E3 is just a week away, and the pre-E3 EA Play event, which runs June 10-12, is even closer. That's where Electronic Arts will unveil, among other things, the debut gameplay trailer for FIFA 18, the latest iteration of its long-running soccer (that's right, soccer) simulator. Ahead of that—as in, right now—we can kick back and enjoy the less game-like, but much more cinematic and Ronaldo-fueled, reveal trailer.

FIFA 18 will be available in three different configurations. There's the standard edition, which includes five Jumbo Premium Gold Packs, a Cristiano Ronaldo loan for five games of FIFA Ultimate Team, and eight "special edition kits" for FUT designed by FIFA soundtrack artists. There's the Ronaldo Edition, which also includes 20 Jumbo Premium Gold Packs and three days of early access to the game. And at the top of the heap there's the Icon Edition, with 40 Jumbo Premium Gold Packs, plus one three-match Team of the Week loan player per week for 20 weeks, and another Ronaldo, Ronaldo Nazário, who was apparently a pretty good soccer player too.

FIFA 18 is scheduled for release on September 29, minus the three-day early access period if you preorder. A trial version will be available to Origin Access subscribers beginning on September 21.  

 


Rebellion announced in March that it was bringing the blue-skinned GIs from the 2006 third-person shooter Rogue Trooper back into action in Rogue Trooper Redux, with updated graphics and tweaked gameplay. Today the studio came across with the launch date—October 17—and shared a new trailer highlighting some of the Redux version's visual improvements.



The new(ish) game features remodeled characters, weapons, and vehicles, remastered cinematic sequences, dynamic lighting, new effects, and "higher fidelity geometry," whatever that is. Bottom line, it looks a lot better. And it does look pretty good: My memories of the original are hazy, but this updated battlefield (allowing for many of the moments in the trailer being setpieces) looks pleasingly busy and chaotic.  

Rogue Trooper Redux isn't up for pre-purchase yet, but will be available from Steam and GOG for $25/£20/€25. For now, you can find out more at roguetrooper.com.

 


The Ghost Recon Wildlands four-on-four PvP mode that Ubisoft announced in March (but somehow didn't include with the original release) will begin open beta testing later this summer, the publisher announced today. Barring unforeseen disaster, the full release of the new mode, called Ghost War, will follow sometime in the fall.

The mode is a "team deathmatch experience," with six classes of soldiers doing battle on "large-scale, open maps," Ubisoft said. "Ghost War will also integrate new PvP mechanics, including suppressing fire and sound markers, to create a true military strategic, team-based multiplayer mode."


 


Ubisoft said it will reveal more information about the PvP classes (and, presumably, the start time of the beta, which lead designer Lucian Istrate says in the trailer will actually be "a series of battle tests to balance the game") over the coming weeks. Ghost War will be available to everyone as a free update when it's ready to go.

Fallout 4's live-action advertising was everywhere back when the game released in 2015. The song that featured, titled 'The Wanderer,' got stuck in my head, and I'm sure I'm not alone. However, the song's singer, Dion DiMucci, isn't too happy about how ZeniMax Media used his song in the ads—and he's suing the company for a million dollars.
Court documents obtained by Polygon reveal that DiMucci claims ZeniMax neglected his terms for using the song in marketing. DiMucci asserts that a contract that was agreed on by both parties stated that he had right of refusal and the right to bargain for a licensing fee. The court documents say ZeniMax didn't comply to either of these terms, which is why DiMucci is now seeking damages.
As for why DiMucci has a problem with the ad (seen in the video above), it's quite simple: the ad, which the plaintiff calls "repugnant and morally indefensible," portrays homicide in an "appealing" way.
"Defendant’s Commercials were objectionable because they featured repeated homicides in a dark, dystopian landscape, where violence is glorified as sport," the court documents read. "The killings and physical violence were not to protect innocent life, but instead were repugnant and morally indefensible images designed to appeal to young consumers.

"In The Wanderer, Dion gives life to the story of a sad young man who wanders from town to town, not having found himself or the capacity for an enduring relationship. The song describes isolation during coming of age. Without Plaintiff’s consent, Defendants dubbed The Wanderer into commercials in which the protagonist, a wanderer, roams from one location to the next, armed and hunting for victims to slaughter. Defendant’s Commercials have no redeeming value, they simply entice young people to buy a videogame by glorifying homicide, making the infliction of harm appear appealing, if not also satisfying."
Despite DiMucci's negative reaction, the documents note that he wouldn't have rejected the use of the song entirely. Had he been allowed to view the commercials prior to their air time, DiMucci would have asked they focus on "post-apocalyptic struggle for survival without craven violence."
DiMucci is seeking the removal of the ads and, as mentioned earlier, a million dollars in financial damages. You can read the full court documents over on Polygon.

Update: It seems despite his words earlier this year, Brendan Greene isn't as confident with regards to PUBG's full release as he once was—having now pushed the game "back from initial 6-month timeframe."

Head over here for Greene's updated statement issued to PC Gamer.

Original story:

The meteoric rise of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been staggering. Alongside a host of pre-release updates, the MMO battle royale recently hit four million sales in just three months—a feat all the more impressive given its Early Access status. Yet, despite the numbers, there remains a large chunk of prospective players who won't pick up Bluehole's runaway hit till it's launched in full.
Which is fair enough. The question is, then: when can we expect PUBG's final release?
According to its Steam Early Access blurb, Brendan Greene—aka PlayerUnknown himself—suggests he and his team "don't expect Early Access to last longer than six months." In an interview with RPS at Rezzed earlier this year, one week following the game's EA launch, Greene was however far more forthright.
"Game development is hard. What makes it hard is, we work with Unreal, which is a joy because they have a company that is focused on making an engine," he says. "So there’s 40 people just working on code for the engine. You look at Daybreak and Bohemia, they’re working on their own engines, and that’s just infinitely harder. I think the ForgeLight engine is a ten year old engine. Now, they’ve improved it considerably since then, but it’s the same with the Arma engine, it’s 15 years old. Now DayZ are making a new engine, and that’s just something which takes time.
"It’s something a lot of people don’t understand and they get a lot of hate because of that. I just try to correct them whenever I can. It’s like, listen, guys, they will get finished. Companies are not going to abandon games like that, you know? People say, ‘oh, DayZ will never be finished,’ and of course it will. People tell us we’re not going to be out of early access in six months; challenge accepted. I can guarantee you, six or seven months and we’re out of early access. It’s the team. It’s a matter of honour, you know? We will finish this game in six months."
Which would see PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds launched in full before the end of October, assuming all goes to plan.

I've spent a lot of time with gaming laptops lately. For the past six months, I've spent time with more than a dozen machines—benchmarking, playing games, and generally working—to determine the best gaming laptop. In my testing, what stuck out to me more than anything is that gaming laptops are thinner and lighter than ever. Thanks in large part to Nvidia's Pascal architecture (the GTX 10-series GPUs), which offer excellent performance at lower temperatures than generations past, the latest crop of gaming laptops can offer excellent performance in a shell that's thin and light, free of gigantic, bulky fans.
At least, that's what I said before testing Asus's new ROG Zephyrus.
The Zephyrus puts them all to shame.
At Computex this year, Nvidia revealed its new "Max-Q" design philosophy. In short, Max-Q is centered around finding the right balance between power and efficiency in order to put high-performance graphics cards into the thinnest notebooks possible. What this means in practice is a "Max-Q" GTX 1080 is less powerful than its desktop equivalent, but in exchange for vastly improved thermals.



Asus's ROG Zephyrus, available now, is the first Max-Q laptop I've tested, and it delivers on that promise of thin, quiet, powerful gaming. It's one of the thinnest laptops—measuring only 20 mm thick while closed—I've ever used, while maintaining the power of significantly bulkier laptops. Now, to be clear, the Zephyrus's GTX 1080 is not as powerful as a desktop GTX 1080—or even one found in a (much bulkier) non-Max-Q laptop. I found it to be about 5 to 10 percent more powerful than most of the GTX 1070 laptops I recently tested, but about 10 to 15 percent less powerful than the ("normal") GTX 1080 laptops—more on that later.
What it loses in raw power, the ROG Zephyrus makes up for in size and sound. The Zeph is significantly quieter than any laptop I've tested—thin or not. At full load, the fans were only slightly audible—a stark contrast to every other "thin-and-light" laptop I've tested, all of which trade their small frames for a loud audio footprint. More impressively, all of these other "thin-and-lights" have mostly sported GTX 1060 (or below) GPUs, meaning that even if the Zeph's GTX 1080 is underpowered compared to a desktop GTX 1080, it's still vastly more powerful than everything else that's thus far been called "thin and light."



To keep temperatures cool (and stay quiet in the process), the Zephyrus has a somewhat awkward keyboard layout that gives way to a rather ingenious cooling solution. The keyboard is located right at the front of the chassis—where the touchpad and wrist rests are normally situated—with the touchpad smushed over to the right. This leaves the top half of the chassis—where the keyboard would normally sit—for a meshed ventilation area. A number of fans sit here, sucking in air to cool the GPU before being spit out the back through a gap that opens up when the laptop is open.
The keyboard layout is a bit awkward to use (the Zeph actually comes boxed with an external rubber wrist rest to improve things a little), but far from totally unusable. More than anything, it means you'll situate the Zephyrus a few inches back on your desk than a normal laptop, which might be an issue if you're lacking in desk real estate. Similarly, it's even more awkward trying to use it on your lap, though I wouldn't recommend doing so in the first place on account of the heat being spit out the rear vent.



In addition to the Max-Q GTX 1080, the ROG Zephyrus has all the standards of a current-gen gaming laptop: Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU, 512 GB SSD, 16GB RAM. It also features a 15.6-inch anti-glare wide-view panel with a 1080p resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and Nvidia's G-Sync technology. Those final two bits are the most important, I think, as aiming for a higher framerate at 1080p is a much better use of GPU power than attempting to run games at higher resolution.
Let's look at some numbers. To show relative performance, I'm going to compare the ROG Zephyrus and its Max-Q GTX 1080 to the following: our favorite GTX 1070 laptop, Asus's ROG Strix GL502VS; a "normal" GTX 1080 laptop, the Alienware 17; and a desktop GTX 1080 system, the Corsair One.



As you can see, the Zephyrus outperforms the GTX 1070 laptop in gaming tests by about 5 to 10 percent, but falls short of the full-size laptop or desktop GTX 1080 systems by 10 to 15 percent. Of course, as I've gone over, the trade-off in performance is more than made up for by the Zephyrus's sleek frame.
Speaking of that frame, it's freaking gorgeous. The all-metal chassis is finished with a brushed steel look that only slightly hints at the aggressive aesthetic that plagues many gaming laptops and peripherals. Here, the look is sleek, classy, and understated in a way that will turn heads without screaming "gamer."
Of course, all that greatness is not without drawbacks, primarily cost. The ROG Zephyrus starts at $2,699, which sounds like a lot for its level of performance (by comparison, the ROG Strix GL502VS it barely outperforms is roughly $1,000 cheaper.) But in this case, you're paying for the convenience of a sleek, tiny frame and the engineering of keeping everything cool and quiet. To my mind, that's money well spent.

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Source: Pc Gamer

Typing without the clack on Cherry MX Silent switches.

Two weeks ago, with my keyboard soaked in Red Bull (my most predictable vice) and a review deadline approaching, I gave up on trying to resurrect the Z, R, and D keys of my soggy Corsair Strafe and headed out, full of shame, to pick up a new one. The Strafe isn’t necessarily the best gaming keyboard, but I like it and I'm used to it, so I didn't want to make a change. Change is what I got, though: Distracted by an aisle of shiny floor speakers, I grabbed a new Strafe without noticing the ‘MX Silent’ tag beneath the logo.
I went from a damp keyboard to a dampened one, and I'm not sure which is worse.
‘Silent’ is an often abused word by marketers, and these supposedly noiseless variants of the Cherry MX Red switch have not been stuffed with motor oil and cotton to form the world’s first 100 percent quiet keyboard. They make noise just like any mechanical keyboard switch, just muted, imprecise—the sound of plastic rubbing against plastic without the joyful clack that lights up the tips of my fingers. Instead, it’s more of a chuckachucka, a squishy sigh.

Cherry's Silent switches, which also include a variation of the MX Black, do reduce the bottom out and top out noises like their spec sheets say, and if I type as softly as I can, someone in the next room would have a hard time knowing I was using a mechanical keyboard. No one types that softly, though, so what you really get is a quieter, less clacky sound, especially when bottoming out, with a lower pitch. You can hear a comparison between my regular MX Red Strafe and MX Silent Strafe above. The MXL 990 microphone I used doesn’t quite capture their natural sounds, but the difference is apparent anyhow.
There are some advantages to Corsair’s quieter option. Playing PUBG the other day, I thought I was hearing rustling, or far-off gunshots, but it turned out to be the clacking of one of my cohorts’ keyboards coming in over his mic. For streamers who are going to be jamming their keys a lot—playing shooters with lots of jittery movement, lots of crouching and standing—a quieter mechanical keyboard serves a clear purpose. The clacking of a keyboard only sounds nice to the person clacking it: when it picks up on a mic it becomes tinny and distracting.
And if I were living in one of the cramped apartments I’ve lived in before, quieter switches probably would’ve been welcomed by my roommates, who don’t necessarily want a tiny castanet band jamming in their home at 2 am.



But the ‘silent’ switches don’t feel exactly like regular MX Red switches, even if they have the same 45 cN actuation force and only a slightly shorter travel. Clacky switches feel like they’ve struck something hard when pressed all the way down (because they have), whereas these keys seem to hit a soft barrier—the sound dampening material also dampens the feel. And though they spring back just as fast, I can’t shake the feeling that they’re sluggish. I’ve tested the two keyboards next to each other and the motion looks nearly identical, but that empirical evidence makes no difference to how I perceive the boards when using them.
I can get used to anything, though, and I’ve mostly gotten used to my softer new board. In practice it’s just as quick to respond as any MX Red board, even if it feels off when I focus on it. I still notice the weakened mechanical sound when typing—it’s hollow and low—but when I’m playing a game I usually have my headphones on anyway, and I’m focusing on cues in the game audio, not how satisfying my keys are to press.



I can see why Cherry’s ‘silent’ switches exist. Were I trying not to wake up a baby, I might have to reevaluate how much I like them. They're great for streamers. And in shared spaces, dampening your key sounds may just be the polite thing to do. Well before Cherry introduced these quieter switches last year, a DIY community was already modding their keyboards to reduce noise. One silencing method involves opening each switch to insert felt, electrical tape, or liquid latex. Or you can add rubber o-rings to stop the action before the clack.
But for me in my secluded office, a good-feeling mechanical keyboard requires a sharp sound. I want a fully-pressed key to report back with a crisp knock as the stem of the switch bottoms out. I type hard, and maybe I like a solid clack to assure me I’m using something durable, not squishing components with my heavy key presses (even though I'm not likely to break any Cherry switches regardless of how they sound).
Now that I’ve tested the silent Strafe, I’m eager to fix and return to my old, loud-ass keyboard. Hell, maybe I should switch to MX Blues just to make up for all the missed clacking.
If you’ve been curious about these so-called silent Cherry switches, which are no longer Corsair exclusive as of late last year, I recommend finding a store where you can try them before you order a keyboard full of them. Best Buy and stores like it usually have display units sitting out above the boxes. You may have a more favorable view of them than I did, especially if you're in a situation where quieter keys will help you—just don’t be like me and look carefully at whatever you end up buying.

Source: Pc Gamer

Details of PUBG's third major patch were revealed today, and include a range of changes to the way looting works, the introduction of two new weapons, rebalancing of weapon drops overall, as well as a handful of bug fixes and improvements to server and client optimization. The patch will arrive Thursday "if everything is stable" after a run through PUBG's test servers on Wednesday this week.
Here are the biggest changes that stick out to me:

 You can now pick up items while moving. The interaction animation will not force you to stop 

anymore, but make you walk slowly.
A huge quality-of-life change that could also accelerate the pace of the game overall.

Adjusted vehicles to face random directions at spawn.
Currently all untouched vehicles face east by default, making it easy to distinguish between a vehicle someone's left by the roadside and a pristine car. Randomizing the orientation of vehicles will add more uncertainty when you see a parked bike or buggy.

You can now pull out pistols faster; Red Dot Sight is now attachable to pistols, except for the revolver.

Pistols get a little more utility here with the addition of optics and increased draw speed. I think we'll see some sick, Solid Snake-grade silenced pistol kills in the coming months.

Added destructible cabins.

Here's Johnny! I don't think this hints at a larger trend toward destructibility in PUBG, but Bluehole selectively making a few structures breakable. My guess is that cars or grenades will break these shacks, but it's unclear what impact small arms fire will have.

See the full patch notes below:

Server performance

• Improved network performance by reducing the amount of data being sent from the server to the client.
• Reduced network lag by preventing a large amount of data being sent from the server to the client simultaneously.

Client performance

• Fixed an issue of frame drop when other characters were around by optimizing nearby characters.
• Fixed an issue of frame drop when vehicles were around by optimizing vehicles.
• Optimized the starting airplane and Care Package airplanes.
• Improved rendering performance of weapons from far-off.
• Made improvements to the weapon animations.
• Optimized many in-game effects, including the red zone bombing effect.
• Improved many UI features.
• Improved features regarding rainy weather.

New items

• Added Groza. Groza is an AR chambered for 7.62mm ammo, and can only be acquired in Care Packages.
• Added P18C. P18C is a pistol chambered for 9mm ammo with a full auto fire-mode.

Gameplay

• Vector and UMP now support burst mode.
• You can now pick up items while moving. The interaction animation will not force you to stop anymore, but make you walk slowly.
• You may interact with doors, items, or vehicles while reloading. Reloads will be canceled with such interactions.
• The screen will be gradually desaturated based on remaining health during the REVIVE state.
• Blood effect does not appear during the REVIVE state anymore.
• Adjusted kill count system in Duo and Squad modes. A person knocking an opponent out will receive a kill count regardless of the actual killer.
• Adjusted F key (interaction) to prioritize the REVIVE action in certain cases
• You can now pull out pistols faster.
• Fire mode can no longer be switched during reload.
• Adjusted the play area to spawn more evenly within a circle, so that the play area does not appear in the center so frequently.
• Adjusted default quantity to be selected at 1 when pressing CTRL key at inventory to partially drop or pick up items.
• Adjusted motorcycle and motorcycle with sidecar to move more smoothly.
• You can no longer switch to/from prone while picking up items.
• Red Dot Sight is now attachable to pistols, except for the revolver.
• Increased the recoil on UMP.

World

• Added two new weather settings: Sunset and Clear Skies.
• Added destructible cabins.
• Added new animation for when a character is at the speed of taking fall damage.

Items and vehicles

• Adjusted vehicles to face random directions at spawn.
• Adjusted loot balance for certain items.
• VSS will no longer be found in Care Packages. It will remain to be spawned in the map.
• At a low probability, you will be able to acquire AR Silencers, SR Silencers, and 4x Scopes in Care Packages.
• Spawn rate of UMP was slightly decreased.
• Spawn rate of UZI was slightly increased.
• Level 1 Helmet was being spawned at a much higher rate than the Level 1 Vest, and the spawn rate was adjusted so that both items will be spawned at a similar rate.
• Increased spawn rate of items in regions and buildings with relatively low spawn rate.
• Changed the names of certain weapon attachments.
• Adjusted the spawn time of vehicles and speedboats, so that they can be seen from farther away.
• Improved the starting airplanes.
• Cargo door opens when participants get ejected from the airplane.
• Optimized lighting inside and outside of the airplane.

UI

• Adjusted the direction of teammate icons to the direction the teammate faces.
• Added teammate list on World Map.
• Improved character’s recoil animation.
• Removed death marks of teammates after a certain period of time or distance away from the place of death.
• Added three new languages: Thai, Indonesian, and Vietnamese.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue when the voice chat volume blasted momentarily after getting on an airplane.
• Fixed an issue where the character was not at the center of the screen while on a parachute.
• If you reload into game while in a parachute, you will still be in the parachute.
• Prevented users from removing outer walls of buildings by deleting certain files.
• Partially fixed a bug that caused a character to be stuck in terrain.
• Fixed a bug that caused a character to be misplaced after getting in a vehicle.
• Fixed a bug that caused effects to look identical underwater and outside of water.
• Fixed a bug that caused a character to make an interaction motion trying to pick up an item when there is no inventory space.
• Fixed a client crash that occurred when fences were destroyed.
• Fixed an issue of invisible fences even after destruction.

Source: Pc Gamer

Update: After bringing Shovel Knight to Dark Souls, hobbyist modder Abject has now launched his Lordran-meets-hell Doom Souls mod alongside two other equally eccentric projects: Fidget Spinner and Rick Souls.
Details on how Doom Souls alters From Software's nightmarescape feature below, while the Nexus Mods file for Fidget spinners comes with a fidget spinning 3D model, an inventory icon of the Fidget Spinner itself, and adjustments to the base game's maps and textures.
Rick Souls includes much of the same with models and icons of the Portal Gun, Hammer Morty and the Plumbus. New textures of Rick's clothes and their respective icons feature too.
Head here for Doom Souls, here for Fidget Spinner and here for Rick Souls.
To mark the launch of all three mods, Abject has put together the following video. Beware of gratuitous expletives.

Original story:

Hobbyist modder Abject has spent the past several months crafting some weird and wonderful Dark Souls mods, the best of which transport other games into the nightmarescape of Lordran.
Shovel Souls is easily my pick of Abject's bunch—although this tongue-in-cheek in-development Fidget Spinners mod is good fun—however the creator's latest work-in-progress is also pretty cool.
Doom Souls, as the name suggests, brings Doom 2016 and the original Dark Souls together—adding a Doom-inspired HUD and objective icons, gunfire sound effects, and a functioning reticule in third-person. Costume-wise, Abject's character uses TehForcer's Crystalline Helm without the crystals mod.
Check out the Doom Souls mod in action below, and know that Abject plans to have it ready for download "soon". I imagine this is down to Abject continued support of Shovel Souls, however the turnover between teaser and launch in that instance was pretty fast.

Source: Pc Gamer