The Monday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Steam's Top 10

1. Days Gone
2. Mass Effect Legendary Edition
3. Pre-purchase BIOMUTANT
4. Resident Evil Village
5. Subnautica: Below Zero
6. Red Dead Redemption 2
7. Valve Index VR Kit
8. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition
9. It Takes Two
10. Cyberpunk 2077

GOG starts the week with new sales and a new release:

• The new Weekly Sale is packed with post-apocalyptic games up to 90% off: https://www.gog.com/promo/20210524_weekly_sale
• The arrival of Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom on the store is a good excuse to put all the games in the series on sale, up to 40% off during the next 4 days: https://www.gog.com/promo/20210521_strategic_mind
• Ubisoft has put all its games up to 80% off during the next week: https://www.gog.com/promo/20210524_ubisoft_sale
• Publisher Good Shepherd has also put its games on sale during the week, up to 90% off: https://www.gog.com/promo/good_shepherd_sale
• And there's a Special Zombie GOGalypse Sale, with up to 90% discounts on zombie games during the next 7 days: https://www.gog.com/promo/zombie_gogalypse_2021
• And the new release is Saints Row: The Third Remastered, 40% off until the 28th (or, if you have Saints Row: The Third - The Full Package, 65% off until June 21): https://www.gog.com/game/saints_row_the_third_remastered

Steam has two new daily deals:

• The first one is The Shore, 33% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1297300/The_Shore/
• And the second daily deal is The Blackout Club, 50% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/599080/The_Blackout_Club/

The Humble Store has 4 new sales:

• Paradox has put its games up to 80% off during the next 4 days. Most keys are for Steam, but there's a handful that are also for GOG: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/pdxcon-sale/
• Publisher Good Shepherd puts its games up to 90% off during the next 4 days. All the keys are for Steam, except one that's also for GOG: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/good-shepherd-publisher-sale/
• The PlayWay Publisher Sale brings up to 90% discounts during the next 4 days. Again, all the keys but one are for Steam, with the other also being for GOG: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/playway-publisher-sale/
• And the Square Enix Spring into Action Sale features up to 90% discounts during the next 11 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/square-enix-spring-into-action-sale/

Fanatical's new Star Deal is GreedFall, 68% off during the next 48 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/greedfall

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

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MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Fans are working on a Resident Evil Code Veronica Remake in Unity Engine
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/fans-are-working-on-a-resident-evil-code-veronica-remake-in-unity-engine/
After the official remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, Capcom appears to be working on Resident Evil 4 Remake. Now as you may have noticed, the team has skipped a RE game that came right after RE3. That RE game is no other than Resident Evil Code Veronica. And since Capcom is not planning to remake it, some fans decided to create their own in Unity Engine.
This fan remake of Resident Evil Code Veronica will feature 3D environments and will be a third-person shooter. The remake aims to retain the style of the original game. Naturally, it will feature reimagined versions of all maps… or at least that’s the plan.
Resident Evil Code Veronica Remake will feature two modes; Remake and Classic. The Remake Mode will feature a third-person camera and faithful expanded scenarios. On the other hand, the Classic Mode will have fixed camera angles like the original game.

This 3GB Mod for Fallout 4 overhauls all buildings of the Commonwealth
https://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/this-3gb-mod-for-fallout-4-overhauls-all-buildings-of-the-commonwealth/
Modder ‘Dazaster’ has released a new HD Texture Pack for Fallout 4 that overhauls all of the buildings of the Commonwealth. According to the modder, the mod includes new textures for Houses, Stores, Airports, Offices, Red Rocket Garage, Skyscrapers and Diamond City.
Do note that this Texture Pack will conflict with other mods that make any building texture changes. Thus, if you are using such mods, we suggest disabling them.
In order to overhaul the game’s textures, Dazaster used the textures from the official Bethesda HD pack as a base. The new textures are the same resolution as those, however, they are larger as they contain more detail. As such, if you can’t run the official Bethesda HD pack, you won’t be able to run this new HD Texture Pack.
>> Available from Nexus Mods.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition mod brings back console commands
https://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-legendary-edition-mod-brings-back-console-commands/
While Mass Effect Legendary Edition already has mods like the FOV fix, it's still not as moddable as the original games due to the absence of a toolset like ME3Explorer. That'll come with time and a better understanding of how its .pcc files—a proprietary version of Unreal Engine package files—have changed. One step along the way to making the Legendary Edition more tweakable is that the in-game console has been enabled, thanks to Mgamerz.
Previous mods to bring back the console involved renaming .dll files and were at risk of being messed with by the games' DRM. The newer mod appears to be the first tinkering directly with .pcc files, providing a replacement Engine.pcc for all three games. If used to replace the existing file in the appropriate BioGame/CookedPCConsole directory (make sure to back up the original first), you'll be open the full console by pressing ~ and a mini-console by pressing tab. (If you use tab to get rid of the UI in photo mode, note that left shift does the same thing.)

Attack on Titan PVP free fan game is now available for download
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/attack-on-titan-pvp-free-fan-game-is-now-available-for-download/
Indie developer Roark has released an amazing Attack on Titan PVP multiplayer free fan game. This AoT fan game allows players to compete online against others in a variety of combat-oriented and objective-based modes. Roark’s Attack on Titan Fan Game features 12 playable characters, 3 unique weapon classes, and 10 game modes. The game supports up to 16 players and 4 teams. The playable characters are: Eren, Mikasa, Levi, Armin, Jean, Sasha, Connie, Hange, Lana, Annie, Bertolt and Reiner. Disappointingly enough, Erwin is not available (and that’s a yellow card… because… Shinzou wo Sasageyo).
>> You can get it from Gamejolt.

GAMING NEWS

Here is the first screenshot from Crysis 2 Remastered
https://www.dsogaming.com/screenshot-news/here-is-the-first-screenshot-from-crysis-2-remastered/
Yesterday, Crytek teased a possible remaster of the second Crysis game. And today, Crytek released what appears to be the first screenshot from it.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint Update 4.0.0 is 23GB in size, full patch notes
https://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/ghost-recon-breakpoint-update-4-0-0-is-23gb-in-size-full-patch-notes/
Ubisoft has revealed the full patch notes for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint’s Title Update 4.0.0. This Update will be huge as it will weigh around 23GB, and will release on May 25th at 9 AM UTC.

Paradox Interactive has officially announced Victoria 3 for PC
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/paradox-interactive-has-officially-announced-victoria-3-for-pc/
Paradox Interactive has announced its latest society simulation strategy game, Victoria 3. In order to celebrate this announcement, the publisher released its debut trailer that you can find below.

Monday news, part two:

Both Titanfall games are once again plagued by DDoS attacks
https://www.pcgamer.com/both-titanfall-games-are-once-again-plagued-by-ddos-attacks/
Titanfall players have been suffering DDoS attacks for a very long time. In April, after many months of complaints, Respawn told players it was investigating the problem, and seemed to get it cleared up. But now a new wave of attacks is affecting both Titanfall and Titanfall 2 players, with streamers showing what looks to be not just a server breakdown, but individual players being isolated and unable to play the match past the opening cutscene. Players have also reported being unable to connect at all.

Crusader Kings 3: Royal Court finally gives you a place to sit
https://www.pcgamer.com/crusader-kings-3-royal-court-finally-gives-you-a-place-to-sit/
After Crusader Kings 3's fun but focused Northern Lords DLC, we're now getting the first big expansion, which comes with things most nobles should be able to enjoy, even if they aren't of the Viking persuasion.

Watch Dogs Legion is getting Grandma Helen and a June surprise
https://www.pcgamer.com/watch-dogs-legion-is-getting-grandma-helen-and-a-june-surprise/
Ubisoft has released an updated development roadmap for Watch Dogs Legion that lays out its plans for the summer, including new playable heroes, a new story expansion, an Assassin's Creed crossover, and a free operative named Helen who you might find a little bit familiar.

Saints Row: The Third Remastered arrives on Steam with discount for owners
https://www.pcgamer.com/saints-row-the-third-remastered-arrives-on-steam-with-discount-for-owners/
After a year of Epic Games Store exclusivity, Saints Row: The Third Remastered is now available on Steam with a 40% launch discount until May 28. If you own the original version and its DLC you can get a bundle that will give you a 65% discount.

Going Medieval is a colony sim that takes its castle-building quite seriously
https://www.pcgamer.com/going-medieval-is-a-colony-sim-that-takes-its-castle-building-quite-seriously/
Most popular colony-building games, like Rimworld or Banished, are flat. Flat! No building up, no building down, just sideways, really. Well, here's an addition to the formula: Going Medieval, prepped for release next month, has a voxel-building-game emphasis on making castles and forts and keeps and mottes and curtain walls and crenellations and suchlike.

Dungeons of Edera is indie, Souls-like Diablo in Unreal Engine
https://www.pcgamer.com/dungeons-of-edera-is-indie-souls-like-diablo-in-unreal-engine/
Indie developer Monster Tooth Studios has a promising looking action RPG that's been in development for a while now, Dungeons of Edera, a kind of procedural roguelite action RPG with the stamina-and-dodging combat of the Soulslike subgenre. It is also made in Unreal Engine and you can tell: It looks good. A far cry from the pixels you'd usually be in for when "Indie" and "Soulslike" are in the same sentence.

Respawn explains Apex Legends cosmetic pricing: 'math is harder than people think'
https://www.pcgamer.com/respawn-explains-apex-legends-cosmetic-pricing-math-is-harder-than-people-think/
In an AMA on the Apex Legends subreddit, Respawn's "director-level monetization guy" agreed to respond to questions about the battle royale's cosmetics. A typical Apex Legends skin costs almost $20, which tests the limits of the word "microtransaction". That's why x5hadau asked, "there's gotta be a way to prevent the player from feeling cheated when they buy something".

Halo's decades-old janky PC visuals are finally getting fixed
https://www.pcgamer.com/halos-decades-old-janky-pc-visuals-are-finally-getting-fixed/
Halo: The Master Chief Collection is finally fixing up a series of graphical hiccups that have been present in the first Halo since Gearbox Software's original PC port.

Players in uproar over Elite Dangerous: Odyssey's bugs and poor performance
https://www.pcgamer.com/players-in-uproar-over-elite-dangerous-odysseys-bugs-and-poor-performance/
The latest expansion for Elite Dangerous released this week and players are in an uproar, reviewing the game negatively in droves. As of this article's publishing it's sitting at 33% positive reviews on Steam, a rating of "Mostly Negative." That's as compared to 77% positive for the five year old game's core release.

Frontier CEO apologises 'wholeheartedly' for shoddy Elite Dangerous Odyssey launch
https://www.pcgamer.com/frontier-ceo-apologises-wholeheartedly-for-shoddy-elite-dangerous-odyssey-launch/
Frontier CEO and founder David Braben has apologised for the state of Elite Dangerous Odyssey at launch, saying the current bugs are the studio's "top priority and focus."

Raven will tone down the sun in Call of Duty: Warzone
https://www.pcgamer.com/raven-will-tone-down-the-sun-in-call-of-duty-warzone/
A visual effects artist at Raven has promised to tone-down the blinding lens flare effects on Call of Duty: Warzone's new map.
The response comes after players started complaining about the spectacularly sunny weather on Verdansk '84 making gunfights a pain, with one redditor even suggesting adding sunglasses as loot. A few suggest the lens flare problems predate the new map, but the general feeling is that Season 3 has ramped up the issue exponentially. Verdansk is just too dang bright.

Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker will have around 30% more story and cutscenes than Shadowbringers
https://www.pcgamer.com/final-fantasy-14-endwalker-will-have-around-30-more-story-and-cutscenes-than-shadowbringers/
When it releases on November 23, Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker is going to be the most important of its four expansions. It is bringing to a close an 11-year story arc that involves dozens of characters and places as the nations of Eorzea finally take the fight to the evil Garlean Empire. If previous expansions are anything to go by, it'll be a stirring and emotional climax—and game director Naoki Yoshida says the development team is pulling out all the stops to make it happen.

Final Fantasy 14's Naoki Yoshida teases what's to come after Endwalker
https://www.pcgamer.com/final-fantasy-14s-naoki-yoshida-teases-whats-to-come-after-endwalker/
Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker is doing something pretty unheard of in the MMO genre: It's bringing an end to the story. Since it launched in 2010 (and was later remade into the much-improved A Realm Reborn in 2013), Final Fantasy 14 has slowly been building toward a planet-sized showdown between the Warriors of Light (the players) and the complicated-but-mostly-evil Ascians—or what's left of them, anyway.

Drummer accidentally leaks a new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
https://www.pcgamer.com/drummer-accidentally-leaks-a-new-tony-hawks-pro-skater/
Jess Margera, drummer for rock band CKY and brother to series mainstay Bam Margera, may have revealed that Activision is working on a new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game.

Tank-fighting JRPG Metal Max: Xeno Reborn is coming to PC
https://www.pcgamer.com/tank-fighting-jrpg-metal-max-xeno-reborn-is-coming-to-pc/
Tank-fighting JRPG Metal Max Xeno is getting a PC port.
Metal Max Xeno: Reborn will bring the 2018 PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita release over to Steam to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary. If you've never heard of Metal Max until today, don't fret—the games have had minimal presence in the West, with Xeno: Reborn only being the third game in the series to receive a release outside of Japan. It's the first game to get a PC release too, having spent its life on Nintendo and PlayStation systems, as well as mobile.

Watch Dogs was a Driver game, until Ubisoft decided it wanted its 'own GTA' instead
https://www.pcgamer.com/watch-dogs-was-a-driver-game-until-ubisoft-decided-it-wanted-its-own-gta-instead/
PC Gamer contributor Jeremy Peel has an excellent feature over at VG247, all about how the game that would become Watch Dogs began life as an ambitious reboot of Ubisoft's much-missed Driver series. The last entry was 2011's Driver: San Francisco (seen in the header image), which I thought was a great laugh but sadly failed to sell in any great numbers. Since then Driver's engine has been dormant.

The original Samorost gets a free 'enhanced edition' on Steam and Itch
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-original-samorost-gets-a-free-enhanced-edition-on-steam-and-itch/
Samorost 1, Amanita Designs' first foray into the weird and wonderful point 'n' click adventure games that would go on to define the studio, has been updated with a free enhanced edition on Steam and Itch.io.

Thanks for the heads up for the Saints Row 3 Remaster. Its £12 to upgrade it on Steam. Mighty tempted to do it but really shouldn't.. Spent a lot lately on new hardware lol.

I wouldn't say it's pointless because it shows CPU scaling in this game when it's not GPU bound. So if you were to upgrade to RDNA 3 or Lovelace or future GPUs, you could see bigger uplifts in performance with Ryzen 5000 CPUs for this game.

Anandtech does their CPU gaming tests the same way by lowering the resolution (In the games that need it) to 360p to elevate any GPU bottlenecks to see how the CPU scales.

It's not pointless at all. It's about future-proofing your hardware.

While currently GPUs are not powerful enough to not be the limiting factor, future GPUs very well will be. So if you can't or won't upgrade your CPU but the GPU instead you can see how high the FPS could be if the GPU is not the limiting factor anymore.

In the meantime, GN reviews a $1000 cyberpower prebuilt with an i5 10600KF that thermal throttles at stock settings because the CPU cooler is terrible.

I get a company like Dell goofing up their prebuilts but come on Cyberpower, don't ship a PC like that! Least it's overall better than the Dell PC.

Intel Socket V (LGA1700) for Alder Lake-S has a lower height and new hole pattern

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-socket-v-lga1700-for-alder-lake-s-has-a-lower-height-and-new-hole-pattern

Slow news day

See my comment below.

I understand why they do this kind of test, but the same benchmark could be done at 720p with no further tricks (or 480p for some of those handheld gaming PCs) and, since no current (or from the last couple of gens) high-end cards will be GPU limited at that resolution, still get the useful results.

No because 720p still has a GPU bottleneck for certain games like this. It's why people at Anandtech has some benchmarks at 360p and others at 720p. Some games even with modern GPUs can still bottleneck high end CPUs like the 5950x.

"We use the same scene for the CPU benchmarks as for the graphics cards. Days Gone is so well optimized that even processors many years old deliver three-digit frame rates. We therefore had to work really hard to be able to generate a CPU limit at all. To do this, we used the render scaling and turned it down to ten percent. At a resolution of 1,280 × 720, this corresponds - exactly - to a cute 128 × 72 = 9,216 pixels. Nobody plays in this resolution, that is clear to us. Nevertheless, we have to create a CPU limit in this way in order to work out the performance of the processors. In this way, we also challenge the frame times more, which are responsible for the perceived playability."

If they did the test at 720p, while it would still show a result that follows the same pattern such as 5950x > 5900x > 5600x > i7 11700k etc, it wouldn't be able to show you how much of a lead Ryzen 5000 CPUs have until you fully get rid of the GPU bottleneck.

At $1050 for a prebuilt, those components are bad and cooling unacceptable. I'm sure they could have added a much better cooler for $5 extra. Also, whats up with pre built with a single stick of RAM. 8GB of 3000Mhz in single channel and can't even run within spec due to the choice of motherboard.

I don't know how the prebuilt prices are like for you guys in the US/Canada, but in the UK you can get a system with a 3600, RTX 2060 and 16GB RAM from £800 with no OS - https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-observatory-lite-mesh-ryzen-3-3300x-quad-core-4.3ghz-rtx-2060-6gb-desktop-pc-for-gaming.html

That Cyberpower is PC is awful as is the Dell for value :P

Just for curiosity, how many games can actually do that? I mean, maybe Star Citizen could, but that's still work in progress, and maybe Flight Simulator, but I can't think of any game that could cause a bottleneck at 720p with all the settings set to low (after all, all the setting would be set to the lowest possible to put the pressure onto the CPU, right?).