^So much true!

I've seen a myriad of people on both the EGS subreddit and EGS twitter account complaining about the freebies not being blockbusters, but indie games, or games that were already given out as freebies twice this year already. 

Also I noticed this little nugget:

https://www.epicgames.com/store/pl/p/he-will-shoot-46efff

https://www.epicgames.com/store/pl/p/street-striker-de25df

And I thought they were curating the store, not allowing straight up asset flips into the store. 

I imagine the combo of TWEWY, KH collection and VIIR cost them quite a pretty penny. I know BL3 and some others cost a lot, but this is like a triple deal with SE, so I'm sure that cost quite a bit. 

Yea pretty much. Next year should be an interesting year with all the new upscaling tech coming around.

If there's one thing that we know about SE is that they are greedy af. Hopefully Apple and Epic goes back into court so we can find out how much they got jipped.

The Thursday news, and there are some of them!

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

There are no more daily free games on the Epic Store and they've gone back to the weekly free ones. The new ones are the new Tomb Raider games, free from today until January 6th;

• Tomb Raider GOTY: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/tomb-raider
• Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/rise-of-the-tomb-raider
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider

Next week, the free game will be Gods Will Fall.

Fanatical has a new bundle: the BYO New Year Bundle, with 24 games to build your 1, 5 or 10 games bundle: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-new-year-bundle

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Enpty-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Far Cry – Definitive Edition Mod vs Original Comparison Video
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/far-cry-definitive-edition-mod-vs-original-comparison-video/
Modder ‘DarkChampion’ is currently working on a graphics mod for the first Far Cry game, called Far Cry Definitive Edition. And although there isn’t any ETA on when this mod will come out, the modder released a comparison video between the modded and the original/vanilla versions.
The primary focus of this mod is to improve the game’s Level of Detail values. As such, the modder has increased general Level View Distance by almost 3 times. Moreover, he deleted the LODs for Geometry and Textures. This will result in a more cohesive image, though there will be a noticeable performance hit. Additionally, he made some changes to the FOG Distance, and more vegetation for many levels.
Furthermore, the modder increased the running speed for all weapons, added the new mutant Screwed with working animation from the Far Cry Demo, and made some AI tweaks.
>> The video has been deleted, but at least now you know about this mod.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake gets an in-game character customization mod
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/final-fantasy-7-remake-gets-an-in-game-character-customization-mod/
Narknon, YudoKubos and AntonDickens have released a cool new mod for Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade. As the title suggests, this mod allows you to customize your main characters in the game.
According to the modders, players can currently customize the Eyes, Hair, Glasses and Clothes. The mod currently supports Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Aerith, RedXIII, and Yuffie. By using the hotkeys, you can cycle through a variety of options.
You can download the mod from here. Also note that this mod requires basemod 3dmigoto to function (that you can download from here).

GAMING NEWS

Unreal Engine 5-powered first-person horror game, ILL, gets a teaser gameplay video
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/unreal-engine-5-powered-first-person-horror-game-ill-gets-a-teaser-gameplay-video/
Team Clout has released the first teaser gameplay video for its upcoming first-person horror game, ILL. ILL will be using Unreal Engine 5, and this teaser video can give you a glimpse at what this indie team aims to achieve.

New gameplay trailer surfaces for Madmind Studio’s horror game, PARANOID
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/new-gameplay-trailer-surfaces-for-madmind-studios-horror-game-paranoid/
Madmind Studios has released a brand new official gameplay trailer for its upcoming horror game, PARANOID. Madmind is the team behind AGONY and SUCCUBUS, so let’s hope that this new title will be better than those.

Be a skeletal accountant in this spreadsheet game
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/be-a-skeletal-accountant-in-this-spreadsheet-game/
In the world of video games there are some of us who are very, very happy to play a game that looks like a spreadsheet. Game designers, on the other hand, spend a lot of time designing systems inside of spreadsheets. Alexander King, a professor of game design at NYU's Game Center, gave his students an assignment: Make a prototype game that exists within a spreadsheet.
One of these projects, by design student Jordan Grayson, is Dividends & Decay: Accounting for the Damned, and it's somewhere between a joke about my favorite kind of game and an actual example of my favorite kind of game. Described thusly: "Play as an undead accountant managing the evil spreadsheets of a necromancer!"

Try out the Cold War tactics of Regiments in its free playtest
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/try-out-the-cold-war-tactics-of-regiments-in-its-free-playtest/
How about a big fat single player campaign RTS about your classic cold war Germany conflict scenario? Regiments is going to be just that when it releases in 2022, with a dynamic campaign about wide-scale warfare in the East-West German border region in 1989. It's a pretty large scale game, intended to let you control platoons rather than individual squads or units, putting you in the role of commanding officer rather than lieutenant or sergeant.

Here's a free visual novel about Communist Poland
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/heres-a-free-visual-novel-about-communist-poland/
Want a nice, sort-of-depressing visual novel about Communist Poland to round out the year? Do you want it to be free? Of course you do.
In Martial Law, you play a lower class man who's left behind by the government of Warsaw Pact Poland. Trying your best to take care of your daughter, he wants to try and have a better lift. It's a classic visual novel setup, with plenty of endings to find and issues to solve and/or not. I called it depressing earlier, but there's a happy ending if you want to go looking for it.
>> It's on Steam.

ASUS has showcased an interesting DDR4 to DDR5 prototype board that would let you use DDR4 DIMMs on any Z690 DDR5 motherboard.

https://wccftech.com/asus-shows-off-rog-ddr5-to-ddr4-adapter-board-working-test-unit-demoed-with-z690-apex-motherboard/

Certainly should help with the DDR5 shortage problem.

Intel ARC Alchemist Graphics Lineup To Launch In March With Two High-End Variants: DG2-512 16 GB GPU To Tackle RTX 3070 Ti & DG2-384 12 GB Tackles RTX 3060 Ti

https://wccftech.com/intel-arc-alchemist-graphics-lineup-to-launch-in-march-with-two-high-end-variants-dg2-512-16-gb-gpu-to-tackle-rtx-3070-ti-dg2-384-12-gb-tackles-rtx-3060-ti/

While 3070 Ti performance in March isn't all that impressive, if priced properly, it could still be fap worthy. Of course, both AMD and Nvidia will also have their more budget friendly GPUs coming out as well.

ASUS Confirms ‘Reversed’ Memory Capacitor As The Root Cause of ROG Maximus Z690 HERO Issues, Will Offer Replacement To All Affected Users

https://wccftech.com/asus-confirms-reversed-memory-capacitor-as-the-root-cause-of-rog-maximus-z690-hero-issues-will-offer-replacement-to-all-affected-users/

LG Display showcases deuterium-based 8K OLED EX Technology

https://videocardz.com/press-release/lg-display-showcases-deuterium-based-8k-oled-ex-technology

Not that we will need 8k anytime soon but having a brighter OLED panel is always good and should come down to their 4k panels

Samsung, Micron warn China's Xian lockdown could disrupt memory chip manufacturing - Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/micron-warns-dram-chip-delays-due-chinas-xian-lockdown-2021-12-29/?utm_source=reddit.com

I have many doubts about that adapter, like how it will affect latency, but that will be a nightmare with anyone using air coolers.

But hey, it reminds me of the SNES card to play Game Boy games, or those cards for the 16-bit consoles to use cheats.

One has to wonder, what was Q&A doing to miss that big flaw?

I already own and have played all 3 on Steam. The third one is a bit darker in tone than the other two, but still a good game despite the reviews. It's a shame they didn't include the mechanics that mentioned the article from the other day.

I'm not sure if I'll get them again on the EGS, but I have time to think about it.

Completed the TR trilogy already but added them to my EGS account. Pretty good year so far for freebies with Shenmue and this (already had Control).

Linus did a small comparison between the new DDR5 vs DDR4 in his usual fashion.

With DDR5 being largely unavailable and scalped to hell, current DDR4 kits/modules still remains relatively competitive in performance and may or may not yet give you tangible performance uplift when going DDR5; and kinda depends on application and workloads.

For gaming there's hardly any uplift. Though in memory intensive applications like Photoshop you can get some pretty substantial performance gains. Value for money DDR4 is still where its at with DDR5 being largely unavailable and it might a solution for people who have or plan to get a ADL system and can't get DDR5 rn.

Yea seeing results like this and the shortages in general, it makes me glad I didn't wait to upgrade.

The last TR is a great game outside of the final boss fight