The news, part two:

Nintendo prototyped a Zelda in the '90s that was a lot like Portal
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/nintendo-was-developing-portals-like-portal-before-it-was-cool/
Giles Goddard, from the late 80s to the early 2000s, was a key talent behind-the-scenes for Nintendo. When the Nintendo 64 technology came around, Goddard was tasked with developing various prototypes to show what the machine could do: the most well-known of which is undoubtedly Mario's interactive face at the start of Super Mario 64. Turns out there was something even more eyebrow-raising in the works: a Zelda prototype that, well, was basically Portal before Portal.

Hunt: Showdown gets a much drier map and a deadly new bow
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/hunt-showdown-gets-a-much-drier-map-and-deadly-archery/
A new, much drier rootin' tootin' map is hitting Hunt: Showdown.
Crytek's criminally underrated 2018 bayou royale has been sitting at two maps since launch, but this new map adds a slightly different flavour from the other two swampy landscapes. There's a whole lot to take in for just a two-minute trailer, and it seems like Crytek threw in a bunch of small nods to the direction the new map is going to take.

Cloudpunk's 'sequel-sized' DLC arrives with a tease for a full cyberpunk life sim
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/cloudpunks-sequel-sized-dlc-arrives-with-a-tease-for-a-full-cyberpunk-life-sim/
Cloudpunk's voxelated taxi service is opening a new service at the bottom of the city, as the cab-noire adventure's new "sequel-sized" City of Ghosts DLC arrives today.

Dead by Daylight's Resident Evil DLC adds Nemesis and AI zombies but no Lady D
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/dead-by-daylights-resident-evil-crossover-adds-nemesis-and-ai-zombies-but-no-lady-d/
Dead by Daylight, the wildly popular multiplayer slash-em-up, celebrated its fifth anniversary by announcing the game has now reached 36 million players (across all platforms), and a new Resident Evil crossover that launches on June 15. The announcement came with the above CGI trailer that shows Nemesis, the tyrant from Resident Evil 3 and the new killer coming to Dead by Daylight, throwing some unfortunate soul into a car.

Axiom Verge 2 is delayed, but there's a free 'making-of' documentary you can watch instead
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/axiom-verge-2-is-delayed-but-theres-a-free-making-of-documentary-you-can-watch-instead/
Three months after Axiom Verge 2 was finally confirmed for PC as an Epic Games Store exclusive, it has been delayed. Instead of landing sometime in the first half of 2021 as expected, creator Thomas Happ announced that he needs just a little more time to get it done, and so instead it will be out sometime in the third quarter of the year, putting it between July 1 and September 30.

A 'large' new Overwatch feature will be announced soon, possibly 'really soon'
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/a-large-new-overwatch-feature-will-be-announced-soon-possibly-really-soon/
(...)
During a Reddit AMA yesterday, Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller said that a "large" new Overwatch feature will be announced "in the timeframe between soon and really soon."
>> Well, E3 is around the corner...

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground gameplay video confirms it is not a card game (but has cards)
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-storm-ground-gameplay-video-confirms-it-is-not-a-card-game-but-has-cards/
We emphasized earlier this year that the upcoming turn-based strategy game Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground is not a card game, a point we felt necessary because of a trailer that depicted units as cards. (...)
Today we got a closer look at Storm Ground's gameplay, and sure enough, while there are cards representing units and heroes, the game itself is all isometric hex-based strategy, with all the complexities you'd expect. The video features a small force of Stormcast Eternals taking on the Nighthaunt army in a midgame campaign battle: The player is in rough shape thanks to losses taken earlier in the campaign, but still has some cards to play (so to speak) including a large number of available upgrades and some potential terrain advantages.

Sonic the Hedgehog livestream will show off ‘upcoming projects’
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/sonic-the-hedgehog-livestream-will-show-off-upcoming-projects/
Sega will host a Sonic Central livestream this Thursday, May 27, and it’s promising “a first look at some of the projects, partnerships, and events for our Sonic 30th celebration.” This year is indeed the 30th anniversary of the original Sega game’s 1991 release, but you don’t exactly need a big milestone to celebrate the blue boi: Sega promised a whole lot of Sonic news in 2020, but we didn’t get much that was relevant to PC, probably thanks to the pandemic.

Strangeland, the new game from the makers of Primordia, is out today (and very good)
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/strangeland-the-new-game-from-the-makers-of-primordia-is-out-today-and-very-good/
Strangeland, the new point-and-click adventure from Primordia developer Wormwood Studios, tells the tale of a distressed amnesiac trapped within the confines of a surreal, nightmarish amusement park suffocating under a malevolent darkness. It opens abruptly, with a woman leaping to her death—not for the first time, the raven warns—but as the story progresses it becomes clear that the true mystery is not what it first appears.

Metal-detection romance The Magnificent Trufflepigs hikes onto Steam next week
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/metal-detection-romance-the-magnificent-trufflepigs-hikes-onto-steam-next-week/
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture lead designer Andrew Crawshaw is returning to the pastoral English countryside next month with The Magnificent Trufflepigs.

Torchlight 3's spring update will be the current developer's last
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/torchlight-3s-spring-update-will-be-the-current-developers-last/
Echtra is wrapping up development on Torchlight 3 with one final update, as the studio moves onto new things under new owner Zynga.
Writing in a "bittersweet" blog post this week, the Torchlight developer wrote that the game's spring update (which adds a cannon-toting Cursed Captain class to the game) would be the studio's last on the game. Echtra was acquired by Zynga back in March, and as part of that, the publisher is keen on getting the developer to move onto different projects.

This cosy cooking game is about staying connected with family in the pandemic
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/this-cosy-cooking-game-is-about-staying-connected-with-family-in-the-pandemic/
This cosy cooking game is all about chilling with your grandma and rustling up some incredible grub.
Nainai's Recipe gives a surprising amount of freedom over the way you cook your food. There are no preset chopping directions, no steps that require a high level of technicality. If you fancy roughly chopping your garlic in half, that's fine. Or you can go for a more precise, thinly sliced method. It doesn't affect any overall performance, which makes the whole experience a little less stressful—until you realise your pork is burning in the pan, of course.

PUBG is remastering Miramar and introducing two new maps
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/pubg-is-remastering-miramar-and-introducing-two-new-maps/
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is preparing to overhaul its big desert map, Miramar, as the developer announces plans for two more brand new battle royale maps: and the addition of a feature that's slowly spread across the genre.

Mass Effect modders to restore same-sex romances from unused audio files
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/mass-effect-modders-to-restore-same-sex-romances-from-unused-audio-files/
The recent release of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition has come with various revelations about the history of the series, and some changes: elements that were cut, some that couldn't be restored, and " target="_blank">tiny tweaks you probably won't even notice. One of the big discoveries was that certain same-sex romance options were planned for inclusion during development, to the extent that scripted dialogue exists in the game's files, but didn't appear in the final product.
Some of this will come down to the process of developing a game with this scale of script and player choice: voice actors always record many more lines than are eventually used, simply because it's much easier to have the options available than to have to go back and re-record. But as former Bioware animator Jonathan Cooper revealed earlier this year, other elements of same-sex romance were removed from the games for much more dubious reasons.
>> There's currently no mod to enable it.

Apex Legends is toning down new hero Valkyrie's jetpack
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/apex-legends-is-toning-down-new-hero-valkyries-jetpack/
If mobility is key in Apex Legends, then having a bloody jetpack gives you one hell of a leg up. But with new hero Valkyrie soaring care-free above the competition, Respawn has decided to tone down her rocket-propelled backpack.

Congratulations, hinch! But,,, a compact keyboard? I'd never buy one. I use the numpad too much and, when I have to use a laptop without it, it's frustrating.

Epic games is showing off a number of new UE5 features

Now the main one that people are interested in would be the Temporal Super Resolution which is supposed to give you near native 4k image quality at the cost of 1080p. It's only a 2 second announcement so no details or anything like that yet but I will be interested to see how it compares against DLSS and the upcoming FSR.

USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2021/5/25/22453936/usb-c-power-delivery-extended-power-range-epr

I would certainly rather have USB charging cable than the usual barrel plugs

Intel Remains World's Largest Chip Producer as AMD Enters Top 15

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ic-insights-top-15-makers-of-semiconductors?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter.com

Nasdaq: "Japan wants TSMC, Sony to build 20 nanometre chip plant - Nikkan Kogyo"

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/japan-wants-tsmc-sony-to-build-20-nanometre-chip-plant-nikkan-kogyo-2021-05-25-0

Microsoft CEO says the 'next generation' of Windows is coming soon

https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-ceo-says-the-next-generation-of-windows-is-coming-soon

And here I thought Windows 10 was supposed to be their "last one"

Steam is getting a new downloads page

Thanks dude. Tbf I don't use numpad much, outside of work lol. But yeah found the board for under half price on Amazon and I've been wanting a TKL keyboard for a while. So impulse buy, yay. Also saves me a lot of desk space and got fed up of my old keyboard and its stupid borked left cursor button xD I'm more saddened at the loss of volume scroll wheel!

The SSD is going in my PS5 assuming its compatible *shakes fist at Sony*, otherwise its going in my rig.

Ah oo new demo for UE5, nice!

That is one beast of an SSD! Noice!

Looks like UE5 will get DLSS support at an engine level!

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/unreal-engine-5-early-access-available-now-with-directx-raytracing-nvidia-dlss-and-nvidia-reflex-support/

Also you can download and "run the demo" but jesus the requirements...

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/ContentAndSamples/ValleyOfTheAncient/

Cheers! Now gonna hunt down a decent low profile heatsink for it.

I use it a fair bit at home. Not too much, but enough to make me appreciate it.

I was wondering why you got another NVMe when you just build your rig. I hope you're able to use it for your PS5.

As long as it's not like the ones Gigabyte uses on some of its drives...

A few more things

Sounds more like this is going to be a future contestant for the 10W and less class (so formerly Intel's Y line of CPUs) if you ask me than anything with a high power.

Zen 2 showed that it should work very well in that power envelope, and considering that a CCX is only 4 cores here, using Zen 2 for a chip with just 4 cores seems like the natural choice. The choice of RDNA2 also is probably more about using less power for the same performance than reaching very high performance.

As such, I expect the amount of CU in the GPU to be relatively low, 8 tops with 4-6 being the most probable.

In fact, if the rumors that AMD will also create some chips on a big.LITTLE design in the future, instead of developing new chips I think AMD could simply reuse the Zen 2 design for the LITTLE cores, just on a smaller node by that time. 4 Zen 2 cores @ 2-2.5Ghz in 5nm or even 3nm shouldn't consume more than 3W but also should be amply enough for the OS and background tasks.

Intel stays first... but looking at the table, I doubt they will for long now. Samsung and TSMC are at their heels, and Intel is the only one dropping down from the fray.

And cudos to AMD and MediaTek for their 90%+ increases YoY.