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Ark: Survival Ascended players are currently enjoying Aberration Ascended, but a strange bug is resulting in some fun, if somewhat confusing, overpopulation problems. The latest expansion for the beloved survival game features one of the most unique and popular maps, shifting the action underground into a series of gigantic caves and tunnels. Within this space, survivors can discover all manner of oddities, but a bizarre addition that no one was expecting is the amount of Paraceratherium running around the place, even in zones that should be marked as "safe" spawns. View the full article

Let's ***** into the A18 Pro first – the chip that powers the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max models. Built on a 3nm process, it packs a 6-core CPU setup with two performance cores and four efficiency ones. It promises a 15% performance uplift over last year's A17... Read Entire Article View the full article

****** and taxes remain constant, the sun rises and sets each day, and I must write about every bit of Total War: Warhammer 3 news until the end of time. No-one is making me, I must add. I simply cannot help myself. Every addition is one step closer to us getting an official Clan Skurvy. Creative Assembly just put out a new video going into more details about what to expect from the strategy game’s next DLC. Here’s a roundup of the last one to get you up to speed before I start frothing like a pint of Bugman’s. That was a Warhammer reference! From Warhammer! Read more View the full article

Enlarge / The cool racing stripe means it's faster. (credit: Sony) [/url] Sony today announced the PlayStation 5 Pro, a mid-generation hardware upgrade that will play the same game library as 2020's PlayStation 5, but with higher frame rates and better resolution than on the original system. The new units will be available on Nov. 7 for a price of $699.99, Sony said. The hardware will come complete with 2TB of solid state storage (up from 1TB on the original PS5), but without an Ultra HD Blu-Ray disc drive, which will only be available as an optional accessory sold separately, Sony said in a press release. In a video presentation Tuesday, Sony's Mark Cerny said PS5 developers "******* more graphics performance" in order to deliver the visuals they want at a frame rate of 60 fps. This leads to a difficult decision for players between the higher resolution of "fidelity" mode and the smoother frame rates of "performance" mode (with three-quarters of players choosing the latter, according to Cerny). The goal of the PS5 Pro, Cerny says, is delivering "the graphics that the game creators aspire to, at the high frame rates players typically prefer." To do this, the new system will sport a larger GPU that's "up to 45% faster rendering," Cerny said, with 67 percent more compute units and 28 percent faster video RAM than the PS5. This will allow for "almost fidelity-like graphics at 'performance' frame rates" of 60 frames per second in many existing PS5 games, Cerny said. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

One player of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has used real life step tracking technology and an inclined treadmill to simulate walking The 7,000 Steps up the Throat of the World to the Greybeards of High Hrothgar. YouTuber ShakeMistake uploads videos which combine fitness and gaming and through the Stepl app and, after already walking three hours from Riften to Solitude, decided to tackle Skyrim's famous 7,000 steps. Video game technology of 2011 limited the number of steps actually on the mountain path, however, and in reality there's only 700 to 800 steps to be climbed. ShakeMistake therefore had to make some changes before he could authentically simulate the route. I Hiked Up the 7000 Steps with Lore-Accurate Scaling, with an Incline Treadmill...As Requested! byu/ShakeMistake_ inskyrim .reddit-embed-wrapper iframe { margin-left: 0 !important; } Unable to make the game world larger to add more steps, ShakeMistake instead reduced their character down to a third of the size. They also set up a treadmill on an incline to emulate the feeling of actually climbing a mountain, and with that set off on the journey. Unfortunately, the number still didn't come to 7,000 exactly. ShakeMistake walked through the doors of High Hrothgar around the 5,630 mark but kept going, as the mountain actually goes much further. They eventually reached the very top at around 8,200 steps, and to satisfy the canon of it all deduced that, ****** a good few hundred steps for all the flat surfaces along the way, the journey would be around 7,000 steps after all. With The Elder Scrolls 6 is still several years away, Skyrim players are having to keep themselves entertained in wild and wacky ways like this. New technology is certainly a popular way of doing so, with one player creating a mod which lets their Twitch chat voice NPCs and another adding haptic feedback suits to an already $15,000 set up, letting them feel real pain when hurt in game. Speedruns are another popular method of keeping Skyrim interesting, and one player recently set a new world record by reaching Level 80 and defeating the infamous Ebony Warrior in under 10 minutes. The most sentimental of fans, meanwhile, booted up their old Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s to "retire" their original characters, showing how much Skyrim has remained in player consciousness in its more than a decade on the market. In our 9/10 review of the beloved RPG, IGN said: "Skyrim is a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced." Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day. View the full article

This has been a hard review to write. Not because I don't know what to say, but because every time I dip back into Satisfactory to look up an item name or confirm some detail, I find myself checking in on the state of my workshop, just for a moment, and then several hours have suddenly flown by. That’s the magic of this seemingly benign, inexplicably alluring factory simulator. Whether I’m pulling my hair out trying to troubleshoot a problem on the factory floor or running away from very disrespectful fireball-spitting aliens, every moment spent in this beautifully complex simulator has been worthwhile. Combining the creativity and exploration of Minecraft with the spreadsheet-inducing planning and optimization of Factorio, Satisfactory is not only the best game I’ve played this year, but my favorite automation game of all time – and that’s without even having reached its final engineering challenges after going hard on a fresh world in its 1.0 build for more than 90 hours. Unless the final stretch of leveling up my factory takes an unexpectedly nightmarish turn for the worse, so far Satisfactory has been an unbelievably good time. Satisfactory is an immediately compelling factory simulator where you and up to three friends are dropped on an alien planet and told you need to establish a base and produce increasingly complicated materials and launch them into outer space to appease your boss. In order to do so, you’ll need to harvest natural resources, develop new technologies, and become a master of conveyor belts, pipelines, and eventually even locomotive operations as you triumphantly grow your tiny headquarters into a planet-encompassing labyrinth of moving parts. More and more is asked of you as you go, and what starts out as a simple process of gathering leaves and mining iron to make basic tools quickly spirals into a convoluted whirlwind of refineries, manufacturing plants, and nuclear power grids, where you’re producing everything from computer chips to rocket fuel. Each breakthrough moment organically leads to the next mountain to climb. If you're wondering how in the heck assembly line optimization could possibly be fun, I understand your confusion. But in the same way that something like No Man’s Sky gives you a ton of creative freedom while providing irresistible goals to chase along the way, Satisfactory never stops giving you exciting new reasons to keep playing I cannot fathom the number of times I promised myself I’d log off after I tweaked just one more thing only to find myself still tinkering away hours later. Each breakthrough moment, like figuring out how oil refineries work and starting the production of plastic, organically leads to the next mountain to climb, like crafting a rifle and producing ammo with the byproducts of said refineries. Before you know it, you hear those alarming morning chirps from birds outside your window and realize you’ve made a mistake. Managing ever more complex factories can be pretty daunting at times, but Satisfactory does an absolutely stellar job of nudging you to take small, manageable steps with its checklist of projects to tackle, and in no time at all you and your friends are managing sprawling operations that would have seemed unfathomable at the start. The earliest factory I built began as a few buildings scattered about the untainted wilderness, which quickly spiraled into a horrendous and disorderly web of nonsensically crisscrossing conveyor belts that looked like a bowl of wet noodles (naturally, I dubbed the settlement Spaghettysburg). That amateurish anarchy might be unintuitive and less than optimal, but hey, it gets the job done, and I victoriously delivered my eminent Spaghettysburg address to my co-op partners as we launched the fruits of our labor into space amid the mess of mechanical pasta. The real fun is in watching your mini society evolve. Later on, my crew’s creations became more structured and efficient, like our coastal oil refinery dubbed Gas Town or our railway system, which we suspended in the air for maximum orderliness. The real fun is in watching your mini society evolve as you solve progressively more difficult engineering challenges, such as optimizing and expanding your power grid to fuel more facilities so you can produce more complicated parts, or running the math on the ideal ore output of a mining rig to figure out the most efficient way to smelt it into ingots. And you don't have to be a spreadsheet geek like me or ***** deep into third-party wikis to simply see a conveyor belt full of unused materials backing up and feel the irresistible urge to do something about it. As you’re required to make dozens of different components and juggle a large number of demanding processes in order to complete the Milestone deliveries that make up Satisfactory's larger progression, you’re constantly switching to wherever your attention is needed most, solving problems and using the new technology you create along the way to make your life easier. For example, early on, I built comically long conveyor belts to move resources from other parts of the world to my main factory, but after unlocking new technologies and manufacturing more advanced parts, I was able to automatically transport resources with trucks, trains, and even flying drones, making things faster, cleaner, and frankly, less chaotic in the process. Going from an unwashed, melee-swinging, conveyor belt-abusing troglodyte to a jetpacking, ****-toting man of tomorrow is immensely satisfying, and makes each hard-fought battle of electrical wiring well worth the trouble. When you’re not juggling the hundreds of things to do with your factory operations, you’ll take to the vast open world to explore the map, battle beasties, evade poison gas and irradiated zones, find hidden treasures, and befriend ******-looking lizard doggos to serve as your loyal companions. Opting for a single, hand-crafted world instead of the more common procedurally generated areas found in some of its peers, Satisfactory’s map has a diverse set of regions with their own vibes and valuable resources to plunder that are awesome to explore and even better to colonize with your hungry machines. As you gain access to new tools, you’ll get better equipment to take out into exploration, which then gives you access to even more areas. For example, crafting a gas mask lets you navigate zones overrun with poisonous clouds, unlocking the jetpack allows you scale cliffs that would otherwise be difficult to reach, and researching explosives allows you to blast through troublesome rocks so you can delve into caves and other blocked off areas. Each of these developments completely changes what’s possible while out in the world, which in turn allows you to acquire better materials to bring back to your base, creating a loop of building and exploration that just doesn’t quit. It goes from great to downright amazing once you add friends. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of an alien planet if there weren't hostile creatures everywhere who are quite interested in seeing your violent demise. You’ll unlock a few melee weapons and some basic guns and ammo, but combat isn’t anything special as it clearly isn’t the intended focus of Satisfactory. It only took me a few hours before I realized I’d seen just about everything combat had to offer, and while it’s not actively bad, it’s just a bit forgettable when the building and exploration are so great. The alien wildlife mostly seems to be there to provide a touch of danger whenever I go looking for new resources, but it's still a bit disappointing that there only seem to be four types of creatures to encounter, each with a few different variations that make them more deadly but not any more interesting. Playing Satisfactory alone can be a lot of fun, but once you add friends to the mix it goes from great to downright amazing. Not only does building with friends allow you to get more done quicker and bounce ideas off one another, but you can each take off to a different part of the map and still work towards shared goals by building infrastructure to transport goods and players from place-to-place. One especially cool aspect is that, once you unlock supernatural alien technology that defies the laws of physics (which happens surprisingly early rather than being wasted on the endgame alone), you can begin sharing resources with one another remotely by uploading your bounty to the Dimensional Depot, which anyone can pull items directly into their inventory from at any time. This creates a really cool dynamic, where a player you haven’t seen in the world for several hours can pipe up to ask for help with something, and you can virtually hand them the resources they need to solve their problem. If there’s one real issue with Satisfactory, it’s that sometimes its ambition exceeds its grasp, leading to a pretty steady stream of performance issues and bugs (at least on the pre-release 1.0 build I had access to for this review). Crashes were a regular occurrence for my crew, especially for those joining my world for multiplayer, and as your factory grows to an absurd size and complexity, you’ll start to see pop-in, weird textures, and framerate dips with increasing frequency. I played on three separate PCs of varying levels of power, and though each could run Satisfactory fine at the outset, by the end only my Ryzen 9 7950X3D/RTX 4090 could run it without at least moderate issues. You’ll likely need a fairly powerful rig to run this one with consistency, but even when it struggled a bit on two of my PCs, those problems were only ever an annoyance rather than anything so severe that they made me want to stop playing. I’ve played over 90 hours of Satisfactory's 1.0 release, and I already have a pretty good idea of where I stand with it at this point, but I’ve still got a final round of uber-challenging endgame tasks to complete before I’ve seen it all and can confidently deliver my verdict. For now, I can tell you that there’s a whole heckuva lot to enjoy. Now, if you don’t mind, I really should get back to it – these production pipelines aren’t going to optimize themselves! View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Enlarge / Where are the gentle creatures and native plants you first saw when you landed? More importantly, could this conveyer belt run on a shorter path? (credit: Coffee Stain Studios) [/url] The company that compels you to industrialize an untouched alien planet in Satisfactory, FICSIT, is similar to Portal's Aperture Science or Fallout's Vault-Tec. You are a disposable employee, fed misinformation and pushed to ignore awful or incongruous things, all for the greater good of science, profit, or an efficient mixture of the two. And yet even FICSIT was a bit concerned about how deep into the 1.0 release of Satisfactory I had fallen. I got a warning that I had been playing for two hours straight. While FICSIT approved of hard work, it was important to have some work-life balance, it suggested. Friends of mine had told me that they had to stop playing Factorio when it began to feel like an unpaid part-time job. Given a chance to check out Satisfactory, I presumed, like I always do, That Could Never Be Me. Folks, it was definitely me. I'm having a hard time writing this post, not because it's hard to describe or recommend Satisfactory. I just stayed up very late "reviewing" it, woke up thinking about it, and am wondering whether enough friends would want to join me that I should set up a private server. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Flopping isn’t free anymore. If you’ve been trying to flop since you got NBA 2K25, but you can’t, don’t worry, it’s not you. The system has changed this year, but we’ll show you how to flop in NBA 2K25 in no time. Last year, you had to double-tap either B on Xbox or Circle on PlayStation to flop. Things work a lot differently in NBA 2K25, though. You don’t need to tap anything. What you need to do is spend virtual currency. Yes, flopping is now gated behind a paywall, if it is a very nominative one. But that’s not all. There are now several steps to flopping in NBA 2K25 that require their own mini-tutorial. View the full article

Like past Pocket colorways, the GBC-inspired collection will be available in limited quantities. | Image: Analogue Analogue is back with another collection of new colorways for its Pocket handheld, now drawing inspiration from Nintendo’s first ****** screen handheld. The Pocket GBC Colors Edition introduces six new colors — teal, berry, kiwi, grape, and dandelion — which were the five launch colors of the Game Boy ****** in 1988, plus a gold version based on a special edition of the GBC created for Pokémon Gold. The GBC Colors Edition collection will be available to preorder in limited quantities starting on September 12th at 8AM PT / 11AM ET for $249.99 each, with shipping expected within 24 to 48 hours. To ensure the new collection was closely matched in ****** to Nintendo’s original hardware, the company used the highest-quality “equipment, tools,... Continue reading… View the full article

Image: Sony The PS5 Pro is official. After months of leaks, Sony just announced a more powerful PS5 console during a special technical presentation. Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PS5 console, revealed says the PS5 Pro improves on the original console in three key ways: a larger GPU, advanced ray tracing, and custom AI-driven upscaling. The PS5 Pro will launch on November 7th, priced at $699.99, and it looks similar to the slim version of the PS5 — just like recent leaks suggested it would. It has three stripes down the side, and appears to lack a disc drive. The hardware upgrades inside will result in 45 percent faster rendering, according to Cerny, and should improve the detail of certain games and frame rates. One of the key reasons for... Continue reading… View the full article

Harry Potter Quidditch Champions is a heartfelt love letter to the most iconic sport in the witchcraft and wizarding world. But while soaring above it all should be freeing and spellbinding, the feeling of being trapped on a broom is inescapable and gets old faster than Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. It’s as clear as a sunny day on the Quidditch pitch that Unbroken Studios understands the sport and knows how to make it wildly entertaining at first. The problem is that Quidditch Champions‘ novelty wears off quickly when you’re confined to the pitch and can’t explore the world beyond. View the full article

Speaking on journalist Simon Parkin's My Perfect Console podcast, Deering, who was Sony's computer entertainment president from 1995 to 2005 and president of Codemasters from 2006 to 2010, gave a somewhat controversial opinion on the huge number of layoffs being seen in the games industry. Read Entire Article View the full article

It's hard to pull me away from Bloons TD 6, but Terrorformer TD has managed to do it. A tower defense game where you constantly tweak the battlefield as time goes on. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

The upcoming remaster-slash-update for New World, Aeternum, is available for free in the upcoming open beta. If you want to jump into the playtest as soon as possible, the game has a pre-load feature you can use. Here’s when and how to pre-load the New World: Aeternum open beta. View the full article

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge News of a Playstation 5 Pro could arrive right on time for the holiday season. Continue reading… View the full article

The full release of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is finally here, letting even more battle brothers join the ****** to save humanity in the grim darkness of the far future. Paired with fellow Ultramarines on a quest to fend off an alien invasion force, players will have six different classes to choose from when fighting back against the hordes of Tyranids and other alien threats. Whether choosing a defensive bastion to protect their teammates or a lone wolf ******* class to pick off threats, each class has its own limits that can be the difference between ****** and victory. View the full article

A report recently claimed that Sony might be moving Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse to 2027, but the series' composer has set the record straight. Pardoning the pun there in that first line, yesterday industry insider Jeff Sneider shared in his (paywalled) column The Insneider that the third and final entry in the Spider-Verse trilogy, Beyond the Spider-Verse, which currently doesn't have a release date is now being slated for 2027, and that most of the film has been scrapped for creative reasons. Beyond the Spider-Verse was originally slated for release on March 29, 2024, though was delayed in part due to the writer's strike last year, but also because it sounded like it wouldn't be ready production-wise anyway. A 2027 release would obviously be a three year long delay, and would mean it was releasing four years after its predecessor, Across the Spider-Verse. However, it seems like Sneider's information wasn't entirely accurate, as the composer for the trilogy of films Daniel Pemberton took to Twitter to dispel any speculation around the claim. "Don’t really ever want to weigh in on this sort of stuff BUT would you ever believe there could sometimes be stuff on the internet that might not always be particularly accurate? Hmmmm…" wrote Pemberton. Read more View the full article

If you want to put a stop to Doctor *****’s scheming, you must work through many unique story quests in Fortnite. These tasks involve completing specific quests like tossing common items at Doomstadt. With so many items available around the map, it can be tricky to figure out what common items actually are. This task is easy enough once you know what it’s asking you to do, so here’s how to toss common items at Doomstadt in Fortnite. View the full article

Following its release on September 9, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has already become a big hit on Steam, reaching the highest concurrent player peak ever recorded for a Warhammer 40K title on the platform. Moreover, both long-time fans and new players have been enjoying Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, leading to a "very positive" rating on Steam. View the full article

There was a lot of controversy last year around whether Dave the Diver counts as an indie game after it was nominated at The Game Awards. The consensus seemed to be 'no', something that director Jaeho Hwang himself agreed with, but now developer Mintrocket is actually going independent. Playing the long game, eh? View the full article

Developed by Knight Shift Games with publishing by Playtonic Friends, Elsie is a fresh and very colourful looking love letter to action-platformers with a roguelike and it looks truly awesome. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Star Wars Outlaws has its first major patch. Title update 1.1.2 weighs in at 1.92GB on PlayStation 5, 2.25GB on Xbox Series X and S, and 1.89GB on PC. The patch notes, published to Ubisoft’s website, begins by thanking fans “for the amazing positivity and support following the launch of Star Wars Outlaws! Your passion, love for Kay, Nix, our open world and all your amazing creations through our Photo mode has been a real inspiration for the whole team.” The patch focuses on early feedback to address various issues and PC performance, as well as overall stability, Ubisoft said. Additionally, cross progression and saves through Ubisoft Connect are now available. But the highlight is an improvement to what Ubisoft called “some challenging stealth moments.” With this patch, it is now less likely to be detected while rolling, and the level of detection is adjusted depending on location. Creative director Julian Gerighty had admitted Outlaws’ instant fail stealth missions were "incredibly punishing" and signaled they’d be fixed soon. "For me, that is a mistake, and this is something that we're going to work on improving," he said. "I don't think it means removing the fail state completely, but I do think there are millions of low hanging fruits where we can make it so much more enjoyable and understandable." "I think it feels unfair. And believe it or not, this wasn't our intention. This is more of something that crept in in the last week or so, and that we're correcting already for a patch that's coming out maybe in 10 days." That patch, out now, also means the Old School Cool trophy can now be unlocked for PS5 players, so they can finally platinum the game. “As we continue to work on future updates for Star Wars Outlaws, we will keep on carefully listening to your feedback and experience in the game,” Ubisoft said. “Thank you for your support and see you in the outer rim!” Star Wars Outlaws’ commercial performance is the subject of much debate. Last week, Ubisoft’s share price plunged following the launch of the game, which some analysts predicted will come in below expectations. And this week, a ********* investor in Ubisoft called on the company to go private as its share price fell further. Ubisoft has yet to comment. IGN's Star Wars Outlaws review returned a 7/10. We said: "Star Wars Outlaws is a fun intergalactic heist adventure with great exploration, but it’s hindered by simple stealth, repetitive combat, and a few too many bugs at launch." Star Wars Outlaws - Title Update 1.1.2 patch notes: New Feature Cross-progression and saving is now available between all platforms through Ubisoft Connect. More info on this here. Performance & Stability Various ****** fixes and stability improvements across all platforms.PC performance improvements and optimization across the game.Improvement for FPS drops during some scenes.VRAM Improvement.Higher graphic fidelity when using ray reconstruction and frame generation technologies. UI, HUD and Settings Game version will now be visible from the settings.Quality mode will be set as default on console.Corrected default settings for motion blur on quality mode for consoles.HDR Brightness values have been modified. Graphics Various graphics and lighting fixes.All cinematics now supported on ultra-wide screens. Audio Fix for potential music loss when fast-travelling in Toshara. Worlds, Fauna and Flora Many additional idle animations for NPC have been added across all planets.Fixed an issue where the Imperial Speeder Bike 74-z would be missing a part. General Gameplay It is now less likely to be detected while rolling.Level of detection adjusted depending on location. MAIN & SIDE QUESTS__ (beware of spoilers)__ Toshara Fixed the issue where the energy barrier in Kerro's Speakeasy would not be disabled after successfully slicing the terminal."The Underworld" - NPC numbers have been adjusted and environmental guidance markers added to better facilitate infiltration."The Mechanics"- Fixed the issue where Kay would spawn outside the quest area if she ***** inside the wind turbine. "The Wreck" - AI detection has been adjusted."Hyperspace" - Fixed the issue where no prompt was shown to take off. Tatooine "Partners" - Fixed the issue where Kay would not gain wanted levels on other planets when reaching the objective "Meet with Hoss in the cantina". Akiva "The Veteran" - Fixed the issue where "reporting to the droid" objective would not update after reporting back to MT-7. Miscellaneous "Old School Cool" trophy can now be unlocked for PlayStation 5 players.Inverting one axis in the controls menu will no longer invert the other one in Photo mode.Nix accessories and treats can now be checked in the loadout menu while Kay Vess is piloting the Trailblazer. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Following the announcement of Noob Saibot's return in Mortal Kombat 1 Khaos Reigns, NetherRealm Studios gives fans their first look at the classic character, his story, and, of course, fatalities. New details for Khaos Reigns have started to arrive at much faster intervals as the upcoming expansion for Mortal Kombat 1 is now only a few weeks away from launch. View the full article

While Sony hasn't outright confirmed that the new console is coming, a breadcrumb trail of leaks and hints suggests the PS5 Pro will take center stage. Read Entire Article View the full article

Ubisoft shares are down and at least one investor isn’t happy, concerned that the company has effectively been taken “********”. Late last month, Ubisoft released Star Wars Outlaws, an ostensibly AAA game set in one of the most beloved media franchises of the past 50 years. What should have been a slam dunk hasn’t turned around […] Source View the full article