With Crysis turning 10 years old this week, here Andy relays a horror story from his earliest days of building a PC some years back. After years of having a rubbish PC that couldn’t run anything made after 2004, I finally saved up enough money to upgrade. And, of course, I chose Crysis as the game to test the new build, as was the custom in those days. If your PC could run Crysis at an agreeable frame-rate, it was probably pretty decent. Even though my current PC can handle Crysis without breaki

In July, Total War creators Creative Assembly announced Total War Saga—a new branch of its familiar historical war tales that will “focus on a specific point in history”, against the base games’ overarching eras. Now, the developer has revealed Thrones of Britannia, a spin-off that’s due next year. Set in 878AD on the British Isles, Thrones of Britannia takes place following the Viking Invasion of Britain. “Our aim with Total War Sagas is to explore key flashpoints at distinct places and times i

But the lesser known backstory is that Tripwire was only one of the successful indie studios that grew out of the Unreal Tournament modding scene and the the Make Something Unreal competition. The many children of Unreal TournamentNotably, Tripwire’s other hit Killing Floor grew out of the modding scene for Unreal Tournament 2004. An engine of creationHearing early Unreal Tournament modders talk about the freedom of the Unreal Engine sounds almost like hearing tales of religious conversion. But

Below, Boian Spasov, lead designer of Surviving Mars at former Tropico dev Haemimont Games, explains this system in more depth, and how you’ll need more than money to keep your colony ticking along. Can you talk about how resources work in Surviving Mars, and how that plays into the survival element of the game? When we started working on Surviving Mars it quickly became apparent to us that a traditional city-builder resource system won’t do at all. How important is it to pick the right spot to

Earlier this year, Farming Simulator 2017 unveiled its then incoming Platinum Edition (and Platinum Expansion for existing players). Today it has arrived, bringing with it new crops, a new location, and new vehicles. Add those to the expansion/new edition’s sugarcane farms, sugarcane harvester, new South American playground, “unique” vegetation and railway network, and Farming Simulator 2017 promises “the most complete experience” so far as farm simulations go. Look, see:As you can see around th

Despite being dropped by Square Enix earlier this year, going indie was a “genuine watershed moment” for Hitman studio IO Interactive . With new games planned, Agent 47’s episodic series is in rude health—and is now in-line for a television series. As reported by Deadline (via gamesindustry.biz), Fox 21 has partnered with streaming service Hulu to launch a Hitman series—with a pilot script written by Derek Kolstad, the creator and writer of the John Wick action films. Kolstad will be an executiv

Project Hospital is the debut project from Oxymoron Games and is a throwback to Bullfrog’s ’90s hospital construction-meets-management simulator. Sporting a familiar top-down isometric view, Project Hospital has players building their own medical institutions from the ground up, crafting specialised wings and departments, managing staff, diagnosing patients, and exploring hundreds of medical conditions. Where Project Hospital deviates from its main source of inspiration is its scope for realism—

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is a weird multiplayer game. In its flagship Galactic Assault mode, 20 attackers fight 20 defenders in bizarro versions of Star Wars battles. I should’ve known, but couldn’t, because there’s no way to tell what Star Cards are in play until you’re dead. Battlefront 2’s campaign features snappy levels that run through all the best Star Wars moments—piloting TIE fighters, exchanging blaster fire down too-white corridors, force pushing Stormtroopers. It’s a classic Star Wars

Yesterday I had the chance to speak with Doug Kennedy, CEO of Studio Wildcard, the company responsible for Ark: Survival Evolved . On Early AccessWith all that in mind, would Studio Wildcard use Early Access again? Do players of Early Access games feel more ownership of a title, and are thus more likely to be critical? “I’d love to see a line in the sand drawn: I’d love for it to be: here are all the Early Access reviews and here are all the post-launch reviews. That’s what Early Access is.”On S

At some point, it’s a safe bet that the sense of smell will enter the equation, and it could happen sooner rather than later. He noted that “sight and sound have been the staple of VR environments,” while haptic feedback has added a sense of touch. A quick Google search shows there are other efforts to bring the sense of smell into VR, too. There are several hurdles that stand in the way of bringing a sense of smell in mainstream VR experiences, but perhaps one day we’ll be able to smell the gun

Crysis hardware in 2007What’s particularly shocking to me is just how old Crysis is in terms of the day’s hardware. Maybe…Maxing out Crysis at 4k with 4xAAWhat does it take to run Crysis at maximum quality, at 4k resolutions? Crysis settings overview, 10 years laterBeyond the steep system requirements, it’s worth pointing out that even a decade later, Crysis is still one of the best-looking games on PC. Crysis post-mortemAfter spawning a meme that has lasted more than a decade, we still haven’t

This past weekend was double XP time for Call of Duty: WWII, but a number of players noticed, and complained, that they weren’t actually getting double XP. It turns out that they were right—not because Sledgehammer forgot to turn it on, but because it forgot to turn it off. Monday AM it goes back to normal.November 11, 2017″We launched with 2XP active, unintentionally. “Come Monday, when we turn off the XP bonus, it will effectively revert to what we should have had at launch (aka 1XP). Players

But while the map should be here by year’s end (we were recently teased with some new images), it’s never too early to start getting impatient for the next next PUBG map. Something apocalyptic, to some degree, has definitely happened in the world of PUBG, but it can’t have been all that cataclysmic. If you’re wondering on a map without buildings where you’d find all that great PUBG gear, it’s simple. For it to work with PUBG it would need to be a really massive silo, like something from Hugh How

You can find some decent deals right now, but in general, the best deals come on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, good deals can depend on the retailer. Of course, Amazon also has Daily Deals which are ever-changing, and also the Lightning Deals which last for an even shorter amount of time. Smaller Amazon Marketplace sellers will also be running their own deals, probably closer to the actual day. A price tracking website like CamelCamelCamel is good for figuring out the price history of

The “evidence” comes out of this Storyhive documentary video about Beamdog that was released at the end of October. Setting aside the possibility that it’s a Valve-style fake-out, Unraveled could be a new game or an expansion to the Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition that Beamdog released in April. InXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera did an excellent job as a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, while the original’s legendary status means that anything short of damn near perfection will

Unlocking a hero is a great accomplishment in the game, something we want players to have fun earning. We used data from the beta to help set those levels, but it’s clear that more changes were needed.” “We’re making the changes to the credit levels for unlocking heroes and we’re going to keep making changes to improve the game experience over time. Star Wars Battlefront 2 will be out on November 17. You can read more about how Battlefront 2’s loot boxes and progression work here.

In the videogame sector, ‘But can it run Crysis’ was on top of the world. Everyone knew someone who played on max settings, even if their PC could only run Crysis at 12 frames per second. ‘But can it run Crysis’ was still riding high alongside popular memes from the time like Scumbag Steve and Rebecca Black’s Friday. We’ve had a lot of fun wondering, but we may never sincerely ask ‘But can it run Crysis’ again. You were there for us when we needed you, but now you can rest in peace, Crysis meme.

When EverQuest was still consuming players’ lives, Progress Quest seemed quite funny. Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms is made by indie studio Codename Entertainment, who previously developed Crusaders of the Lost Idols. Idle Champions is essentially a reskin of their previous game, with characters and places from the Forgotten Realms D&D setting draped over it. Click your life away Progress Quest isn’t the only idle game to parody the way videogame compulsion loops work. Back in the day,

That’s why I was so excited come across Brandon McCarthy’s beautiful wooden PC case at Quakecon. You can see the entire process by reading through Brandon’s build log , and I really suggest you do. Plus, Brandon somehow managed to get through the entire thing without making a big deal about how he’s describing his wooden case in a build log. Because it’s a wooden case. A build log for a wooden case.

Intel last week announced it was working with AMD to develop a multi-chip module combining a Core processor with Radeon graphics. The photo was posted to Chip Hell and shows the motherboard of the NUC outside of the chassis. Click for original. (Image: © Chip Hell)The long and rectangular MCM combines a quad-core Kaby Lake-H CPU die with custom Radeon graphics based on AMD’s Vega GPU architecture. There is no accompanying information, such as when this might come out or how much it will cos