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The PC-exclusive ray-tracing effects coming to Cyberpunk 2077 have been revealed by Nvidia.

As part of the graphics card manufacturer’s technical partnership with CD Projekt Red, Nvidia is bringing four immersive ray-traced effects to Cyberpunk 2077, which will enhance the game’s performance and fine-tune its fidelity. You check out screenshots of the effects in action below:

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These immersion-bolstering effects include Ray-Traced Diffuse Illumination, which “captures sky radiance” and emissive lighting to ensure that the sun and moon “realistically illuminate Night City.” The game will also feature Ray-Traced Reflections which as you might have guessed, make reflections more realistic in how they simulate the way light affects surfaces.

Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion will also affect the game’s shading tech on PC, further darkening objects with ambient lighting. Finally, Ray-Traced Shadows have allowed CD Projekt Red to bring “pixel-perfect shadows” to the game, as well as “directional shadows from sun and moon light” to further increase your immersion.

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Cyberpunk 2077 will also utilise Nvidia’s DLSS 2.0 technology, an AI Rendering system that uses a deep learning neural network to boost frame rates “while generating beautiful, crisp game images,” which should in theory allow you to crank the settings on launch. Nvidia also revealed that the game will land on its cloud streaming service, GeForce NOW, at launch, with support for ray-tracing effects baked in.

It’s possible that these ray-tracing effects could make it to the upgraded PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game arriving post-launch, but there’s no confirmation of that right now.

For more on Cyberpunk 2077, check out our article covering the four hours of gameplay we experienced during a recent preview. If you missed yesterday’s slew of announcements via CD Projekt Red’s Night City Wire, you can catch the full broadcast here. 

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Assetto Corsa Competizione is the exclusively GT3-focused offshoot of the fan-favourite, mod-friendly Assetto Corsa. That darling of the PC racing simulator community was ported to console back in 2016 to mixed results.

Competizione, though, is in most ways a vastly better racer than its broader progenitor: there’s night racing, there’s dynamic weather, and the AI is leaps and bounds more civilised and capable of battling fair and yielding corners. The problem is the console versions’ performance and control issues make it seem like it wasn’t quite ready to be released yet.

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There are, no doubt, fans out there that will regard the contraction in total content between the original Assetto Corsa and Competizione disappointing, because scaling down to a single racing discipline means Competizione admittedly sheds a lot of surplus rides and racetracks. However, I think Competizione’s laser-like focus on a single underrepresented school of virtual racing is quite brilliant. Endurance racing is a fantastic challenge and, while it requires long stretches of unbroken focus and rapid reflexes, when you get into a consistent rhythm there’s an almost meditative quality to it.

Competizione understands this and includes an official selection of some of the world’s most respected circuits, and scores of racing opportunities: quick championships, long championships, a career mode, and host of fully-customisable custom events. Multiplayer is obviously supported and you have to reach a high track knowledge and safety rating in-game to be able to enter the competitive servers. However, custom lobbies aren’t available at launch and the game hasn’t let me into a single quick public race to date; it’s been greeting me with ‘No Servers Available’ for days.

The arsenal of exotic GT3 steeds on hand may be slim compared to some of Competizione’s racing peers, but they’re very distinct from each other in terms of handling characteristics and there’s a real world of difference between, say, a mid-engine Ferrari and a Bentley, which is a front-engine British holiday home on wheels. Moreover, they sound absolutely astonishing. The audio is a huge highlight overall, from the raw, mechanical squeaks and shrieks over the wicked exhaust tones to the bespoke track announcers in the background at each circuit.

Unfortunately, there are a few complicaziones.

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Off the Pace

Unlike the PC version, the Xbox One and PS4 versions of Competizione run at 30 frames per second, even on the One X and the Pro. That fact alone is not a sore point necessarily; hugely successful console racers like Driveclub and Forza Horizon 4 also run at 30 frames per second and they’re amongst some of the most visually-accomplished racing games of their generation. The key point of difference is those games have rigidly locked framerates, while Competizione seems to flutter. The result is a slightly uneven experience that obviously lacks the silkiness of the PC version, but also misses the consistency of other console racers: whether they run at 60 frames per second or a locktight 30. This is when I was playing on Xbox One X, too; not the standard launch consoles. Oddly enough, beyond the occasional temporary freeze on track, the frame rate seems at its worst in the menu screens, drastically diving to the point where the spinning car select screen resembles stop-motion animation.

It’s less of an issue, but it’s very noticeable that the steering animation has a tendency to appear wildly erratic when driving aggressively using a gamepad. The rotations seem like they’re matched to stick position rather than how fast a human could realistically twist a wheel. It makes the full cabin view and the otherwise well-positioned helmet cam a bit of a bust for pad users, so in these instances I found myself sticking with the more zoomed-in dash view – which crops out the steering wheel entirely.

The pad controls are otherwise pretty well-tuned; they’re a little devilish before the tyres come up to temperature but I had some great races and battles playing this way. The Blancpain series represented in Competizione allows factory traction control and ABS, which I tend to find useful playing racing sims with giant hands on tiny triggers anyway, and that helps make the pad controls less daunting. The default steering settings are intuitive enough to let you generally catch and correct a little oversteer; you just need a delicate touch on turn-in as the steering is quite sensitive on the stick. Controller force feedback is a bit vanilla, though, and the controller response to clipping curbs is pretty feeble.

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The Wheel Deal

Competizione is, of course, aimed at racing enthusiasts, and using a wheel makes you mostly immune to those weird driver arm display quirks. However, getting it working in the first place was bafflingly cumbersome. Our Thrustmaster TS-XW Racer wasn’t even properly detected at first, and then the buttons worked but not the steering or pedals. After a bunch of apparently fruitless fiddling around in the control assignment menus and a pair of reboots, I eventually got it running by resetting the button bindings (twice) and turning the wheel off and on again. I should restate that all this fussing was done with the d-pad and buttons on the wheel itself; Competizione recognised them, but not the throttle, brake, or any steering input. Once the wheel had finally registered I took the track only to discover my maximum wheel rotation had arbitrarily switched itself to just 40 degrees, which is utterly undriveable (this bug repeated itself several days later after going through the same broken process of plugging in the Thrustmaster). Helpfully, most settings (including steering rotation limit) can be manually adjusted through the pause menu without quitting the track but this issue with steering wheels is a supremely daft problem to have considering it’s clearly built to be played this way.

After finding a suitable wheel rotation angle, force feedback on the TS-XW seemed surprisingly flaccid at first. That was odd considering how impeccable the driving experience is in the console port of the original Assetto Corsa, but that of course has its own problems. I’ve improved it via some finagled settings but it’s still probably a bit lighter than I’d like.

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Regardless of whether you’re using a wheel or pad I can’t personally recommend the chase camera; it’s rather stiff, so the moment you get any kind of oversteer the camera yaws instantly, exaggerating even minor slip and regularly turning small losses of control into total tankslappers. Chase cam isn’t my preference in racing sims at the best of times and I found this one extra challenging due to these factors.

Also, regardless of whether you’re using a wheel or pad, don’t bother with manual options for things like the pit limiter, or lights or wipers and such; there are already about a billion more things to map functionality to than you’ll have buttons. We’re not working with keyboards here!

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One of Microsoft’s biggest exclusives of 2020, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, has reached a new milestone. The game’s Twitter account announced that the Xbox One and PC game has reached “2 million spirits,” which seems to be how many people have tried the game so far.

This isn’t a direct sales figure, however, as Will of the Wisps is available on Xbox Game Pass for Xbox One and PC like all of Microsoft’s games are. Sales figures going forward for Microsoft’s games may be harder to pin down specifically and compare to previous titles due to the rise of Xbox Game Pass.

Of the 2 million people who have played Will of the Wisps, around 423,000 people beat the game, Moon Studios announced. That works out to a completion rate of around 21 percent. Only 45,000 people completed the game on the Hard difficulty.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

The first “deep dive” gameplay livestream for Madden NFL 21 was held today. EA Sports showed off the next-generation football game and detailed some of its new features during a broadcast that was held on June 25.

The event was broadcast on Twitch, and you can check out a replay below. You can also read the ridiculously in-depth “Gridiron Notes” here to get all the details on what’s new in Madden 21.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

For PC gamers, the launch of Steam’s Summer Sale is one of the biggest days of the summer, offering an opportunity to snag some of the platform’s best games for their cheapest price yet. While multi-platform games have the chance to be featured in multiple sales, like Nintendo’s or PlayStation’s, PC-exclusive games like Total War: Three Kingdoms, Gears Tactics, and Half-Life: Alyx only get a chance to shine in the Steam Summer Sale, so it’s worth paying extra attention to those games–you might not see them at this price for a long time.

From turn-based strategy and digital board games to fighting games, action RPGs, and more, here are some of the best PC exclusives in Steam Summer Sale 2020. Please, see our overall list of the best Steam Summer Sale 2020 game deals and the best cheap Steam games under $10.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

$45 / £33.74 / $67.49 AUD (25% off)

Total War: Three Kingdoms still hews closely to the series’ expansive strategy sim framework but makes a few key changes that, along with the ancient Chinese period setting, make it stand out within the series. The increased emphasis on individual commanders and general gives each playthrough with a different army a new flair, and whip-smart enemy leaders make it difficult to simply steamroll the map on your way to victory, making this an intense new entry with a lot of depth.

Gears Tactics

$40.19 / £33.49 / $66.96 AUD (33% off)

Gears Tactics takes a more bombastic approach to the XCOM school of turn-based strategy and melds it with the pulpy, war-fueled world of Sera. Each of the Gears franchises’ iconic weapons like the Lancer, Gnasher, and Longshot translate seamlessly to a strategy game, and their abilities serve to differentiate each of your squad members in combat. You’re also closing up emergence holes with grenades and mowing down Wretches with machine-gun fire–just like in the third-person shooter franchise Gears Tactics takes its name from.

Half-Life: Alyx

$45 / £34.86 / $63.71 AUD (25% off)

There are quite a few great games you can play on VR headsets, but Half-Life: Alyx is one that really makes the case for games designed exclusively with VR in mind. Grabbing and throwing objects with the new Gravity Gloves feels fantastic, and trying to stay quiet so a blind, unstoppable monster doesn’t hear you makes you naturally hesitant to even close a cupboard door. Exploring City 17 feels incredible through a headset, from the moment you see a Strider towering above the city’s rooftops in the first few minutes of the game to the moment you begin a mind-bending trek near the end I won’t spoil here. Alyx quickly becomes an essential part of the Half-Life universe, even if you think you know how it all ends.

Killer7

$10 / £7.74 / $11.97 AUD (50% off)

If you’re a fan of any Grasshopper or Suda Goichi game (No More Heroes, Shadows of the Damned, Let It Die), you owe it to yourself to experience Killer7. It’s undoubtedly his most surreal, trippy game, and this remaster of the original Gamecube and PS2 classic updates it for PC, complete with higher resolution options and mouse-and-keyboard aiming, making it the best way to experience this strange masterpiece in 2020.

XCOM: Chimera Squad

$15 / £12.74 / $22.46 AUD (25% off)

XCOM: Chimera Squad is a smaller entry in the series that focuses on a single squad of fleshed-out characters rather than a platoon of random soldiers and offers a few twists on the intense XCOM firefights we’re familiar with, like a back-and-forth turn order, breaches that give you a chance to whittle down enemy squads from the jump, and special abilities that give each member of your squad a special role in fights.

Disco Elysium

$30 / £26.24 / $42.71 AUD (25% off)

Disco Elysium eschews the fantasy trappings, combat-oriented encounters, and easy morality that underpin a lot of RPGs and instead lets you tell a story that truly feels your own. As an alcoholic detective hitting rock-bottom just as he’s assigned a major murder case, you explore a city block in the middle of a conflicted territory recovering from a political revolution. The conversations you have with various denizens around Revachol have you re-litigating the city’s tumultuous past, putting together a dance club in the middle of a church, and delivering heartbreaking news to unsuspecting families as you come to terms with who you were before your last bender. It’s a long journey with twists that flip from pensive to laugh-out-loud funny to solemn on a dime while somehow telling a consistent, powerful story along the way–something I can’t say about many other games. Disco Elysium is planned to release on consoles later this year, but for now, you can only enjoy this incredible narrative experience on PC.

Tabletop Simulator

$9 / £7.49 / $14.47 AUD (50% off)

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many people to spend much more time indoors and distance themselves from friends and family, so finding ways to stay connected while apart has become crucial. One of my favorite ways to hang out with friends virtually has been Tabletop Simulator, an indie game that lets you play digital versions of board games in a player-driven physics sandbox. The game comes with classics like chess, poker, and dominoes included, but the real draw is the massive collection of free player-created board games and card games available in the Tabletop Simulator workshop. Here, people have recreated some of the best board games around, including Pandemic Legacy, Gloomhaven, and Root.

Obviously, some of these creations are more polished than others, but the larger games tend to work really well; in fact, I was really shocked how well complex games like Root worked within Tabletop Simulator. Some publishers have also published official DLC for Tabletop Simulator, so there’s no shortage of content available to try out. If you’re a board game fan like me and can’t always get friends together in person to play, Tabletop Simulator is worth every penny.

Mordhau

$24 / £25.14 / $34.36 AUD (20% off)

Mordhau is a fun medieval multiplayer game that features some of the most involved first-person sword-fighting out there. It’s not exactly a sim, though–there are lots of hectic, one-off multiplayer moments that will probably remind you of games like Battlefield, but the strong emphasis on teamwork and sieging castles set it apart.

Black Mesa

$13 / £9.74 / $18.81 AUD (35% off)

This remake of the original Half-Life has been over a decade in the making, but it’s finally complete and definitely worth the wait. It features revamped graphics and overhauls the previously-maligned Xen section of the original but manages to keep the soul of Half-Life intact, making this the best way to see Gordon Freeman’s first encounter with the G-Man and alien life if you’re looking to catch up on the series before playing Half-Life: Alyx.

Jackbox Party Pack 3

$16.24 / £12.34 / $23.36 AUD (35% off)

It’s hard to find a series that’s more immediately accessible than the Jackbox games. These party games, which you can play with others online or in-person through your PC or phone, have you responding to all kinds of outlandish prompts, drawing your own (often lewd) pictures to show off and working together to accomplish a common goal. The entire series is on sale for cheap, but Jackbox Party Pack 3 is the one to play, since it’s the best collection of games overall. Quiplash 2 lets you answer a bunch of weird questions with even weirder answers and then pick the funniest ones. Meanwhile, Tee K.O. has you separately drawing pictures and coming up with taglines, then putting together a shirt based on the pictures and tags you randomly get from the group.

Them’s Fightin’ Herds

$10.04 / £7.63 / $14.40 AUD (33% off)

Originally developed as a My Little Pony fan game, Them’s Fightin’ Herds has blossomed into a unique fighting game all its own, complete with new equestrian designs from MLP producer Lauren Faust. The roster is small compared to its higher-budget competition, but there are a lot of creative concepts packed into each of these manes, and tutorial and single-player options are more diverse than you might expect from a fighting game made by a smaller team.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

$15 / £11.24 / $17.21 AUD (25% off)

For some history buffs, the empire-building sim genre that slowly evolved into the 4X genre began and ended with the Age of Empires series. The iconic second entry is finally available for modern computers, complete with 4K visuals, a remade soundtrack, and a new “The Last Khans” expansion that includes more campaigns and civilizations to round out this strategy classic.

If Found

If Found is a deeply emotional and resonant visual novel that follows Kasio, a woman struggling at a crossroads between ending her education and looking for a career with meaning. The gorgeous illustrations give the game a vibrant style, and its focus on smaller moments and more relatable topics make it a fantastic palette cleanser between other games on this list.

Monster Train

$22.49 / £17.54 / $32.35 AUD (20% off)

Deck-building roguelikes are pretty popular nowadays, but Monster has a few tricks up its sleeve that have proved popular with a growing fanbase. The deck-building mechanics are top-notch, and the presence of factions, which act as a way of theming your deck, make building effective combos easy and natural.

Sometimes, Marvel Comics creates super villains with complicated, nuanced, tragic backstories that slowly build them into multifaceted characters with flaws and hopes and dreams all their own. Other times, they create villains like MODOK.

The Mental (Mobile/Mechanized) Organism Designed Only for Killing, MODOK is–well, exactly that. Extremely on-the-nose name aside, MODOK is about to hit the big time, with both a major villainous role in the upcoming Avengers video game by Crystal Dynamics and his very own animated TV show on Hulu starring Paton Oswalt. So there’s never been a better time to learn the ins and outs of Marvel’s infamous, uh, giant floating head with baby arms, because as it turns out, there’s more to this mental organism than just killing.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Ryan and Greg break down American Horror Story Hotel Episode 4 “Devil’s Night.”

Following recent allegations against now-former Assassin’s Creed Valhalla creative director Ashraf Ismail, Ubisoft has issued a public statement on the matter.

“We have started by launching investigations into the allegations with the support of specialized external consultants,” the studio said. “Based on the outcomes, we are fully committed to taking any and all appropriate disciplinary action. As these investigations are ongoing, we can’t comment further. We are also auditing our existing policies, processes, and systems to understand where these have broken down, and to ensure we can better prevent, detect, and punish inappropriate behavior.”

Though the studio didn’t go into further detail, Ubisoft said it will be sharing “additional measures” that will be put in place company-wide in the coming days.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Fallout 76‘s first season, The Legendary Run, starts on June 30, alongside Update 20, Bethesda announced. Seasons in Fallout 76 had been previously announced as a free battle pass type system where players can earn cosmetics and premium currency through completing challenges.

Season 1 features 100 ranks for players to progress through, with each rank offering a new reward to earn. Players rank up by completing challenges, public events, and gaining XP, all of which increase their S.C.O.R.E. The Legendary Run features a board game theme and will run for 10 weeks, ending in mid-September.

Season 1 is free for all players and Fallout 76 initially encourages you to rank up by playing the game. However, starting on July 14, season ranks can be purchased for 150 Atoms a piece, about $1.50 USD. Seasons will offer Atoms as one of the rewards for ranking up, replacing the option to earn the in-game currency by completing daily and weekly challenges. According to Bethesda, this change will lower the amount of Atoms that you can earn without paying real-world money.

Continue Reading at GameSpot