-Day prologue, but the combat itself looks pretty stellar.

Gamescom 2019 - Microsoft has just finished their Gamescom 2019 announcements and as expected they have added a new line of games to Xbox Games Pass.

Microsoft has detailed a new line of games that will be coming to the Xbox Games Pass over the course of August. The list of games that will soon arrive on the service is: Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, Devil May Cry 5, Stellaris, Ape Out, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Bard's Tale IV: Directors Cut and Blair Witch.

The games will be added to the Game Pass' library from August 19, starting with Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, Devil May Cry 5 and Stellaris. Then on August 22, Ape Out and Kingdom Come: Deliverance will be added and then finally followed by, Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut and Blair Witch on August 27th and August 30th. If you are after additional descriptions on any of the mentioned games, visit the official blog post on the Xbox website here.

While wide-spread pollution free energy might sound like pipe dream when thinking about how many facets of the world economy uses fossil fuels, we might not actually be that far away from it.

A Canadian group of engineers recently published a new paper detailing a method humans could extract hydrogen from oil sands and fields. This new method could enable a large-scale adoption that would ultimately cause a domino effect into energy market, making it extremely cheap to capture hydrogen instead of expensive. The researchers inject oxygen into the oil fields which then raises the temperature and liberates the hydrogen, filters are then used to separate the hydrogen from the other gases that are present.

The commericilization of this new method is already taking place and, Grant Strem, CEO of Proton Technologies has given a statement regarding the discovery "This technique can draw up huge quantities of hydrogen while leaving the carbon in the ground. When working at production level, we anticipate we will be able to use the existing infrastructure and distribution chains to produce H2 for between 10 and 50 cents per kilo. This means it potentially costs a fraction of gasoline for equivalent output".

HBO has announced a brand new Westworld virtual reality game for fans, and the best news out of the entire announcement is that its already playable.

The new VR experience is called Westworld Awakening and is produced by Survios, Kilter Films and with the assistance of Westworld's showrunners. The game is planned to arrive on the Oculus Store, Viveport and Steam on August 20, but will only be available for VR users who have headsets linked to PCs.

Westworld Awakening is based in the second season of the TV show and will let players experience 5 chapters of madness. The main character is a host called Kate and players will be by her side as she becomes self-aware and attempts to dictate the outcomes of her own life. The game is expected to last around 4 - 6 hours and will cost $30. If you are interested in checking out Westworld Awakening on Steam, visit this link here.

Firstly, because why not right? Why wouldn't you want a jacket that reflects every color in the visible spectrum? I mean, if you want to stand out a party, here if your next purchase.

Vollebak has used lasers to embed over 2 billion microscopic glass spheres onto the surface of their Vollebak black squid jacket. The design idea behind the jacket is to replicate the elements of a squid's biological survival necessities across three layers of fabric. Vollebak co-founder, Steve Tidball spoke out about the design, saying "The black squid jacket focuses on replicating the elements of squid skin that make it hyper-visible. With over two billion of them [glass spheres] embedded in resin on the jacket's surface, and over 40,000 in every single square centimeter, they're invisible to the naked eye."

He continues and says "When light hits the jacket, it travels through the curved surface of these black glass spheres and strikes the back of them, before being reflected back at the original light source and scattered away from it simultaneously, so that the fabric looks like it's emitting light." The jacket is currently priced at $995 and is available in only one color (I wonder why).

Instagram has announced a new program called "Data Abuse Bounty" that will put a price on the head of third-party apps who are found to be abusing user data.

Instagram and their parent company, Facebook has issued out a new program that will encourage researchers to track down third-party apps who are found to be abusing user data. An Instagram security engineer, Dan Gurfinkel wrote in a blog post, saying "Our goal is to help protect the information people share on Instagram and encourage security researchers to report potential abuse to us so we can quickly take action."

Instagram hasn't set a flat payment for researchers who discover nefarious third-party apps abusing data, instead they said that will pay researchers based on the impact the violent has caused against their company. The head of Instagram's engineering department, Nam Nguyen has said that "Expanding and building on the Facebook bug bounty program is a key development in our ongoing security efforts, and we are grateful to the wider security community for all they do to help keep our platforms safe."

A good real-time strategy game is extremely hard to come by in this day and age, luckily for fans who are missing sinking their teeth into a brand new RTS title, KING Art Games has your back on September 1st.

KING Art Games are the developers behind the upcoming real-time strategy game 'Iron Harvest' which is set in an alternate reality of 1920+. I've been following the progress of Iron Harvest for quite some time now, as real-time strategy games are some of my favorite games of all time. From what I've seen, Iron Harvest looks like a more than promising RTS title and is definitely placed quite highly on my "Definitely Need To Play" list.

Taking a trip down memory lane, we have the original kickstarter campaign trailer and article which can be found here, if you are interested in a bit of history about how Iron Harvest came about. There is also the 'Tech & Controls' demo that can be found here if you are interested in seeing what the game can achieve movement and positioning wise. Finally, there is the above trailer which announces the games official release date which is scheduled for September 1st. There is also the official Steam page for anyone who wants to keep tabs on Iron Harvest, check it out here.