One of the toughest things for new Absolver players to figure out is where to spend ability points. The Absolver 1.08 Halloween update is live now on Steam, and it adds a ‘prestige’ system which rewards level 60 players with ‘crystals’ they can use to reset attribute points. The update also adds six Halloween-themed masks, plus three regular masks, four new gear sets, and a rework to the loot system. Rather than receiving random drops in Combat Trials, players will be rewarded with tokens which

There is a growing number of cases that use tempered glass side panels and don’t cost and arm and a leg. Corsair’s new Carbide Series Spec-04, now with a glass panel option, is one of them. There are five fan mounts inside the Spec-04, including two 120mm/140mm mounts up front, two 120mm mounts up top, and a 120mm in the rear. Removable dust filters help keep the interior clean, which you’ll want to do since the large tempered glass side panel provides a full of the entire setup. The Spec-04 wit

It seems that every new keyboard that comes out uses mechanical key switches, but that is not actually the case. Proving otherwise are a couple of new membrane keyboards from Razer, the Cynosa Chroma and Cynosa Chroma Pro, both with “soft cushioned” keys that Razer says are superior to other rubber dome keyboards. The Cynosa Chroma Pro takes RGB lighting up a notch with the addition of an underglow, complete with 24 customizable zones. Otherwise, everything else about the the Cynosa Chroma and C

GOG is holding some Halloween festivities of its own, and it’s got a little something extra in the bowl, too. Anyone who spends at least $15 in the sale will get a free copy of Tales From the Borderlands, and there’s also a pile of new horror-themed games available in GOG Connect. GOG Connect, which went live last summer, enables you to add games that you already own on Steam to your GOG library. (There are 29 games eligible for GOG Connect during the sale, those are just a couple I happen to li

The fine print reveals AMD is referring to mobile processors for laptops with a 15W TDP, as is the case for its new Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U. Both the Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U are 4-core/8-thread Zen-based CPUs with 512KB of L2 cache per core, and 4MB of shared L3 cache. Though AMD’s new mobile processors share DNA with their desktop brethren, the company made some tweaks aimed at mobile computing. Several of AMD’s hardware partners are getting ready to launch laptops powered by th

The rumors were true—well, one of them, anyway. The 2017 Steam Halloween Sale has begun! As you might expect, the focus in this particular sale is on all things spooky and horrific. A very small selection:The sale also includes “Horror VR” games like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter VR, Narcosis, and The Brookhaven Experiment, and an interesting selection of horror movies too, including the classic An American Werewolf in London and Battle Royale: Unrated Director’s Cut—if you want to see where thi

Outcast – Second Contact hit a bump in the road earlier this year when its scheduled release date of March 30 was pushed into the fall. A date wasn’t set then, but it is now: November 14 is the big day, a nice bit of news that comes to us alongside a new ‘Hero Trailer’ showcasing the unfortunate adventures of down-on-his-luck good guy Cutter Slade. Outcast – Second Contact is a remake of the 1999 original, which was a decent hit when it was new and has acquired something of a cult following sinc

When you start gaining XP in Assassin’s Creed, ability points will follow. It’s extremely fun and highly useful, since it turns your arrows into guided missiles. On the other side of a wall was a caged lion, but the wall was in the way of my shot. No worries, though, I just popped a predator arrow into the air and steered it over the wall, freeing the lion to cause some havoc. You can unlock the Enhanced Predator Bow skill along two different paths, but the less costly is to head straight for it

The next expansions for Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy games Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4 are charging out together next month—CK2 is getting a Chinese-themed update while EU4 is revamping the Middle East and Central Asia. Crusader Kings 2: Jade Dragon brings an off-screen China into the fray, and with it a new grace system for you to try and curry favour with the Chinese Emperor. Get the Emperor on side with gifts and a silver tongue and he might even attack your enemies. EU4

For the past couple of weeks PC Gamer has had access to a ‘pre-beta’ of Steam’s upcoming new Curator features. Anyone who uses Steam can become a Steam Curator, allowing them to assemble a collection of recommended games which can be viewed in a list, as well as populate the storefront of followers. Curator recommendations will begin appearing in tag and genre pages. Developers will “be able to search the listings of Steam Curators, narrowing results by name, OS, language, or tags that the Curat

Fortnite has been given the customary Halloween once over in an update that adds some ghoulish cosmetics including a pumpkin rocket launcher, but the more substantial changes come in the popular (and completely free) Battle Royale game mode. Previously, knocking back the game’s only potion would boost your shields by 50 points instantly. That’s useful, because items often fall in clumps and it’s hard to collect bullets without also accidentally swapping out weapons. Epic has also introduced lead

Today, Nvidia officially revealed the specs and pricing for its upcoming GTX 1070 Ti graphics card. As we discussed earlier, the card is a beefed-up alternative to the GTX 1070 that ends up landing very close to GTX 1080. Another difference is that the GTX 1070 Ti (and 1070) uses standard GDDR5 running at 8Gbps, while GTX 1080 cards use GDDR5X—the initial cards ran the memory at 10Gbps, and later models support 11Gbps. By creating the GTX 1070 Ti, Nvidia ensures that its parts are faster at equi

Amateur hourLast week, Tim decided to share his porn-fuelled business strategy with the members of the EVE Online subreddit. Tim tells me he didn’t get into amateur pornography with the intent of making money in EVE Online. “My last check was over $350, which I mostly spent on EVE Online,” Tim says. A stroke of geniusThere is no singular endgame to EVE Online like there is in, say, World of Warcraft. These lumbering haulers boast around 150,000 cubic meter cargo holds, enough to carry all but th

Skateboard turf-war game Decksplash will grind into Early Access on November 10—but only if 100,000 players try it out for free during the preceding week. If it doesn’t reach that milestone, then the game is cancelled. Bossa Studios, of Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, is the developer, and it’s clearly prepared to take a huge risk on this one. If you do hop in early then any loot, levels and coins (for loot boxes and skateboard customisation) will transfer over to the full game. Mat tried the

That’s the tone of the game encapsulated, really: moments of sincerity punctuated by the silliest of jokes. I won’t say too much about the specifics of the settings in Wolfenstein 2, just because I’ve avoided everything about The New Colossus since its E3 reveal and enjoyed the surprise of discovering them. One woman tries to kiss up to a Nazi officer, and ends up committing a faux pas that gets her reported, while one newspaper seller thinks he knows the truth about who BJ really is. New to Mac

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ blue zone is now deadlier than ever thanks to a new patch, and the further you are from the safe zone on the map, the more damage you’ll take over time. That won’t apply to the first circle, though, which means you’ll still be able to hike a fair distance in the blue zone early on and live to tell the tale. Anyone caught outside of that area is said to be in the blue zone, and gradually takes damage over time. Developer Bluehole announced last week that the blue zo

Welcome to our review in progress of Assassin’s Creed: Origins. This occurs after the opening of Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which begins with a fight (interrupted halfway through by a cutscene) during which my enemy charges full speed at me and then stops, standing completely motionless for several seconds, before swinging his weapon. That’s where I’m at with Assassin’s Creed: Origins at the moment. Climbing in AssCreed hasn’t felt fresh or novel in ages, and I found it immensely tiresome in Ass

If you miss the days of first-person shooters that gave you magic staffs and axes then let you loose in spooky cathedrals to carve monsters into gibs, then indie studio Indefatigable is working on just the game for you. Amid Evil’s reveal trailer shows magical lightning, fireballs, black holes and more being used to demolish both bad guys and the blocky level geometry around them. It looks like a lost third game in the lineage of Heretic and Hexen, which is very much by design. Indefatigable is

ThroughLine Games’ animated adventure Forgotton Anne begins with a peculiar decision: whether or not to kill a talking scarf. For the Copenhagen-based studio Forgotton Anne is a real passion project, representing an effort to achieve a dream they have long nurtured: to create an interactive cinematic experience. It’s clear from looking at Forgotton Anne that Studio Ghibli has dramatically influenced the animation style. One of the ways Forgotton Anne distinguishes itself is with its character de

Newegg is selling CyberPower’s GX1325U model this week for $190, but you can grab it for $122 if you use promo code AFEMBRCE69. That’s a really good price for this particular unit, which boasts pure sine wave. Pure sine wave is the big feature to look for when shopping for backup power supplies. Many of the cheaper UPSes uses simulated sine wave output, which is a stepped sine wave that approximates what you get out of your wall outlet. Some electronics are sensitive to simulated sine waves and