Mildred W Means

Jurassic World Evolution
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Jurassic World Evolution
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7

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7.1

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Jurassic World Evolution was a bit of a surprise smash hit when it arrived on PC earlier this year, topping the Steam charts for a good long while. Planet Coaster developer Frontier isn’t one to let its golden goose wither and die though, announcing Secrets of Dr. Wu, the first expansion pack for Jurassic World Evolution.

Arriving on November 20th, Jurassic World Evolution: Secrets of Dr. Wu features new missions, locations and, most importantly, new dinosaurs to place in your jurassic parks. Anyone familiar with the new movies, or any of them, to be honest, will be aware Dr. Wu is not a man to be trusted. However, he’s looking for park managers to embark a new business venture with him, and a strong track record of designing hybrid dinosaurs helps.

The expansion adds a new area to play around with on Isla Muerta, where Dr. Wu is working on new hybrid dinosaurs. This includes the Spinoraptor, the Ankylodocus, and the fantastic-to-say Stegoceratops. There’ll be a total of five new dinosaurs and a new story to work through, given a bit of extra juice with new genetic research items and additional building upgrades.

Jurassic World Evolution: Secrets of Dr, Wu is out alongside free update 1.5 on 20th November for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, priced at £12.99 / $14.99 / €14.99. Update 1.5 will include a day/night cycle, new dinosaur behaviours, higher capacity feeders, and new contracts for free.

Sadly there’s still no sign of aquatic or flying dinosaurs, one of the main bugbears from my Jurassic World Evolution review. Frontier is clearly working on new content for JWE though so I’m still holding out hope.

Final Fantasy XV
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Final Fantasy XV
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8

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6.3

Most Demanding

54

The incomprehensible world of Final Fantasy XV is coming to a sad, sorry end. Square Enix hyped and hosted a special event to…. announce the cancellation of any further development on Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition.

Luminous Productions, the arm of Square Enix that worked on FFXV, has now moved onto another large-scale project. Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata has resigned and left Square Enix, while development of three of the four announced upcoming FF15 expansions has been cancelled.

“In regards to my next endeavours and near future, I have a project that I truly wish to solidify as my next challenge after Final Fantasy 15,” said Tabata on the livestream. “As production of Episode Ardyn continues and Luminous Productions works on new projects, I felt that it was time for me to hand over the torch to the next-generation group of talented and trustworthy colleagues and believe that they will create something amazing.”

What is truly odd here is Square Enix used an announcement live stream to reveal DLC cancelation, Tabata’s departure, and touched on a £25 million loss that Luminous Productions had just posted.

If you are confused as to what the heck this all means, you are certainly not alone. Final Fantasy XV originally launched in 2016, along with a season pass and a roadmap for a year or more of additional content. All of this content was then bundled into the Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition, as well as included with this year’s launch of Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition. Then, back in April of this year, we were told Final Fantasy XV would be getting a second season pass comprised of four new DLC expansions – Ardyn, Aranea, Luna and Noctis. Ardyn is still in development and will launch in March 2019. Aranea, Luna and Noctis have been cancelled.

Square Enix also confirmed a Final Fantasy XIV tie-in event that’s taking place next month, while FFXV’s multiple Comrades mode will be turned into a standalone game on PS4 and Xbox One, due to launch on December 13th. It’ll be free for current owners of the Comrades expansion for Final Fantasy XV. There will be no standalone PC version.

As someone on the outside looking in, I think I’m even more confused than I was before. Final Fantasy XV was, by all accounts, a story that needed fleshing out when it originally launched. The DLC expansions have been doing just that, in conjunction with the Kingsglaive movie. Sadly though, we’ll never learn the full tale due to the cancelation of the three further planned episodes.

For PC players, it basically means Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition is as dead as a chocobo. There will no additional development outside of the Ardyn expansion, meaning Nvidia DLSS support, the rumoured ray-tracing support, and the modding tools, are now out of the picture.

Darksiders 3
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Darksiders 3
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8

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8.7

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33

UPDATE: Darksiders 3’s preliminary system requirements were revealed all the way back in May of 2017 so, unsurprisingly, they’ve changed majorly since then. Gunfire Games has now revealed the final PC specs for Darksiders III ahead of the November 27th launch.

Darksiders 3 Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows 7 64-bit CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8320 3.5 GHz RAM: 8 GB System Memory GPU RAM: 2 GB Video Memory GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon R7 370 DX: DirectX 11 HDD: 25 GB available space

Darksiders 3 Recommended System Requirements 

OS: Windows 7 64-bit CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K 3.2 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz RAM: 16 GB System Memory GPU RAM: 4 GB Video Memory GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB DX: DirectX 11 HDD: 25 GB available space

Unsurprisingly, we see some big changes to the system requirements for Darksiders 3 since those preliminary specs from last year. We only had the minimum specs to go on but we can see a marked increased in the minimum requirement CPUs for Darksiders III. The Intel Core i5-4690K and AMD FX-8320 are often the recommended CPUs for big titles, so it’s definitely unusual to see these touted as the absolute minimum spec. I’ve got a 4690K CPU in my rig right now, so the upgrade alarm bells are starting to ring.

The recommended requirements for Darksiders 3 are totally new though, and these come in at right around the average system requirements for a AAA title in 2018. To play Darksiders 3 on Ultra at 1080p you will need a DirectX 11 capable graphics card with at least 4GB VRAM, along with decently-clocked quad-core processor and 16GB RAM. The RAM in particular seems a little on the high side. We rarely see games actually use more than 8GB system memory, so we’d estimate 12GB RAM should still run Darksiders 3 just fine.

As ever, remember you can always check out how well your PC can run the Darksiders 3 System Requirements here, where you can check benchmarking and performance from other users. Compare your graphics card to the Darksiders 3 GPU benchmark chart and we also have a Darksiders 3 Frames Per Second system performance chart for you to check.

Original Story: 03-May-2017 – Darksiders 3 Preliminary Minimum System Requirements Revealed

This time yesterday most of us weren’t even aware Darksiders 3 was in development. Now we’ve got the first screenshots, a debut trailer, and now the minimum system requirements. We’re still a ways off from Darksiders III’s 2018 launch, so these specs are preliminary and may change. For now though, here’s what THQ Nordic predict you’ll require to run Darksiders 3 on PC.

Darksiders 3 Minimum System Requirements (Preliminary, may change)

OS: Windows 7 64-bit CPU: Intel Core i5-2400 3.1 GHz or AMD FX-6100 2.8 GHz RAM: 6 GB System Memory GPU RAM: 2 GB Video Memory GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti or AMD Radeon R7 260X DX: DirectX 11 HDD: 15 GB available space

Now, as I said earlier, these are still preliminary system requirements for Darksiders 3, so THQ Nordic and Gunfire Games to say these are subject to change. However, it does provide a decent guideline as to where they’re heading with Darksiders 3.

Darksiders 2 ran on the Phoenix Engine, which was created by then THQ subsidiary, Relic Entertainment. Relic is now owned by Sega, suggesting Darksiders 3 will probably be switching to an all-new engine. In all likelihood, this is Unreal Engine 4, as it’s probably the easiest for Gunfire Games to get to grips with.

The main sticking point is that this is a low-end bunch of system specs. You will need at least 2GB VRAM to play Darksiders 3 however, alongside a decent quad-core CPU. Fortunately, most graphics cards have at least 2GB memory these days, and yet more will by the time Darksiders III launches on PC next year.

Remember to bear in mind that these Darksiders 3 minimum system requirements are subject to change, so they may go up or down, and should only form a guideline. We’ll update you as soon as we hear any more. 

Red Dead Redemption 2
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Red Dead Redemption 2
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7.36

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7.3

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Most Demanding Score?

UPDATE: Take-Two has announced Red Dead Redemption 2 sold-in 17 million copies worldwide during its first eight days on sale. This already puts Red Dead 2 in the top 40 bestselling games of all time, a feat achieved in a matter of days. Red Dead Redemption 2 has now sold more copies than the original Red Dead Redemption. RDR2 has done in eight days what it took RDR eight years to achieve.

At 60 bucks a copy that means RDR2 has generated over a billion dollars in sales. While Red Dead 2 was always going to be one of the biggest games of the year, its more niche appeal compared to GTA meant most expectations were considerably lower than this. No doubt the stellar reviews helped, along with the mammoth success and global appeal of GTA 5.

Compared to Grand Theft Auto 5, Rockstar’s highest selling game, Red Dead Redemption 2 still has a mountain to climb. GTA5 grossed $1 billion in just three days and his since gone on to shift more than 100 million units. It’s unlikely Red Dead 2 could ever climb these lofty heights, but we’d imagine a lot of its continued success will hinge on Red Dead Online, and just how popular its multiplayer component becomes.

Original Story: 30-Oct-2018 – Red Dead Redemption 2 had the Highest Grossing Opening Weekend in Entertainment History

It would be fair to say, Rockstar Games is rolling in cash right now. The box office developer has announced Red Dead Redemption 2 has achieved the highest grossing opening weekend in entertainment history.

Rockstar sold through $725 million (£568m) worth of Red Dead Redemption 2 copies within the first three days of the Western epic being on sale. That’s almost triple the highest-earning movie box office opening weekend ($257m) achieved by Avengers: Infinity War earlier this year. Pricing is going to vary from country to country, but at $60 a game, that’s around 12 million copies of RDR2 sold worldwide.

The wording of the announcement is slightly strange in that Grand Theft Auto V is still the biggest entertainment launch in history, selling through $1 billion worth of stock in its opening three days. However, GTA V launched on a Tuesday, so its opening ‘weekend’ was actually smaller, despite the bigger launch.

It now means Rockstar holds the top two biggest launches in entertainment history – RDR 2 and GTA 5. The third spot on the podium is currently held by Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, which grossed $500m on its opening day but took a further two weeks to break $1 billion.

Other accolades scooped up by Red Dead 2 includes the biggest launch of 2018, obviously, the most pre-ordered digital ever on PlayStation, largest day-one game sales ever on PlayStation, and the biggest first three days sales ever on PSN.

It’s an obscene amount of cash, to be honest, and we’d imagine Rockstar is already tipping over into a healthy profit on its 8-year venture. There’s also the prospect of Red Dead Online launching next month, as well as the inevitable PC version further down the line.

While Red Dead Redemption 2 was practically guaranteed to be a success, we didn’t expect it to even be in the same ballpark as GTA V. The appeal of Red Dead is much more niche than Grand Theft Auto, something Rockstar would have been all too aware of heading in. Ultimately, RDR2 is never going to get anywhere near GTA 5’s 100m copies sold, but it’s a record-breaking start and, thankfully, proof that Rockstar won’t have to subsist off GTA sequels for eternity.

If you haven’t seen our Red Dead Redemption 2 review yet then be sure to check it out here, and we’ve also got several reasons why it could be worth waiting for the eventual PC version of Red Dead 2.

Have you picked up Red Dead Redemption 2 yet? How much does it cost in your country? How much do you think it could’ve reached if it launched on PC? Let us know what you think!

AMD revealed the world’s first 7nm GPU yesterday evening during its Next Horizon event in San Francisco. The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 graphics accelerator utilises a 7nm Vega 20 GPU, the first of its kind.

While the Vega 20 GPU is aimed squarely at high-performance computing (HPC) usage, for now, it does provide us with a tantalizing preview of where we’re headed next with our gaming graphics cards.

The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 sports a 7nm Vega 20 GPU. It features 13.23 billion transistors crammed onto a 331mm2 die. The Vega 20 GPU has 64 Compute Units and 4096 Stream Processors, capable of 7.4 TFLOPs double precision compute, 14.8 TFLOPs single precision, and 29.5 TFLOPs half precision compute. In comparison to the 14nm parts we’re looking at 25% performance gains within the same power envelope, or 50% less power usage when running at 14nm clock speeds.

Specs-wise, the 7nm Vega 20 is actually pretty much the same as the current 14nm Vega 10, but the smaller process node allows for higher clock speeds and lower power draw. At 331mm2 it’s also tiny, coming in at just 68% the size of the 484mm2 Vega 10 GPU.

The Vega 20 GPU is paired with 32GB HBM2 memory on the Radeon Instinct MI60, offering up a mightily impressive 1TB/s of memory bandwidth. This is more than any other commercially available GPU on the market. It’s also an industry-first GPU capable of using PCIe 4.0, affording it 64GB/s bi-direction CPU-to-GPU bandwidth.

AMD has promised the Radeon Instinct MI60 will be ready to launch by the end of the year. Unfortunately, it’s literally just for enterprise use right now but we do begin to get a picture of where AMD is headed with its 7nm products.

Diablo 4
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0

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10

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If you have even a cursory interest in Blizzard and the Diablo series, you’ll be all too aware of the storm of controversy that blew up during BlizzCon 2018 over the weekend. Blizzard ended its opening keynote for the event with the reveal of Diablo Immortal, a new mobile Diablo game developed in conjunction with NetEase.

Suffice to say, a large section of fans were not happy. At all. They’ve made their feelings known loud and clear, downvoting YouTube trailers for Diablo Immortal and booing Blizzard at BlizzCon itself. They wanted Diablo 4, not Diablo Immortal. It’s plainly obvious Diablo IV is coming of course, and Diablo Immortal’s development is not going to impact any potential Diablo sequel whatsoever, but it was certainly an off-key way to handle a reveal at Blizzard’s biggest event of the year.

Last night a further rumour surfaced that Blizzard had, in fact, intended to show a Diablo 4 teaser trailer at the end of BlizzCon. This particular rumour came from Kotaku’s Jason Schreier, who claimed Blizzard decided to pull the trailer from the event at the last moment.

Today, Blizzard has now refuted these claims, saying Diablo 4 was never planned for BlizzCon and that no trailers were pulled.

“First off we want to mention that we definitely hear our community,” said Blizzard. “We generally don’t comment on rumors or speculation, but we can say that we didn’t pull any announcements from BlizzCon this year or have plans for other announcements. We do continue to have different teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects, and we look forward to announcing when the time is right.

Schreier though, insists Blizzard co-found Allen Adham had recorded a video in which he talked about a new Diablo game coming to PC. There is some confusion over whether this video was intended for BlizzCon or another event, but the suggestion is that Diablo 4 is very much real, it’s in development and has been for years, but it’s been undergoing some major changes throughout its dev cycle. Until Blizzard has nailed down what Diablo 4 is going to be exactly, we’re not going to hear about it.

For my part, I really cannot see what the fuss is about, outside of how the reveal was made. Creators should be free to create what they want, customers should be free to pay for what they want. If Diablo Immortal isn’t wanted, it won’t succeed. There have been plenty of beloved game franchises that have had mobile versions with no damage to the core series, including Hitman, Tomb Raider, and FIFA, and there’s no reason to think Diablo Immortal will irreversibly damage the franchise. Diablo 4 will happen regardless, and Diablo Immortal will be on mobile for those who want it.

What are your thoughts on the Diablo Immortal storm that’s been brewing? Was it the right game shown at the wrong place, or is it an actual blow to the Diablo franchise? And when do you think Diablo 4 will be revealed? Let us know your thoughts!

Hitman 2 (2018)
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Hitman 2 (2018)
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8.88

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9.3

Most Demanding

6

Hitman 2 is launching this coming Tuesday, November 13th, providing six new sandboxes for our disguise-loving bald friend to murder folks in. Early reviews are out and looking strong, the benefit this time being we won’t have to wait for episodes to roll out piecemeal, it’s an all-in-one, ahem, hit.

Anyway, with the release right around the corner, that, of course, means it’s launch trailer time for Hitman 2. Cue plenty of stylish slow-mo shots, a few peeks at the gorgeous and labyrinthine new levels, and the tantalising prospect of Sean Bean dying, yet again.

Yep, good old Sean will be the first Elusive target. “Elusive Target missions are unique, high-stakes contracts that are free for all players, allowing one chance to assassinate the target and if not successfully completed, the contract cannot be retried,” explains IO Interactive. “Elusive Target No. 1 Starring Sean Bean will release on 20th November and will run for 14 days. Once Elusive Target No. 1 is available, players must stop Mark Faba (a.k.a. Sean Bean) before he can utilise his expert surveillance, infiltration and demolition skills to complete a contract at the Global Innovation Race event in Miami, and if anyone can take down Faba for the last time, it’s Agent 47.”

Fingers crossed we should have some Hitman 2 benchmarks and assorted goodies coming your way shortly, but in the meantime be sure to check out the Hitman 2 game page where you can see the final PC system requirements and estimated frames per second performance.

Hitman 2 is out on November 13th for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Just Cause 4
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6.6

Optimisation

7.1

Most Demanding

7

Square Enix dropped the new ‘Eye of the Storm’ cinematic trailer for Just Cause 4 during Microsoft’s X018 event last night.

In the trailer, we see our hero Rico Rodriguez (not that one, the other one) land on the massive island on Solis in an effort to discover the truth behind the death of his father. Don’t worry, Just Cause 4 isn’t getting all serious on us, Rico’s also going to come up against the Black Hand militia, a military outfit headed up by Gabriela.

Just Cause 4 is coming to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on December 4th.

Battlefield V
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Battlefield V
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6.68

Optimisation

8

Most Demanding

44

Battlefield V is available to play on PC right now provided you stump up the cash for an EA Origin Access Premier subscription, just make sure you’ve got the latest AMD Radeon or Nvidia GeForce graphics card drivers installed and you’re good to go. However, if you’re one of the lucky few who’ve got your mitts on a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, GeForce RTX 2080, or GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card, you’re probably wondering when you can finally see what the fuss is all about in regards to real-time ray tracing.

Well, as it currently stands, Battlefield 5 on PC doesn’t have RTX support. However, DICE has updated fans to let them know that DirectX Raytracing (DXR) support will be coming to Battlefield V around the same time as the Battlefield V Deluxe Edition releases on November 16th.

“DirectX Raytracing (DXR) – DXR enables realistic real-time ray traced reflections in Battlefield V for players with NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards including the GeForce RTX 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti. An early release of DXR will be available in an upcoming patch, near the Battlefield V Deluxe Edition release window. EA, DICE, and NVIDIA will also continue to optimize this implementation and deliver regular updates after its release.”

And, erm, there is a second snag which RTX owners will run into. The Windows October update that contains the official Windows-level driver support for DXR still isn’t available outside of the Windows 10 Insiders fast ring. You know the update I mean, the one that was unintentionally deleting user files, then causing BSOD crashes, and then causing unzipped files to overwrite other files. Basically, the Windows 10 October update is an absolute mess, and until it’s sorted, real-time ray-tracing support is either gone to be non-existent or buggy, whether DICE patches it in to BFV or not.

For their part, Nvidia’s reaction to this has been shoddy in the extreme. The main selling point of its new family of RTX 20 Series video cards is the raytracing capabilities, and yet when a game finally comes along that supports it, Nvidia is silent about both Battlefield V’s raytracing and the potential issues. It’s really quite odd, a ray-traced game like Battlefield V launching should be something Nvidia is shouting from the rooftops but alas, here we are.

The good news is that DICE is doing its part and bringing RTX support to BF5 within the next week. Let’s just hope Microsoft and Nvidia can both pull their fingers out so we can finally see what raytracing brings to the table, along with just how demanding it is.

Crackdown 3
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0

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10

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100+

Crackdown 3 has risen from the ashes at last, with Microsoft announcing at X018 that Crackdown 3 will be coming to PC and Xbox One on February 15th, 2019.

It’s been a long road for Crackdown 3. Originally announced at E3 2018, the open-world smash-em-up has suffered numerous delays and false starts. That wait comes to an end of February 15th though, when both Crackdown 3’s Campaign and the cloud-powered multiplayer Wrecking Zone mode launch on PC and console.

Crackdown 3: Wrecking Zone was the focus for X018, a team-based competitive multiplayer component with fully destructible environments and three unique modes. Each and every building in Crackdown 3 can be brought to the ground thanks to its advanced destruction physics, all of which appears to be offloaded to the cloud so it doesn’t impact performance.

Before the weekend the official Crackdown 3 PC system requirements were also revealed. They’re actually not too bad at all for modern AAA titles, presumably down to a bit of that cloud computing that Microsoft’s making a big deal about. It’ll certainly be interesting to see whether there are some repercussions for those with slower net connections.

Are you liking what you see of Crackdown 3? Do you sense a multiplayer hit, or could Microsoft have another dud on its hands?