Phantom Blade Zero Will Use Hardware Ray Tracing on PS5 and PC

Another game's been confirmed for Geoff Keighley's Opening Night Live event at Gamescom next week, and it is, of course, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (yes, we know it's technically an expansion, and not a game). Keighley's promising «a world premiere new look at gameplay», while Cyberpunk 2077's official social media account clarifies that it'll be a gameplay trailer.

Phantom Blade Zero was revealed earlier this year, quickly becoming one of the hottest games to watch, after it showed off some seriously impressive kung-fu action. In fact, it kind of stole the show that it was featured in, so it's no surprise that gamers are eager to hear more.

UL Solutions, the developers of the popular 3DMark benchmarking application, have released a new cross-platform ray tracing benchmark. It's called Solar Bay and it's available as a free update for owners of 3DMark.

The MESA Radeon Vulkan drivers "RADV" for AMD GPUs are expected to feature huge ray tracing performance upgrades in the coming release, with up to 3x the gains in some titles.

Bandai Namco just shared new Armored Core 6 system requirements, and the publisher recommends using an Intel Arc GPU for ray tracing. While we’ll need to run some benchmarks for ourselves to see how the Alchemist GPU fairs running FromSoftware’s mech romp, I’m pleased to see developers acknowledge the Alchemist GPUs existence. 

The fear of artificial intelligence (AI) endangering human existence is not new. Since AI first began making waves, experts have expressed concern about this technology that can hypothetically even gain sentience one day. In 1950, American writer Isaac Asimov published his book "I, Robot", which explored this theme. Then, in 1984, James Cameron's film The Terminator took the stage and showcased the killer AI that caused the apocalypse. However, in 2023, those who are expressing concerns are entrepreneurs that are working with this technology, governments, and AI scientists themselves. Recently, one AI expert stated that AI will cause the first extinction event for humans by triggering events such as nuclear war and virus outbreaks.

All those fancy rays of light can only be contained in your Armored Core garage.

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.

Gun Interactive and Sumo Nottingham’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will be launching a week from now, and with the clock ticking down on the road to launch, details have been revealed on what console players can expect in terms of graphics modes and performance and resolution targets.

There's something so satisfying about when a game you love finally comes out on your console of choice. The latest example: Cardboard Computer's fan favorite Kentucky Route Zero: TV Version is getting released on the PS5 and Xbox Series X and S. Annapurna Interactive is publishing the game and put out a trailer ahead of its release.

A new Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart patch has gone live today, finally enabling ray tracing on AMD GPUs, improving ray-traced reflections and shadows and more.

Rumours of Nintendo’s next generation console have been swirling for a while now, and more concrete details on the hardware and its launch have started emerging in recent weeks. Last week, a report by VGC’s Andy Robinson claimed that the console would be another hybrid similar to the Switch, feature an LCD screen rather than an OLED one, and would launch sometime in the second half of 2024, following which, prominent insider NateTheHate offered more details on it in his podcast.