Amazon Prime Day deals out plenty of discounted gaming hardware

Amazon Prime Day is kicking off a little later than usual this year – you can probably guess why – pushing it back from its usual mid-July slot to October 13 and 14. You’re probably wondering whether it should be called ‘Prime Day’, now that it spans two whole days of discounts, but you’ll need to take that up with Amazon itself. During this time, you’ll see a slew of sales across all your favourite tech brands, whether you’re in the market for a brand new headset, monitor, graphics card, or pretty much anything to take your setup to the next level. Not all Amazon Prime Day deals are equal, though, as the daily deals are accompanied by Lightning Deals, which work on a first-come-first-served basis until stock depletes, and flash sales that only last a couple of hours. There is one unsurprising catch, however, given its name – these deals are exclusive to members of Amazon Prime. The subscription costs $12.99 / £7.99 per month or $119 / £79 per year and comes with a host of benefits, from same- and next-day delivery to Prime Video, Prime Music, and more.
Syndicated from here: Amazon Prime Day deals out plenty of discounted gaming hardware

Free demo for Party Animals tops 135k concurrent players on Steam

October 12, 2020 The Party Animals demo has reached a new concurrent player peak of 135,843 on Steam.

Party Animals is pretty much Gang Beasts - a physics-focused multiplayer brawler where you awkwardly wail on your friends until you can knock them off of the stage. Except this time, it's adorable animals doing the punching. That sounds like a recipe for success, and so far the numbers have borne it out, as the free demo for Party Animals has reached some absurd heights on Steam. The Party Animals demo reached a concurrent player count peak of 135,843 earlier today, as SteamDB shows. That's well past the daily peak for venerable free PC games like Path of Exile, and surpasses the today's highs for games like Rainbow Six Siege and Rocket League. It's an absurd number for a demo to put up, and far beyond the game's previous limited-time demo release back in June, which reached a peak of just under 8k. If you haven't checked out Party Animals yet, this is going to be your last chance for a while. The demo is going away on October 13 at 10:00 PDT / 13:00 EDT / 18:00 BST. If you want to hit the Steam page and play it, you'll need to make it quick.
Syndicated from here: Free demo for Party Animals tops 135k concurrent players on Steam

Nvidia’s RTX 3080 20GB refresh is rumoured for a December release

Not long after the Nvidia RTX 30 series launched, reports began to crop up that a 20GB RTX 3080 is in the works, doubling the current model's video memory. This isn't entirely out of character for the green team, but now we're hearing whispers that it might be just around the corner, launching before the end of the year. According to VideoCardz, the RTX 3080 20GB graphics card will launch in December and it won't be alone. In fact, the refresh will reportedly extend to the RTX 3070, as its sources are "confident" that Nvidia will launch a second SKU known as the RTX 3070 16GB, once again doubling the memory of the original. This comes at the expense of the rumoured RTX 3070 Ti with 6,144 CUDA cores, which has "allegedly been scrapped" with no reason given. The word on the street doesn't end there, too, as the potential mid-range RTX 3060 Ti or Super graphics card has been pushed back to mid-November, according to the same report. Rumoured release dates are always tentative, however, so it's worth waiting for official word first.
Syndicated from here: Nvidia’s RTX 3080 20GB refresh is rumoured for a December release

Destiny 2’s stasis powers were inspired by Destiny 1

When you boot up Destiny 2's new expansion you may find that the new Stasis powers feel a tad familiar if not entirely different to anything else in the game. Ahead of the Destiny 2 Beyond Light release date, Bungie has been talking up the design philosophy behind the new powers. Speaking to Edge (thanks, Wccftech), game director Luke Smith explained that the team wanted players to feel a greater sense of freedom. "I think we're trying to get a little bit back to the feeling of Destiny 1, but updated to how we're thinking and some of the systems that we're using today in Destiny 2," he explains. "I'll use a MOBA as an example. They get to have a lot of tuning vectors for their four abilities. The modularity and the piecemeal nature of Stasis allows us more flexibility to do more to introduce [...] cool stuff. I know that Kevin Yanes and the abilities team have a pretty strong desire to keep iterating on it. We're just getting started." If you missed out on Destiny 1, subclasses were more customisable as you could select different power-ups to finish your build. The game's follow-up is a tad more limited as each subclass has three pre-set options you can pick from.
Syndicated from here: Destiny 2’s stasis powers were inspired by Destiny 1

This Skyrim mod adds an immersive NPC revive system

Skyrim's AI companions have a tendency to walk headfirst into danger, often towards their certain demise. There is, however, a simple feature that makes them less troublesome to take care of. Whether trampled by mammoths or sent skyward by a giant's club, your companions always rise again of their own accord. That's all set to change with the arrival of a mod that requires you to manually revive your accident-prone pals. The 'StayDown' Skyrim mod forces your downed companions to remain immobile for the duration of combat. That is, unless you can pull yourself away from clobbering any nearby Thalmor to heal them up. Now, the hidden revive timer after battle is also influenced by a number of factors, including the NPC's gear, gameplay style, and how much damage they took prior to going down. The mod offers three distinct difficulties, allowing you to decide just how useless you want your companions to be. And, as the cherry on top, the overhauled revive system seems to extend to non-follower NPCs, such as the legendary Jarl Balgruuf. Not that you'd want to see him suffer, mind.
Syndicated from here: This Skyrim mod adds an immersive NPC revive system

A CS:GO fan has created a map inspired by the scariest Halloween movies

Halloween is the spookiest time of the year, but Counter-Strike: Global Offensive fans are in for a treat. As well as being a highly competitive esport, CS:GO has a huge community dedicated to making custom maps for the first-person shooter, and one custom map maker has gone all in for the witching season. Steam user Nipper has lovingly recreated some recognisable Halloween houses for their “trick or treat” map, designed explicitly to scare the bejeezus out of any players who might, for some reason, be expecting a regular game. Streets are littered with abandoned cars and empty coffins, and the visage of Friday 13th’s cult killer Jason Voorhees adorns the walls of one particular house. However, for the faint of heart, there are also plenty of jolly-looking pumpkins and witches plastered around the creepy village. We think we’ve managed to figure out a few of the recognisable houses - there seems to be one with an Amityville vibe, and possibly a Psycho-inspired creation. However, we’re still trying to work out exactly what film each house is from - can you do any better?
Syndicated from here: A CS:GO fan has created a map inspired by the scariest Halloween movies

Larian won’t tell us what Baldur’s Gate 3’s Guild of Great Genius is all about

If you've signed Baldur's Gate 3's EULA, you probably owe Larian a song or interpretive dance if you want to get into one of the new PC game's secret guilds. Players swiftly discovered that agreeing to the document means that you've signed up for an "additional quest" to send Larian one "recording of a chant, song, text, poem, or interpretive dance performed by you and extolling your interest in the Forgotten Realms". The prize for doing so? Status as a founding member of the Guild of Great Genius. "Should you decline to undertake and finish this quest within the first three winters following your acceptance of this pact, you forfeit subsequent fame, fortune, and/or infamy as a founding member of our Guild of Great Genius. You hereby grant Larian Studios a worldwide, perpetual, and royalty-free license to share such recordings through Larian Studios' social media channels." Being the passionate, curious journalists we are, we reached out for information as to what the benefits of the club are. We don't just dance for anyone or anything.
Syndicated from here: Larian won’t tell us what Baldur’s Gate 3’s Guild of Great Genius is all about