Various Video Game Stories and More from the Week of September 27, 2021

Category: Gaming
Posted: October 1, 2021 08:05AM
Author: Guest_Jim_*

The week has come to its end, which means it is also time to go through some of the news from it, starting with a bit of time-sensitive news. GOG is turning 13 years old and naturally is celebrating with a sale that goes until October 6 as well as some additions to its library. These additions are Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain that brings you to the beginning of the Nosgoth saga as well as Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus, vintage games from the cult horror series. All three of those are on sale at 10% off but you can find over one hundred more discounted by up to 90% as part of the Anniversary Party sale.

Source: GOG (Anniversary Party)

There is another anniversary being celebrated this week as the Civilization series turns 30 , so 2K and Firaxis have put together a trailer to celebrate the player, and Sid Meier has written a blog post about the franchise's three decades. If you, like many of us have had those "Just one more turn" moments into the early morning or managed to lead a people from ancient times to the space age, you may want to check this out.

Source: 2K/Civilization

Splitgate has received a significant update this week with such changes as improvements to the mantling system and support for NVIDIA Reflex. With the new mantling system it should be easier for players to climb ledges and apply verticality in combat, and by having it apply the jetpack, there is no animation to interfere with your gameplay. NVIDIA Reflex should help to cut down on latency that may make the difference in a match, but does require an NVIDIA GPU to utilize. Voice chat has been improved and featured playlists that will rotate each weekend have been introduced as well. A pretty neat feature to arrive with this update is to customize the color and enemy and friendly players' armor and outline colors, so instead of your team being blue and the enemy being red all the time, you can make them what you want.

You can check out the source link or the video to learn more about this update.

Source: 1047 Games (Splitgate)

The Arcade Crew and developer 1P2P Studio have announced Young Souls is coming to PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch in Q4 2021. Originally an exclusive to Google Stadia, Young Souls is a co-op RPG, beat 'em up that follows misfit twins as they explore various realms to find their guardian, a professor who vanished just before they found a portal in his estate. Training during the day and adventuring at night, Jenn and Tristan face immeasurable dangers to find the professor and protect the world from the monsters beyond the Moon Gate portal.

For those not so interested in waiting for the full release, from October 1 to 7, a demo will be available on Steam as part of its Next Fest. This demo covers the game's opening battles and sets the stage for the eventual showdown.

Source: Press Release (The Arcade Crew – Young Souls) and Young Souls Steam Store Page

HandyGames has released a new trailer for A Rat's Quest: The Way Back Home that features Mat the rat sharing how he found himself so far from his home and his true love. After escaping from a well he was thrown in, he will have to cross a significant distance to return to the house, climbing, jumping, crawling, slithering, and sneaking along the way. It will not all just be travelling though, as there will be boss encounters to overcome in addition to the natural threats and over 200 voiced cinematics telling the tale as well. You can check out the new trailer below for a better glimpse of what we can expect when the game releases.

Source: HandyGames (A Rat's Quest: The Way Back Home)

Prime Matter has shared a couple stories as part of the Tokyo Game Show 2021, including the announcement of Ikumi Nakamura being involved in the development of Gungrave G.O.R.E. Yasuhiro Nightow, the creator of anti-hero Grave, revealed Nakamura has been heavily involved in development, bringing her own style to the game while helping Studio IGGYMOB achieve their vision for this sequel. You may be familiar with her work as lead art designer for The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2, creative director for Ghostwire: Tokyo, an artist on Okami and senior artist on Bayonetta.

In Gungrave G.O.R.E. you play as the anti-hero Grave as he tears through enemies with a ballet of bullets and third-person action. Though it is a sequel and resurrection for the Gungrave franchise, it will also serve as a standalone story for a new generation of gamers and consoles. Along with the announcement was an extended cut cinematic trailer that includes the first look at gameplay, but it is age-restricted on YouTube, so here is the link: Gungrave G.O.R.E - Gameplay Reveal + Extended Cinematic Trailer [ESRB].

Source: Prime Matter [1] (Gungrave G.O.R.E. – Source in German)

Also announced by Prime Matter at the Tokyo Game Show 2021 were character reveals for The King of Fighters XV. Isla and K' are new characters joining the roster with the former featuring similar powers to Shun'ei, her rival. K', on the other hand, is a modified human with genes transplanted from Kyo Kusanagi and a mixed personality as an utterly blunt introvert. He has the power to wield fire and uses it in his fights as he tries to regain his lost memories.

Both new characters are featured in their own trailers and you can follow these links to check them out: KOF XV?ISLA?Trailer #30 and KOF XV?K'?Trailer #31.

Source: Prime Matter [2] (The King of Fighters XV – Source in German)

Square Enix has shared a few things this week, including the announcement of Dungeon Encounters, a single-player dungeon exploration RPG that will be coming to PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch on October 14. The game has been directed by Hiroyuki Ito, a veteran of the Final Fantasy series and producer for Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age and will test players with its 100 levels of challenges. With its 2D grid-based movement, players are to explore the otherworldly labyrinth filled with obstacles and monsters, making it necessary to strategize to survive.

You can watch the announcement trailer below and if this seems like a game for you, there is be a 20% discount on Steam and the Nintendo Switch until late October. It will enter the PlayStation Store on October 14 and those with a PlayStation Plus membership will see the 20% discount applied if they purchase it before October 28.

Source: Square Enix [1] (Dungeon Encounters)

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is set to release on October 26 for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and GeForce NOW alongside a Cloud Version for the Nintendo Switch, and this week the PC Tech Trailer was released, showcasing the different features that will be available to PC gamers. Like many of the latest AAA titles, it will support real-time ray tracing and diffuse illumination along with HDR and wide color gamut. Though it might be hard to find the hardware to play it on, the game will also support resolutions up to 8K. For those with an NVIDIA RTX graphics card, it will also employ DLSS to help improve performance through AI-enhanced upscaling. You can check out the trailer below to see the impact these technologies can have on the visual experience.

Source: Press Release (Square Enix [2] – Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy)

Lastly for Square Enix, the release date for Life Is Strange: Remastered Collection has been announced as February 1, 2022. Players will get to experience Max's rewind ability and Chloe's quick-witted attitude with remastered visuals with an improved engine and lighting upgrades, and even new motion captured facial animation for Life is Strange. The Life is Strange: Before the Storm Remastered will include the game's Deluxe content, such as the Farewell episode and Zombie Crypt outfit. When it launches, the collection will be available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Google Stadia.

Source: Press Release (Square Enix [3] – Life is Strange: Remastered Collection)

Dying 2 Know: Episode 4 released this week from Techland, giving us the next glimpse into Dying Light 2, and with this episode we got a closer look at the game's setting of The City as well as the music recording process for Olivier Deriviere's compositions. It was also revealed that actress Rosario Dawson has lent her talent to the major in-game character Lawan, a woman seeking revenge on the people who wronged her, but through the player's choices she can become obsessed with her goals and rage, or develop into a nightrunner with the purpose of helping others.

Dying Light 2 is scheduled to launch on February 4 for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch for the Cloud Version. Originally the Switch version was going to come after the others, but perhaps with the recent delay to February, it will now be a simultaneous release across all of these platforms. For those Switch players interested in the series, Dying Light Platinum Edition will be coming to the Nintendo console on October 19.

Source: Press Releases (Techland – Dying Light 2)

Now for some non-gaming news and the first piece can be described as the end of an era as Silicon Lottery is shutting down on October 31. For those unaware, Silicon Lottery is a store front with the somewhat niche business of binning CPUs for overclocking potential, as well as de-lidding processors to apply superior thermal paste. Unfortunately as both AMD and Intel have made significant advances in boost technologies and both now employ solid TIM to connect the dies to the heat spreader, the market for this store has reduced. Additionally, the company has suffered from supply issues with significant delays for recent releases.

Though the store is shutting down, Silicon Lottery does note in its announcement that it could return in the future. It depends on the market and if we see overclocking headroom open up again or if the variation between parts increases in the future. Some parts today are binned versions of others, making the extra binning of Silicon Lottery less necessary for many, further reducing the niche the store served.

Source: Silicon Lottery

Lastly are some announcements from UL Benchmarks starting with an update to 3DMark that adds Steam achievements and trading cards, for those with a Steam copy. There are 17 of these new achievements and some old ones have been updated as well, giving owners a chance to unlock them again with newer benchmarks and test. Some were also removed for being too difficult or incompatible with modern hardware. As for the trading cards, there are six that can be earned with each featuring a character from the software's benchmarks. These have been rendered at a high resolution and you can even open the cards up to view the uncropped 1920x1080 version of the art.

The other announcement is that UL Benchmark's different tools will be ready for Windows 11 when it releases on October 5. There may be some minor updates so the UI and results files can properly detect the new OS, but 3DMark, PCMark 10, VRMark, UL Procyon, and Testdriver, the last two target professional users, are compatible with Windows 11, and in the case of PCMark 10, it is compatible with Microsoft Office 2021. In the future the company does intend to add support for Virtualization-based Security, VBS, a technology that can reduce performance and will be enabled with a fresh install of the operating system, but not when upgrading from Windows 10.

Source: UL Benchmarks [1] (3DMark Update) and [2] (Windows 11)