January 17 will bring Dynasty Warriors: Origins, a thrilling new addition to the Dynasty Warriors series to PC, PlayStation 5 & Xbox, and we recently had the opportunity to play the tactical hack-and-slash action ahead of its release.

The gripping tale of a "nameless hero"
Dynasty Warriors: Origins follows the drama surrounding China's Three Kingdoms period, from the Yellow Turban Rebellion to the Battle of Red Cliffs. At the beginning of the game, the protagonist gets caught up in a battle with Guan Yu against the troops of corrupt officials. The Yellow Turban Rebellion was never portrayed in detail in previous installments of the series. Still, this game goes into depth around the origins and woes of the Yellow Turbans, as well as the perspectives of each general belonging to the defeated troops.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is out now on Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation 4|5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC (via Epic Games Store & the Ubisoft Store), and Amazon Luna. An all-new adventure set in a milieu of Persian mythology and history, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a 2.5D action-adventure that casts players as Sargon, youngest member of the elite, superhero-like Immortals. Armed with acrobatic combat skills and an ever-growing arsenal of time powers, Sargon explores the mythical Mount Qaf in search of the kidnapped Prince Ghassan, and gradually unravels the dark secret at the heart of the mountain's time curse.

Inspired by Metroidvanias, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown invites players to explore a vast citadel complex and its outlying biomes, including forests, caves, snowy peaks, and much more. Developed by Ubisoft Montpellier - the studio that also produced Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends - the game builds on the ultra-responsive, highly varied platforming action that the Rayman games established - as well as their tradition of spike- and trap-filled pathways that sometimes leave little room for error. Demanding quick reflexes, it delivers performance to match, with all platforms targeting at least 60 frames per second.

NVIDIA has released its newest Hotfix Driver 531.58 which is based on the latest Game Ready Driver 531.41, but brings fixes for The Last of Us Part 1 game that may randomly crash on GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards. It also fixes stability issues in Assassin's Creed Origins game, and corruption issues when FXAA is enabled in Resident Evil 4 Remake.

This hotfix addresses the following issues:

• [The Last of Us Part 1] Game may randomly crash during gameplay on GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs [4031676]
• Assassin's Creed Origins may have stability issues when using 531.18. [4008770]
• [Resident Evil 4 Remake] Corruption in the game when FXAA enabled [4051903]

GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 531.58 can be found here and is available for Windows 10 x64 and Windows 11 x64.

HyperX, the gaming division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., today announced the release of the HyperX Alloy Origins and Alloy Origins Core gaming keyboards. The Alloy Origins and Alloy Origins Core mechanical keyboards feature the new tactile HyperX Aqua mechanical switches built for performance and longevity with an 80 million click rating. Both keyboards include RGB exposed backlit keys for brighter illumination with radiant lighting effects and five adjustable brightness levels. The Alloy Origins keyboard is available now and the tenkeyless Alloy Origins Core is available for pre-order.

The Alloy Origins and Alloy Origins Core gaming keyboards include an aluminium body with an aircraft-grade brushed finished for durability and stability, plus a space-saving layout to maximize desktop real estate for mouse movement. The Alloy Origins Core tenkeyless gaming keyboard is geared for users seeking a compact form factor and more room for mouse movements. Both keyboards are supported by HyperX NGENUITY software with advanced customization features for lighting, macros and customable per-key lighting effects. The USB Type-C to USB Type-A keyboard cable is also detachable on both designs.

HyperX, the gaming division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., today introduced a new addition to its award-winning lineup of gaming keyboards - HyperX Alloy Origins Core. Featuring HyperX Red mechanical switches, the new keyboard is built for performance and longevity with a shorter actuation point and 80 million click rating.

Alloy Origins Core maximizes desktop real estate with a space-saving tenkeyless layout for ultimate mouse movement. The keyboard features RGB exposed backlit keys for brighter illumination with radiant lighting effects and five adjustable brightness levels to enhance gaming, day or night. For added durability, stability and flexibility, Alloy Origins Core is built with a full aircraft-grade aluminium body and the USB Type-C to USB Type-A keyboard cable is detachable.

We took a close look at HyperX's new keyboard, the Alloy Origins, earlier this week, and were left impressed with it. The company had sent along also a set of their new replacement keycap set for us to check out, and this seemed like a great product to trial out a shorter article format to cover products that otherwise would not merit multi-page reviews. Let us know what you feel about such posts, and if you would like us to expand coverage accordingly.

The HyperX-branded PBT plastic keycaps with doubleshot injected legends use the so-called "pudding" construction, with the top 1/3 of the keycap sides only left opaque to allow for more light to go through. The black and white set was originally sold beginning late last year, and there must have been enough demand for HyperX to dedicate a new SKU for an all-white edition. Read past the break for more on the new keycap set, including fit and finish on the Alloy Origins keyboard too.

HyperX at COMPUTEX 2019 announced they've developed new, in-house mechanical switches they'll start employing on their products. HyperX says these are rated for up to 80 million clicks, and that they're brighter than the competition's offerings due to their DIP design. The switches feature a 1.8 mm actuation point, and a short 3.8 mm travel.

While seeing DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) claims used for the removal of copyrighted content on Youtube and the like is a common occurrence, seeing it used to take a game off digital store shelves is still a relatively new concept. However, that is precisely what happened to Stardock's Star Control: Origins which released back on September 20th, 2018. The DMCA claim itself comes from exclusive copyright holders Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford who were two of the original game designers that worked on the series' first and second installments back in the early 1990s for Accolade. Considering Stardock bought the brand, trademark and publishing rights in 2013, this particular DMCA claim may not be legitimate. Even so, the game has been pulled, oddly enough the DLC remains available for purchase.

While Paul and Fred are claiming exclusive copyright in regards to the original titles as well as any related materials present in said games, they also claim similar copyright in regards to Star Control 3. Even if they do have some form of a legitimate copyright claim, Stardock's title does not use characters or story threads from the previous games and is based in a separate standalone universe. Taking into account Stardock's ownership of the brand, the DMCA claim appears to be nothing more than a form of harassment directed at Stardock. Worse yet, considering the resulting loss of income due to the DMCA claim, the company will be laying off some developers assigned to Star Control: Origins. Considering this legal dispute has been ongoing for some time you can view Stardocks side of the story on a separate webpage. Meanwhile, you can see the original DMCA takedown at the source provided below.

Today, gamers around the world will face off against an ancient, forgotten evil power in the highly anticipated Strange Brigade. AMD and Rebellion have worked closely to ensure smooth, immersive gameplay on Radeon RX Graphics in Strange Brigade.

• FreeSync 2 HDR: Brings low-latency, high-brightness pixels and a wide color gamut to High Dynamic Range (HDR) content for PC displays, enabling Strange Brigade to preserve details in scenes that may otherwise be lost due to limited contrast ratios. Ultimately, it lets bright scenes to appear much brighter and dark scenes to be truly dark - all while keeping details visible.
• Asnychronous Compute: Strange Brigade by default has asynchronous compute enabled improving GPU utilization, input latency, efficiency and performance by tapping into GPU resources that would otherwise be underutilized. For example, running various screen space effects during the shadow map rendering.

Today, Ubisoft announced that The Hidden Ones, the first downloadable content (DLC) for Assassin's Creed Origins, will launch on January 23rd, 2018, on all platforms. Ubisoft also revealed release dates for upcoming Assassin's Creed Origins post-launch content, including season pass content and free add-on content, available to all players. Players can continue their journey through Ancient Egypt with a wide variety of content, including several hours of new storyline expansions and quests, timed events and customization items.

DLC 1 - The Hidden Ones: This story-driven expansion builds upon the growth of the Brotherhood, taking players four years after the events of Assassin's Creed Origins, as they clash with an occupying Roman force in a new region of the world, the Sinai. This expansion will increase the level cap to 45, allowing players to continue to upgrade and customize their character. Players will have access to four new Legendary weapons, a new outfit, two new mounts and multiple new weapons, as well as two new levels for all crafted gear. The Hidden Ones DLC is available for all season pass owners or can be purchased separately on January 23, 2018.

Steam has revealed the top selling/highest grossing games on its platform for the year 2017, and with come some surprises, and some non-surprises as well. The distinction between top selling and highest grossing is a needed one, if you look at the top Platinum tier. There are two free-to-play games on it, which really isn't much when you consider that the category itself contains 12 titles. Still, it does go to show how correct monetization of free-to-play games leads to impressive earnings for companies. Joining those two titles are the usual multiplayer galore of titles. The hit phenomenon Player Unknown's Battlegrounds stars in 4th place, behind H1Z1, Grand Theft Auto V, and Rocket League. When it comes to single-player games, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt holds its own on 6th place in the Platinum list, a remarkable feat if one considers the game was originally released in May 2015, and hasn't seen added content for a year now.

Metacritic has been invaded by a veritable flood of what appear to be semi-sentient robots, spamming the website with favorable Assassin's Creed Origins reviews. This isn't a common occurrence, but isn't unheard of either - there have been a number of scandals regarding fake reviews on Metacritic and other review score aggregators, with some publishers having even been brought to the center of the discussion.

The semi-sentient part derives from the fact that usernames are obviously a mashing-up of keyboard keys, and no amount of effort has been put towards hiding the fact that these are fake scores. The wording is practically the same, as sometimes even the English in these is of dubious quality. This type of actions usually hurt more a games' reception than help it, if done badly, as these reviews are. So if the idea is to improves Assassin's Creed Origins in the eyes of potential buyers, certainly the fact that these are clearly fake reviews will affect perception negatively. This reminds this editor of those Chinese review farms that were reported some time ago, where entire companies were created that devoted employees towards simply posting positive reviews for apps and programs, while being paid to do so.