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

[JEMC]

The Tuesday gaming news, hopefully posted on Tuesday:

SALES/PLAYER COUNTS & DEALS

Steam’s Top 10

(Click here for the Top 100)

Steam has one new deal and several sales:

• Deadzone: Rogue will be 35% off until the 2nd of March: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3228590/Deadzone_Rogue/
• And now, the Sales/Events:
  • Once again, like last Friday, there’s too many to post them, 11 in total if you count the Steam Lunar New Year Sale that’s in the front page but not in the Sales page of the store. You’ll find sales from Crytek, D3Publisher, Fulqrum, Cosmo Machia, Tripwire, Rusty Lake or Ankama, that celebrates its 25th anniversary, plusthe Guildford and Quebec Festival and Capcom doing a second sale with its Monster Hunter games. You can find them here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/sales/
• And we can’t forget about the weeklong deals, right?

Fanaticals new Star Deal is Stellar Blade™ Complete Edition, with a 35% discount during 48 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/stellar-blade-complete-edition

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

INTEL Arc Graphics 32.0.101.8509 driver
https://videocardz.com/driver/intel-arc-graphics-32-0-101-8509

HIGHLIGHTS
XeSS 3: Multi-Frame Generation Extended Platform Support
This release extends support beyond the Intel Arc GPUs in Intel Core Ultra Series 3 listed products to include:

• Intel Arc B-Series discrete GPUs (Codename Battlemage)
• Intel Arc A-Series discrete GPUs (Codename Alchemist)
• Intel Arc GPUs in Intel Core Ultra 2 series processors (Codename Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake H)
• Intel Arc GPUs in Intel Core Ultra processors (Codename Meteor Lake)

FIXED ISSUES
Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 3 with built-in Intel® Arc™ GPUs:

• Ghost of Tsushima* (DX12) may exhibit color corruption on terrains during gameplay.
• Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord* (DX11) may experience an application crash during game launch.

Intel® Arc™ B-Series Graphics Products:

• Ghost of Tsushima* (DX12) may exhibit color corruption on terrains during gameplay.
• GPU 3D utilization in Task Manager may show inconsistent metrics.

Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 2 with built-in Intel® Arc™ GPUs:

• Ghost of Tsushima* (DX12) may exhibit color corruption on terrains during gameplay.
• GPU 3D utilization in Task Manager may exhibit inconsistent metrics.

Intel® Graphics Software Fixed Issues:

• Combined Display may intermittently not function as expected while combining displays or resetting settings.

>> I forgot to post about it yesterday.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Banjo-Kazooie Remastered on PC With HD Textures and Better Draw Distance
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/banjo-kazooie-remastered-on-pc-with-hd-textures-and-better-draw-distance/
Last month, we informed you about an unofficial native PC port of one of the best Nintendo 64 games, Banjo-Kazooie. And today, we have some exciting news for its fans.
Let’s start with the recomp. Banjo: Recompiled is a project that takes Banjo-Kazooie and turns it into a native PC port using N64: Recompiled. This new version adds many new features, improvements, and lots of mod support. It also uses RT64 as its rendering engine to give the game better graphics.
The cool thing about this PC version of Banjo-Kazooie is that it supports high framerates and high resolutions. This means you can play the game at more than 60FPS. There is also support for mods, as well as for ultra-wide screens. All the advanced visual effects, like the jigsaw puzzle screen transition and Bottles’ Moving Picture Game, work as intended.
The music and sounds are exactly like the original N64 version of the game. All of the audio processing works correctly, with no popping or stuttering. Any scenes that match sound to visuals have been fixed so the timing stays perfectly in sync, just like on the original hardware.
Two weeks ago, ProxyBK released a must-have mod for it. This mod extends the game’s draw distance, allowing you to see more of its world. This mod lets you enjoy Banjo-Kazooie even more than before.
Then, we have a new HD Texture Pack for it. Created by Granvillimus, this pack upscales all of the game’s textures. By using it, PC gamers can get a crisper and more detailed image.
With these two mods, Banjo-Kazooie has been fully remastered on PC. In my opinion, this is the definitive way to replay it. So, if you are a big Banjo-Kazooie fan, you should definitely try them.
You can download the Draw Distance Mod and the HD Texture Pack from here and here, respectively. Do note that you will also need the Asset Expansion Pak. This rewrites the asset management system of the game to allow direct asset in-memory replacements by other mods.
>> The article has a 10 minutes video.

Rockstar celebrates official GTA mod support by nuking non-official mod platform
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/grand-theft-auto/rockstar-celebrates-official-gta-mod-support-by-nuking-non-official-mod-platform/
Around a month ago Rockstar launched an official mod shop for Grand Theft Auto Online, with Cfx Marketplace coming three years after the studio's 2023 acquisition of Cfx.re, a GTA and Red Dead Redemption modding team. This is obviously something of a dry run for the company before the all-conquering arrival of GTA 6, with a new GTA Online presumably not far behind: Rockstar has seen that Roblox money, and would sure like some of it.
Now, and perhaps inevitably, comes the news that the GTA 5 multiplayer platform alt:V Multiplayer is going to be closing down this summer after nine years, apparently after Rockstar owner Take-Two started making threatening noises in its direction. The alt:V team describe their work as "a free modification for Grand Theft Auto 5 that lets you play on dedicated servers with custom gamemodes." In other words roleplay servers, and yes that's pretty similar to what FiveM offers.
"This is not an easy message to write," writes alt:V team member Vadzz on Discord (thanks, GamesRadar+). "For the past nine years, we've been building alt:V—starting as a small side project and growing into a full-scale multiplayer platform used by hundreds of servers and thousands of players around the world. It's been years of solving hard problems and trying new ideas."
But it seems like the alt:V team got an offer they couldn't refuse. "Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive have made it clear that FiveM is the only authorized platform for GTAV multiplayer modding, as defined in their Platform License Agreement (PLA)," continues Vadzz. "In accordance with that policy, and at Take-Two's request, alt:V will begin a structured shutdown process in 2026."
No new community servers will be accepted from March 2, and public access to the toolkit will be discontinued. The alt:V team recommend all server owners using it begin "planning their migration to FiveM as early as possible."
Come May 4, the public server listing will disappear, and by July 6, "all remaining community servers are expected to cease operations." All servers must have migrated by that point, because the "backend infrastructure will be permanently shut down."

GAMING NEWS

Here are the PC requirements for Metal Gear Solid 4
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/here-are-the-pc-requirements-for-metal-gear-solid-4/
Konami has shared the official PC system requirements for Metal Gear Solid 4, which will be included in the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.2. So, let’s see what PC system you’ll need to run it.
>> They’re quite low.

Assassin’s Creed: Shadows Update 1.1.8 Released – Patch Notes
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/assassins-creed-shadows-update-1-1-8-released-patch-notes/
Ubisoft has just released Title Update 1.1.8 for Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and shared its full patch notes. So, let’s see what this new update brings to the table.
>> You’ll now be able to jump!