Halo: Reach has been running beta test “flights” for the last while, and now we have what appears to be a firm release date. The PC version of Halo: Reach comes out December 3, according to its page on the Microsoft Store, which apparently was quietly updated this morning ahead of tonight’s XO19 kickoff. If you’re unfamiliar with the series after its long time away from PCs, Halo: Reach is the prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, and is the fifth game in the Halo series. When we tried it out at E3 e

Last month, we invited our readers to vote for their favorite tech gizmos in the first-ever Future Tech Reader’s Choice Awards. Now we’re upping the ante with a draw for four really good prizes that you can enter just by casting a ballot. (Not that I’m actually eligible to win any of this stuff anyway, but a new Dell XPS would be sweet.) Giveaway winners will be notified during the week of December 9, and prizes will hopefully be in winners’ hands in time for the holidays. Readers Choice winners

Walmart has got a deal on a cheap gaming chair right now that you should consider for yourself or a gift for the hardcore gaming in your life this holiday. Respawn’s RSP 110 Racing Style Gaming Chair is currently on sale for $109. Feel free to take a peek at our best gaming chairs to see how the Respawn gaming compares them. A decent option if you don’t an immense amount of disposable income but are in need of a comfy gaming chair. Respawn 110 Gaming Seat $109 (save $80)Pick up this awesome recl

Instead, Razer summoned its new Kraken Ultimate to pummel eardrums with “punchy base” and “super clear sound.” Razer’s positioning the Kraken Ultimate as a higher end headset. Some of that is marketing talk, obviously, though custom tuned drivers can be an enticing feature, depending on how they are configured. The Kraken Ultmate also supports THX Spatial Audio, which Razer says “delivers pinpoint positional accuracy greater than 7.1 surround sound.” Razer also announced a cheaper Kraken X USB h

Update: Bleeding Edge now has a live Steam store page, with a release date listed for March 24, 2020. According to their reporting, Bleeding Edge will launch March 24, with two separate closed betas starting February 14 and March 13. The page also revealed that players who pre-order the game and Game Pass subscribers will have access to the beta phases. We first saw Bleeding Edge at E3 earlier this year, and our panel had muted reactions to their hands-on time with the game. However, our editors

AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 is a great graphics card, if you can’t spend a little extra money for the 5700 XT. For comparison, most other RX 5700 cards start at $330. The model on sale uses AMD’s reference design, meaning there is no factory overclock, no custom cooler, and so on. Don’t worry, though—our review of the reference 5700 found that it still out-performed the RTX 2060 and AMD’s own Vega 64. It’s a great graphics card for 1440p and 1080p gaming, though you may have to turn settings a bit on t

It’s been five years since the launch of 11 Bit Studios’ grim survival game This War of Mine, and to mark the anniversary the studio has released one last major content update. This War of Mine: Final Cut adds a new character and scenario to the game, incorporates all locations from the This War of Mine: Stories DLC into the base game, and adds new quests and events based on Stories locations. “We think of the Final Cut as a closing episode to the one-of-a-kind series This War of Mine has been.

Colin Furze, the guy who made real versions of the wildest weapons in Sekiro, has now turned his attention to Overwatch, and specifically Junkrat’s ultimate ability, the RIP-Tire. In the game, it’s a spiked tire with a pullstart that Junkrat can steer toward his enemies—and which explodes violently when it reaches them. In real life, it doesn’t blow up, but otherwise it’s wonderfully close to the mark. And while the throttle is controllable remotely, the tire can’t actually be steered, although

While work on a new BioShock game has reportedly been in progress at a “top-secret” 2K studio since at least 2018, recent activity seems to lend credibility to that rumor. Barely a week later, this job listing from 2K Publishing in Novato, California was unearthed, advertising for an ‘End Game Design Lead’. Nothing about that screams “BioShock”, except when you take into account this reddit thread, which compiles all of the current talent working at the Novato studio. It’s a substantial list, wi

After months of rallying fans and other influencers to flood Ubi with requests, the BOSG ACOG is now a reality. It’s also great to see his barbed wire come back. WardenReplaced Barbed Wire with Nitro CellUbi says this change is to increase Warden’s potential as a “denial defender” against defuser plants. ElaDecreased falloff damage curve for FO-12 shotgun. Ubi says that Ela’s FO-12 shotgun stands out among others as too strong.

(Image credit: Epic Games)Another Fortnite play tester is facing legal action for leaking details related to the battle royale’s Chapter 2 content update. According to Global News, Epic Games has filed a claim against play tester Lucas Johnston for his alleged leaking of a screenshot taken during his period of employment at Keywords Studios, where the play testing was carried out. According to the report, Johnston is alleged to have taken the screenshot during a session on August 30, before uplo

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Forget graphics for a second because great sounds can have just as much impact as beautiful visuals in a game. Maybe it’s the sound of a starship engine or some sort of sci-fi machinery, the noise of a cool weapon firing or a stirring level-up sound. That’s our burning question this week: What’s the greatest single sound in a game? The Imp SFX and other Doom sounds are available in .WAV format here. And then I remember: it’s the bright pastel colours that draw me in at first, and then it’s the g

Are you looking for a gaming laptop, but you don’t have thousands of dollars to spend? If so, you might be interested to hear that one Asus laptop with a GTX 1660 Ti graphics card is just $899.00 right now. This laptop has better hardware than most other models in this price range, with an Intel Core i5-9300H processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card, a 15.6-inch 120Hz IPS display, 8GB of 2666MHz RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD. Most other laptops in this price range have either a GTX 165

The latter is more demanding, with ray traced reflections rendered at the same resolution as the scene. To give an example of the Very High setting, at 1920×1080, ray-traced reflections get rendered at “approximately” 1357×763. “CryEngine’s ray tracing technology is both hardware and API agnostic and will run on most mainstream contemporary AMD and Nvidia GPUs, whereas other ray tracing methods are typically bound to GPU solutions with dedicated RT cores. However, Crytek suggests dedicated ray t

A post-BlizzCon update from Diablo 4 game director Luis Barriga recaps what was undoubtedly a better experience for the studio than last year’s show, saying that the team was “floored by the overall reception—especially from long-time Diablo players.” It will be the first in a series of quarterly updates where we’ll share behind-the-scenes looks at our progress going forward,” Barriga wrote. Personally, I’m mad about the always-online requirement, but that’s a carryover from Diablo 3 and doesn’t

Family Sharing, for instance, won’t be supported at launch: Doronichev said it’s a “high priority feature,” but it won’t be available until early next year. It also sounds like existing Chromecast Ultra devices won’t actually be ready for Stadia when the service goes live. “On Day 1 you should use the Chromecast Ultra that came in your bundle. “On 11/19 we’ll be only streaming 4K / HDR / 5.1 to Chromecast Ultra. On day 1, PC Chrome gameplay won’t support 4K, HDR, or 5.1 Surround Sound,” Doronich

After years of breathless anticipation, Shenmue 3 finally launches on November 19. Above is the launch trailer, and it seems pretty on-brand: there’s thoughtful black and white passages, some very urgent dialogue, a few instances of fisticuffs and a red clad woman with a very menacing laugh. I haven’t played a Shenmue game, but I’m definitely keen to see what the fuss is about. Of course, Shenmue 3 is now a timed Epic Games Store exclusive, which rustled feathers to the extent that refunds were

John Carmack, who was recently announced as the recipient of the first-ever Accenture VR Lifetime Achievement Award, has announced that he is stepping back from VR development. “I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn’t in sight,” he wrote. Based on that, he added in fine Carmack form, “By a Pascal’s Mugging sort of logic, I should be working on it.” But some very unlikely outcomes may have very great utilities, and these utilities can grow faster

The PC release of Red Dead Redemption 2 has been a rough ride so far, as players have struggled with freezing, crashes, and generally poor overall performance. An update that’s expected to come out later today will hopefully help smooth things out for everyone, but Rockstar cautioned that it might not resolve the problem entirely. “We are aware that a small number of Red Dead Redemption 2 PC players are still experiencing some ongoing problems with the game stuttering. Rockstar also urged player