Lenovo’s Y710 Cube desktop is once again on sale, this time with a speedy GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card inside. The system is marked down to $850 (down from $1,300), but you can get it for $790 and change by applying coupon code SAVEXTRA7 at checkout. Connectivity consists of a pair of USB 3.0 ports on the front of the case, along with two more in the back. The rear I/O is also home to two USB 2.0 ports, an optical audio port, and PS/2. Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy somethin

According to the datasheet, which HP has now pulled from its website, its Envy x360 15-bq101na will feature a Ryzen 5 2500U that combines a quad-core Zen CPU with an integrated graphics core powered by AMD’s Vega architecture. To be clear, this is not a discrete graphics solution, so we don’t expect performance to rival a desktop Radeon RX Vega. However, AMD previously said its Zen-based APUs will deliver 40 percent more graphics performance than its current Bristol Ridge APUs, and 50 percent mo

This isn’t for connecting your monitor (though you could), but for plugging in your Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset. The HDMI output can be routed to your graphics card’s HDMI output through a hole in the rear of the case. The case comes with three 120mm fans, including two in the front and in the rear. There is room to add a third fan up front, plus three more 120mm fans or two 140mm fans up top. If you prefer to liquid cool, the case supports up to a 360mm radiator in the front, up to a 280mm

I thought I was going to enjoy Echo, but in the end I bounced off it hard. In Echo, enemies choose behavior patterns that mimic the behavior of the player. As you’d expect from a game with stealth, you have multiple ways to move around the level, multiple ways to distract enemies, and several different options for movement. (There are plenty of somethings in Echo: half-walls, doors, pedestals, and staircases, but every level is built from those same pieces.) Echo’s cycles could have made a fanta

In many ways, CD Projekt Red, the development branch of Polish game company CD Projekt, sounds like a fantastic place to work: Successful and financially stable, but still very “indie” and pleasingly renegade. But this time, and “especially in light of the fact that we haven’t communicated anything about Cyberpunk 2077 for a long time and saw some gamers getting worried about the project,” CD Projekt elected to respond publicly. And also, you can reasonably infer from the statement, a lot of lon

If Forged Battalion does its job, you should be able to tell a lot about how someone likes to play games based on the armies they create. Forged Battalion is the newest project from Petroglyph Games, a studio formed by ex-Westwood developers, best known for their work on games like—you guessed it—Command & Conquer. They told publishing partners Team17 that Forged Battalion wasn’t ready, and that it needed more time before Petroglyph could show it off to press. It’s what makes Forged Battalion un

In January last year, Andy chatted to Ghost Ramp about how the Californian record label is embracing games. Since then, the likes of Crypt of the Necrodancer, Nuclear Throne, and a handful of other neat indie games have seen their soundtracks translated to vinyl alongside some bespoke and eye-catching sleeve art. Red Hook Studios’ Darkest Dungeon is the latest to receive this treatment—the result of which will look something like this:With an impressive 18 tracks, Ghost Ramp’s Patrick McDermott

Loot boxes have come up rather a lot during the last few weeks, playing various roles in the likes of Shadow of War and Battlefront 2 to a pretty heated response. The petition, raised by Connor Rhys Deeley, specifically calls out loot boxes, and has over 11,000 signatures so far. “Gambling in video games mostly involves ‘loot boxes’ where players use virtual currency (often bought with real money) to earn in game items often worth less than what they paid (sometimes more) hence its gambling. “Cu

RTS specialist Petroglyph has announced Forged Battalion, a new strategy game with a strong focus on unit customisation and building your own faction. There’ll also be co-op and competitive multiplayer for up to eight players, what’s being called a ‘dynamic story campaign’ and Steam Workshop support. Forged Battalion will launch in 2018 on Steam Early Access, and should arrive with at least five campaign missions, different multiplayer modes and five multiplayer maps. They’re expecting to stay i

Back in July, Dying Light developer Techland promised its players ten free DLC helpings over the next 12 months. Content Drop #0 marked the first, while Content Drop #1—named “Lethal Inventions”—is the second. Here’s that:As outlined above, completing three special bounties grants players access to three new weapons: the limb-lopping Fenris Axe, the parkour speed-rushing Kuai Dagger, and the body-blasting Last Wish Revolver. In typical Dying Light style, each weapon’s execution is more gruesome

Next year, the National Basketball Association will officially enter the world of esports by way of its NBA 2K League . Managing director Brendan Donohue has now billed the association’s esports involvement as “a long-term play” that he reckons will span multiple decades. In conversation with Gamesindustry.biz, Donohue suggests the NBA is confident of its place in esports and that the success of the NBA 2K series makes the jump a “logical” step. That’s one of our advantages: the NBA 2K game, and

This time last year, Call of Duty launched a lighthearted, star-studded live-action trailer ahead of its then incoming Infinite Warfare instalment. It was a wee bit weird. Now, COD has released similarly structured trailer about regular people. They’re getting their squad back together in celebration of the war series’ return to World War 2. Look, see:Call of Duty: WWII is due November 3 which is somehow the week after next (seriously, where has the year gone?).

It looks like Quake has just got its own version of Brutal Doom, the ultra-violent (and ultra popular) fan-made mod for id Software’s 1993 FPS behemoth. Qore adds heaps of guts and gore to Quake, and it looks bloody brilliant. Qore adds a scary chainsaw that pins enemies in place if they have low health, cutting through them until they go splat. Creator DaisyFlower says they will continue to work on the mod, adding new enemy attacks among other things. Technically, Qore is actually a mod for Dar

Up until now, loot crates containing cosmetic items dropped occasionally after matches, and to open them you had to buy a key with real money (or trade for one). The game’s Halloween-themed event, Haunted Hallows, kicks off tomorrow (Monday at 5pm PDT), adding new spooky items and pumpkin-inspired loot crates. Decryptors will open both Halloween loot boxes and regular ones, and to obtain them you need to spend Candy Corn, a new in-game currency specific to the event. You earn Candy Corn simply b

When Christopher tried out Early Access survival game The Wild Eight in February he was repeatedly mauled by wolves (and only managed to keep going by eating his own dead body). He might have more luck if he jumps in this coming week because players will be able to tame wolves and other wildlife thanks to an update due tomorrow. The Animal Update (imaginative, I know), means players can team up with animals for the first time, and each creature has a special ability to aid survival. To tame an a

That’s why we asked our readers to share their favorite LAN party memories with us. During the day of our LAN party, we decided to cook some BBQ using some disposable BBQ kits that were rested upon bricks. Seriously, do you really think we’d write up all these LAN party memories and not include a story about someone defecating themselves? I was part of the LAN party and we’d play Counter-Strike 1.6, five-versus-five matches with four teams. Clean up the bathroom, throw this guy’s chair out, and

What if Dungeon Keeper had an above-ground RTS tacked on? That was (basically) the premise of Dungeons 2, where you spent half your time trapping heroes underground and the other half waging war in the overworld. Dungeons 3 came out this week and adopts the same formula but is—the developers hope—bigger and better. If you’ve played Dungeon Keeper then you’ll know the score below the surface: construct a labyrinth of trapped rooms and fill the corridors with nasties to crush any goody two-shoes a

Let’s just cut to the chase, I know you goof off when you should be working. I know this because I goof off when I should be working too. It’s a dangerous to play when you should be working, but this week we want to hear your stories of doing just that. Ever been busted by your boss while playing shitty flash games through a VPN to get around the company firewall? We want to hear your dirty, awful confessions about the times when you should have been working but were playing instead.

Even if you don’t intend on playing Star Citizen when it finally comes out, Cloud Imperium Games’ video series Around the Verse provides—in my opinion —a fascinating insight into the development process. The latest video, above, is the first since the game’s alpha 3.0 version became available for testing. Peering round your craft from first-person should look fairly polished in 3.0, but there’s a lot more to come. smoke or no smoke), the developers are working on effects that change based on the

Maybe that means I need to be more observant, or perhaps it’s a testament to the game’s anti-cheat system, which is banning more than 6,000 suspected cheaters every day. Its official account tweeted yesterday that between 6,000 and 13,000 players are getting their marching orders daily. On Saturday morning, it had cracked down on nearly 20,000 players within the previous 24-hour period. The “vast majority” of those were from China, where in-game ads recently caused a flood of negative reviews of