Gaming - Page 1802

Ubisoft is getting ready for the release of Rainbow Six: Siege, which deploys on December 1 for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC with a new trailer highlighting the NVIDIA GameWorks features - check it out.

Rainbow Six: Siege will feature HBAO+ for deeper and richer shadows and improved occlusion, TXAA, 'enhanced graphics', and much more. For NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M (notebook), GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti, you can grab yourself a copy of Rainbow Six: Siege or Assassin's Creed: Syndicate for free, by checking out the "Bullets or Blades" promo that NVIDIA is running.

Let's hope it launches without multi-GPU issues, unlike Batman: Arkham Knight and Assassin's Creed: Syndicate.

Avalanche Studios' deliciously chaotic open-world explosion-sim Just Cause 3 releases in just little over a week from now, and we've spotted some new details that concerns PC gamers.

According to a leaked shot of Just Cause 3's back cover, the game will use NVIDIA's expansive GameWorks effects suite. GameWorks offers a slew of impressive enhancements across the board, from destructible environments and real-time physics to ambient smoke and fog effects. Considering Just Cause 3 is based around a wide, open world of fiery havoc, some of the GameWorks effects like PhysX, Destruction, Enhanced Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion and Turbulence are a no-brainer.

The back cover also highlights the game's PC requirements, which we've included below. Neither Square Enix, Avalanche or NVIDIA have revealed the full list of GameWorks effects used in Just Cause 3, but we can make some quick deductions.

Fallout 4 is one of the few big-name Bethesda RPG's that didn't come with a huge fold-out poster map, and we don't even get with Prima Games' basic guidebook. Sure you can shell out some extra caps to get the fancy hardback edition...or you can make your own. One amazingly-skilled gamer opted for the latter choice and created a spectacular feat of cartography that will fuel your adventures for months to come.

The sprawling Fallout 4 map was created by a Redditor named koolkyle802, and it exposes the hidden treasures and terrors that post-apocalyptic Commonwealth has to offer. The map has everything from cities, settlements, locations, bobbleheads, holotapes, magazines and a chromatic tide that denotes enemy threat levels.

KoolKyle802 used GIMP to create the map and has since been awarded four different instances of Reddit Gold for his contributions to the Fallout community. Essentially the map provides top-tier navigation for gamers who don't have or don't plan to buy Prima's guidebook.

With both companies working together to provide multiple ESL/ESEA CS:GO tournaments recently and having rumors mount that a buyout talk was in progress, ESL has now confirmed that it has acquired ESEA for an undisclosed amount.

With the confirmation of this buyout hitting the public, ESEA will continue to operate separately of ESL, with HLTV explaining this renewed relationship is set up for ESEA to benefit "from the products and services provided by ESL, which is owned by Swedish digital entertainment company MTG."

This purchase is said to be yet another move by MTG to solidity its position in eSports, previously purchasing 75% of ESL for $83 million and the world's largest LAN, DreamHack, for $28 million.

While Warner Bros. has pretty much given up on multi-GPU setups for Batman: Arkham Knight, even after the game being so bad at launch the developer had to pull it from sale Ubisoft is up the same creek without a paddle.

Ubisoft has acknowledged the issues with multi-GPU setups on Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, with Ubisoft's Community Manager "Mr_Shade" posting on the Ubisoft forums with "The team are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it - it's possible that NVIDIA will release driver updates to correct this, but in the mean time - please try using just one GPU for the game so you can play if that solution works for you".

The Xbox One's backward compatibility feature was heralded with much fanfare when it was announced, but when it actually started rolling out, the games library was quite underwhelming. Instead of the heavy-hitting Xbox 360 titans like Red Dead Redemption, we were delivered a slew of Kinect and Xbox LIVE Arcade games. Now Microsoft has stepped forward to explain why key games are missing from the lineup.

"It's really up to publishers to approve [backward compatible] games," said Microsoft engineer Richard Irving in a recent interview with Eurogamer. "Publishers are super engaged and responsive to that stuff, the response was overwhelming from fans. It's just that some of the content takes longer than others to organise, so we weren't able to get all of the top 50 or 100 games, but we have a good number of them."

Irving also said that Microsoft has to "re-engage" publishers and effectively show incentive to convince games-makers to fork up the licensing to a new console. "It didn't seem fair to ask our partners to go off and find licenses for all this Xbox 360 content so what we opted to do instead was to give fans the opportunity to prioritise which games they want. So then we can re-engage with publishers and ask about specific games and say, 'please let us know if this is something you can do'. As you can imagine, publishers have cut very specific deals on some of that content. For example Madden--you can imagine how many licenses go into a game with the players, the NFL, sponsors, and so on. And there's over 1000 games at this point on Xbox 360."

We knew they were coming, but according to the latest rumors the next-gen consoles should be released in 2018 - much earlier than the roadmaps Microsoft and Sony had before the current gen consoles were released.

Before the Xbox One and PS4 were released, 4K gaming wasn't really solidified - but now it is. It's getting cheaper and cheaper to get on the 4K bandwagon, and over the next year or two, the current-gen consoles are going to look very aged next to mobile, VR and PC gaming. The Xbox One and PS4 are barely capable of 900p let alone 1080p (and then let alone 60FPS), with AMD set to beef up the APU powering the Xbox Two and PlayStation 5 consoles.

The biggest thing that we need to think about is VR. Sony is already onboard with PlayStation VR, but the PS4 is underpowered to really push 1080p (or higher) at 90FPS (or higher). This is where the PS5 and Xbox Two will be better equipped, but another thing to consider is backwards compatibility. Thanks to the new consoles being powered by AMD technology again, and an x86 architecture, the Xbox Two and PS5 should be backwards compatible with the Xbox One and PS4, so you won't lose your game library like you did from the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 is a mighty machine; even today the Xbox One is far eclipsed by the functionality, games library, and general UI setup of its yesteryear predecessor. Today the Xbox 360 celebrates its tenth birthday, signalling that the console's lifecycle is starting to wind down, but the system will forever remain one of Microsoft's crowning achievements.

Originally released on November 22, 2005, the Xbox 360 propelled console gaming forward to new heights. I've shared thousands upon thousands of hours with my Xbox 360, and regard it as one of the most momentous gaming systems in my gaming history. I still remember how magical it was playing Oblivion for the first time, taking in the enchanting scenery of Cyrodiil--this was the first time that I really felt like "next-gen" gaming was here.

The Xbox 360 still has one of the best games libraries in gaming; it's so good, in fact, that Microsoft has brought it over to the Xbox One via backwards compatibility. It's rather strange to think about how Microsoft got so many things right with the Xbox 360, and so many things wrong with the Xbox One. The system has served for an entire generation of gaming, spawning a huge assortment of memorable exclusives and amazing experiences that we might never see again.

Like most AAA games, Fallout 4's game code is littered with secrets and hidden gems. Quite often we see dataminers and code-combers unearth buried treasures, and now an intrepid Nexus modder by the name of xxdeathknight72xx has dug up one of the most hilariously fun weapons Fallout 4 has to offer.

The hidden Fallout 4 weapon is a harpoon gun that uses powerful pressure to propel cruel harpoons into the faces and heads of unsuspecting baddies. Using the harpoon rifle in VATS is quite amusing and honestly I have no clue why Bethesda scrapped the gun. Maybe it's an item that will be unlocked by upcoming DLC? I hope so, because the weapon is so immensely satisfying thanks to its headshot animations, which rips an enemy's head clear off their shoulders and pins it to a nearby object to make a macabre trophy of sorts.

In order to use the hidden gun, you'll need to download an install a special mod. If you plan to start the massive journey that is mod collecting, be sure to pick up the Nexus Mod Manager to keep things organized. To enable mods you'll have to do some tinkering with the game's .ini files. Here's a quick step-by-step walkthrough on how to get started.

For the last month or so, the first 1000 or so backers of Star Citizen have been playing around with the alpha 2.0 of the game. Alpha 2.0 provides some big upgrades on the game, fixing countless problems, with improved animations, smoother performance and more.

The video above was shown off at the CitizenCon 2015 presentation last month, where we can see that the ship exploration is improved, and the graphics look much smoother, too. There seems to be some improved lighting and environmental effects, which I'm incredibly excited over. This is a game for the PC, something that simply couldn't be done at this scale on the consoles.

At four minutes into the video, Quantum Drive gets activated, and it gave me goosebumps. Awesome.