Fallout 4 has more dialogue than Fallout 3 and Skyrim combined

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 4, 2015 6:19 PM CDT

Fallout 4 will have an incredibly huge span of dialogue that consists of over 100,000 lines of voiced text.

The news comes straight from Bethesda, who issued a Tweet yesterday confirming that the studio was in fact done recording all the dialogue. Fallout 4 features approximately 111,000 lines that took multiple years to record, and we have to wonder just how much of the game's data is taken up by the huge helping of voice-overs.

In Fallout 4 players have been given a voice, and a good chunk of that dialogue will be made up of the player character's responses. The game's text options have been consolidated from a list into a short-and-sweet response menu made up of a controller's four face buttons. Voice over actors Courtenay Taylor and Brian T. Delaney will portray the game's male and female protagonists.

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Batman: Arkham Knight is finally playable on PC thanks to new patch

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 4, 2015 4:51 PM CDT

PC gamers will be relieved to find that Batman: Arkham Knight is finally playable on the platform, but with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Mad Max on Steam, WB might have been too little too late.

"Good news - testing for the interim patch has been completed and it is now available for those who already have Batman: Arkham Knight for PC," read the official patch notes. "As a reminder, the patch brings major performance improvements including consistent frame rates and VRAM optimization."

The patch is targeted to fix the game's crippling latency issues and crashes by beefing up system memory and VRAM optimization as well as adding "improved performance on all GPUs". Other messy blemishes like low-resolution texture bugs have been supposedly smashed, and Arkham Knight will now run better on HDD's.

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Early Access games dominate Steam game sales in 2015

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 4, 2015 3:45 PM CDT

Out of the six Steam games that have reached over a million sales in 2015, three of them are still in Early Access.

As more and more PC gamers move towards original games, amateur indie developers are actually starting to overtake AAA game sales on Steam. According to info gleaned from Steam Spy, a site that analyzes sales and downloads on Steam, three of the six million-selling PC games of 2015 are still unfinished--but that hasn't stopped them from hitting the top charts.

The top-ranking games are the open-world zombie survival sim H1Z1, the dinosaur survival game ARK: Survival Evolved, and the RTS siegecraft game Besieged.

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Report: Mega Man movie gets greenlit by Fox

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 4, 2015 2:07 PM CDT

It looks like the futuristic saga of Capcom's iconic 8-bit hero in blue will be the latest in Hollywood's push on video game adaptations.

Reports from Tracking Board indicate that Fox has backed Chernin Entertainment as a producer for the film, with development on the project underway. But is Chernin a good fit to handle Mega Man's immortal legacy? The company is also currently working on the upcoming War of the Apes film for 2017, and is responsible for producing a boatload of The New Girl episodes and a handful of Terra Nova episodes.

Mega Man--also known as Rockman in Japan--has been one of the most popular icons in gaming history with a franchise that spans back to 1987 with the NES classic. With over 50 games as source material, Chernin and Fox will have their work cut out for them, but we can't see them starting anywhere but the very beginning in 200X with the clash of Dr. Light and the nefarious Dr. Wily.

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Acer's new 10-core smartphone will 'dominate' Android gaming

Derek Strickland | Computer Systems | Sep 4, 2015 8:13 AM CDT

Acer has gone all out by bringing enthusiast-grade gaming across the entire spectrum of devices, including a new decacore smartphone and beefy 8-inch tablet.

At IFA 2015, Acer announced its new Predator 6 performance smartphone that will reportedly "dominate any game you throw at it".

The Predator 6 runs Android (possibly 5.1), sports 4GB of RAM, a 10-core MediaTek processor (most likely the Helio X20 mobile SoC), and a 6-inch full HD display with haptic feedback that Acer says will "perform just like a controller". It also has a 21-megapixel back-facing camera and features a slim, lightweight feel modeled after the stylized metallic flair of Predator line. No pricing has been revealed so far.

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The first big patch for Windows 10 is coming soon

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Sep 4, 2015 6:52 AM CDT

If you've already installed Windows 10, you might have already received a few security updates and patches for your OS, but come next month, there will be a major, non-patch update for Windows 10 known as Threshold 2, or Wave 2.

The new update will arrive in November after it has been delayed from its original October release window. The new Threshold 2 update will include a few smaller changes, as there is a bigger 'Redstone' update that will be released sometime in 2016. As for the patch expected in November, we are to expect a new Messaging app that will have Skype integration and Chrome-like extension support for Microsoft's Edge browser.

We will have more information on the patch in the near future, but I think the Redstone patch is going to be the big new interesting one, coming in 2016.

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Rocket League patch will let you filter out PS4 users on the PC

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Sep 4, 2015 5:15 AM CDT

The v1.05 patch for Rocket League will arrive in "two weeks or less" bringing with it the start of the first season, not only that, but Rocket Leaguers will be able to filter out PS4 players in matchmatching on PC, and to search for new ranked matches at the endgame screen.

The new patch will also do the usual bug fixes that saw PC players to not have a name, fix chat issues, and improve corruption protection for saved games. The update will also have Middle Eastern servers that "will still come at some point" according to developer Psyonix. The developer will also be adding in a music player interface in the near future.

If you didn't already know about, is a vehicle-driven, off-the-wall soccer game where players attempt to score goals in hotted up cars and trucks.

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ASUS unveils a new super-powered gaming notebook that is watercooled

Anthony Garreffa | Laptops | Sep 3, 2015 11:24 PM CDT

The ASUS ROG G751 is one of the most powerful gaming laptops on the market, but the Taiwanese giant has just one-upped itself with the new GX700 gaming notebook. What makes it so special? Well, it's watercooled. Frickin' watercooled.

The ASUS GX700 features a 17-inch screen with a 4K resolution, which is a first. Inside, we have the new Intel K-series Skylake processor, and an unreleased NVIDIA GeForce GPU. The CPU itself is reportedly the Core i7-6820HK, which has a 2.7GHz base frequency and Turbo clock of 3.6GHz. There's an insane 64GB of DDR4 RAM inside, and as for the GPU, it's an unreleased GeForce chip with 2048 CUDA cores, a 1190MHz GPU clock, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 160GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The big difference between the G751 with its GTX 980M, is that the GTX 980M has 1536 CUDA cores, so this new GPU should be quite the jump.

ASUS includes a huge 'docking base' with the GX700 which is just a standalone watercooling solution. The notebook itself is very similar in its cooling design to the G751, but the watercooling base is a huge change. When attached, it can increase performance by as much as 80% according to ASUS. This is because gaming notebooks throttle the GPU speeds when it's not adequately cooled.

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Every single Deus Ex game can be purchased for under $7 right now

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Sep 3, 2015 9:20 PM CDT

With the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided set for February 2016, gamers need to get into the world of Deus Ex, and what better way than by getting every Deus Ex game released for just $6.59 from Steam?

The $6.59 bundle includes Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Director's Cut) and Deus Ex: The Fall. This is a steal, considering it would cost close to, or just over $200 if you paid nearly full price for all of the Deus Ex games when they were released.

The sale lasts for another 14 hours or so, so you will want to jump in quick.

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6S Marketing hopes Apple names new phone the iPhone 7, not iPhone 6s

6S Marketing may like iPhones and other Apple products, but hopes the new iPhone isn't dubbed the iPhone 6s. The company rented billboard space in Times Square, along with plastering trucks with a plea to Apple.

You see, the company, which has offices in New York City, Toronto and Vancouver, doesn't want Apple to name its next-generation smartphone as the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. The new phone, which is expected to be unveiled later this month, could break 6S Marketing's hearts:

"See, our company name is 6S Marketing, but our clients, friends, and colleagues simply refer to us as good ol' "6S." It's a small name but a big part of our identity -- one we've been using since 2000, when we started this company in my tiny apartment. At that time, we didn't think that one of the biggest, and most well-respected, companies would use it to name a mobile device. (We were still using Motorola flip phones at the time, after all.)

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