Sometimes, a game sits at such a cross section of my interests that it almost feels made specifically for me. In the case of Affogato, it’s three of my favourite types of games mashed together: it’s Coffee Talk by way of Persona by way of any card-based tower defence game – only here it’s sort of "reverse tower defence", as the game's Steam page is keen to point out. It's your own card units that are the ones moving along pre-defined tracks wreaking havoc on stationary enemies, not the other way around.

It’s a debate as old as role-playing games themselves: should players have to deal with encumbrance?

The recent release of Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 and Bethesda’s Starfield have thrust the encumbrance debate back into the headlines, with both games employing a system that restricts how much stuff you can carry.

While each game employs systems and mechanics that let you carry more and more, it is inevitable that as a player, you’re going to have to spend a decent chunk of your time fussing with managing your character or characters’ carry weight limit.

Valve is introducing new indicatiors, and filters, that specifically show which types of controllers are supported by a given game. As it stands, most game pages simply say whether they fully or partially support controllers, but Valve has already begun asking developers to specify which type of controller their games support.

Less than a day after the game's official launch, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer proudly announced that Starfield has exceeded one million concurrent users across all platforms (PC, Xbox Series S|X, and cloud).

It speaks of a large player base from the onset, especially on Game Pass. Starfield peaked twelve hours ago at around 270K concurrent users on Steam, so there must have been at least 730K users between Xbox and Microsoft Store on PC. New records will likely be set during the weekend when gamers have more time to dedicate to the fresh release.

NVIDIA announced this week's wave of game additions to the GeForce NOW library. There are some brand new releases, like Chants of Sennaar, SYNCED, and Void Crew, as well older games that are now supported on the cloud streaming service.

Additionally, several Game Pass games are now available via GeForce NOW, including hits like Atomic Heart (the dystopian first-person shooter by Mundfish that recently got its first DLC, Annihilation Instinct), A Plague Tale: Requiem (the sequel to the highly acclaimed A Plague Tale: Innocence by Asobo), and Snowrunner (the popular off-road racing game by Saber Interactive). The full list of GeForce NOW additions can be found below.

• Chants of Sennaar (New release on Steam, Sept. 5)
• SYNCED (New release on Steam, Sept. 7)
• Void Crew (New release on Steam, Sept. 7)
• Deceive Inc. (Steam)
• A Plague Tale: Requiem (Xbox app)
• Airborne Kingdom (Epic Games Store)
• Atomic Heart (Xbox app)
• Call of the Wild: The Angler (Xbox app)
• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (Xbox app)
• Death in the Water (Steam)
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker (Xbox app)
• Insurgency: Sandstorm (Xbox app)
• Monster Sanctuary (Xbox app)
• Saints Row (Steam)
• Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition (Xbox app)
• SnowRunner (Xbox app)
• War for the Overworld (Steam)

Three of these titles also support DLSS 3 (Frame Generation). Atomic Heart, SYNCED, and A Plague Tale: Requiem can be played with DLSS 3 enabled via GeForce NOW if you are subscribed to the Ultimate tier (equipped with an RTX 4080-class GPU).

Six Intel 14th Gen Core Raptor Lake-S Refresh SKUs were prematurely listed by an e-tailer late last month, the already leaked Core i9-14900K CPU model popping up again (a week later) via CPU-Z and Geekbench tests. This higher end K and KF product lineup is expected to launch at some point next month...

AMD and Bethesda's Starfield Game Bundle promotion kicked off back in mid-July, with a wide range of current and previous generation hardware qualifying for the campaign. It was very apparent, at the time, that Team Red had bolstered the list of GPUs with plenty of mid-range RX 6000-series (RDNA 2) models—in absence of heavily rumored successors. AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT graphics cards were finally introduced at Gamescom 2023, and reached retail outlets yesterday. Post-unveiling it was revealed that all Radeon RX 7000-series desktop cards would be eligible for the Starfield campaign, but the new Navi 32-based models were not mentioned in specifics.

I'm enjoying Starfield so far, but when we're talking about having the right tools, the biggest problem a lot of players will face comes down to the limited accessibility settings the game comes with. This was a worry for the accessibility community during the buildup to Starfield's arrival, as gameplay trailers, interviews with Bethesda's Todd Howard and the general trickle of pre-release information failed to explore accessibility. Unfortunately, our accessibility worries were rooted in reality.

PB Tech New Zealand has lowered the price of a Galax GeForce RTX 4070 1 CLICK OC X2 12 GB graphics card to stay competitive with the initial batch of freshly released AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT cards. This particular custom NVIDIA model is not quite as fancy as its triple fan sibling that sits in TPU's database, but the promotional price of NZ$999 (abt $588 USD) could be enough to tempt customers away from Team Red's new mid-range offerings—starting with Sapphire's reference model at NZ$998.99. For NZ$1018.99 (abt $600 USD) you reach the first tier of custom design RX 7800 XT models—ASRock's AMD Challenger 16 GB OC and a Sapphire Pulse Gaming 16 GB card.

Edit: Changed some tilde characters to 'about' to avoid formatting issues

Intel has launched a new graphics driver for users of its Arc A-Series and Iris Xe GPUs. This update delivers some highly desirable fixes for Starfield players. Among the improvements users should see with Intel Graphics Driver 31.0.101.4672 include: faster load times, better stability, and fewer visual artifacts.

Intel Driver Download Link

• Graphics Driver package has temporarily increased to significantly reduce the Starfield* game load duration.
• Several Starfield* game instability and visual artifacts have been fixed in this driver. High Preset and below is recommended to improve stability.
• Efforts in progress to further improve overall gaming experience of Starfield* for Intel® Arc™ users in future driver updates.

The Bethesda director is lost in space and pushing the boundaries of the medium. In a rare, in-depth interview, Howard opens up about 'Starfield,' the game he's waited for his entire life.

...

“Every game we ship is tough,” Cheng tells me, attributing some Fallout 76's issues to the team's relative inexperience with making multiplayer games.

...

In 2009, he pitched Lucasfilm on an Indiana Jones game, which has always been on his bucket list. His first dog's name was Indy, after all. It didn’t work out back then, but in the years since, Disney decided to back Howard’s initial idea. The game is being developed by Machine Games, a Swedish studio under the same company. They’re known for making Wolfenstein, which also involves fighting against Nazis. In other words, a natural fit.

...

Howard would talk more about Indiana Jones—I can tell he really wants to—but he’s not allowed. Instead, as I exit his office, he flashes that smile.

“We’ll talk next year.”

The Asian Games 2022 athletic event was originally set to take place last September—officials have rescheduled proceedings to later this month (opening September 23, closing October 8). Gunnir has prepared new versions of its existing Arc A770 & A750 Photon OC graphics cards in celebration of e-sports competitions being added to the roster at XIX Asian Games, Hangzhou. The Chinese hardware manufacturer has produced an extensive portfolio of Intel Alchemist-based discrete solutions, so it is not surprising to see slightly revised designs being issued to tie-in with a significant multi-sport tournament.

Rather than posting 4 million different links, it might be easier to just aggregate a few of the links about the devices.

7800 XT

tl;dr - Roughly 6800 XT performance. Price is decent compared to other new cards.

Reviews

• Gamers Nexus - "definitely an embarassing showing compared to the 6800 XT though"
• Hardware Unboxed - "the 7800 XT is basically a 6800 XT in terms of performance" ... "at 500 us there's really nothing better in terms of value than the 7800 XT"
• Toms Hardware - "gaming performance isn't significantly better than the previous generation RX 6800 XT"
• PCGamer - "Even now the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti has had a price cut down to $449, I would still recommend opting for this Radeon card instead. "
• PCGamesN - "The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is the midrange graphics card the GPU space has been sorely needing"
• IGN - "It comes in at a reasonable price in a time of ludicrously inflated GPU prices and delivers rasterization performance that punches above its weight class."
• Guru3d - ASUS TUF Version - " the RX 7800 XT closely mirrors its 6800XT/6900 XT predecessors within this competitive market segment"
• HotHardware - "With traditional rasterization, the Radeon RX 7x00 cards looks great, but with Ray Tracing in the mix, NVIDIA often pulls ahead. Consider DLSS and FSR, and things get even dicier, especially when frame generation comes into play. And then there’s the previous-gen Radeons, with only about $90 separating the RX 6800 from the 6700 XT."
• Tweaktown - "The Radeon RX 7800 XT priced at USD 499 represents some real solid competition in the mid-range/enthusiast GPU market"

7700 XT

tl;dr - Price is less attractive given performance relative to the 7800 XT.

• GamersNexus - "we're wondering if this is a classic upsell here from AMD because the performance gap between them is larger than the price Gap might otherwise suggest"

• Toms Hardware - "Most of the time it fails to impress relative to 7800 XT"

• PCGames N - "feels more like an upsell for its sibling thanks to its price"

• HotHardware -"the Radeon RX 7700 XT’s price is close enough to the Radeon RX 7800 XT’s that it makes a lot of sense to spring for the higher-end card"

*Guru3d - Sapphire Pulse - "Given the $449 tag, some might lean towards the 7800 XT, potentially aligning with AMD's strategic positioning."

Card Partners News

Gigabyte

Biostar

Asrock

Sapphire

Sea of Stars developers Sabotage Studio have confirmed that they’re already working on DLC for their warmly-received love letter to classic RPGs, along with their next standalone game. Helping them along the way is Sea of Stars’ fantastic reception, which has seen the game sell a year’s worth of copies in just one week.

That incredible success comes via Sabotage’s announcement on eX-Twitter that Sea of Stars has shifted more than 250,000 copies since its release on August 29th. That’s apparently more than the studio projected for the game’s first year. The game had already got off to a strong start by selling 100,000 copies on its first day.

Cross-play is apparently already on the development roadmap for Baldur's Gate 3. This means players on PlayStation 5 and PC - and at some point, Xbox - will all theoretically be able to play together online in the future.

Confirmation comes from Larian's director of publishing, Michael Douse, who told me the studio always intended to do cross-play but it was one thing too many to get working for launch. The PS5 version comes out today, remember; the PC version came out at the beginning of August; and the Xbox versions will arrive at some point this year.

If you're someone that likes to rack up your levels quickly, then you might want to find a companion in Starfield quickly.

Starfield, is, you might be surprised to hear, a video game. And with video games comes different gameplay features, like gunplay, levels, and status effects. Sometimes these status effects have things like buffs, which can add a little pep in your step. As it turns out, Starfield too has status effects with buffs! For example, did you know if you sleep with a companion, you get an XP boost? Sorry, what's that? You think I'm just doing a little goof? No, no, it's true, and best of all, the effect is quite literally called "emotional security."

You take the brutalist, mechanical efficiency of Factorio, combine it with the glorious destruction of Teardown, and add maybe a hint of comedy and catastrophic glee from Kerbal Space Program, and you get Abriss, an amazing new building game just launched on Steam. With high levels of detail, individually modelled bricks, blocks, and building sections, and a frankly fetishistic focus on the intricacies of blowing up stuff, according to Abriss’s developers, its 1.0 release represents your “GPU’s most feared day.” Destruction so meticulous it might melt my PC? Sign me up.

Steam Link

Friend, are you weary of talk of blockbuster space-faring RPGs and blockbuster D&D adaptations and blockbusters in general? Do you yearn for the older, simpler days before the great Unrealification and the invention of sex scenes, when people called a spike pit a spike pit, and you could count all the different colours in a screenshot on your fingers? Do you, in fact, reject this framing of retro-styled 2D pixelart games as "older" and "simpler", regarding it as condescending and false? Look, shut up already. I'm trying to tell you about Isles of Sea and Sky from developers Jason Newman, Dan Collver and Craig Collver.

YouTube Trailer
Steam Link

I never got round to playing Shiro's 4X-plus-RTS adaptation of Dune, but chuckling spice baron Nic Reuben deemed it "intricate", "polished" and "well-considered" in his early access review last year, and I trust his nose for these things. The game now has a 1.0 release date - 14th September 2023 - which will also bring a sixth major content update featuring the politically adept House Ecaz faction - who, if the press release speaks true, "wield power like a paint brush". You love to see it!

Steam Link

The developers of STALKER 2 have discussed the game’s first hands-on at gamescom 2023 and addressed a “downgrade” debate sparked by a new gameplay trailer.

GSC Game World told IGN it is still targeting a visual quality and level of polish suggested by STALKER 2’s eye-catching 2021 trailer (below). This comes despite the horrendous conditions suffered by the staff at the Ukrainian developer amid the war with Russia, which halted development, displaced staff, and caused a number of delays.

STALKER 2 was at the Microsoft gamescom 2023 booth in hands-on fashion, letting the public and press play the post-apocalyptic first-person shooter for the first time. STALKER 2’s gamescom 2023 gameplay trailer (below) includes footage taken from the build used at the show.

It’s fair to say the build on show was rough. As IGN’s STALKER 2 hands-on preview revealed: “Despite its Unreal Engine 5 base and prominent Microsoft support, the 15-minute gamescom demo suggests that STALKER 2 still sits in the ‘eurojank’ category; the colloquial term for eastern European games that are overly ambitious and technically wobbly.

Though it may have been overshadowed somewhat by major releases like Baldur's Gate 3 , and more recently Starfield, there's no doubt Remnant 2 remains one of the year's best games.

Developer Gunfire Games has been quietly updating the game since its release, changing co-op scaling, making it easier to unlock Archtypes, improving performance, and continuing to add quality of life tweaks to the loot shooter.

Today's Radeon Software Adrenalin 23.9.1 driver adds two major components to the suite which include the highly anticipated HYPR-RX feature and support for Anti-Lag+. Both technologies are supported by all RDNA 3 GPUs while also delivering day-1 support for the latest GPU releases, the Radeon RX 7800 XT and the Radeon RX 7700 XT.

Regarding some of our users receiving an error message of "UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR" upon Blue Screen of Death with MSI's Intel 700 and 600 Series Motherboards. MSI and Intel have been working hard these several weeks to come up with a solution together and have found the root cause of the BSOD issue w...

I've always wanted to build a little PC, but I don't have space or time to play games other than on a handheld on the sofa. I've been playing Xbox Game Pass on my Retroid Pocket 3 Plus and it's been really good, but I'm wondering if a gaming pc streamed locally would be cheaper in the long run. It'd live under the TV and very rarely get used with a controller on the telly, almost always streamed to a little handheld.

Alternative is Steam Deck, which looks good, but tbh, it seems quite unweildly. Though I know it's possibly the right route.

Any thoughts?

At this point it's hard to think of the 7800 XT as new despite this being the first time we've been able to show you it and that's because the first rdna3 base gpus were released last year back in December of 2022.