PC gaming news and reviews

The latest PC gaming news and reviews of gaming PC hardware, software and accessories.

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'Star Wars' VR game 'Vader Immortal' teases story details in trailer
One of the launch titles you'll get to check out on Oculus Quest when it arrives this spring is Vader Immortal, a virtual reality series set in the Star Wars universe. Rift and Rift S owners won't miss out, though -- the game is coming to those headsets too, as revealed at Star Wars Celebration alongside a trailer for the first episode.
Apple hires the founder of VR content startup Jaunt
Apple just made another key hire to bolster its augmented reality plans. Variety has discovered that Apple recently hired Arthur van Hoff (shown at left), the founder of VR content startup Jaunt, as a Senior Architect for an unnamed team. While it's not certain what he'll be doing, van Hoff is a veteran of multi-camera systems and video creation for AR and VR, not to mention capturing 3D images using depth-sensing cameras. He'd been helping Jaunt shift its focus to AR until he bowed out in December 2018.
EU charges Valve and five publishers with geo-blocking games
Two years after the EU began investigating whether Valve uses regional pricing and geo-blocking practices in its Steam store, the European Commission has formally charged the distributor and five game publishers. The Commission released its "preliminary view" that Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax prevented consumers from purchasing videogames cross-border from some Member States. That's considered geo-blocking, and it violates EU competition rules.
Labo VR modes come to 'Super Mario Odyssey' and 'Breath of the Wild'
Still on the fence about Nintendo's latest push into VR? There's one more thing to know about Nintendo Labo VR: it will work with hit Switch titles Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. According to Nintendo you won't have to press it up to your face to replay either game in full, instead updates will enhance each title in different ways. In Breath of the Wild, players can jump in and out of the VR experience at will, while playing the same game as always. In Super Mario Odyssey, however, it will gain three "bite-sized bonus experiences" crossing the Cap, Seaside, and Luncheon Kingdoms. Software updates for both titles will arrive on April 25th, a couple of weeks after the VR kit and its accessories hit shelves on the 12th. Nintendo didn't say whether VR upgrades are planned for any other games, but if the add-on takes off then the potential is certainly there.
Epic will continue to sign Steam games to exclusive store deals
So much for hopes that Epic would stop signing developers to exclusives for its Games Store. While the company suggested at the Game Developers Conference that it would ramp down its push for exclusives, CEO Tim Sweeney has since said Epic would be "open to continuing" its practice of signing exclusives for its shop, whatever a developer's previous plans were for Steam. The decision to switch stores had to be up to developers and publishers, he added, and Epic wouldn't turn them down just because of what had already been said about Steam.
'No Man's Sky VR' is the purest way to explore the universe
There's been at least one moment in the past year when Sean Murray, the creator of No Man's Sky, has been seated around an awards-ceremony table with the people behind Fortnite, Rainbow Six Siege or Warframe, and they've all shared a moment of incredulity. "We're like, 'Yeah, so, two years ago was pretty rough, right?'" Murray said, laughing. "And everyone's in the same boat."
Deep Silver deactivates 'Metro Exodus' keys stolen from a factory
If you've been sold a code for post-apocalyptic adventure Metro Exodus, you might want to check where it came from. According to publisher Deep Silver, a number of keys have been stolen from the factory where physical key printing for the game had been taking place, before it became an Epic Games Store exclusive. In a post on Steam, the company explained that physical keys don't have the necessary files to run "as they were not meant to be released."
Valve's Index VR headset will ship June 15th
You won't have to wait until May to learn more about Valve's Index VR headset. Valve briefly posted (and promptly removed) unfinished pages for the Index that offer both a clearer look at the headset and reveal a June 15th ship date (Engadget has confirmed this with Valve). While the company didn't provide vivid detail about the headset proper, it showed that the Index would included its own headphones. It also appears that you'll have the option of buying separate base stations and Knuckles motion controllers (now Valve Index Controllers) on top of any potential bundles.
Valve freezes updates on 'Artifact' to face 'deep-rooted' issues
Last year Valve launched a Dota 2 card game spin-off that took aim Hearthstone and Gwent, but according to the team, Artifact hasn't lived up to anyone's expectations. In a blog post, Valve announced it's dropping the old plan of developing a stream of gradual updates driven by conversations with the community. Instead it will "re-examine the decisions we've made along the way regarding game design, the economy, the social experience of playing, and more." Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome. But we don't think that players misunderstand our game, or that they're playing it wrong. Artifact now represents an opportunity for us to improve our craft and use that knowledge to build better games. At least one of those decisions could be the game's business model. As we noted when its release date appeared, those competing card games are free, while Artifact opted for a $20 starting price and made additional booster packs of cards available for an extra fee on top of that. That made it similar to traditional Magic: The Gathering, a game designed by Artifact's project lead, but, as RockPaperShotgun notes, could come off as stingy compared to both the big guns and even smaller alternatives like Shadowverse or Eternal. Valve made some big upgrades about a month after launch, but judging by the tone of the post -- or Steam Charts stats that count an average of just 353 simultaneous players over the last 30 days or reviews that are only 15 percent positive over the last 30 days or its fewer than ten viewers on Twitch -- it didn't help hold player's attention. Since then the team has been largely silent. Now it's entering a period of "process of experimentation and development" that's expected to take "significant" time, it's still unclear exactly what the future holds for Artifact, but at least Valve is acknowledging where things stand at the moment.
Valve's 'Index' VR headset is coming in May
While Valve worked closely for years with HTC on Vive VR hardware, it's about to introduce a virtual reality headset of its own. A teaser page on the Steam website shows off this image of the Index, with the tagline "Upgrade your experience" and a May 2019 date. This occurs despite layoffs of some employees on its hardware team, which Valve said would not mean major changes to its plans. The development of Steam VR gives some ideas of what Valve would like to do, but there are no details or specs on the Index itself. Hints of the device have appeared with trademark filings and even a logo, but we don't even know if it will use the "Knuckles" finger tracking controllers we've seen from Valve a few times over the years. Whatever it is, we'll know more about how it competes with Oculus, HTC and the rest very soon.
'Five Nights at Freddy's' is even more creepy in VR
Fans of the venerable horror puzzler Five Nights at Freddy's will have something to scream about as the latest iteration of the series arrives on VR headsets at the end of April. I got to play through a few of the levels at a recent PSVR demo event came away sufficiently jump-scared to want to play the rest of the game as soon as it's released.
'Dance Central' arrives on Oculus this spring
You might have felt like you had cutting-edge moves when you boogied through Dance Central -- thanks to the Kinect -- on Xbox 360, or when you downloaded it on your Kinect-less Xbox One. But soon, you'll be able to tear it up in virtual reality. Harmonix is bringing Dance Central to VR this spring. It'll be available on Oculus Rift and Oculus Rift S, and it's set to be a launch title on the forthcoming Oculus Quest.
‘Angry Birds: Isle of Pigs’ washes ashore on PlayStation VR
If you're an Angry Birds diehard, you'll be happy to hear that Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs is available on PlayStation VR for $14.99. And Rovio and Resolution Games have added 13 new levels of play. Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs launched on Vive and Oculus Rift in February, and it looks like that was just the beginning. In addition to the new platform, the game makers hope to have 100 levels available by the end of the year.
'Trover Saves the Universe' is even more bonkers than I'd hoped
The inside of Justin Roiland's head is a magical, mysterious place filled with wondrously quirky, foul-mouthed, morally ambiguous characters. And so, too, is Trover Saves the Universe, the latest title from Roiland's fledgeling studio, Squanch Games. I was afforded an hour of hands-on time with the game at GDC last week, and let me tell you, if you're a fan of Rick and Morty, action platformers or just gratuitous cartoon violence and swearing, you're gonna love this game.
HTC Streamlink turns VR headsets into big screens for console gaming
One surprise announcement coming out of today's Vive Ecosystem Conference in Shenzhen is HTC's Streamlink, an in-house VR app that lets your PC-powered or standalone Vive headset -- like the new Vive Focus Plus -- receive HDMI signal from any USB video capture card -- some of which can be bought for as low as $65 per piece in China, according to an HTC rep. There are many potential use cases here, of course, but HTC is specifically pitching this as a new way of playing games on your consoles -- namely PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One S -- as well as watching videos from your set-top box.
HTC's work-oriented Vive Focus Plus headset arrives mid-April for $799
If you're eager to don HTC's professional Vive Focus Plus headset, you won't have much longer to wait... although you will pay a hefty sum for the privilege. The company has announced that the Focus Plus will be available through the Vive website in mid-April for $799 in 25 markets around the world. That's a hefty increase over the $599 you'd pay for the enterprise version of the original Vive Focus, but HTC is clearly betting that the Plus' advanced performance will make all the difference for exacting users.
'Doom Eternal' and other Bethesda games are coming to Steam
The rise of proprietary game launchers appears to be getting worse, but there's at least one company headed in the opposite direction. Bethesda has announced that its upcoming games will be available through Steam, including Doom Eternal, Rage 2, Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. On top of that, it's bringing Fallout 76 to Steam at some point later in 2019. While that won't help the shared-world RPG fare any better, it will at least ensure that you can start complaining about the game that much sooner.
'Iron Man VR' puts you in the suit
During the State of Play event on Monday, PSVR players got their first look at the upcoming Iron Man game from Camouflaj, which is slated for release later this year.
PS4 exclusive 'Concrete Genie' is delayed again, this time to fall 2019
PixelOpus hasn't said much about Concrete Genie since its 2017 reveal and last year's gameplay clip, but the studio is nearly ready to show its hand... hopefully. The PS4 title is now slated to launch in fall 2019, or considerably later than the earlier spring 2019 window (which was itself a delay). However, it'll come with an as yet undescribed PlayStation VR mode to spice things up. Also, an accompanying trailer (below) gives you a good summary of the story. You play Ash, a bullied child whose street art is instrumental as both his escape and, of course, a game mechanic -- he has to paint his hometown back to life while dealing with the bullies trying to make his life miserable.
'No Man's Sky VR' puts the universe on your headset for free
No Man's Sky studio Hello Games has rolled out a steady stream of updates to take its stargazing simulator from "cautionary indie tale" to "Best Ongoing Game award nominee" in just two years. No Man's Sky is a sprawling exploration of the universe and a near-infinite number of its planets, filled with crafting, digging, flying, building and hodgepodge creatures of all kinds. And, soon, it'll all be in VR.

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