Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

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Let's go with the news:

SALES & DEALS

Nier: Automata has sold more than 4 million copies
https://www.pcgamer.com/nier-automata-has-sold-more-than-4-million-copies/
Since it launched in 2017, Nier: Automata has sold more than 4 million physical and digital copies, which is quite a turnaround given that developer Platinum was on the ropes before 2B and 9S's misadventure made its way into players' hands.
"It's fair to say it's keeping the lights on at Platinum" said designer Takahisa Taura in a video marking the occasion.

Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is just $6 on Steam right now
https://www.pcgamer.com/borderlands-the-handsome-collection-is-just-dollar6-on-steam-right-now/
Borderlands 3 is due to arrive later this year, but if you've never played the previous games (we won't judge too harshly), catching up on the series has never been cheaper. The Handsome Collection, which includes Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel, and all the additional content for both games, is now just $6.02 on Steam.
There's a massive amount of DLC bundled up here, including "hundreds of hours" of extra story missions, various cosmetic items, and other goodies. All it's missing is the original game, which is "only" on sale for 33 percent off.
To get the deal, just visit The Handsome Collection's page on Steam.

Steam's latest sale supports Greenpeace and other environmental organizations
https://www.pcgamer.com/steams-latest-sale-supports-greenpeace-and-other-environmental-organizations/
Steam's latest sale comes in recognition of the UN's World Environment Day, and generally encompasses games which have water or greenery in them, such as Raft, Equilinox, Flower, and Samorost 3.
The sale was set up by Fugl developer Johan Gjestland, and a portion of the revenue from participating games will be donated to "organizations like Greenpeace, World Land Trust and The Nature Conservatory."
>> That's just one of the Midweek sales. The other three as well as the two daily deals are:

• The first daily deal is Epistory - Typing Chronicles, 75% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/398850/Epistory__Typing_Chronicles/
• The other one is TIS-100, also 75% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/TIS100/
• On the Midweek sales, Northgard is 50% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/Northgard/
• The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is 90% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/215530/The_Incredible_Adventures_of_Van_Helsing/
• And HeadUp Games celebrates its 10th anniversary putting its games on sale: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/headupgames/

GOG's Summer Sale has added games from Bethesda with 50% discounts on all its titles. It may be worth giving it a look.

And at Fanatical... well, the old Star Deal has ended and the new one still hasn't appeared, so check it out for yourselves if you want.

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

Microsoft adds Variable Refresh Rate support to all DX11 games in Windows 10
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/microsoft-adds-variable-refresh-rate-support-to-all-dx11-games-in-windows-10/
Microsoft has announced that it has added a new toggle in Graphics Settings for variable refresh rate in the latest version of Windows 10, Windows 10 Version 1903. This option will allow you to have variable refresh rates in all DX11 games in full-screen mode, regardless of whether a game was previously compatible with VRR or not.
In case you aren’t aware of, Variable Refresh Rate (also known as VRR) is similar to NVIDIA’s G-SYNC and VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync. In short, it allows your monitor to function in a variable refresh rate so that it can eliminate screen tearing.

Steam hardware survey shows RTX graphics cards growing in number
https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-hardware-survey-shows-rtx-graphics-cards-growing-in-number/
A new Steam hardware and software survey is out, and with it comes some interesting trends that can be observed. For one, we see an uptick in the number of GeForce RTX series graphics cards.
Ownership among Steam users rose 0.31 percent from the end of April to the end of May. Not surprisingly, the bulk of those were RTX 2060 upgrades, as that is the least expensive graphics card with dedicated RT cores to handle the brunt of ray-traced workloads.
In a vacuum, a 0.31 percent rise spread out among four GPUs is not eye-popping, and neither are the individual gains. However, compared against every other GPU surveyed, RTX adoption last month was among the highest.

Coherence aims to democratise online game development
https://www.pcgamer.com/coherence-aims-to-democratise-online-game-development/
Coherence is the latest project in the trend towards more democratised game development tools. Playdead and Jumpship co-founder Dino Patti, Unity co-founder David Helgason and DICE's Peter Björklund have teamed up to make an open-source platform designed to allow developers, regardless of size or experience level, to create persistent online games.
Helgason has an advisory role in the company, also called Coherence, while Patti and Björklund are CEO and CTO, respectively. They want to use Coherence to break down some of the barriers that developers face when taking on the significant challenge of building online worlds.

MODS/EMULATORS

You can now play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in VR & first-person mode on the PC
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/you-can-now-play-the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-in-vr-first-person-mode-on-the-pc/
The Legend of Zelda fans, here is something special for you today. YouTube’s ‘Kaze Emanuar’ has released a new romhack for the Nintendo 64 version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that allows you to play this classic Zelda game in VR and with a first-person perspective.
Since this is a romhack, you can only play it via an emulator (Kaze Emanuar suggests using the Dolphin emulator). As such, these new custom VR and first-person perspective modes can only be experienced on the PC, something that shows why emulation is so important for older games.
Now while this is a really cool concept (and gamers can play the entire game in VR and FPS), it has some issues. For instance there are black bars and the backgrounds could have been better. Kaze Emanuar promises to release a better version in case there is interest for this VR project in which he will disable culling and will have improved backgrounds and 3D house scenes.
>> Here's the download link (Mediafire).

This 4GB Texture Pack for Fallout 4 adds 4K textures for its landscapes
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/this-4gb-texture-pack-for-fallout-4-adds-4k-textures-for-its-landscapes/
Modder ‘Spiffyskytrooper’ has released a brand new version of his Natural Landscapes mod for Fallout 4. Natural Landscapes is described as a mod that aims to bring high quality, realistic 4K textures to the landscapes of Fallout 4.
As the modder noted, Natural Landscapes aims to stay true to vanilla where it can, and replace/expand upon textures where there’s room for improvement. This basically means that this texture pack stays true to the vanilla aesthetic while expanding where there isn’t much.
>> Get it from Nexus Mods. There's also a 2K version.

The Witcher 3 HD Project – New incredible comparison screenshots for its upcoming 2019 version
https://www.dsogaming.com/screenshot-news/the-witcher-3-hd-project-new-incredible-comparison-screenshots-for-its-upcoming-2019-version/
Modder ‘Halk Hogan PL’ has released some new comparison screenshots between the vanilla version of The Witcher 3 and the latest version of his HD Project. These new screenshots showcase some of the new and highly detailed textures that will be coming soon to The Witcher 3.
For those not familiar with this mod, The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project aims to overhaul CD Projekt RED’s role-playing game, featuring high quality meshes with a lot of details (most of them are created from scratch and good optimalization is preserved), very high quality detailed textures with great sharpness and performance, without any unnecessary VRAM losses, very high quality accurate normal maps and specially customized materials for all reworked stuff.

GAMING NEWS

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York officially announced, coming to Steam in Q4 2019
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/vampire-the-masquerade-coteries-of-new-york-officially-announced-coming-to-steam-in-q4-2019/
Draw Distance has announced a new Vampire: The Masquerade game called Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York. Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York presents the conflict between two vampiric factions: the traditionalist Camarilla and the fiercely independent Anarchs among the iconic landmarks and night lights of The Big Apple.

Jumanji: The Video Game is coming to the PC on November 15th
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/jumanji-the-video-game-is-coming-to-the-pc-on-november-15th/
Bandai Namco, Outright Games and UK based development studio Funsolve, in collaboration with Sony Pictures, today announced Jumanji: The Video Game, the officially licensed game set in the world of the massively successful Jumanji film franchise.

Anthem Public Test Server now available on the PC for its Cataclysm Endgame Event
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/anthem-public-test-server-now-available-on-the-pc-for-its-cataclysm-endgame-event/
Electronic Arts and Bioware have just announced that the PTS (Public Test Server) for Anthem’s endgame Cataclysm event is now available on the PC. In case you weren’t aware of, the PTS is a way for Anthem PC players to share their feedback about the Cataclysm experience before it’s available to everyone else.

First Halo: Infinite gameplay footage to be shown at E3 2019, will be running on the PC
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/halo-infinite-first-gameplay-footage-to-be-shown-at-e3-2019-will-be-running-on-the-pc/
Tech journalist Brad Sams, the man who revealed that Halo: The Master Chief Collection, was coming to the PC prior to its official announcement, has shared some new information about Microsoft’s E3 2019 conference. According to Sams, Microsoft will present the first gameplay footage of Halo: Infinite at E3 2019 which will be running on the PC.

Rocksteady will not be present at E3 2019
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/rocksteady-will-not-be-present-at-e3-2019/
Sefton Hill, Game Director and co-founder of Rocksteady Games, has announced that the team behind the Batman Arkham series will not be present at E3 2019. This obviously means that the mysterious DC game that the team is currently working on will not be announced during this upcoming gaming event.

F1 2019 vs F1 2018 official graphics comparison screenshots
https://www.dsogaming.com/screenshot-news/f1-2019-vs-f1-2018-official-graphics-comparison-screenshots/
Codemasters today unveiled new visual improvements for F1 2019. As such, you can find below the visual evolution of night lighting through comparison screenshots between F1 2018 and F1 2019.

APEX Legends Patch 1.2 is now available for download, full patch release notes revealed
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/apex-legends-patch-1-2-is-now-available-for-download-full-patch-release-notes-revealed/
Respawn has released a brand new update for its battle royale game, APEX Legends. According to the release notes, patch 1.2 adjusts the mini map so its direction can now display correctly while in the ship or skydiving, improves server performance for some cases of rubberbanding when using items and improves skydiving so it should feel more responsive and smooth.

Focus Home Interactive confirms the September 24th release date for The Surge 2
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/focus-home-interactive-confirms-the-september-24th-release-date-for-the-surge-2/
Yesterday, we informed you about a possible leak regarding the release date of The Surge 2. And today, Focus Home Interactive and Deck13 confirmed that their hardcore action RPG, The Surge 2, will be indeed released on September 24th.

The Lord of the Rings Online now supports 64-bit operating systems, improving overall game performance
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-lord-of-the-rings-online-now-supports-64-bit-operating-systems-improving-overall-game-performance/
Standing Stone Games has released a brand new update for The Lord of the Rings Online. According to the developers, update 24 adds support for 64bit operating systems which can improve game performance.