Live from Computex Taipei 2025 - Stay updated with the latest news and product reveals!

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate patch 1.4 is out, improves performance

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 1:04 PM CST

Assassin's Creed Syndicate just got a new patch that seems to focus the most on improving performance all around. It wasn't the worst performing AC game on release, but it also wasn't the smoothest experience from a new game either.

Unlike the misstep that was the release of Assassin's Creed Unity, Syndicate had fewer bugs and game-breaking glitches when it became available. The crowd density was reduced in order to help alleviate some of the issues regarding framerate while walking around the bustling city. That helped, but the increased environmental geometry, improved ambient occlusion along with increased shadow map rendering quality has made for quite the resource hungry game.

SLI in particular scaled horribly in the beginning, though it works quite well now. Ubisoft has been very quick to react to player feedback this time around putting out patches that have solved nearly all the issues and glitches that did, unfortunately, happen to make it into the final release of Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Curious if your system is any better, download the patch and let us know!

Continue reading: Assassin's Creed Syndicate patch 1.4 is out, improves performance (full post)

Pokemon Sun and Moon trademarks slip out, announcement tomorrow?

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 12:03 PM CST

It seems that the cat is out of the bag a little early on this one. Once again the trademark system has helped to uncover and confirm two upcoming Pokemon games for the 3DS before the big Nintendo Direct anniversary celebration tomorrow. Though nothing has actually been confirmed (aside from a fake parody account doing so) officially as of yet. The filings, however, are indeed real.

According to OHIM website, Nintendo put in an application to trademark Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon just earlier today. This corresponds to the surprise that Nintendo was teasing just yesterday for the 20th anniversary. More info will likely be available tomorrow during the Nintendo Direct, an we'll be watching along side you for all the juicy bits of info.

Continue reading: Pokemon Sun and Moon trademarks slip out, announcement tomorrow? (full post)

GIGABYTE has new 17.3' gaming laptops on the way with Skylake

Jeff Williams | Laptops | Feb 25, 2016 10:58 AM CST

GIGABYTE has some new 17.3-inch gaming focused laptops coming to market soon with the latest round of Skylake mobile processors.

The new laptops are in the P57 family, which has at its core, an Intel Core i7-6700HQ under the hood that runs at 2.6GHz and can boost to 3.5GHz. It's on Intel's HM170 chipset and can have up to 32GB of DDR4-2133 memory installed along side it. There are currently two different variants of the laptop, the P57K and the P57W.

They both share a 1080P IPS matte screen but the P57K powers that screen with an NVIDIA GTX 965M whereas the P57W has a more powerful GTX 970M with 3GB of VRAM. For storage they're using a 512GB M.2 SSD that uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface for some blistering fast speeds. In the front of the massive laptop is a Blu-Ray RW drive that's situated just under the trackpad, a strange and new location for the drive, which can also be swapped out for more storage if you so choose.

Continue reading: GIGABYTE has new 17.3' gaming laptops on the way with Skylake (full post)

Report: PS4 and PlayStationVR is 60% more powerful than PC equivalent

During a recent AR/VR presentation, Sony's Dr. Richard Marks revealed more details on Sony's PlayStation VR headset. According to one of the slides, the PS4 is actually 60% more powerful than equivalent PC hardware.

Report: PS4 and PlayStationVR is 60% more powerful than PC equivalent

"This isn't my number, this is some middleware people that said that the PS4 console is 60% more powerful than a same-spec PC. This is because of all that direct access you have and knowing every piece is exactly what it should be, and not having any variability. You can just tune things and effectively get about 60% more performance," Dr. Marks said during the talk. Other details include a 120Hz refresh rate, Unity integration, always-on reprojection to reduce latency, 100-degree FOV, and less than 18ms latency with no "screen door" effect.

A PSVR developer corroborated the slide in a recent Reddit post, saying: "PSVR is extremely close to being on par with Vive and the Rift w/ a gtx970 based on the tests I've done. The team from Epic (Nick & Tom) have also stated the same in at least one of their VR Twitch streams. If your app runs at 90Hz on a PC with a gtx970 then you should be very close to 60 on the ps4. And with the 120Hz reprojection applied it's glassy smooth."

Continue reading: Report: PS4 and PlayStationVR is 60% more powerful than PC equivalent (full post)

Ori and the Blind Forest dev says Nintendo too secretive over NX

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 10:06 AM CST

Nintendo has a great opportunity in front of them to leap head-first into the market, delighting with their upcoming console with a lineup of games that show just why they should be chosen over all others. The secrecy around their new console, even among developers, might hurt Nintendo's chance at making the substantial wave their business needs.

The CEO of Moon Studios, the developer of Ori and the Blind Forest, sees the folly in keeping their plans so secretive and said as much on NeoGaf. He was very critical of all console makers and how they tend to even keep developer kits until the last minute to prevent leaks from happening.

"This is actually the single most annoying thing for every dev out there," Thomas Mahler wrote, "Every hardware manufacturer is treating their dev kits and unreleased consoles like they're the second coming and are insanely secretive about it to a stupid degree in today's time." And really, he's right. Without those developers being able to actually make their games and optimize as far out as possible, then the starting line-up can diminish the initial value.

Continue reading: Ori and the Blind Forest dev says Nintendo too secretive over NX (full post)

Fallout 4's new Survival Mode adds weighted ammo, diseases and more

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 9:32 AM CST

If this list of leaked features is genuine, Fallout 4's new Survival Mode overhaul is going to be pretty punishing.

Fallout 4's new Survival Mode adds weighted ammo, diseases and more

Players aren't too impressed with Fallout 4's so-called Survival Mode. There's really not much to say about the game's hardest of hard mode other than increased enemy health and damage output. Bethesda has heard our cries and is preparing to add some serious bite to the Commonwealth. Along with its huge Fallout 4 DLC roadmap, the studio plans to completely tweak Survival Mode to keep endgame players busy and add new depth to the experience.

According to data found in the game's code, the new Survival Mode changes include weighted ammunition, disabled fast travel, and the need to eat, drink, and sleep. Running around while over-encumbered drains Agility and Endurance, and you can also get infected with diseases like the Elder Scrolls universe. I'm hoping one of these diseases turns you into a fully-fledged ghoul if left untreated. Check below for the full list of details uncovered by dedicated dataminers.

Continue reading: Fallout 4's new Survival Mode adds weighted ammo, diseases and more (full post)

Rockstar and 2K Games gearing up for something 'big' at E3 this year

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 9:04 AM CST

Rockstar Games and 2K Games are headed to E3 this year "in a big way", the CEO of 2K, Strauss Zelnick told MCV. That means newly announced IP's or a huge celebration of what we know is coming.

Probably not the announcement we'll actually see

And they already have some good titles on the way. Battleborn is an exciting new addition from 2K's own Gearbox, though they've been featuring that quite a bit lately, so it logically doesn't make sense to see that at the forefront. It was last year. So perhaps they'll have a number of other new and interesting working titles to talk about, things we may haven't seen yet, or at least in full form.

Continue reading: Rockstar and 2K Games gearing up for something 'big' at E3 this year (full post)

Windows 10 universal apps coming to Xbox One

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 8:31 AM CST

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has reportedly confirmed that WIndows 10 universal apps will expand to the Xbox One, further unifying the company's cross-platform ecosystem.

Windows 10 universal apps coming to Xbox One

According to Microsoft Insider. Nadella made the confirmation at the dotNET Conference in Spain. Nadella apparently didn't reveal a timeline for Windows 10 universal app integration, but we may see the first apps show up as early as summer during the console's next major update.

Thanks to November's major New Xbox One Experience update, the console is now running on Windows 10--more specifically a customized OS kernal called OneCore.

Continue reading: Windows 10 universal apps coming to Xbox One (full post)

Alan Wake's Return trademark spotted in EU database

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 8:00 AM CST

Alan Wake's sequel has been rumored to be around for some time, though we haven't heard very much about it and we actually thought it was cancelled for good at one point. But Remedy apparently isn't done with the survival horror just yet.

A trademark application for "Alan Wake's Return" has been spotted in the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (the trademark office of the EU), having been applied for by Remedy themselves on the 23rd of February.

A trademark application can come at many points in the development cycle depending on how secretive the company wants to be. If the IP is already too big, they may apply for several potential marks before any work is done to secure the right to use the name they finally choose. Smaller projects might wait because the public nature of the system tends to expose anything in the works. In this case it might even simply be related to the "return" of Alan Wake to the scene through the backwards compatible version. Hopefully it's an actual real, bona-fide, new game though.

Continue reading: Alan Wake's Return trademark spotted in EU database (full post)

MAINGEAR joins the VR hype, releases Oculus-ready notebook

Chris Smith | Laptops | Feb 25, 2016 7:32 AM CST

"VR is now a reality and both the F131 and NOMAD VR are ready to fully immerse you into any virtual adventure you seek" says MAINGEAR CEO Wallace Santos in a recently issued press release. This PC company has jumped on the VR-ready hype train by releasing its F131 desktop and NOMAD VR notebook for virtual reality operations.

The NOMAD VR packs a serious punch as you may expect, bragging some similar specifications to the Eurocom Sky X9E that I wrote about earlier today. Within this model, you can expect to find an Intel i7-7600K, a desktop NVIDIA GTX 980 and a 1080p G-Sync ready display.

Further packed with HD Foster Audio speakers that are tuned by Soundblaster Cinema, USB 3.1 Type-C, an integrated webcam and more, this model is shaping up to be another killer portable gaming rig. While I say 'portable', it's important to remember that you're not expected to sit this in your knees while waiting for long-haul flight connections, but it's certainly much easier than carrying a desktop PC around.

Continue reading: MAINGEAR joins the VR hype, releases Oculus-ready notebook (full post)

Newsletter Subscription