$270 version of Final Fantasy 15 has no season pass

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Aug 18, 2016 9:09 PM CDT

If you've got $270 burning a hole in your pocket, pick up the Ultimate Collector's Edition of Final Fantasy 15, which comes with a massive amount of physical and digital goods.

But, the $270 version of Final Fantasy 15 will be an extremely limited release, it won't include the $35 season pass. For $270, you'll get the game itself, a 192-page hardcover artbook, an action figure, steelbook case, soundtrack CDs, and digital content - but no season pass - because, reasons. FF15 director Hajime Tabata took to Twitter, when someone asked about whether the Ultimate Collector's Edition would include the season pass, and it was a big fat no.

Tabata tweeted: "Will the Ultimate collectors edition contain the season pass? - sadly no & we look into making more UCE but we were told we still can't".

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Agony is a gloriously grotesque monument to the bizarre

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Aug 18, 2016 6:16 PM CDT

Gamescom 2016 - Madmind Studios' new game Agony takes players on a mind-bending journey through hell itself, displaying a creative and supremely bizarre flavor of the underworld.

Agony is a gloriously grotesque monument to the bizarre

Agony is the kind of game I've been waiting on for a long time. We have horror games, sure, but this is different; this brings to mind the scarlet horrors of Wayne Barlowe and the twisted monoliths of Zdzislaw Beksinski, of the kinds of things in cenobite's nightmares, the things that make Jason and Freddy look like child's play. It's a new kind of horror game that taps the primal weirdness that birthed the genre, it's a blackened fane to everything grotesque and a blood-inked love letter to the abominable.

Agony's new eight-minute gameplay trailer propels the survival horror genre into one of the most visually striking versions of hell. As a horror movie connoisseur, I'm well-versed in the themes and visuals that Agony uses; we have Cronenberg-style body-horror with the writhing organic walls, and some very Clive Barker-ish demonic entities. Everything is visually entrancing in an eerie, freakish sort of way, and rather than being terrified, viewers want to see more. I mean if you ask me, this is how Diablo should be--at least in some way.

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No Man's Sky might have paid DLC after all

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Aug 18, 2016 5:24 PM CDT

No Man's Sky's free substantial content updates may transform into paid DLC after all.

No Man's Sky might have paid DLC after all

Remember when Hello Games pushed out the huge day one content update for No Man's Sky? It wasn't just an optimization update--according to the devs that patch added in new features and content, usually the kind of stuff gamers get charged for as DLC. The devs said that No Man's Sky's updates will always be free, but at what point? Can the devs afford to add in massive chunks of content for free?

"Hello Games will continually update No Man's Sky this way. This is the first of many," Sean Murray said at the time, promising the next free update will add in the ability to build bases and own space freighters, as well as graphics options that will "really change the game again."

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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided features 19 graphics options

Sean Ridgeley | Gaming | Aug 18, 2016 4:35 PM CDT

A lucky few have gotten their hands-on early PC copies of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and with that comes a sneak peek at the game's graphics options. The list is much longer than that of its predecessor, including 19 items as well as 12 display options. Among them: MSAA, field of view, temporal anti-aliasing, contact hardening shadows, chromatic aberration, and then less fancy bits like shadow quality, texture quality, and depth of field.

On a related note, DirectX 12 won't be supported at first: developer Nixxes Software says that should arrive the week of September 5.

Mankind Divided launches in four days.

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Watch an hour of new Final Fantasy 15 gameplay footage

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Aug 18, 2016 3:30 PM CDT

Gamescom 2016 - Square Enix showed off nearly an hour's worth of new Final Fantasy 15 gameplay footage, detailing strings of quests, battles, NPC interactions and more.

Watch an hour of new Final Fantasy 15 gameplay footage

If you're still disappointed by Final Fantasy 15's recent delay to November, the devs have eased your pain with a nice chunk of new gameplay footage. The only trade off is that the video is based on the Xbox One version, so the graphics are a bit wonky at times, but it still looks absolutely fantastic.

Although it's only 52 minutes long, the footage is edited in such a way that it takes us pretty far into the game instead of being just one continuous stream. There's a nice blend of main quests seamlessly merging into sidequests and miscellaneous activities, showing how the dynamic and immersive the open world is.

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Ubisoft shoots farts in your nose, thanks to South Park

Ubisoft is using one of the most unique PR pushes I've seen, with a device that shoots farts into your nose - a real life version of the Oculus Rift parody in South Park: The Fractured But Whole video game called the Nosulus Rift. The device straps to your face, shooting the smell of a fart directly into your nostrils - yeah, we're not joking.

Oculus' Head of Studios, Jason Rubin, was asked what he thought about the device, as it's a parody of the Oculus Rift headset. Rubin said: "[Matt Stone and Trey Parker] are some of the funniest human beings on the planet and very deserving of their accolades. Having Matt and Trey take on Oculus says we've made it. It is absolutely a moment of pride for Oculus". Stone and Parker worked with Rubin on South Park: The Stick of Truth when Rubin was the CEO of the now-closed developer THQ. Rubin added that "producing Matt and Trey was one of the most amazing moments" of his career".

Rubin added: "We would go and hear their pitches for levels and they'd be like, 'Okay, you're climbing up a rectum,' and I was like, 'Oh my god, how are we going to get this by the ratings board? Those guys are amazing. It's a moment of pride. More power to them. Ubisoft is a big supporter of VR, so the joke is on all of us and we all share in that".

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T-Mobile says 'the era of the data plan is over'

Sean Ridgeley | Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones | Aug 18, 2016 2:36 PM CDT

T-Mobile is making choosing a phone plan a lot simpler than what you're used to by removing the choice altogether and going all in on unlimited.

T-Mobile says 'the era of the data plan is over'

"I declare that the era of the data plan is over," says CEO John Legere. "We are completely destroying the whole concept of a data plan; it's gone. We have one single offer that banishes data buckets forever."

Its new and only plan -- apart from previous plans available to those already signed up for them -- is dubbed "T-Mobile One", costs $70 per month ($50 for a second line, and $20 for each line after that), and offers unlimited talk, text, and 4G LTE data. Also included: unlimited mobile hotspot data on the 2G network.

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Intel i7 6950X overclocked to an insane 5731 MHz

Derek Strickland | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Aug 18, 2016 12:30 PM CDT

Renowned overclocker Elmor has set a new world record by pushing Intel's i7 6950X an insane 91% past its base clock speed.

Intel i7 6950X overclocked to an insane 5731 MHz

At this year's Intel IDF 2016 "Technical Innovation" event, Elmor was able to overclock Intel's Broadwell-E i7 6950X CPU to 5731 MHz, which is 91.06% past the CPUs base clock speed. Elmor achieved this speed by using liquid nitrogen cooling on an ASUS Rampage V Edition 10 X99 motherboard, an ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti Matrix video card, and G.Skill's Trident Z DDR4 RAM.

For more info on Intel's Broadwell-E i7 6950X Extreme Edition CPU, check out our official review.

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No Man's Sky's patch will fix urgent, critical errors

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Aug 18, 2016 11:30 AM CDT

With all of the issues surrounding the launch of No Man's Sky, news of two patches for the PC and PS4 releases of the game should have some gamers happy.

An email has been sent by the developer, saying: "A patch for both PC and PS4 will be released this week. These will fix the most urgent and critical issues for all our players. Then next week another patch for PS4 and PC will be released which will help to improve the experience further for players. We will keep you updated".

The PC version of No Man's Sky has been suffering from performance issues, so these patches should hopefully fix performance, as well as the notorious alt-tab bug that crashes the game for most people who try it.

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MSI launches its new GeForce GTX 1060 3GB models

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Aug 18, 2016 10:00 AM CDT

MSI has just announced its new GeForce GTX 1060 3G range of graphics cards, which will be mostly the same as the normal GTX 1060 except it has 3GB of VRAM instead of 6GB of VRAM.

There will be five different models of the GTX 1060 3GB from MSI, with the GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING X 3G, GTX 160 GAMING 3G, GTX 1060 ARMOR 3G OCV1, GTX 1060 ARMOR 3GV1, and GTX 1060 3GT OC graphics cards. There are varying clock speeds, with the GTX 1060 GAMING X 3G featuring its GP106 GPU clocked at 1594/1809MHz for base/boost, respectively. The GAMING X cards will feature MSI's infamous TWIN FROZR VI cooling technology, while the ARMOR models will feature the ARMOR 2X cooling tech.

As for pricing, we should see MSI's GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING 3G priced at around $215, while the GAMING X will be a little more expensive, and the ARMOR models a little cheaper.

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