Gigabyte, makers of all things gaming, have decided to celebrate the launch of Metro: Last Light by offering the games.on.net readers the chance to gear up and take on the unforgiving underground of the Russian metro.

That’s right: win this competition, and you walk away with a brand new Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660… and a brand-new Aivia Osmium mechanical gaming keyboard (with Cherry Brown MX switches). With these babies attached to your rig, you’ll have everything you need to crush the mutants into submission.

But wait! There’s more!

These are the special Metro: Last Light editions of the GTX 660 — so you’ll score yourself a free copy of the game as well! Very nice.

There are two prize packs to win, and each one contains the card (with copy of the game) and keyboard — so don’t delay!

Wondering how good Metro: Last Light looks on PC? Why not check out our detailed, nine-minute long video review and see for yourself!

Holy crap! How can I enter?

Good question! To enter this competition, all you need to do is in 150 words or less, describe one of the mutated creatures now living in the radioactive Russian underground. It can’t be an existing Metro enemy, it has to be something you made up. It can be as serious or zany as you like: the two most creative entries as selected by our judges will walk away with the prize.

Leave your entry as a comment on this article below. Remember! 150 words or less. This competition is also open to Australian residents only.

What else do I need to know?

This competition runs from now until 11:59 PM Adelaide time on Sunday 26 May. It is governed by the terms and conditions on this page.

Editor’s Note: After we ran our massive interview with Nate Mitchell, VP of Product behind the Oculus Rift VR headset (read part one here, and part two here) we were contacted by Neil Schneider from Meant To Be Seen 3D, the core developers behind the open source Vireio Perception drivers that many gamers have been using to turn games into VR-capable 3D experiences.

He asked us if he could issue a statement to clear the air around the issue of Vireio drivers vs. native Rift support, and we agreed. So without further ado, take it away Neil…

***

Let me begin by saying that I’m supportive of the Oculus VR SDK and Nate is 100% correct that a native VR game has competitive advantages over anything a VR or stereoscopic 3D driver can deliver. Oculus’ strategy is the correct one, and Vireio Perception’s role is to fill the need for games that don’t or won’t have native VR support. It’s not our intention to replace or substitute the benefits of true VR rendering and programming.

Nate’s remarks as they are written are misleading, however, and I would like the opportunity to answer his criticisms.

Andres Hernandez (Cybereality). Toy Gun!

First, Cybereality, whose real name is Andres Hernandez, is an MTBS forum moderator. He’s helped out with coding parts of the website and has contributed a lot of time to the community over several years. He still does. The same goes for Palmer Luckey, who also has roots as an MTBS moderator for years, and still maintains the role.

Long before the Rift was launched, Andres announced plans to release commercial stereoscopic 3D drivers for VR devices like the Oculus Rift. What made these drivers unique compared to the other products is that they supported head tracking which is a core feature of the Rift and is available through other means by off the shelf products. This isn’t a simple “mouse look” as Nate’s comments suggest. The game rolls and turns with your head movements; it does this by using a combination of mouse look and adjusting the projection matrix so that you get all three axes of rotation.

Head roll, deep 3D, table corner is protruding with Vireio Perception

Realizing that he was getting hired by Oculus VR, Andres decided to release his VR drivers as open source so he could put most of his energies into Oculus VR. Since that time, Vireio Perception went from one solitary programmer to three talented volunteer coders who are collaboratively working to build the next iteration of the software.

According to the article, Nate’s primary concern about the Vireio Perception drivers is latency, and that this latency is somehow disorienting for gamers. While I will be the first to tell you that Vireio Perception has a major problem (I mean MAJOR), it has little to do with latency.

Stereoscopic 3D, a core feature of VR and the Oculus Rift, requires that the left and right view appears on the screen at the same time. If the software is working correctly, you should see the left and right view, next frame, left and right view, next frame, etc. etc. Each frame has to show both views simultaneously.

Vireio Perception drivers are a software hack to get the same results from games that weren’t designed to do this. On the fly, the drivers take existing video game data from DirectX API calls, create a second camera view where none existed before, and pass on a left and right view to the display – in this case the Oculus Rift.

When Andres was working on the Vireio Perception code he got nearly everything correctly, but for whatever reason, the left and right views were out of sync. So even though things are happening faster than our eyes can easily perceive, the left and right views are not being updated at the same time in each frame. That was a piece of the puzzle he just didn’t have enough time to solve, and that’s how the drivers have been behaving right up to the current build.

This is one of those errors where you know something is wrong, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Nate is calling it latency, but it’s really something very different. There is a happy ending to this story, and I will get to that shortly.

The biggest problem with Vireio Perception is the user interface (UI). The Oculus Rift is designed in such a way that the screen’s field of view goes beyond what your eyes can actually see. The majority of games place the HUD elements in the far corners of the screen which means that even though the UI is there, you can’t see it! This is a real problem when you are dependent on in-game menus or health and ammo indicators. There is also the issue of the game’s crosshair not being accurate in 3D mode because it wasn’t designed for that purpose.

Now the good news!

Convergence Portion of SHOCT Mechanism

First, the time differential problem between the left and right camera views is largely corrected. As long as users follow our settings guide and use the SHOCT tool (Schneider-Hicks Optical Calibration Tool), we think the next public build is going to be a lot more comfortable for extended gaming periods.

While Vireio Perception started as just supporting DirectX 9, we have been hard at work adding DirectX 10 and 11 support. We also think the crosshair problem will be easily solved with an add-on 3D crosshair or something similar, and we are experimenting with different methods to get existing game HUDs more VR friendly. This problem hasn’t been licked yet, but we have ideas.

I know this sounds crazy, but not one of our programmers have received their Oculus Rift yet! Imagine the improvements that will be made once they have the actual SDK in their hands!

So this begs the question: does native VR support have a real advantage over VR drivers like Vireio Perception?

Yes, and this is why. Vireio Perception makes it possible to track nearly all your head’s movements. It’s kind of like a mouse look, but it’s much more advanced. However, unless the game is designed to behave differently, your body and head movement are one and the same.

Native VR games let you look around and walk as two distinct movements just like real life. Depending on the game, there are additional hacks and modifications that can be found to replicate this behavior, but it’s not a simple driver fix. It’s also likely that there is a lower latency with native code as Nate describes, but this hasn’t been reported as an issue by excited Vireio Perception gamers with mid to high range PC gaming equipment.

I will finish by saying that I’m very proud of the Vireio Perception development team for their continued technical innovation and their positive problem solving attitude. When he got wind of Nate’s remarks, Philip Larkson’s first comment was “all we can do is keep improving it (Vireio Perception)”. With a Skype smiley, Chris Drain said “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to replay old stuff that’s never going to get first party support though!” As for John Hicks, he didn’t have to say anything. He’s just setting an example and is hard at work on the next wave of Vireio Perception.

I should point out that there are other products out there. There is a lot of excitement for Vireio Perception because it’s free and open source, but there is also a commercial package called VorpX in development, and with the help of NTHUSIM HMD, I think that established brands like Dynamic Digital Depth’s TriDef Ignition and Nvidia’s 3D Vision drivers will be able to repurpose their established 3D software for VR. At least, it’s something I’m hoping for. I don’t know if the NTHUSIM / 3D driver mix will have head tracking, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they cook up.

Palmer Luckey & Neil Schneider at CES 2013

Let me finish by saying that whether people love or hate VR drivers doesn’t matter. What matters is that VR is being taken very seriously by game developers and gamers alike for products in the not-too-distant future. I expect that there will be plenty of AAA titles and independent game releases with innovative VR support someday soon. In the meantime, MTBS’ community is just happy to help fill the large gap of games leading up to that point. After all, helping foster community driven ideas is what we do best.

We’ve been carefully evaluating the entries to our BenQ Gaming Monitor giveaway, where three lucky people will be heading home with a brand new BenQ RL2450H gaming monitor. These monitors were custom-made in accordance with the direction from some of South Korea’s top StarCraft II players, resulting in an experience powered by a dynamic contrast booster to adjust levels on the fly and keep you at maximum alertness.

But enough about that! Who are the winners? Well I’m very pleased to announce, after much deliberation, that our winners are…

Writing Category

We had a lot of great entries and tales of terror in this category, but unfortunately there could be only one. And our winner, with the worst sob story of them all, is assa46.

I currently have only 1 monitor (21″ BENQ-G2220HD) the fact that is tiny is only half of my problem, whenever I am playing a game, midway through the screen goes black and I usually die before I can turn it back on. It has been doing this for over a year now, I can’t even play games now without the worry of it shutting off. Getting a new monitor would be really great and I would be able to return to gaming once again.

A tiny 21″ monitor that blacks out in the middle of games? We must help this person. assa46, a shiny new 24″ BenQ RL2450H is on its way to you.

Drawing Category

Once again some very stellar entries in this one, but the judges felt that forum regular a3gis‘ entry showed a truly terrifying scenario of global extinction should the man lose at a game of Solitaire.

Congratulations, a3gis! Please don’t kill us all.

Video Category

Very few entries comparatively in this category, but all of them top notch — unfortunately, only one entry could win and it was tarvang whose madcap jumping and arm-flapping genuinely told the judges that he was the one who would get the most excited.

Some great runner-up entries from xsphera and AuV2 Jason, respectively. Check them out!

Tarvang, if you could please post a follow-up video once your monitor arrives showing the real happy-dance in action, that would be perfect.

Congratulations to all the winners!

I’ll be contacting you by private message on the forum shortly to organise your prize collection. Thanks to everybody who entered, and thanks to BenQ for supplying the prizes. Look out for our next competition very soon.

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is due out in a matter of days, and includes an interesting feature for an ARPG — customisable lair-building. You’ll be returning to your lair frequently and your enemies will try to attack you even there, so it’s important to build up your defences with traps and upgrade your generator to unlock more crafting options. Interesting stuff! If you want to get in now, you can pre-order at the official site.

Source: VG247

News of Maxis’ upcoming Sim City expansion has accidentally hit the internet, with Green Man Gaming posting a listing for the DLC on their site (and then quickly removing it).

Maxis have since confirmed the expansion on their Facebook account, saying “Some of you may have seen thrilling new SimCity content that arrived too early at the gate. It’s coming May 28th. We think you’ll be amused.”

Unfortunately it wasn’t pulled down quickly enough, with one quick-thinking YouTube user catching the whole thing below.

Source: VG247

Metro: Last Light is the direct sequel to Metro 2033, and promises to fix all the complaints about the original while simultaneously looking drop-dead gorgeous and pushing your PC as far as it can go. Does it live up to the claims? Find out in our video review.

WARNING: Metro Last Light is rated R18+ in Australia. The following video contains scenes and language that are not suitable for viewers under 18.

Editor’s Note: At the time this video was being cut together, the FOV patch had not yet been released. It was made available overnight, and Steam users should update their game now to get it working.

A HD download of this review from our file library is coming soon.

Good:

• Drop-dead gorgeous
• Amazing atmosphere and attention to detail
• Great PC support (aside from the lack of FOV control)
• Meaty gunplay and clever mechanics

Bad:

• Ultra-linear and in love with its own story
• Bad voice acting, poorly-written characters
• Makes you crawl at a snail’s pace everywhere outside of combat
• Heaps and heaps of quicktime events and silly contrived situations

Back in February, Avalanche Games’ CEO released several blurry sepia-toned screenshots of what looked for all the world like a new Just Cause game. “Just Cause 3?!” I screamed excitedly, ripping my pants off in anticipation — but it was not to be.

Avalanche’s chief creative officer Christofer Sundberg has revealed to Edge that the screenshots were actually “from a steampunk-style game we had in development that we put on ice.”

“I really love that art style, and to combine it with sandbox gameplay is a dream of mine,” he said. “Fortunately, being an independent developer I can control my own destiny and we’ll make something in that world sooner or later.”

Well! I’d better put these pants back on then. So what ARE Avalanche working on? “We are developing for both current and next-gen, but the earliest we’ll be able to talk about it and go into any detail is after the games we are working on are announced,” he said.

“We’re also announcing new, interesting tech development that we do internally, but that is not until later this year.”

Source: Edge Online

A website for a MOBA called Dawngate has appeared overnight, offering a chance to be a part of a MOBA that “looks and feels familiar while offering a whole new way to experience MOBA gameplay”.

“Dawngate empowers you to forge the champions you love for the roles you want in a competitive arena,” claims the site, “shaped by ever-evolving, community-driven content and story.” And, well… that’s all there is to know so far, other than the fact that EA have signed on to publish it.

You can hit up the official site to sign up for beta, or perhaps mine meticulously through the source code for clues. With EA on board though, I should think we’ll be hearing more about this next month at E3. Stay tuned.

Source: Blue’s News

It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything about DARK, the vampire stealth game — perhaps it’s been quietly recovering its strength in a casket of native soil. In any case, there’s a new trailer out that shows off the various skills in the game, which you can see below. It’s a somewhat underwhelming bit of gameplay video and doesn’t seem to look as good as early-released screenshots, which doesn’t bode well for its upcoming PC release in the next few months. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Source: Blue’s News

Former THQ boss Jason Rubin has revealed that 4A Games worked in gruelling conditions to finish Metro: Last Light, including being packed together on folding wedding chairs and with power and heat going off for days at a time.

“4A’s staff sat on folding wedding chairs, literally elbow to elbow at card tables in what looks more like a packed grade school cafeteria than a development studio,” writes Rubin in a revealing post on GamesIndustry International.

Rubin explained that power and heat were unreliable, with 4A staff working “in their parkas and struggling to keep their fingers warm in temperatures well below freezing”. The team also apparently had to deal with constant corruption, with Rubin saying that “When 4A needed another dev kit, or high-end PC, or whatever, someone from 4A had to fly to the States and sneak it back to the Ukraine in a backpack lest it be ‘seized’ at the border by thieving customs officials.”

The whole blog post is very eye-opening and worth a read, so check it out.

Source: GamesIndustry International

Codemasters have released the full track listing for the upcoming GRID 2, which launches on May 30. There are 82 tracks in total, although this list includes the pre-order bonus tracks that not everybody will (immediately) have access to. Still, it’s an impressive figure and when you consider the LiveRoutes system that changes the tracks as you drive, should make for some good replayability.

Also just released is this new trailer for the game, which shows off the tracks in the Asian region. Take a look.

Check out the track listing below.

1. Al Sufouh Strip, Dubai [Day & Night]
2. Ap Lei Chau, Hong Kong [Sunset]
3. Arc De Triomphe, Paris [Day & Night]
4. Art Deco Loop, Miami [Sunset]
5. Avenue De New-York, Paris [Day & Night]
6. Big Sur, California [Day & Night]
7. Bixby Pass, California [Day & Night]
8. Cabrillo Highway, Cote d’Azur [Sunset]
9. Causeway Approach, Miami [Day & Night]
10. Championship Circuit, Yas Marina [Day (Pre-order) & Night]
11. Champs Elysees, Paris [Sunset]
12. Circuit De La Seine, Paris [Day & Night]
13. Club Circuit, Algarve [Day]
14. Collins Park Ring, Miami [Day & Night]
15. Columbus Bay, Barcelona [Sunset]
16. Columbus Pass, Barcelona [Day & Night]
17. Downtown Speedway, Miami [Day & Night]
18. Fountain Loop, Barcelona [Sunset]
19. GP Circuit (Pre-order), Brands Hatch [Day]
20. GP Circuit, Algarve [Day]
21. GP Circuit, Indianapolis [Day]
22. GP Circuit, Red Bull Ring [Day]
23. GP Circuit, Yas Marina [Day (Pre-order) & Night]
24. GP Circuit Reversed (Pre-order) , Brands Hatch [Day]
25. GP Circuit Reversed, Red Bull Ring [Day]
26. Gulf Approach, Dubai [Day & Night]
27. Hattan Way, Dubai [Sunset]
28. High Street, Barcelona [Day & Night]
29. Indy Circuit, Brands Hatch [Day]
30. Indy Circuit Reversed, Brands Hatch [Day]
31. Infield Circuit, Indianapolis [Day]
32. International Circuit, Yas Marina [Day (Pre-order) & Night]
33. Jumeirah Beach, Dubai [Day & Night]
34. Kowloon Climb, Hong Kong [Day & Night]
35. La Turbie, Cote d’Azur [Day & Night]
36. Lake Shore Point, Chicago [Day & Night]
37. Le Trocadero, Paris [Sunset]
38. Leopolda, Cote d’Azur [Day & Night]
39. LiveRoutes, Barcelona [Day]
40. LiveRoutes, Chicago [Day]
41. LiveRoutes, Dubai [Day]
42. LiveRoutes, Miami [Day]
43. LiveRoutes, Paris [Day]
44. Magazine Gap, Hong Kong [Day & Night]
45. Marina City, Chicago [Sunset]
46. Marine Gate, Barcelona [Day & Night]
47. Memorial Gate, Barcelona [Day & Night]
48. Mizu Mountain, Okutama [Day & Night]
49. Nakheel Vista, Dubai [Day & Night]
50. National Circuit, Algarve [Day]
51. North Circuit, Indianapolis [Pre-Order Bonus] [Day]
52. North Circuit, Red Bull Ring [Day]
53. North Circuit Reversed, Red Bull Ring [Day]
54. Ocean Drive, Miami [Sunset]
55. Orra Quay Loop, Dubai [Sunset]
56. Oval Circuit, Indianapolis [Pre-Order Bonus] [Day]
57. Pacific Way, California [Sunset]
58. Paddock Circuit, Yas Marina [Day (Pre-order) & Night]
59. Peak Road Descent, Hong Kong [Day & Night]
60. Pebble Beach Drive, California [Day & Night]
61. Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong [Sunset]
62. Pont De L’alma, Paris [Day & Night]
63. Redwood Approach, California [Day & Night]
64. Riverside, Chicago [Sunset]
65. Route De Corniche, Cote d’Azur [Sunset]
66. Route d’Azur, Cote d’Azur [Day & Night]
67. Saint-Laurent, Cote d’Azur [Day & Night]
68. Sakura Pass, Okutama [Sunset]
69. Shinto Shrine, Okutama [Day & Night]
70. South Circuit, Red Bull Ring [Day]
71. South Circuit, Yas Marina [Day (Pre-order) & Night]
72. South Circuit Reversed, Red Bull Ring [Day]
73. South Point Bay, Miami [Day / Night]
74. Sport Circuit, Algarve [Day]
75. Sport Circuit , Indianapolis [Day]
76. Tatsu Valley, Okutama [Day & Night]
77. Tenshi Way, Okutama [Day & Night]
78. The Loop, Chicago [Day & Night]
79. Torii Rush, Okutama [Sunset]
80. Underpass Ring, Chicago [Day & Night]
81. Wabash Run, Chicago [Day & Night]
82. Wan Chai Gap, Hong Kong [Day & Night]

Source: VG247

EA have announced that they will no longer be moving forward with the online pass system, despite being one of the most ardent supporters of the idea. Why? Well, because you demanded it.

“None of our new EA titles will include that feature,” said EA’s John Reseburg in an interviee with VentureBeat.

“Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format. We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.”

However, Reseburg did emphasise that EA was “still committed to creating content and services that enhance the game experience well beyond the day you first start playing,” which presumably means multiplayer, DLC and other various add-on components.

Source: VentureBeat (Thanks, Stefan)

Coffee Stain Studios have announced that Sanctum 2, the sequel to the original FPS/TD mashup, has now launched on Steam. Priced at $14.99, the developers are promising a sequel rebuilt from the ground up with new towers, new enemies, and more customisation and loadout options than ever before.

A new progression system and four character classes help round out the new features — but interestingly there’s also a DLC season pass, something usually reserved for AAA publishers. For $11.99, it offers access to four DLC packs for the price of three, with all content set to be available by February 2014. Still, as an enormous fan of the original I can’t wait to check this one out.

Following the surprise announcement last week that Ubisoft had unceremoniously and quietly fired Patrice Desilets, the man who created Assassin’s Creed, they’ve now confirmed that work on the title he was heading up has been suspended.

During the company’s 2013 investor earnings call, CEO Yves Guillemont claimed that they had “suspended Project 1666 for an undisclosed period of time”. Guillemont also noted that “After more than two months of discussions with Patrice, we couldn’t align our visions both on the project development and team management.”

“Consequently, our collaboration has ended.”

Project 1666 was in development at THQ Montreal, which was acquired by Ubisoft in January (along with Desilets).

Source: IGN

The good ol’ Steam Database is very rarely wrong, and today it’s proven that yet again with the reveal of the Steam Trading Cards beta.

Valve’s new system will allow users to collect cards from various games (participating games currently include CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, Portal 2, Half-Life 2 and Don’t Starve). Each game will only drop up to half the available cards for a particular game, and therefore players must trade with each other to collect whole sets.

Collecting an entire set grants a Steam badge, which also grants you a special emoticon, an alternate background image to use on your profile page, the possibility of a discount coupon, and 100 XP which may increase your Steam level.

What’s a Steam level? Well, it’s a new system Valve are creating to “see how much someone has invested in their Steam account, and how valuable that user is to the rest of the Steam Community”. In other words, it’s a little number that displays on your profile, and you can level it up in a variety of ways other than trading cards, such as simply continuing to maintain an active Steam account over time.

Get all the details over here, and then read the FAQ by clicking here.

Following the news that EA had signed an exclusive deal with Disney to give them the rights to all Star Wars games, the company is now opening a new DICE studio in California to focus entirely on Star Wars games.

The new studio is expected to grow to 60 employees by the end of this year, and is aimed at directly competing with Treyarch, who operate out of the same city.

“There is an extreme talent pool over [there] that we want a part of,” said DICE general manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson to the Wall Street Journal. “It’s no secret that our main competitor is there.”

A number of former Medal of Honor: Warfighter developers are already on board and the studio is hiring for their first title.

Source: WSJ (paywalled) via Gamasutra

Strategy gaming luminary Sid Meier has used an interview with GamesIndustry to express concern about the inflexibility of Kickstarter-driven game design.

“I think you kind of lock yourself into a lot of ideas early,” said Meier. “I really enjoy the luxury of changing my design and evolving over time.”

“I’d be a little concerned with Kickstarter if I committed to X, Y and Z and I found out down the road that Z didn’t work very well, I kind of promised to do this.”

Contrary to many industry figures, Meier is positively thrilled about his relationship with his publisher, 2K Games.

“They do all the stuff I don’t want to do; they allow me to make games and really focus on that part of what it takes to get a game out there,” he said. “So more power to Chris Roberts and the Kickstarter, but having a great publisher is a real asset and allows me to focus on the things that I can do and not worry about all the other stuff that needs to be worried about.”

Source: GamesIndustry via VG247

Metro: Last Light isn’t really “officially” out in Australia until May 17, but it released on Steam on Tuesday and PC gamers immediately noticed one thing — the FOV can’t be adjusted. At all. Not even in config files.

4A Games have heard these complaints loud and clear and are promising a solution “in the next few days”, but in the meantime are warning players that this may cause the game to break in all sorts of unexpected ways, as many 3D elements, cutscenes and others aspects are created with the current FOV in mind.

“Changing the FOV would break all the cut-scenes and animations – you would be able to see inside Artyom’s arms, or they would appear to float in the air in front of you. Or worse,” writes the developers on the Steam community forums. “We had considered offering three FOV pre-sets, but this would still require significant work to re-do every animation, adjust the HUD and UI and other seemingly small but incredibly time consuming tasks.”

“Even with a wider but still fixed field of view, Artyom’s hands would look too far away. We know – we tried. Game performance is also tied to FOV – the amount of geometric detail we put in each scene has been partly determined by this set FOV, and setting a wider FOV would have a performance impact.”

“In the immediate term – the next title update, due in the next few days, will allow you to directly change the FOV in the .cfg files.”

Look out for our review of Metro: Last Light shortly.

Source: Steam

With Resident Evil Revelations fast approaching its May 24 release date, Capcom have released a demo for the game onto Steam — which you can grab here.

The game originally started life as a Nintendo 3DS title, and has since been overhauled with HD graphics and tweaked for the PC. You can check out the PC specs and look at some screenshots by clicking here. It’s been one of the few Resident Evil games in recent years to actually get a positive reception from fans and critics alike, so it’ll be interesting to see how well it holds up when it finally launches.

Source: Steam News

Do you know what you were doing on May 15, 2012? This time last year, I was resisting the urge to bash my computer screen in with an axe as Diablo 3 spat Error 37 at me over and over again. Good times!

Fortunately all those hiccups have now been cleared, and Diablo 3 is celebrating its first birthday today (and just after the auction houses have come back online, too!).

Some of the major Diablo 3 events of the last year have included the announcement of the game on PS3 (with offline mode, no less), Jay Wilson admitting that they would “turn off the auction house if we could”, and the introduction of duelling and Monster Power commands.

After the rampant sales success of the game, scientists have now concluded that the colour palette was probably not too bright and cartoony after all.

Source: Battle.net

Crate Entertainment have announced that the alpha for Grim Dawn will release through Steam later today, May 15.

“The initial alpha release will be distributed through Steam because that proved to be the easiest way to provide an exclusive alpha for backers and put out patches while we are still actively developing the game and fixing issues,” explain the team in last night’s Kickstarter update.

“Other download options may be rolled out later depending on how long alpha lasts / what we are able to manage. We realize that some people have a hatred of Steam and hope that it will not upset anyone excessively, but it was the fastest and best solution given the complexity of trying to set up our own authentication server due to the numerous different pre-Kickstarter / Kickstarter / post-Kickstarter reward tiers with different levels of access and numbers of keys, partnering with Humble Store to handle all the key distribution and not having given out keys that were uniquely tagged to each reward / game tier.”

The developers stress that they will be providing a DRM-free final version of the game as originally promised, and that “if anyone just has an absolute aversion to Steam and does not want to participate, we will provide you with a full refund.”

For instructions on how to collect and redeem your Steam key, click here.

Source: Kickstarter

We all knew it was on the cards, and now finally, here it is: RIFT will become a F2P game on June 12.

Free players will enjoy two character slots and three bag slots, while RIFT owners will have six and five respectively. Owners of the Storm Legion expansion will receive access to the expansion souls as normal.

The in-game RIFT store is being expanded to cope with the change, offering mounts, gear, boosts, companion pets, and more. However, if you maintain a subscription option you’ll be known as a “patron” and get access to a constant passive +15% currency boost, passive +10% mount speed boost, a daily XP boost, and other various rewards that make life generally easier for you.

Trion stress that the entire game will remain available for free players, with the exception of Storm Legion expansion souls. Check out the FAQ here.

Source: RIFT

NVIDIA have released the application behind their recent human face-rendering technology video, so that home users can run it for themselves.

You can adjust the rendering options in real-time during the video, to see how NVIDIA’s FaceWorks technology copes with different lighting conditions. Getting creeped out by the Uncanny Valley effect is not part of the demo but you’re welcome to do it anyway.

If you’d like, you can download the demo right here from our file library which is, of course, quota-free for iiNet group customers.

Source: NVIDIA

Trion Worlds aren’t just abandoning Defiance after shipping it — in fact, they’ve revealed that they’re aiming for an aggressive release schedule which will see five DLC expansions released in the next 12 months.

“We do our DLCs a bit differently with Defiance. Every time we do a DLC, of which we have 5 planned within the next year, we have a free component, a paid component and a store update,” claims Nathan Richardsson, executive producer on the game. “The free part is for everyone. We want people to be playing with their friends; we don’t like to isolate players.”

“That doesn’t mean there won’t be exclusive content in the DLCs, quite the contrary. The difference is that you can usually bring your friends with you. The catch is that they can’t directly benefit from all of it, like DLC specific loot or gain abilities.”

The first upcoming DLC is tentatively called “Enter the Castithan”, and Richardsson revealed it would (also tentatively) contain the following:

You get this when you buy the DLC for $10:
– Access to play the Castithan Species
– Access to a new Story Mission Line with new Battle Arena Game Mode
– Access to the new Castithan Battle Arenas
– Castithan Charge Blade & Ceremonial Mask as a reward from Story Mission Line
– A unique version of the Raptor, a new 4 player truck of doom
– A unique Castithan version of an outfit
– A Charge Weapons Starter Pack
– Access to New Pursuits
– New Xbox and PS3 Trophies and Achievements

You get this in the DLC for free:
– Access to the new Charge Weapons Class and Castithan Blades
– Access to Sieges, a new Open World Game Mode
– Access to the new Monolith Major Arkfall
– Access to a new PvP Map – Military Academy
– Join a friend into the Battle Arenas Game Mode
– Duel your friends and neighbors in the Duels Game Mode
– Enemies, lockboxes, and events can drop Charge Weapons
– Select a new voice for you character
– Multitude of game improvements from UI to content

You can buy these individually from the store:
– New Mods that tint the color of your Castithan Blade
– Lockboxes have a chance to get Charge Weapons
– More versions of the Raptor, the new 4 player truck of doomed compensation
– Character Customization changes: Appearance change, name change, or everything change

Source: Defiance

Following their accidental early release last week, CDProjekt RED have now officially released REDKit, the modding tools for The Witcher 2.

The tools are available via dedicated REDKit site, which also features a detailed wiki as well as an already-completed mod named Lykaon.

You’ll need a PC copy of The Witcher 2 to run REDKit, which you should of course have already as it’s one of the finest RPGs around. Go on, get on that.