Items tagged with PC gaming
When we talk about modding third-person fantasy RPGs on the PC, you almost assuredly will start thinking about the Elder Scrolls series, and particularly Part V: Skyrim, with its enormous library of user mods. Those games have official modding tools straight from Bethesda, and they're built in such a way that they're...
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Have you played the PC version of 2018's God of War? Despite the lack of a subtitle, it's the 4th main-series game in the franchise, and whatever your feelings on the title, its PC port was patiently crafted with love and care. It has quality keyboard and mouse controls as well as excellent performance. If you...
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If you're a hardcore desktop PC gamer, you probably sneer at framerate limiters. "Why would I want to limit the glorious power of my monster PC," you may ask, but for folks on thermally-, power-, or battery-constrained machines, framerate limiters can be a godsend. There's no need to crank out ≧60 FPS all the time...
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These days, video game audio is so complex that it's actually simple. Computer processors and audio hardware are advanced to the point that everything can simply be multi-channel digital audio. Game sound effects and music tracks are just digital samples; digitized recordings of real-world sounds. Digitized audio has...
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A lot of people go into FromSoftware's games with the wrong ideas about what they're all about. Titles like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and now Elden Ring are often described as online action RPGs, but that's not really accurate. The games do have online multiplayer components, but in actuality they are primarily...
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Elden Ring this, Elden Ring that—if you're tired of hearing about the game, well, that's understandable. In the nearly-two-months since its release, FromSoftware's fantasy epic has conquered online gaming discourse, and memes from the title's fans have penetrated the mainstream. To some degree that's because it's one...
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Along with its public release of Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games shipped a free sample project called "City Sample." It's basically the city from the Matrix Awakens demo, but with all of the Matrix-specific stuff stripped out. Superficially, it's a complete city environment, with roads, buildings, cars, highways...
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The PlayStation 2 stands as one of the most successful game platforms of all time. In fact, it is actually the best-selling game console of all time, moving over 155 million units in total. It has a massive library of more than 3800 games, and many of the biggest franchises of today made their debut on the PS2.
With...
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The majority of big game studios these days prefer to license preexisting engine technology, like Epic Games' Unreal Engine or Bethesda's infamous use of the Creation (neé Gamebryo) engine. While you do give up some control over the low-level aspects of your game—and it's not a silver bullet for technical issues—it's simpler and easier to
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The Steam Deck is fully-released now, and reviews have shown that while it's not flawless, it's a fantastic value for PC gamers that want to play on the go. For as little as $399 you get a powerful handheld that can play just about anything on the market competently—as long as your game runs on Linux with Proton...
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Elden Ring is, by any honest account, an extremely long game. This author has over one-hundred hours in the game, and by his own reckoning, is only about halfway through the title. Many other players have expressed similar sentiments on Reddit and elsewhere.
The thing is, like most open-world games, Elden Ring...
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One of the greatest new features that you'll find in a lot of games is a photo mode. These modes usually let you pause the game, and then tilt, pan, swivel, and zoom the camera freely for taking epic screenshots. The concept isn't new; many older games (including From Software titles) had this capability, but it was...
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From Software's latest dark fantasy epic, Elden Ring, is out now for PCs and consoles, and this writer spent over ten hours last night playing it. In a word, it's fantastic. It's not flawless, but if you like action RPGs, fantasy settings, or just video games in general, you owe it to yourself to play this...
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Have you played Splatoon or Splatoon 2? Those games have nothing to do with Fortnite; don't get excited for an Inkling skin (as cute as that would be). However, those games are widely lauded for their excellent integration of gyro aiming in a third-person shooter. For those unfamiliar, gyro aiming lets you move the...
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It is very likely that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time needs no introduction for HotHardware readers. Released to universal acclaim in 1998, the first three-dimensional Zelda title is regarded as one of the true all-time greats. The creator of Dark Souls called it "a textbook for 3D action games," and the father...
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The 2018 unsubtitled God of War game is out on PC, and we've been testing it to see how it runs. We'll have that article for you sooner than later, but in the meantime we've been checking out all the chatter surrounding the game. Among that noise is a brief interview with two lead developers from the game's creator...
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Sony's Santa Monica Studios are the original creators of the God of War series, and while the 2018 release (simply titled "God of War") could reasonably be called a "re-launch" for the popular game title, it's not a reboot. The game centers on series main character Kratos, now living in the frozen north among the...
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Do you have a GeForce graphics card from the 10-series or later, or alternatively an RDNA-based Radeon? If the answer is "yes," have you tried Quake II RTX? If not, why not? You don't have to own the game, nor do you need a GeForce RTX graphics card to play it, although both admittedly make the experience a lot nicer...
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During its CES 2022 virtual launch event, For Those Who Dare: The Rise of Gamers, ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) announced a new lineup of gaming gear products. From new gaming monitors, peripherals, and a high-speed Wi-Fi 6E router, ROG is trying to fulfill its mission of creating the world’s best gaming hardware...
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A new era’s begun in discrete graphics, as Intel has announced shipment of the latest Intel Arc graphics to OEM customers. Codenamed Alchemist, Intel Arc graphics chips will offer a new choice in the consumer high-performance graphics arena. Game studios have already adopted the technology, with several AAA PC gaming...
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The Kinetic Series Gaming Chassis that was just announced at CES 2022 by CyberPowerPC will leave you in awe and feeling as though you just stepped into the future. The design is not only meant as an aesthetic, but also serves a functional purpose.
CES 2022 is fully under way in Las Vegas, even as many companies...
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A solid move for folks who just want to play some PC games in this GPU-starved market hellscape has been to pick up a CPU with a fast integrated GPU. Sure, integrated graphics aren't going to blow anyone's socks off, but game performance can be eminently playable with the right settings. In a laptop, you have your...
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