even if TEMPEST Dawning Connections delayed to October 26

Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon arrives in less than two weeks, and FromSoftware and Bandai Namco have revealed the full PC requirements for the game, both with and without ray tracing. Overall, the specs are very reasonable, which seems to be in line with a game that looks polished, but not necessarily boundary-pushing in terms of tech. Even ray-tracing requirements aren’t that high, although it should be mentioned ray-tracing is only present in the garage when you’re designing your mechs, not during regular gameplay. You can check out the full PC requirements for Armored Core VI, below.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is now the top-rated videogame of all time according to one aggregator site, defeating legendary hits such as Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Elden Ring to reach the number-one spot. OpenCritic collates reviews (such as our own Baldur’s Gate 3 review) to form an overall score. BG3 is now top of the all-time chart, as it simultaneously becomes the highest-rated PC game ever on Metacritic, and Baldur’s Gate 3 players smash the RPG game’s Steam player record.

While we continue to hope and wait for news of another Command & Conquered Remastered Collection, I'd recommend giving Tempest Rising a look to tide you over, especially now there's a free demo for it over on Steam. You don't have long to give it a pop - it will disappear on August 28th - but this base-building RTS harks back to the C&C days of yore with its diverse set of units and industrial metal soundtrack. I played a version of this demo earlier in the year and had a great time with it, so it's worth seeking out over the weekend if you get a spare moment.

A demo for real-time strategy game Tempest Rising is now available for PC via Steam until August 28, publisher THQ Nordic and developer Slipgate Ironworks announced.

I am mainlining two games right now: Baldur's Gate 3 and Final Fantasy 14. I rather foolishly resubbed to the latter right as the former was released, and now I'm stuck in a perpetual cycle of catgirls and dice rolls. Turns out the two may be more closely linked than I realised, as a small but heartbreaking reference has surfaced that shows someone at Larian has definitely been spending their free time playing the critically-acclaimed MMORPG. Spoilers for both games below, of course.

“Don’t be afraid. There’s the two of us now,” may be one of the most romantic lines ever written, but when Outlander author Diana Gabaldon penned it, it’s doubtful she realized how much of an anchor it would become not just for her main characters, but for their millions of fans.

Twitter Blue subscribers that are hoping to monetize their posts on the platform are finding that the platform might not be quite the money maker that they thought.

Xur has returned in Bungie’s Destiny 2, this time to the Arcadian Valley on Nessus until the next weekly reset. His selection this week isn’t exceptional, but there are some decent items for new players. Merciless, an Energy fusion rifle available since day one, is the Exotic weapon on sale for 29 Legendary Shards.

Apple has been increasing the divide between its Pro and non-Pro models. While the standard models have always received one or two fewer upgrades compared to the Pro and Pro Max models, in the iPhone 14 series, the standard model and the iPhone 14 Plus missed out on the adaptive refresh rate, always-on display, the A16 Bionic chipset, as well as the 48MP cameras. The divide is expected to stay in the upcoming iPhone 15 series as well. However, a new leak has suggested that this rule might be broken for one particular upgrade. According to this report, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus can get a stacked CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) image sensor (CIS), something the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will not.

The Nintendo 3DS, the company’s 2011 successor to the Nintendo DS, was discontinued in 2020, but the handheld console has continued to have a dedicated fanbase. While the Wii U and 3DS eShop shutdowns in late March have made it much harder to buy new games for the console, somehow, 3DS fans have persisted. Over the past three months, Nintendo has sold roughly 210,000 3DS games, according to its quarterly earnings results.

There are a thousand densely layered visual and verbal jokes in Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script for Barbie, but one in particular stands out, because it’s a light gag with such massive story implications that it feels like an ethos. When Aaron (Connor Swindells), a low-level Mattel employee, finds out “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie) has escaped from the fantasy world of Barbieland and entered Reality, he immediately alerts Mattel’s CEO (Will Ferrell) and the corporation’s board of directors. But then Aaron takes a moment to ponder the ontology of the world he lives in.

Baldur's Gate 3 is a big game, there's no denying that. It's been in the oven for a while now, including a lengthy Early Access period with a bunch of updates. But it's about to get a whole lot bigger, with its full PC launch on August 3, later this week. Just don't get your hopes up about playing it on launch day unless you have a really strong internet connection - and a decent amount of free space on your hard drive.