Here are the most important changes flying under the radar in Ember Rise, and what they mean for Siege. With the introduction of Siege’s new and improved deployable shields with small bulletproof windows, Ubisoft has moved around operator loadouts to reflect their higher power. Overall, there are now nine defenders that can carry a deployable shield, or a little over one third. If you bring them all on the same round, that’s 10 frag grenades for defenders to worry about. In-game bios don’t shake

Dying Light 2 got a substantial hands-off showing at E3 in June, and now (better late than never) everyone on the internet has the chance to watch it. Embedded above is a half-hour video showcasing one of the game’s major story missions. It’s pretty intense: the city’s largest human settlement is about to lose its drinking water. I especially like how verdant the rooftops are: the first game’s world did feel monotonously brown at times (at least, until its major expansion released), but Dying Li

(Image credit: Reddit user Eevim)Rainbow Six Siege will be free to try for an entire week starting from August 28 and ending September 9. During that period, you’ll have access to 20 legacy operators, and all progress won during the period will carry over if you choose to purchase the game. The free weekend will likely finish up just before the next expansion, Operation Ember Rise, hits some time in September. The game is also getting with the times and introducing Battle Passes some time during

(Image credit: Thermaltake)Thermaltake is launching a new Level 20 GT RGB gaming keyboard ostensibly priced at $4,440, according to a figure that shows up when searching for the plank on Google. Okay, maybe you can, and to Thermaltake’s credit, even at $4,4400 the Level 20 GT RGB is less than its weight in gold (it weighs 1,500 grams, which is worth nearly $74,000 in gold). way off, either by mistake or as a placeholder that, at the time of this writing, has not been fixed. Thermaltake’s offerin

According to the release notes, the new 19.8.2 driver release delivers up to ten percent better performance in Control when running in DirectX 11 mode, compared to the previous 19.8.1 release. The loan other feature is support for HDCP 2.3 on Radeon RX 5700 cards. Otherwise, there are few fixes that come with the latest driver package. System instability may be experienced on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics products when performing memory overclocking while a 3D application is running. Follow thi

(Image credit: Blizzard)World of Warcraft Classic officially goes live later today, but with a simultaneous global launch the specific timings can be a little tricky to pin down: Midnight CEST is simple enough, but what does that work out to in North America? We’ve got you covered—here’s the schedule:North America (PT) – 3 pm August 26– 3 pm August 26 North America (ET) – 6 pm August 26– 6 pm August 26 Europe (CEST) – 12 am August 27– 12 am August 27 Taiwan (CST) – 6 am August 27– 6 am August 27

(Image credit: HTC)One of the best PC-related discounts from Amazon’s big ‘Prime Day’ sale in July was the HTC Vive Pro for $200 off. If you missed out on that deal, you can once again get the headset for $599. The HTC Vive Pro is one of the best VR headsets currently available, matched only by the $1,000 Valve Index. However, the Pro is great advance in comfort and design when compared to the original Vive, and maybe that’s more important”Of course, the high resolution of the Vive Pro means it

After struggling through one of the most famously catastrophic launches in years, it sounds like Star Wars Battlefront 2 is turning things around. Brännvall said EA is putting out more content for Battlefront 2 now than it did during the game’s first year of release. The community is happier now, and as a result so is the development team. Interestingly, EA’s approach to Battlefront 2 has been fundamentally different from its predecessor right from the beginning. “The team enjoys working on it a

Though he told me that famous quote was, at the time, poorly worded, it’s what I’m laughing at now as I try to log into World of Warcraft Classic, which just went live. Right now on Twitch, 1.1 million viewers are watching their favorite streamers, many of whom are stuck in equally long queues. There’s no telling how many people are trying to play WoW Classic at this moment, but my guess is that the number is staggering—far more than what would typically show up for an expansion launch. The good

is the simple question driving Life is Strange 2 Episode 4, the penultimate episode of Dontnod Entertainment’s story-driven adventure game. But Sean is in pretty dire straits: he starts the episode in a hospital and under arrest, having lost an eye—and much of his confidence—in the last episode. Episode 4 is out now, and you can pick it up for $8/£6.50 on Steam or the Humble Store. Philippa wrote about Life is Strange 2’s strong opening here and in June Joanna spoke to the game’s lead writer abo

(Image credit: Valve)Australian police have arrested six Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players during an investigation into suspicious betting activity in an esports league. It’s alleged that the six men, all between 19 and 22 years old, arranged to lose matches in advance and then placed bets on those matches. At least five matches were affected during an unnamed CS:GO tournament, and more than 20 bets were placed on those matches by Australian punters. The six men, four from Melbourne subur

It’s a good time for emulation, with all kinds of new projects out there as well as existing ones coming on by leaps and bounds. Here’s one of the most impressive things we’ve seen in a while: Automatic machine translation between Japanese and English at the press of a button. This is a new feature of RetroArch, which is a front-end for other emulators, added in version 1.7.8. As you can see in the video of the 1990 Super Nintendo god game ActRaiser above, the text-to-speech function reads aloud

“Your city might look very lopsided, but because of the way you’ve placed heavy buildings, it’s fine,” says Wander. “Depending on where you’ve placed your lift buildings, the centre of your city might actually be way off to the side.” Wander says the team are going for a “toybox, miniature feel,” and so far they’re on target. You’ll also be able to apply dyes and patterns to your city, which you’ll get from cities on the ground. The storytelling is inspired by 80 Days and Sunless Skies, with som

With Gamescom 2019 behind them, Fraser Brown and Andy Kelly have taken over this week’s news recap to share the best games they played or saw at the show. Here’s our full list of PC games that were at Gamescom. Andy: With the first Kerbal Space Program being one of PC Gamer’s highest scoring games, I was pretty eager to see Kerbal Space Program 2. Empire of Sin, meanwhile, gave me my favourite Gamescom developer chat: talking to Brenda and John Romero about STDs. Desperados 3 probably has some b

Elite Dangerous is getting two major new features that bracket the spectrum of player experience. At one end, the September update will add a fully-voiced in-cockpit tutorial to the beginning of the game, while on the other, fleet carriers will arrive in December. Starting with the first of those, the tutorial will give new pilots a reworked opening few hours in the game. Again, this tutorial will be fully voice acted, and that includes all of Elite Dangerous’ supported languages. Carriers can a

Well, the newly remodeled Aurora carries on that tradition, though it does not look like any previous Alienware that has come before it. The new look is what Alienware is calling its “Legend” industrial design, as part of “new design identity” the company is shooting for. To Alienware’s eyeballs, it is a “bold departure” from both the previous look, and the “sea of sameness in the industry.” “Born from the ethos of purposeful innovation, Alienware’s new Legend industrial design has been awarded