The Khronos Group’s low-level Vulkan API has slowly been making headway into games since version 1.0 was released a little over two years ago. Today the consortium is introducing version 1.1, a major upgrade that bakes in a wide range of extensions that were available for the previous version, including multi-GPU support. Alongside Vulkan 1.1 (and integral to the API’s release), the Khronos Group also published Standard Portable Intermediate Representation (SPIR-V) 1.3 specifications. This could

With arena brawler Battlerite out of Steam Early Access and officially free-to-play, developer Stunlock Studios announced the game’s first competitive season today. Season one will go live today, and its accompanying patch is bringing a medley of additions. Firstly, there’s a new champion: Jamila the Shadowblade Assassin, a stealthy ninja-type fighter who put on a good show in her animated teaser. “We updated the reward system in order to acknowledge the daily efforts of competitive players, and

The Council is a narrative-focused adventure about a secret society in the late 1700s, whose members include historical luminaries such as Napoleon, George Washington, and you, Louis de Richet. The new trailer offers a closer look at how the game will play, and how players will be able to approach it. “The vast majority of choices in The Council have short, medium, and long-term consequences, both cosmetic and very real. The trailer suggests there will be moments of physical disagreement, but Th

If you’re having trouble with your Oculus Rift today, then you’re not alone. A certificate linked to the devices has expired and caused them to stop working, with users facing a “Can’t Reach Oculus Runtime Service” error if they try to boot up. It was first flagged on the Oculus forums, and some quick digging uncovered the fact that a certificate for the Oculus Runtime Service expired earlier today, which is a pretty big oversight on Oculus’s part. The company’s co-founder also tweeted this:We’r

Jump scares are often considered cheap scares, and to some extent that reputation is justified. It’s a sophisticated survival horror game where you’re pursued by an unpredictable alien foe for most of the story’s 20-hour lifespan. “Jump scares are an ingredient,” says Red Barrels co-founder Philippe Morin, developer of both Outlast games. “Good jump scares should stay with you, putting you in a state of discomfort for the whole game.” This is really, really hard and achieving that balance is oft

The folks behind the excellent, surreal point-and-click adventure games Machinarium, Botanicula and Samorost have just released Chuchel, which is more focused on making you laugh than asking you to solve tough puzzles. Chuchel is an angry ball of dust with an orange hat and a pet that looks like a cross between a rat and a potato, called Kekel. The pair want nothing more than to hunt for cherries, and it’s your job to help them along the way. The trailer, below, was released a few months ago but

Loot is a big deal in Warhammer: Vermintide 2—I mean, why else would you cleave through hordes of Skaven and Rotblood raiders? Right now, we have guides for the four levels included in the Vermintide 2 pre-order beta, but will add the rest once Vermintide 2 launches on March 8. Festering GroundLike Empire in Flames, Festering Ground has two very problematic jumping puzzles you’ll have to master if you hope to nab each tome and grimoire. That last grimoire is a doozy though, requiring a pixel per

Monolith’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is (somehow) four years old later this year—yet it remains one of the best open world action adventure games out there today. If you somehow missed the boat/mountable Caragor the first time round, you might like to stop by Fanatical who has slashed the recommended retail value of its Game of the Year Edition by 85 percent. That means visiting Gondor, Minas Ithil, Black Gate and beyond will costs just $2.99/£2.39 for the next 24 hours as part of the digit

The effect on player numbers has been immediate: the game reached a peak concurrent player count of 176,856 on Steam today, smashing its previous best. According to SteamCharts data, its peak player count is now triple what it was just six months ago and already 50,000 more than its peak during February, which is a hell of a feat for a game that’s more than two years old. Players are also upset about the lack of refunds for weapon attachments and operators, as mentioned above. The update has com

Ahead of next week’s release of the Devil May Cry HD Collection—a reboot of the original three DMC games—Twitch Prime subscribers can now play Devil May Cry 1 HD before everyone else for free, although some players are reporting bizarre framerate bugs. Twitch Prime is the subscription service that comes bundled with Amazon Prime (if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, click here to link your two accounts). Subscribers were initially meant to get access to Devil May Cry 1 HD in February, but the r

Ever seen Quentin Tarantino’s 1996 vampire movie, From Dusk Till Dawn? South Park: The Fractured But Whole’s next DLC is similar, only instead of a strip club the vampires have flocked to Cartman’s favorite Mexican restaurant, Casa Bonita. The story of From Dusk Till Casa Bonita, which is out on March 20, focuses on The Coon and Mysterion, the superhero alter egos of Cartman and Kenny. Mysterion’s sister is trapped inside Casa Bonita with the hungry vampires, and it’s your job to break in, nibbl

Fortnite has been doing a stellar job mixing up its Battle Royale formula by regularly adding temporary game modes. I reckon it will be even more ridiculous than the 50v50 game mode introduced in December. The 50v50 mode was often a slog because when one team got a numbers advantage they just steamrolled over the rest of the opposition. Epic revealed its future temporary game modes last month, including one with “team sizes in between 50v50 and squads”, which must be this one. The game is now th

Los Santos Life RP is a dedicated roleplaying server within FiveM, a 32-person open source community modification for Grand Theft Auto 5. In Los Santos Life, cash reflects reality, therefore my haul was probably akin to a few million GTA$ as it features in GTA 5 and its online component. I screamed into my mic, before realising it was 11.30pm in the real world and my downstairs neighbour was probably asleep. I screamed into my mic, before realising it was 11.30pm in the real world and my downsta

This year’s rumor suggests that Treyarch is making Black Ops IV, which follows 2015’s Black Ops III. But here’s the thing: the title will apparently be written as “Black Ops IIII”, because Activision does not give a single functional crap about how Roman numerals work. Some pointed out that it shared a striking resemblance to the Black Ops 3 logo, only, with an extra “I”. pic.twitter.com/ky3E8TK9HyMarch 7, 2018So it looks like Call of Duty won’t follow up its immensely successful historical shoo

If you’ve been playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you’ve no doubt run into a few bugs and glitches, and perhaps wished there were some changes to the save systems and lock-picking minigames. A patch intended to address these items, along with a few others (such as a craftable respec potion) is in the works, though after a few signs it might be nigh at hand—such as a tweet on Monday from the game’s director that the patch was being finalized—another tweet on Tuesday suggests the wait might be a b

In Throne of Lies, 16 players gather at a castle, each with their own goals. Every day, players talk with each other in a public chat and in whispers (aka sliding into one another’s DMs), and may accuse someone of treason. This is where the beauty and challenge in Throne of Lies, uh, lies. There are still enough Blue Dragon members left to set up a court and execute the Mastermind. However, it’s this complexity that keeps Throne of Lies fresh dozens of game in.

Ubisoft said in early February that the Far Cry 5 season pass will include three separate stories: One about zombies, one about Martians, and one about a guerrilla conflict in Southeast Asia that killed more than one million people. (Time travel is actually the theme there, but the real-world trappings feel a little out of place amidst the full-on fictional settings of the other two.) In case there was any doubt, the callback to Far Cry: Blood Dragon that opens the new post-launch trailer makes

State of Decay 2, the sequel for 2013’s surprisingly good zombie survival game, will release for Windows 10 on May 22. As a Microsoft-exclusive, it’ll release concurrently for both Xbox One and PC, with cross-play and Play Anywhere support included. Like the original State of Decay, this sequel will be priced at $29.99 (or $49.95 in Australia). “Our goal is to build a long-term relationship with the State of Decay community and to foster deeper experiences with the franchise. We believe State of

My second monitor is almost always opened to some game guide or wiki page. But what’s it like playing a complicated game today if you don’t ever refer to a wiki or video when you need help? I check the display settings but I can’t see any reason why the game isn’t using my entire screen. In effect, by not using a wiki, I’m just writing my own wiki. Not only do I need help from a wiki to live, I need help from a wiki to die.

Amid Evil is a retro-FPS homage to Heretic and Hexen, Raven’s Doom-powered fantasy-shooters from the mid-’90s. Today, publisher New Blood Interactive revealed more gameplay in a new trailer showing off the “Hordes of Evil” endless mode, and more importantly announced an Early Access launch date of March 12, less than a week away. The Early Access release will include three episodes taken from the campaign, as well as the Hordes of Evil mode shown in the trailer. The great thing about a game like