Gaming - Page 1962

Earlier on today we reported about The Evil Within on PC being locked to 30FPS for the reason of it "Makes more sense for a survival horror game" but now Bethesda has come out and discussed the upcoming horror game on PC, and much more detail.

Bethesda has now addressed the 30FPS lock on the PC version, saying that the developers have locked the frame rate at such a low point because the game was built around that, as the quote above says, but it can be unlocked through debug commands. A FAQ on the game reads: "Shinji Mikami and the team at Tango designed The Evil Within to be played at 30fps and to utilize an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 for all platforms. The team has worked the last four years perfecting the game experience with these settings in mind. For PC players, we'll provide debug commands on how you can alter the framerate and aspect ratio, but these commands and changes are not recommended or supported and we suggest everyone play the game as it was designed and intended for the best experience".

The developer has aimed for 1080p as its resolution, but 4K is supported. PC gamers have the option of turning off the cinema-like letterboxing in order to render it at full screen, but this option is not fully supported. PC gamers do get a few additional graphical options to play with, which include fullscreen or window support, AA settings (FXAA, MLAA and SMAA), Shadow Quality (High, Medium, Low), Motion Blur, SSAO, and Reflections.

Microsoft, Sony and Activision want to see the forthcoming Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare become to best-selling Call of Duty yet, with Activision announcing a cross-buy deal.

This cross-buy deal sees the digital versions of the Xbox 360 and PS3 including a Xbox One or PS4 version, for free. Better yet, this includes all of the purchased DLC and season passes, and all of the stats you will tally up on the previous-gen hardware. Once you've secured yourself a copy of the looks-like-Titanfall-meets-COD first-person shoote,r you just need to enter in a code that you'll receive with your copy.

This deal expires at the end of March 2015, so you'll have plenty of time to get your free current-gen copy of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. This is how the companies should be dealing with all games, as it encourages people to buy a new console without having to fork out the money for it right now. Better yet, I don't see why you couldn't buy this on the Xbox 360 or PS3 for yourself (or a friend) and then use the code for a Xbox One or PS4 version. I guess we'll find out more details on this deal closer to the release of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

A week ago, CD Projekt Red released few screenshots of its upcoming game 'Witcher 3: Wild Hunt' which created sheer disappointment within many of its fanbase. As a result, CD Projekt Red had to respond to assure gamers that the graphics shown in demo videos which was showcased at E3 2013 and a week-old screenshots are not a final version. An anonymous member on the NeoGAF forums also claimed that the CD Projekt Red and its PR are creating an overblown vision of a game that doesn't exist.

It was also assumed that the preview was going to be as good as the final version. It was also speculated that the game's graphics showed in a NVIDIA PhysX Middleware demo would be the same result in console variants. The demo was displayed to display HairWorks, specifically relating to rendering of hair and fur with PhysX enabled.

CD Projekt Red's Community Manager Marcin Momot said: "Please keep in mind that the game is still in production phase. Certain things are still being worked on. The final version of the game will look better than what can be seen in the latest screenshots - no matter the platform. As you probably know, when publishing screenshots, some of them can be subjectively less appealing than others (depending on one's opinion), that's perfectly normal. The most important thing here is that the game will come out looking gorgeous when we are done working on it. There will be no downgrade."

Have you been waiting for a gaming PC that can sit in your living room, that you can have sitting somewhere that it can't be seen? Well, the G-Pack sits on the back of your TV, powering as a "Steam-optimized PC".

There are three different configurations on offer, with Configuration I on offer starting at $1,695, Configuration II at $2,095 and Configuration III at $2,695. We have a Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processor, 4GB/8GB/16GB RAM, 1TB/2TB/3TB HDD for storage, and 32GB SSD, 250GB SSD and 500GB SSD for each system, respectively.

For $445, 20 backers were able to buy the Early Bird Empty Chassis, which was their "all-aluminium, custom designed case & brackets - put your current machine in there, or make something new".

Myst developer Cyan has inked a deal with Legendary Entertainment to bring Myst to TV, with Variety claiming that the two creators behind the island-based adventure game, Rand and Robyn Miller, to be directly involved with the creative direction of the TV series.

We shouldn't just expect a "compelling TV drama" but it will expand Myst into a "true transmedia franchise" that could involve tablet support, as well as a tie-in video game. What we don't know, is where it will debut. Could we sit it hit Netflix? Traditional cable or free-to-air TV? Are you excited to see this materialize? I know I am.

MSI has revamped his GT Stealth/Ghost Series and GT Dominator Series gaming laptops using NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 900M Series video cards, the company has announced. The new gaming units ship with the Intel Core i7 processor, Killer E2200 Game Networking, Sound Blaster Cinema, Dynaudio Technology, XSPlit Gamecaster, 4K HDMI output, Matrix Display and NVIDIA Surround.

All new MSI gaming laptops using the NVIDIA GTX 900M video cards are available now, with prices starting at $1,599.

"MSI's newest gaming laptops showcase breakthroughs in mobile gaming technology that improve graphics performance, increase gaming comfort, and transport gamers into an unbelievable gaming journey," said Andy Tung, MSI Pan America president. "NVIDIA's GTX 900M Series GPU delivers mobile graphics that are up to par with desktop video card models and superior to anything we've ever seen."

Assassin's Creed: Unity has been confirmed to be running at 900p at 30FPS on both the Xbox One and PS4, according to Senior Producer Vincent Pontbriand in an interview with VideoGamer.

Pontbriand said: "We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff". Weirdly, the new Assassin's Creed title is not held back by the GPU side of the AMD-powered APU found inside of both of the consoles, but the CPU side of the silicon. Pontbriand explained: "Technically we're CPU-bound. The GPUs are really powerful, obviously the graphics look pretty good, but it's the CPU [that] has to process the AI, the number of NPCs we have on screen, all these systems running in parallel".

"We were quickly bottlenecked by that and it was a bit frustrating, because we thought that this was going to be a tenfold improvement over everything AI-wise, and we realised it was going to be pretty hard", he continued. "It's not the number of polygons that affect the framerate. We could be running at 100fps if it was just graphics, but because of AI, we're still limited to 30 frames per second".

It looks like we can expect Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes to hit the PC on December 18, according to multiple Russian sources who attended their local video game exhibition, IgorMir.

We know that both Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain are coming to PC, with series creator Hideo Kojima officially announcing the Steam versions of the game just a couple of months ago. Ground Zeroes is a prologue to the full deal: The Phantom Pain, and is already out on the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is due out on the aforementioned platforms, and PC, in 2015.

Rebellion has just updated Sniper Elite 3, with the game now joining the ranks of AMD's Mantle compatible games. The Head of Programming at Rebellion, Kevin Floyer-Lea explained that switching to a different API, is important not only for the gaming industry, but gamers, too.

Sniper Elite 3 runs on the Asura engine, with Rebellion having to find a way to bake Mantle support in with the assets the developer had made for the DirectX version of the game. With Asura being a cross-platform title, it was easier than some engines, but a big task nonetheless. The Mantle-powered version of Sniper Elite 3 lowers the CPU overhead, thanks to more efficient calls within the Mantle API. You can see in the image below, that the Mantle version of the game uses less CPU power, but also provides increased FPS.

We can see that using the Intel Core i7 3770K processor at stock speeds (3.5GHz), the DirectX 11 version of the game uses 23% of the 8 available threads, and provides 88FPS. The Mantle version of the game on the other hand, uses 21% CPU - 2% less than DX11 - and provides 100FPS, just over 10% added performance. Not bad, considering its free performance for Radeon users.

Monolith's new Shadow of Mordor is pushing PCs a little harder in the graphics department, but the effects are good enough to require a 3.7GB download of the games Ultra HD texture pack. This texture packs increases the in-game graphics with higher resolution textures, recommended only for GPUs with 6GB of VRAM, like NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan.

But as it stands, there is an issue with the texture pack, as users are reporting that even with the Ultra preset for textures enabled, the game still runs on High quality. There aren't many GPUs on the market with 6GB of VRAM (or more) on them, apart from a select group of Radeon HD 7970s and R9 290Xs, and a couple of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780 and 780 Ti, apart from the company's higher-end GTX Titan series.

The game has a built-in benchmark which is easy for comparing your system against friends, and to see the averages, etc increase with an upgrade to your system. We will have benchmarks using Shadow or Mordor shortly, so check back over the weekend.