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

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And here’s the third part of the gaming news:

These fanmade reload animations for Abiotic Factor are so good the game's own art director praises them: 'You absolutely nailed the vibe I was going for'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/these-fanmade-reload-animations-for-abiotic-factor-are-so-good-the-games-own-art-director-praises-them-you-absolutely-nailed-the-vibe-i-was-going-for/
Half-Life-inspired survival game Abiotic Factor cascaded into a 1.0 launch earlier this week, earning itself an 'Overwhelmingly Positive' rating on Steam, and a whopping score of 92 in our Abiotic Factor review. Our intrepid brainiac Morgan Park called it "one of the greatest survival crafting games ever made, and by far my favourite," praising its combination of rich survival systems with an enormous tech tree and a Black Mesa-style setting that continuously rewards exploration.
In short, Abiotic Factor is excellent. But it seems there's still room for improvement within the GATE Research Facility. This isn't my opinion either. It's that of the game's own art director, Connor Moran, who took to YouTube to praise a fan for improving upon their own work in a specific area of the game.

Stormgate is leaving early access before it's technically finished: 'We believe that our campaign and 1v1 are ready for a broader audience'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/stormgate-is-leaving-early-access-before-its-technically-finished-we-believe-that-our-campaign-and-1v1-are-ready-for-a-broader-audience/
Stormgate developer Frost Giant Studios recently announced that its Warcraft-inspired RTS will receive its first proper single-player campaign in August, and that this juncture would mark the game's official departure from Steam early access. However, this reveal led to some confusion, as Frost Giant numbered its launch version "0.6" instead, causing players to speculate that the game was leaving early access unfinished.
Now, Frost Giant has issued an update apologising for the mix-up, while announcing that, henceforth, Stormgate updates will no longer be numbered.

Crytek says the most important difference between Far Cry and Crysis had nothing to do with technology: 'In Crysis, we mimicked nature as closely as possible'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/crytek-says-the-most-important-difference-between-far-cry-and-crysis-had-nothing-to-do-with-technology-in-crysis-we-mimicked-nature-as-closely-as-possible/
Sorry (not sorry) for rolling out this withered, ancient chestnut, but it truly is mind-blowing how good Crysis still looks today. What's even more amazing is just how advanced it looked compared to Crytek's previous game Far Cry, even though the two only released three years apart.
I always figured the difference was due to technological advancements, and certainly, Crytek devised some wild new technical features to make Crysis look as good as it did. From subsurface scattering to make leaves look translucent, to skin-shaders specifically designed to make characters blush if required, there's some amazingly specific tech running beneath Crytek's nanosuit-powered shooter.
But in the first of a series of videos celebrating Crytek's 25th anniversary, the studio says the most vital difference between Far Cry and Crysis had nothing to do with raw technical oomph.

An 'Overwhelmingly Positive' idle game about plastic ducks floating in a pool has a collectible card-game successor, and there's a demo you can play now
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/card-games/an-overwhelmingly-positive-idle-game-about-plastic-ducks-floating-in-a-pool-has-a-collectible-card-game-successor-and-theres-a-demo-you-can-play-now/
I am often in a state of delighted befuddlement at the games which prove popular on Steam, but few have simultaneously thrilled and baffled me as much as the success of Placid Plastic Duck Simulator. (...) Any game that well regarded is likely to spawn a successor, and Placid Plastic Duck Simulator is no different. But dual developers turbolento games and Fantastico Studio haven't just knocked out 50 extra duck models and called it Placid Plastic Duck Simulator 2. In fact, while the developer's next game shares the plastic duck theme, it is otherwise completely different and substantially more involved.

Sony acquires a slice of the Bandai Namco pie, snagging a stake in Elden Ring
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/sony-acquires-a-slice-of-the-bandai-namco-pie-snagging-a-stake-in-elden-ring/
Sony has struck a "strategic business alliance agreement" with Bandai Namco, further strengthening its ties to Elden Ring and FromSoftware. The partnership was announced on July 24 after Sony purchased a 2.5% stake in Bandai Namco. Both companies have made it clear that anime and manga are the main focus in this partnership.

Bloody fighting game Invincible VS gets its most brutal character yet in Comic-Con trailer
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fighting/bloody-fighting-game-invincible-vs-gets-its-most-brutal-character-yet-in-comic-con-trailer/
Gory fighting game Invincible VS got a new gameplay trailer at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, giving us our first look at the latest addition to the playable character line-up: Battle Beast. While not a central character in the Invincible franchise, Battle Beast has made several appearances in the show and the comic books, where he is known for his fierce quest to find worthy opponents to challenge him in battle.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 uses a plugin called KawaiiPhysics, a free engine built to 'cutely animate things' that's used in a ton of popular games from gachas to soulslikes
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/clair-obscur-expedition-33-uses-a-plugin-called-kawaiiphysics-a-free-engine-built-to-cutely-animate-things-thats-used-in-a-ton-of-popular-games-from-gachas-to-soulslikes/
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is many things—heartwrenching, impressive, a love-letter to the JRPG genre, and, uh, (checking my notes) kawaii, apparently. In case you aren't uncomfortably familiar with anime—or just don't know Japanese—'kawaii' means 'cute'.
That's per the creator of Kawaii Physics, Kazuya Okada (Okazu) who noticed that, during a Sandfall Interactive lecture, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 uses his engine. Primarily designed to make anime girls look cute while they do cute stuff, it's been weaponised by Sandfall to make Gustave's coat tails look super neat (thanks, Automaton). You can see a tech demo example of KawaiiPhysics below.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers gets another patch to improve performance, though the fixes appear to be nothing more than forcing on upscaling, even when it's supposed to be off
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/wuchang-fallen-feathers-gets-another-patch-to-improve-performance-though-the-fixes-appear-to-be-nothing-more-than-forcing-on-upscaling-even-when-its-supposed-to-be-off/
New soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feather has had the most auspicious of launches. Over on Steam, it currently enjoys a 'mostly negative' rating from over 25,000 reviews, and our Tyler reckons that while it 'brings some fun ideas to boss fights', everything else is a 'pale imitation of much better games'. Opinions are likely to take a further turn for the worse, though, as a new performance patch doesn't seem to do anything more than just force a lower rendering resolution, even if you select 100%.
That particular claim has been made by YouTube GPU guru Daniel Owen (via Reddit), and he has the evidence to back it up. Comparing the launch version to the recent 1.4 patch, Owen tested how the resolution scaling option affected the performance of Wuchang: Fallen Feather running on a GeForce RTX 3060.
>> Why wotk in further optimizations when it’s easier to do this sh*t, right?

Kung fu action game Phantom Blade Zero's has my new favorite take on hard mode balance: Beating it 'in a very beautiful manner' is the true challenge
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/kung-fu-action-game-phantom-blade-zeros-has-my-new-favorite-take-on-hard-mode-balance-beating-it-in-a-very-beautiful-manner-is-the-true-challenge/
The first time I played Phantom Blade Zero earlier this year, I was bad at it—which might've had something to do with jumping straight into a boss fight while I was still learning the controls. But over the last two days at a preview event in Beijing, I've gone from fresh-faced trainee to a wispy-bearded master, beating an hour-long demo's toughest fight on "Hellwalker" difficulty.
Okay, that's probably giving myself a little too much credit—because in a refreshing change from the sea of Soulslikes in recent years, Phantom Blade Zero is actually aiming to be more beautiful than bastard hard. Even on its toughest setting, it's not as punishing as FromSoftware's Sekiro or Shadow of the Erdtree. It's more generous with parry windows and stamina than TeamNinja's Nioh. And it's lighter on technical combos than Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden. All that is intentional, because the pain isn't meant to be the big draw.

'We proved people wrong:' After Silent Hill 2, Bloober Team's survival horror developers are no longer 'feeling like underdogs all the time'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/horror/we-proved-people-wrong-after-silent-hill-2-bloober-teams-survival-horror-developers-are-no-longer-feeling-like-underdogs-all-the-time/
"Give us a chance," horror studio Bloober Team asked Silent Hill fans last summer.
(...)
"We are starting to stop feeling like underdogs all the time after Silent Hill," he said. "The Silent Hill era wasn't so easy in the eyes of the public. There were a lot of voices: 'Oh no, Bloober is doing this. They will destroy that.' It was very tough for the whole company to stick to our guns and put all our heart into that thing, even if most people don't want it. We proved people wrong, so that's nice.'

Overwatch 2's new China-exclusive dating sim event looks so good that players say they've been 'robbed' of the experience
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/overwatch-2s-new-china-exclusive-dating-sim-event-looks-so-good-that-players-say-theyve-been-robbed-of-the-experience/
Overwatch 2 is going in for round two of its Loverwatch dating sim—it first appeared two years ago on February 13. While this new iteration includes more heroes like Junker Queen and Mauga, it is, unfortunately, only available for players in China.