GTA 6 rival 'EVERYWHERE' set to come to PS5 & Xbox Series X|S

Yep, because to be a GTAV rival, it'd have to come to three different console generations.

I remember downloading the Wacky Wheels shareware from a local BBS, and realizing that the maps that looped behind the menu to entice a purchase were stored in the game's directory, and I could play them too by renaming them to the name of the actual demo circuit that was included. In the single digits age-wise getting most of a game for free was a huge win, so thanks for the fun Apogee! Now where's my ray-traced version of Tyrian?

It's got a weird lofi pixel art style where the scale's inconsistently applied, so it looks more alpha patchwork WIP art rather than an intentional style choice. Dabbled in the Postal series here and there and this doesn't resemble the oddball small town USA setting or style whatsoever, nor the style of combat.

It seems like this is the kind of tech the UE5 demo is relying on, and given that game assets have generally been packed and streamed based on spinning platter HDDs (and in many cases, have a strong legacy from discs, with ~100ms seek times and sub-10MB/s transfer rates at best), we were due for a generational leap. Nvidia's already got their own branded version with RTX I/O, and being able to rely on NVME-level random IOPS and overall speed combined with video cards that can do more of the decompression work themselves should start to change assumptions about the level of detail and scope we can put into gaming experiences. Dwarf Fortress depth, Control visuals.

Deathloop's trailer in the PS5 State of Play showed some of the strongest personality among a bunch of generally gorgeous looking games, and I hope that carries through in a NOLF kind of way, where even the small design decisions have that bit of added flair. Glad they're taking time to get it right, but it seems like the console launches this holiday season are getting more and more barren, and it'll be a tougher sell with a minuscule library of new games to get people excited. My next PC upgrade will definitely be steered by what next-gen games are starting to require, but if there's not much out there to demand it, why bother?

If what you're after is "SUPERHOT, but more" this is exactly it. The roguelite semi-randomness and increased variety of skills and enemies means there's just more to sink your teeth into.

Haha, and that C&C pack just reminded me of downloading the ~10MB demo late at night cause it took forever on 28.8k dialup and I wasn't allowed to tie up the phone line for that long. Now it's "60GB? Eh, no big deal."

Mojang Studios, ladies and gentlemen! I hope notch is giggling in his mansion doing the backstroke through his Olympic-sized pool of money. Good to see that Microsoft wasted no time sending over engineers from the Windows 10 update team to "lend a hand".

Also, can't speak to it too directly myself, but the tide of opinion on most of the hardware / trading / deals forums I frequent is that Newegg's customer service and returns have plummeted in quality over the last few years as they've expanded their marketplace. Especially if you're looking at important and expensive PC components, you're better off buying from somewhere else.

This game is a ton of fun if you want the slightly rarer combo of third-person shooter mixed with roguelite. Keep it on the easiest setting until you unlock ANY character other than the default Commando, who's really boring and not representative of what the rest of the game offers. I love the Engineer, who gets a pair of deployable turrets that mirror the upgrades your character collects. It feels essentially complete as is, minus a few clearly signposted bits of content, and the upgrade/unlock loop feels well balanced.

I was checking through hours-played on a few potential purchases to see if Steam friends liked it, and just saw Prez's count is at 12,345.

How much side quest crap is going to be in this game?

Apparently it's going to be more focused and with less side fluff, so it doesn't dull the impact of the story moments they put so much effort in to.
https://www.vg247.com/2020/05/07/assassins-creed-valhalla-length/

Pr()ZaC wrote on Mar 7, 2020, 14:40:
So... Basically you'll be able to stream just Windows Solitaire on GeForce NOW, now.

Yeah, but...with RTX On!

I snagged an Acer ED323 Abidpx on a recent Lightning Deal, and at $180 for a 32" 144Hz how could I resist? My previous monitor was a HP Omen 32" 75Hz (both Freesync/G-Sync compatible, powered by a moderate-OC 1080) so you'd think the difference wouldn't be that massive, but I really, really like the Acer. The first day or so the curved display threw me off but after settling in the curve really does feel more natural, and gives more even color and brightness with minimal backlight bleed or haloing. It's a waste on smaller monitors, but if you've got a 32" monitor on your desk it's worth seriously considering for your next purchase.

I assume they use a similar form to "From the desk of: Bender", with a bunch of checkboxes like "Allow real people to test the UI" and "Extend QA to, like, a full week" and "Security? Security!" and this week's "We're really, really going to support PC gaming this time, promise, pinky swear" with a final one at that bottom that says "And this time I mean it"

While they could have handled the time jumps in a much more deft manner, the showrunners have said the main reason for them is that Ciri wouldn't even be in the story until two or three seasons in, if told purely chronologically.

It's because the limiting factor isn't necessarily just the SSD's speed, it's the CPU and memory decompressing those assets after they're read, loading the GPU's memory from that, and the efficiency of the processes and hardware that move all that data around. Later on in the article they even talk about how many modern games duplicate commonly accessed data to compensate for the slow random read response of HDDs, which is an inefficiency easily dropped with NVMe drives.

I've had the chance to test load times between a standard ~520MB/s-read SATA3 SSD, and ~2GB/s and 3GB/s NVMe drives (Intel 750 & Samsung 960) in the same system, and the reduction in load times going from SSD to NMVe was maybe 10-15% despite 3-6x the read speed, but hardly noticeable between the NVMe's. On an OG fat PS4, swapping the internal ~60MB/s HDD for a SATAII-capped 300MB/s SSD cut power-on-to-Witcher-3 from three minutes to two. All that to say, faster storage helps, but it's far from a linear return, and until some methods free themselves from the shackles of HDD speeds (and random reads in particular), just adding raw speed isn't the solution.

So air-popped is good, but microwave kettle corn is right out?

Got this for free with my Ryzen CPU, and it's basically a jankier, AI-director-less, not as fun Left 4 Dead 2 (or Vermintide, if that's your flavor). At least The Division 2 is pretty sweet, and that's the usually-a-C-bill Gold edition, not just base.

Bah! If it doesn't start with Road and Track Presents and have delightfully bad 90s postage stamp videos with stiff narration, it's not a true Need for Speed game!

Porsche Unleashed is probably the best driving game in the NFS series, but on the whole it's always landed on the side of "arcadey bullshit", and at this point half a dozen developers have had their go at the series, to varying levels of success. GRID or Assetto Corsa have a similar "real, but softer" feel that PU managed to a magical degree.

On balance I like the 2010 Hot Pursuit best out of the series. It's Criterion (of Burnout fame) laser-focusing their brand of vehicular violence on a pretty open world, now with shiny licensed cars and more focus to the main progression (DJ Atomika was taken out back and shot). It hadn't yet been taken over by the wannabe-RPG stat creep of every modern open world game, instead it was a game that let you just drive but also gave you plenty to do when you wanted to evade (or take part in) a pursuit with spike strips, EMPs, and helicopters.