Fortnite gets Ariana Grande as a playable character

The singer who is loved by many and is the idol of many - Ariana Grande has arrived in Fortnite as a playable character with her own set of skins and custom weapons!

At this point, Fortnite is almost synonymous with all of it’s concerts involving some pretty big names in the industry and this one, Ariana Grande’s Rift Tour - felt no different than the others. According to the current season in Fortnite, the game is supposed to be in the middle of an alien invasion right now. That is reflected by the number of different iconic characters that people can play as if they purchase them from the shop. Characters like Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty, Superman and a ton others are available to choose from and in the middle of all this, comes Ariana Grande surprising the fans with a concert.

In a black room lit by stars, a towering Grande appeared, taking players through an extremely surreal world. There were giant floating bubbles in the sky, a ride on a glittering llama, an M.C. Escher-style castle, and finally the pop star emerging from a crack in the ground to smash all of her fans with a bejeweled hammer.

You can watch the whole concert here and experience the magic yourself : 

Also, if you want to play as her, you can buy her skin from the store to get that iconic high pony and that shimmering white dress and hammer!

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Heres why Apex Legends lead game designer was fired

Daniel Z Klein, the lead game designer of Apex Legends, has departed Respawn Entertainment after abusive blog writings from 2007 were discovered, according to sources. Later this month, images from the DeviantArt site were distributed on Twitter, and they included comments that were disparaging to women and African people.

Klein issued a statement from his Twitter handle on July 28 shortly after the photographs began to circulate, condemning the content : 

 

I was recently confronted with some awful statements I made on a blog I wrote back in 2007. I take full ownership for the things I said, and I'm embarrassed, sad, and angry at my younger self for saying this stuff. I hope it is obvious that I don't believe these things anymore.

— Daniel Zenon Klein (@danielzklein) July 27, 2021

 

At the time, Klein's colleague and Respawn director of communications, Ryan K Rigney, stepped out in support of Klein. Rigney wrote, "Daniel sent me the video himself to make me aware of it" "In response to the criticisms, "Regarding the comments: I don't think anything from 2007 reflects on a person in 2021. People grow up. And accusing him of 'possible sexual assault' is over the line, you should never say stuff like that without evidence."

Klein announced his departure from Respawn in a series of Tweets shortly two weeks later. He stated the following, "I want to be completely honest here and admit that I'm heartbroken and miserable." “It's been a particularly bleak few days.”

"You may or may not have seen the awful, bigoted things I said in 2007. I wholeheartedly agree that THAT guy should have been fired. I have poured so much energy into becoming a better person since then, and right now I'm just very depressed because it feels I'll never be able to make up for who I was.”

"I said racist and sexist things, not because I deeply believed any of them, but because I knew I could get a reaction out of people. That does not excuse anything I said; the impact of my words was the same regardless of what I believed.”

"I'm mentioning this because with the help of a lot of people who loved me in spite of the shithead I was sometimes I was able to make progress on the journey to becoming a better person. If my story can help one person out there in a similar position to see that there's a way to become better, it would at least serve a purpose."

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After Google shut down the developers of Savage Planet they reform as Raccoon Logic

Typhoon Studios, the developer of Journey to the Savage Planet, have reformed under the new moniker Raccoon Logic. The team claims in a statement that they want to "boldly go back to where they were previously," referring to Google's failed acquisition of the business. Raccoon Logic also announced that they had repurchased the rights to Savage Planet, allowing them to “hit the ground running on new adventures in the action-adventure space.”

This Montreal team was part of Google's Typhoon Studios acquisition in 2019. Google bought Typhoon as part of its drive to acquire first-party content for Stadia, which is still in its early stages. Unfortunately, Google's restless management chose to shift direction in early 2021. Typhoon was shut down by Google in February after it stopped developing first-party games for its Stadia cloud gaming service. 

Alex Hutchinson, the former creative director of Typhoon, and Reid Schneider, the studio head at Typhoon, are cofounders of Raccoon Logic. Their studio employs around 15 individuals, the majority of them are Typhoon employees, and they enjoy Tencent's support. The members of the studio have worked for companies such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and WB Games in the past.

“We’re excited to be back in the indie space, making the games we truly believe in with an amazing new team,” offers Alex Hutchinson, Creative Director at Raccoon Logic. “The early investment from Tencent is a huge boost, meaning we can do significant work on our own before we start talking to publishers. We love systemic games, games with a sense of humor and a big heart, and games with strong flavours that get reactions from players. We’re going to keep pushing on those ideas and we’ll have something to show soon!”

Tencent hasn't put any pressure on the company to develop a specific type of game. According to Hutchinson, the team is aiming for a type of "systemic comedy," in which the humour is integrated into the game's mechanics. Returning to a small firm will aid in the development of that sense of humour.

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Razer is now a part of the Custom Mechanical Keyboard gang

Razer has just released its own set of custom keycaps – The Razer Phantom keycaps, a coiled USB cable and some wrist rests – The Razer Ergonomic Wrist Rest and Wrist Rest Pro, to go along with its mechanical keyboard lineup. Although many accessories of the same sort have been in the market for a long time, since Razer has released their own set of accessories now, the fans expect them to have both quality and durability.

Coming to the wrist rest first, there are two variants released by Razer here. The Razer Ergonomic Wrist Rest and the Razer Ergonomic Wrist Rest Pro for full sized keyboards. Both of the editions will come with Anti-Slip Rubber feet so that the wrists won’t serve as a hindrance to the keyboard and move it along the direction of force applied and both will be compatible with all full-sized keyboards. Razer has not yet come out with the smaller ten keyless (TKL) versions of these wrist rests but we expect to see them some time in the near future. The main difference between the Standard and the Pro edition is the type of cushioning that has been used. The Standard edition comes with a Leatherette exterior with memory foam inside while the Pro edition comes with a special Heat Transfer Fabric on the outside with Cooling Gel infused cushion on the inside. This will help gamers have long gaming sessions without their wrists aching and getting sweaty. The Standard edition costs $19.99 while the Pro edition costs $34.99 on Razer’s website right now.

The Phantom Keycap Upgrade Set features 128 keycaps and is made of ABS plastic. The keycaps have translucent sides for the RGB to shine through and they will fit most of the cross shaped axis switches. The keycaps themselves come in two colors - black and white and according to Razer, they will fit their whole 60%, 65%, Tenkeyless and full sized keyboard lineup. The upgrade set is selling for $30 right now on Razer’s website.

Lastly, Razer is selling the PBT Keycap + Coiled Cable upgrade set too. The set will include doubleshot PBT keycaps which are usually much more durable than their ABS counterpart and the cable will be a USB - A to USB - C cable which will be coiled and braided. Both of them will come in different colors like Classic Black, Razer Green, Mercury White and Quartz Pink. The user can even mix and match different colors to truly make their keyboard different from the others. Razer is selling this upgrade combo for $49.99 on their website right now.

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Nerf: Legends is an upcoming Family Friendly FPS featuring the iconic toy guns

Nerf: Legends is the new FPS shooter on the block - developed by GameMill Entertainment and containing Nerf guns instead of actual guns ingame.

Nerf: Legends will have a campaign mode and a multiplayer mode. Coming to the multiplayer mode first, Nerf: Legends will be an Arena style shooter (like Quake 3) with either 4v4 team battles or eight-player free for all battles. Here, the gun that the player will be using - the Nerf blaster will fire energy blasts rather than foam darts. 

However, one thing that the game will really excel in is the Campaign mode. Since it is described as a “Family - Friendly  FPS” we assume that it would have no blood or gore as compared to other games in the FPS genre like Halo or CoD. According to GameMill, “NERF Legends thrusts you into a futuristic, sci-fi world where you’ll come face-to-face with legions of robot enemies and ultimate boss masters. Armed with a wide array of NERF blasters based on their iconic, real-world counterparts, you’ll thwart formidable enemies while being challenged to pull off the most impressive high-flying trick shots across a series of unique and immersive environments. Are your NERF skills up to the challenge to become the ultimate NERF Legend?”

The player will get 15 NERF blasters to choose from and all of them will be based on Hasbro’s Mega, Ultra and Elite toy lines. The campaign is set across 19 different sci-fi locations and will feature a variety of boss battles and challenges. The player will also be able to acquire various power ups such as magnetic pull darts, push darts, seeker darts and slow darts. Also, the player will be able to customize their NERF blaster with skins and other perks. The in-game player can be customized too.

Nerf: Legends is planned to launch this October on PS4, PS5, Xbox One X | S, Nintendo Switch and PC and the game will support crossplay. You can watch the announcement trailer via IGN here:

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Diablo II: Resurrected offering an open beta on August 20th

Blizzard will give Diablo II fans the chance to play the game's forthcoming remaster during two consecutive early access weekends, despite the corporation being mired in a sexual harassment lawsuit. The company is offering gamers two opportunities to test out Diablo II: Resurrected. The first of them will begin at 10:30 P.M. IST on August 13th. It will be open to those who pre-ordered the game or the Diablo Prime Evil Collection ( which includes both the remaster and Diablo 3) on PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4. You can play through Act I and Act II of the narrative as an Amazon, Barbarian, Druid, Paladin, or Sorceress till August 17th at 10:30 PM IST. Everyone else will be able to play the open beta a week later, from August 20th at 10:30 PM IST to August 23rd at 10:30 PM IST.

The subsequent betas come at a difficult time for Blizzard, which is under fire following a lawsuit alleging that Activision Blizzard has a culture of "continuous sexual  harassment." Considering the current situation at Blizzard, some gamers have stated that they would not be playing the game to show support for the studio's employees. Still, it’s unclear if Blizzard devs support boycotts, according to Kotaku. On Tuesday, an Activision Blizzard shareholder wrote a letter to the business, claiming that the corporation's reaction to the claims doesn't go "quite far enough."

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Intel Arc desktop graphics cards to take on NVIDIA and AMD GPUs

Intel Arc is the new brand for their upcoming desktop and notebook high-performance graphics cards. Like other Intel brands, Intel Arc will host an array of Intel hardware, software and services aimed at the enthusiast graphics market. Hitherto, Intel’s upcoming desktop graphics card based on their Xe high-performance graphics microarchitecture has only been known by its “DG2” moniker. From now on, it will carry the codename “Alchemist” and will be the first generation of the Arc line of graphics cards. Future generations on Intel’s discrete GPU roadmap have been revealed to have the codenames Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid. Desktops and notebooks featuring the new Intel Arc graphics solutions will reportedly hit retail markets in Q1 2022.

“Today marks a key moment in the graphics journey we started just a few years ago. The launch of the Intel Arc brand and the reveal of future hardware generations signifies Intel’s deep and continued commitment to gamers and creators everywhere. We have teams doing incredible work to ensure we deliver first-class and frictionless experiences when these products are available early next year,” said Roger Chandler, Intel vice president and general manager of Client Graphics Products and Solutions.

Intel DG2 Rumoured Specifications

Speculations around Intel DG2 graphics have hinted at multiple SKUs with the top SKU sporting 512 Execution Units clocked at a base frequency of 1.1 GHz and a Turbo frequency of 1.8 GHz. This would mean that the top SKU would have about 4096 Shaders. The mobile GPUs will supposedly be rated for 100-120W TDP and the desktop GPUs will have more headroom. As for the memory, we’re looking at a maximum video buffer of 16 GB GDDR6 linked to a 256-bit wide bus. 

Intel Arc Ray-Tracing and Super Sampling

Intel states that the Intel Arc graphics cards will support hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and AI-driven super sampling technologies. NVIDIA and AMD both support hardware-accelerated ray-tracing technologies such as NVIDIA RTX and Microsoft’s DXR. Whereas NVIDIA is the only one to have AI-driven super sampling in the form of DLSS. Intel Arc will reportedly support the full DirectX 12 feature set.

Intel Arc Graphics Cards Release Date

Desktop and notebook graphics solutions from the Intel Arc family will be available in Q1 2022 and more details regarding these new GPUs will be made public in Q3/Q4 2021. Intel have been sampling their Intel Arc “DG2/Alchemist” GPUs for a while now and the Q1 2022 launch window hints at a public reveal being done at CES 2022 in Las Vegas

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