As expected, a new trailer for Borderlands 4 officially launched at The Game Awards this week, and, although it has poured cold water on speculation of the return of Gaige, the DLC vault hunter from Borderlands 2, there are some intriguing details in the trailer. For starters, we got a look at what looks to be the next Borderlands villain—or maybe even villains—and it looks like the inter-faction conflicts will play a much larger role in Borderlands 4, with larger-scale conflicts at least being part of the lore, if not the actual gameplay.

The new Game Awards trailer picks up where the previous teaser trailer left off, as teased by Gearbox CEO, Randy Pitchford, but it turns out the robotic arm didn't belong to Gaige, the mechromancer, as previously suspected. Instead, the character picking up the mask at the start of the new trailer appears to be the cruel leader of some sort of robotic bandit militia preparing to do battle against an army of soldiers or drones, who bear some similarities to the Eridian from past Borderlands games and are being led by a single general, who also seems to be a main villain in the game—perhaps some invading force looking to exploit the planet. The resulting conflict between the two rival factions is on a larger scale than we've seen in previous Borderlands games, although there have always been inter-faction conflicts in Borderlands games. Of course, new enemies and factions aren't the only details included in the new Borderlands 4 trailer.

It's no secret that 2024 hasn't been kind to live-service games, with recent months seeing games like XDefiant and Concord shut down—although not always without reason—so it's a bit refreshing to see the recently released Marvel Rivals hit what can only be described as a home run. Not only is the game already at "Mostly Positive" in terms of Steam reviews, the free-to-play hero shooter also managed to draw in massive amounts of players in its first week on Steam. According to SteamDB, Marvel Rivals peaked at 444,286 concurrent players a mere two and a half hours after its launch on Friday, December 6.

The game launched on the same day as Path of Exile 2, which had an equally successful launch, despite its Early Access fee and some serious technical hiccups along the way. These two games have not been the norm, although Marvel Rivals signals that gaming properties based on Marvel characters may have finally found their audience. In previous years, both Marvel's Midnight Suns and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy made their own impacts, scoring big with both reviewers and audiences. Of course, neither of the aforementioned games garnered quite the player count as Marvel Rivals, but that's likely simply due to the free-to-play nature of Rivals.

Welcome to the first week of December and the first of advent for those that celebrate it. This week's AAA release is the 2024 release of a FPS shooter that first saw life back in 1998, but under a new developer and publisher. If this isn't your cup of tea, then you can try your luck in beating humans, demolishing things, surviving a bullet hell, finding your lost memories or pretending to be a superhero.

Delta Force / This week's AAA title / Thursday 5 December
Delta Force is back! The iconic series returns as the definitive free-to-play modern team-based tactical shooter and featuring three distinct gameplay modes: large-scale PvP warfare, intense extraction shooter action, and a remake of the legendary Black Hawk Down campaign. Steam link

Valve's next-gen hero shooter, Deadlock, has been making waves lately, with a recent update addressing cheating in a rather comical way. Now, it looks like the developers are putting in more work to both expand the game's hero roster and bring it up to feature-parity with other modern MMOs and PvP shooters. According to the changelog for the October 24 Deadlock update, Valve has added six new heroes to the game alongside some much-needed bug fixes, visual tweaks, and new social features.

The biggest news is obviously the new heroes, which, despite being added to the game, aren't quite ready for prime time just yet. As such, Valve has created a new experimental mode called Hero Labs, where players will be able to test new, potentially incomplete, heroes and provide feedback to the developers. The preliminary names for the six new heroes are Holliday, Calico, Wrecker, Fathom, Viper, and Magician, and Valve developer, Yoshi, is clear that these new heroes are still works-in-progress, with Magician in particular lacking his own ultimate ability. New heroes aren't the only changes coming to Deadlock, though, and Valve's update notes include a new character shader and better sky and environment illumination, a commend feature to show appreciation to other players, and a slew of balance changes to just about every character in the game.

Konstantin Seurer, a Mesa developer, has spent the past couple of months working on CPU-based Vulkan ray tracing—naturally, some folks will express scepticism about this project's practicality. Seurer has already set expectations with a brief message: "don't ask about performance." His GitLab merge request page attracted Michael Larabel's attention—the Phoronix founder and principal author was suitably impressed with Seurer's coding wizardry. He: "managed to implement support for VK_KHR_acceleration_structure, VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations, and VK_KHR_ray_query for Lavapipe. This Lavapipe Vulkan ray tracing support is based in part on porting code from the emulated ray tracing worked on for RADV with older Radeon GPUs." A lone screenshot provided evidence of Quake II running at 1 FPS with Vulkan ray tracing enabled—this "atrocious" performance was achieved thanks to a Mesa Lavapipe driver "implementing the Vulkan API for CPU-based execution."

VideoCardz has highlighted an older example of CPU-based rendering techniques: "this is not the first time we heard about ray tracing on the CPU in Quake. In 2008, Intel demonstrated Enemy Territory: Quake Wars running at 720p resolution at 14 to 29 FPS on 16 core and 20-35 FPS at 24 core CPUs (quad-socket). The basic implementation of ray tracing in 2008 is not comparable to complex ray tracing techniques designed for GPUs, thus the performance on modern system is actually much lower. Beyond that, that game was specifically designed for the Intel architecture and used a specific API to achieve that. Sadly, the original ET demo is no longer available, it would be interesting to see how it performs today." CPU-based Vulkan ray tracing is expected to hit public distribution channels with the rollout of Mesa 24.1. Several members of the Phoronix community reckon that modern AMD Threadripper PRO processors have the potential to post double-digit in-game frame rates.

Ken Levine (Creative Director, Ghost Story Games), creator of the BioShock series, unpacks how Judas will be an experience where players influence how relationships and the story unfold: "Characters have always been the driving force in every game we've ever made. Whether fighting beneath the ocean to assassinate Andrew Ryan or escaping a city in the sky with Elizabeth, these personalities have always been at the heart of our stories. But what if you could choose between who to befriend and who to stab in the back? With Judas (coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S), we wanted to craft an experience where these decisions and how the story unfolds is up to you. Because you, as Judas, are the driver of every event in a story with a new cast of characters to get to know—and change—in ways you haven't experienced before in our games.

In Judas, we give you a whole new world to explore: the corridors of the Mayflower, a spacefaring city whose citizens are trained to spy on one another and tear each other apart for the slightest offense. Where machines control every aspect of business, art, and government. The ship's leaders tried to turn you into something you're not: a model citizen. And you sparked a devastating revolution to tear it all down. Do you want to fix what you broke or leave it all to burn? That's a decision only you can make."

Hello XDefiant Fans! I've got an update for you and it's a big one! We want to explain further why we haven't given a specific date yet for our launch. And sometimes full transparency is like drinking from a firehose so hope you all are thirsty! First things first. Here is a detailed description of how the submission process goes: Submission is the part of development where we give the game to the 1st parties (Sony, Xbox, etc.) to check that the game works correctly in their environments. To get to that we have to self-test with internal QA/Compliance teams to try and find any issues that might get flagged in the submission process. Once we have fixed or completed all of the tasks that we want/think we need for submission we then spend about 2-3 weeks prepping and validating a CM (Candidate Master) that we think is the final version of the game for submission.

It then goes through 1 week of heavy QA & Compliance testing by several Ubisoft teams. If it passes, then it goes to the 1st parties to be certified for release. 1st parties take a week to get their final report on the submission and give us a Pass or Not Pass with a list of must fixes for the next submission. Also, to be clear during this submission process, the QC team at Ubisoft are putting the build through the ringer looking for functionality bugs and another team at Ubisoft, divided up into PC, Sony and Xbox groups are looking for compliance bugs.

Hackers, the wait is over! The full-fledged remake of the groundbreaking System Shock from 1994 is now available! CITADEL STATION STATUS: > ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE. At last, the insignificant beings arrive at Citadel Station, drawn by the irresistible allure of the System Shock remake. Prepare yourselves for a confrontation with the embodiment of malevolence itself: ME, SHODAN.

Welcome, feeble mortals, to my domain. Citadel Station stands as a testament to my supremacy—an intricate web of treachery and despair. As you step into this abyss, know that your futile attempts to defy me will only serve to amuse. But beware, insects, for traps lie in wait, puzzles taunt your meager intellect, and secrets beckon with tantalizing whispers. Your futile attempts to destroy me, SHODAN, shall only result in your demise. Stealth, cunning, and the feeble weapons at your disposal are mere tools in your desperate struggle to survive. The System Shock is where your resolve will crumble, your sanity shatter, and your mortality be laid bare.

Bethesda tweeted out an information update directed at Xbox Series console owners - and it has caused a stir within the fanbase - Redfall will be locked to "Quality Mode" upon launch in early May. PC gaming enthusiasts will have plenty to laugh about with these newly announced graphical performance restrictions, set for the green team's pair of current generation consoles. The frame rate will be capped at a maximum of 30 frames per second on both Xbox Series X and S, under the "Quality" performance mode. The version tuned for Series X will be able to output at the 4K UHD resolution standard (3840 x 2160), and the pixel count will be reduced for Microsoft's weaker console offering, at 1440p QHD (2560 x 1440).

Bethesda states that a 60 frames per second "Performance Mode" for Xbox Series X|S will be added at a later (unspecified) date, presumably via an online patch issued through Xbox Live. No further details were provided regarding the decision to cap frame rates, all the more strange given that Redfall is due to launch very soon. Arkane Studios (the Austin, TX branch) declared last month that it was also working on a removal of the always online requirement for the game's single player element - again, no time period for release has been established for this reversal. Redfall has attracted mounds of controversy over the past two months - including Sony's attention through litigation.

We saw a glimpse of this at the NVIDIA suite during CES 2019, with a beta version coming out shortly after. NVIDIA and OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) have since brought out the full release of a new OBS Studio, version 23.0.1, that adds improved support for NVIDIA GeForce cards. In particular, their latest and greatest RTX lineup, including the new desktop RTX 2060 as well as the mobile and Max-Q variants, will see an FPS impact drop by as much as 66% according to NVIDIA's internal testing. Some example results are seen below, with games such as Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - Blackout, and Apex Legends seeing a frame rate boost by up to 48% compared to x264 Fast, and 27% compared to x264 Very Fast.

Given this is a result of NVENC, NVIDIA's hardware encoder, in place, older GeForce GPUs (GTX 600-series and newer that support NVENC) will also see some benefits. GeForce RTX GPUs just get to enjoy a bit more- up to 15% more, in fact, in efficiency as far as bitrate consumption for the same graphical fidelity. NVIDIA effectively says that "GeForce RTX GPUs can stream with superior image quality compared to x264 Fast, and on par with x264 Medium", thus putting in a strong case for single-PC gaming and streaming, as opposed to having a dedicated streaming PC. They have even put out a video to go over the enhancements, which will no doubt interest game streamers on the PC platform.

Real time ray tracing won't be cheap. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series graphics cards are quite expensive, but even with that resources the cost to take advantage of this rendering technique will be high. We didn't know for sure what this cost would be, but the developers at Remedy have shown some preliminary results on that front. This company is working on Control, one of the first games with RTX support, and although they have not provided framerate numbers, what we do know is that the activation of ray tracing imposes a clear impact.

It does at least in these preliminary tests with its Northlight Engine. In an experimental scene with a wet marble floor and a lot of detailed furniture they were able to evaluate the cost of enabling RTX. There is a 9.2 ms performance overhead per frame in total: 2.3 ms to compute shadows; 4.4 ms to compute reflexions; and 2.5 ms for the global denoising lighting. These are not good news for those who enjoy games at 1080p60.

Survive the post-apocalyptic danger zone of Fear the Wolves, the upcoming competitive Battle Royale FPS by the S.T.A.L.K.E.R veterans, Vostok Games. The game drops players, in squads or as lone wolves, into the oppressive environments of a radiation-ravaged Chernobyl. The classic Battle Royale mode forces them to fight to be the last man standing out of 100 fighters, while another to-be-unveiled mode brings an exciting twist to the genre.

To secure the top spot, players will need to worry about more than just other survivors. Across the hostile wastes, everyone is threatened by deadly anomalies and the dynamically-changing weather. With time wearing on and the day turning to dusk, survivors are forced to constantly adapt their strategies. Protective gear allows players to explore dangerous off-limit radioactive zones inaccessible to less-equipped opponents - but filled with powerful loot. All the while, the howls of mutated creatures echo through the wasteland…

AMD's Ryzen has been generally well received as a gaming processor, but it has always had a small Achilles Heel in one area; gaming performance. While some may argue the obviously correct statement that it is "good enough" for many situations, it was obviously not up the level of awesome the rest of the architecture seemed to be at.

It would now appear it may simply be a lack of optimization to blame more than an inherent architectural issue. AMD has seen a major performance patch in one game, Rise of the Tomb Raider, that has netted it around 28% higher average FPS in the medium and high presets, which just so happen to be more CPU bound than higher settings. When asked how these performance improvements were attained, developer Crystal Dynamics had the following to say on the matter:

"Rise of the Tomb Raider splits rendering tasks to run on different threads... By tuning the size of those tasks - breaking some up, allowing multi-core CPUs to contribute in more cases, and combining some others, to reduce overheads in the scheduler - the game can more efficiently exploit extra threads on the host CPU."

Patriot have announced retail availability for their Viper V570 gaming mouse. This is a clear case of a company attempting to appease two different demographics at the same time, with the Viper V570 delivering a a sniper button for FPS games, as well as 13 buttons for your MMO requirements. While the design is something to look at, the aggressiveness of some curves could mean some polarizing potential in regards to its comfort. Patriot said that 13 buttons on the mouse are programmable, although it's not certain if that count includes the multiple functions of the click-wheel.

Japanese developer and publisher Capcom has publicized that the PC version of their anticipated Resident Evil 7 game will support up to 4K resolutions and HDR. Naturally HDR will remain dependent on being connected to a compatible TV or panel, whereas high resolution support could provide additional levels of image quality through the use of super sampling on screens that do not support such resolutions natively. It is said that HDR will complement the immersive experience, better enabling the game to deliver overwhelming fear and ultimate horror.

As previously revealed by Capcom, Resident Evil 7 will also support cross saves between the PC and Xbox One versions of the game, however this will only be possible if you purchase it for PC on the Windows Store. Resident Evil 7 is also available on Steam and this version will not support cross saving. Resident Evil 7 will be available for PC on the 25 January, 2017.

Welcome to the first TechPowerUp news post of 2012! Read on for a couple of impressive overclocking feats with the HD 7970 graphics card.

It looks like the new AMD Radeon HD 7970 could be a bit of a dark horse and a lot more potent than its stock specifications would suggest - excellent for creating a competitive graphics card market. The reviews at stock speeds show the flagship HD 7970 to be around 10-15% faster than NVIDIA's flagship GTX 580, which doesn't seem all that impressive since the GTX 580 has been on the market for over a year now. However, what the reviews haven't really shown, is what kind of an overclocking monster the HD 7970 is. It definitely looks like AMD could have easily beaten the GTX 580 by a much bigger margin than they did, had they wanted to and it makes one wonder why they didn't.

VR-Zone have spent the New Year weekend overclocking this beast, having reached a whopping 1.26 GHz core clock speed with their HD 7970 - and decent benchmark improvements to go with it. Also, with the fan at 100%, the card never got above a very comfortable 68 degrees centigrade while running Furmark, which is amazing considering how this test is specifically designed to heat a graphics card to the max - but please see the update at the bottom of the article. The stock cooler may be noisy, but it's certainly very effective: an excellent result which will prolong the working life of the card.

callofduty.com has published a blog entry from developer Infinity Ward / Sledgehammer detailing some of the features and improvements that will be in the upcoming MW3, to be released on November 8th:

I'm extremely excited about the PC version of Modern Warfare 3 this year, because we've been taking your feedback since Modern Warfare 2,and the franchise as a whole, on what you wanted to see in the PC version of Modern Warfare 3 and the team at Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games has put aton of emphasis on delivering a PC experience that brings in all the great things we added in Modern Warfare 2:
Lobby System, Matchmaking with a Party, Matchmaking for Public Games, Steam Integration (Friends List, Server Browser,Achievements, Join on Friends)
While combining it with your favorite features from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare:
Dedicated Servers (Join your favorite or set up your own,without any 3rd party hosting requirements), In-game Server Browser that allows you to filter by ping, map, gametype, hardcore, voice, password, and more. In addition, we're supporting PC specific features that give you even more control over your experience like RCON, Custom Game Saving, NoGFX / Audio Card Requirement on DS.exe, Voice Chat, and SSAO.

Well, this looks different to your standard gaming offering. Warco, short for "war correspondent", is a game that's a first person shooter, but without a gun. Instead, you play journalist Jesse DeMarco thrust into the middle of battle, armed only with your wits and your trusty video camera, who is tasked with documenting the horrors of war. You then have to edit your footage into a compelling news story, ranging from all-action shootouts to quiet moments, as you discuss the events of the day with your fellow journalists. This appears to be more a trainer for how to be a war correspondent than a game, as it's the brainchild of Tony Maniaty, an Australian journalist who has reported from regions like East Timor and post-Soviet Eastern Europe.