Lego has been proven to be a positive mental boost for creativity and problem-solving, and now it can help you improve your retro typing skills as well. The latest set from the Danish toy company is the Lego Typewriter, which will include 2,079 pieces and will retail for $200.
Much like the classic tool for hammering out letters and memos, the Lego typewriter features a center typebar that rises each time a letter key is pressed and is linked to the carriage which moves across as you type.
You can even feed paper into it to simulate the feel of typing, as the kit includes a platen roller in its retro design and comes with a letter written and signed by Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, chairman of the LEGO Group. The original design came from Steve Guinness, with the Lego fan explaining that the idea came from a desire to create “something totally different from anything that LEGO has ever done,” and showcase that anything can be made from Lego.
Guinness bought a vintage typewriter and studied it until he was happy with how the bricks and typing mechanisms worked. The Lego Typewriter will be available to buy from June 16 for VIP members and will be on sale to everyone else from July 1.
This isn’t the only nostalgic kit that Lego has revealed lately, as fans of NBC’s Friends can also reconstruct the iconic apartment from that sitcom as well the Central Perk coffee shop.
The first trailer for Invasion has been released. The new sci-fi thriller series arrives on Apple TV+ in October and stars Jurassic Park’s Sam Neill.
Like most first teasers, the Invasion trailer is big on atmosphere without giving too much away about the story. We see the main cast, which also includes Shamier Anderson (Awake), Golshifteh Farahani (Extraction), Firas Nassar (Fauda), and Shioli Kutsuna (Deadpool 2), all of whom play people in different countries, while a voiceover states, “We will finally have our stand.” As the title suggests, the focus of the series is on some sort of alien invasion, and while we don’t see what exactly has invaded the Earth, there’s enough to know that it’s something big and scary. Check the Invasion trailer out below:
Invasion is written and produced by X-men movie veteran Simon Kinberg and David Weil, who created last year’s acclaimed Amazon series Hunters. The show premieres on October 22 with the first three episodes, with subsequent episodes releasing weekly.
Apple TV+ is set to release a variety of other highly anticipated shows over the next few months. Season 2 of the hit sports comedy Ted Lasso arrives on July 23, and the series has already been renewed for Season 3. The epic sci-fi series The Foundation is expected later this year, as is the second season of the Jason Momoa-starring fantasy series See. On the movie side, Martin Scorsese’s thriller Killers of the Flower Moon is currently in production, while Tom Hanks will star in the post-apocalyptic drama Finch.
Ahead of the Xbox E3 briefing on Sunday, new art for Halo Infinite has emerged, albeit through an unusual manner. Among the many merchandising campaigns for Halo Infinite is a partnership with a calendar company for a Halo Infinite calendar. The listing for this calendar is now live on Calendars.com, and it shows off what looks to be new art from the next-gen Halo title.
Shinobi602 on Twitter spotted the 18-month 2022 calendar, which contains images that show more of Zeta Halo, the setting of Halo Infinite. One particularly striking image shows a Spartan soldier–potentially Master Chief himself–floating above the ground in the dark as a ship approaches and shines a light on this person. Other images show off more of the landscapes and environments in Halo Infinite; it all looks pretty nice.
The calendar itself, which was created by Trends International, sells for $15 and apparently releases later this year.
Although neither Microsoft nor 343 Industries have officially said that Halo Infinite will be featured at the Xbox/Bethesda E3 showcase on June 13, it’s widely expected that it will be there in a big way. The key art for the showcase prominently features a group of Spartans, after all. 2021 is the 20th anniversary of Xbox and Halo, so it’s a big year for the brands.
Following a delay from 2020, Halo Infinite is now slated to release this holiday across PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The game is included on Xbox Game Pass, while the multiplayer element is completely free-to-play.
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Great news for anyone looking to save money on PlayStation games: the Sony Days of Play sales event and the Double Discount promotion are crossing over for one glorious PlayStation day of savings.
What that means for you: PlayStation Plus members can save even more on already discounted games in the PlayStation Store. With the new promotion and Days of Play intersecting, that means if you aren’t a PS+ member, you can grab 12-months on sale and then take those savings to the bank with Double Discounts at the PlayStation Store.
The list of games is extremely long and the discounts quite generous. The complete list of eligible games, according to the Sony PlayStation blog, is below. There are a lot. The games themselves are available from the PlayStation Store, if you’d prefer to browse direct rather than check the huge list below. Make sure you’re logged in with your PSN account to see the full discounted prices.
Aces of the Luftwaffe: Squadron – Extended Edition
Soccer stars Harry Kane and Marco Reus are coming to Fortnite, following in the footsteps of Neymar Jr. just a few weeks ago. Epic has revealed the latest additions to the increasingly catch-all Icon Series, showing off the new character skins as well as their accessories. Both outfits go on sale this Friday, June 11, separately or available in a bundle for the biggest fans of the beautiful game.
Harry Kane, captain of the England National Team, will include the new HurriKane Emote and similarly named Back Bling. Meanwhile, two-time German Player of the Year Marco Reus will come with the Marcinho Emote and Back Bling. Prices were not yet revealed, but other Icon Series skins have tended to sell for between $12 and $20, with a discount for those buying a bundle.
Harry Kane will take to the Fortnite pitch this Friday.
The Icon Series is Fortnite’s home for many collaborations, including popular TikTok dances, musical artists such as Travis Scott, and streamers such as Lazarbeam and Loserfruit. If it’s a licensed deal with a real-life person, rather than a brand like Marvel or DC, for example, it tends to end up in the Icon Series.
Earlier this year, Vikings wideout Justin Jefferson strutted into Fortnite by way of his rookie campaign’s instant-hit touchdown dance, Griddy, which became an Emote in the Item Shop. The Kane and Reus skins bring the total character skins in the Icon Series to ten after Neymar Jr. was last season’s “secret” skin. The skins will hit the Item Shop together on June 11 at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET.
Marco Reus will travel from Germany to Apollo.
Fortnite UEFA 2020 Cup
Alongside the reveal of two new soccer stars coming to the game, the Fortnite UEFA 2020 Cup will kick off next week for a two-day in-game tournament. All players with an Epic Account at level 30 and who have enabled two-factor authorization on their accounts will be eligible to play in Round 1 on June 16. The second round takes place the following day and will welcome back all qualifying players as determined by the following parameters:
Europe, NA East, Na West, Brazil – Top 1,000 players from each region will advance from Round 1 to Round 2.
Middle East, Asia, Oceania – Top 500 players from each region will advance from Round 1 to Round 2.
At the end of Round 2, the top performers n each region will split a $50,000 prize pool, while all participants who score at least 10 or 20 points during the event will earn the Winner’s Cup Emoticon and Kick it! Spray, respectively. Interested players can look for the Cup in the game’s Competitive menus next week.
One YouTuber has discovered something interesting in Quarantine Sector 236 of the European Dead Zone. Amidst a collection of statue placeholders in that area, several destructible pieces of the environment can be found, and naturally, destroyed.
It’s not clear what purpose destructible trees will have in Destiny 2, but it would be a first for the series, which is now almost seven years old. The environments of the game have largely been static and resilient enough to easily shrug off several Guardians activating their Supers. The trees in the secret area, however, fall apart from a Titan shoulder-charging through them as JB3 demonstrated in the video below.
As Forbes noted, this could play into the zone that next year’s Witch Queen expansion is rumored to take place in, a version of Chicago that Bungie hinted at when it released a teaser image in its latest weekly blog post. Old Chicago was allegedly meant to be in the original Destiny, but it was cut during development and has since then been briefly mentioned in Destiny 2.
While destructible trees don’t sound too revolutionary, it would be another environmental upgrade for Destiny 2 that began with the Beyond Light expansion experimenting with harsh winter weather conditions on Europa. An entire forest of breakable trees could in theory be used to create a more atmospheric map. Hive soldiers destroying a forest or lost sectors hidden by a clump of trees would make for an interesting change of pace.
Bungie’s teasing something.
In other Destiny news, the latest patch has significantly nerfed Stasis abilities in PvP after that subclass became too powerful in the game’s multiplayer Crucible mode. The Gaming Community Expo charity event for 2021 has also gone live and is offering fans a chance to win a replica of the Midnight Coup hand cannon. A donation of $77 to the fundraiser earns you an entry in the raffle, with proceeds going towards raising money for St. Jude Children’s hospital.
Destiny 2’s latest season has also kicked off, introducing shades of grey to its traditional story of good vs evil, making for a narrative that is engaging and the best that it has ever been.
Watch live streams, videos, and more from GameSpot’s summer event. Check it out
A new report has shed some light on Activision’s plans for Call of Duty, and it includes skipping out on E3 2021 for the reveal of the rumored Call of Duty: Vanguard and major plans to shake things up with a new map for Call of Duty: Warzone later on.
According to VGC, Activision won’t announce Call of Duty: Vanguard at E3 2021 this year, which is no big surprise given that Activision is not officially attending in the first place. In previous years, new Call of Duty games have been announced in April or May, and then shown off at either Sony or Microsoft’s press conference at E3.
Instead, Activision is looking to announce Vanguard potentially through an in-game event inside Warzone, similar to how it revealed Black Ops Cold War through the battle royale game. For what it’s worth, Activision management already confirmed that the reveal of 2021’s Call of Duty game will happen later in the year than normal, so this tracks.
VGC also reported that the Sledgehammer Games-developed Vanguard will release across generations of consoles, coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S, in addition to PC. The release date will be sometime in November, according to the report.
It’s also been claimed that Vanguard will have a campaign, multiplayer, and Zombies modes. The story takes place in the European and Pacific theaters of World War II, according to the report, which went on to say its narrative will dive into the origin of the allied special forces.
Vanguard will also be incorporated into Warzone, which is something Activision has already confirmed will happen. The VGC report said Warzone will get an entirely new map in an update that’s said to be bigger and more substantial than the overhaul that came to Verdansk’s map when it went back in time to the ’80s.
The new Warzone map will launch around the same time as Vanguard releases, according to report, and the map will reportedly be set in the Pacific theater of WWII. It will be “significantly larger” than Warzone’s existing Verdansk map, the report said.
VGC also reported that Warzone will get new vehicles and “technology updates.” It’s claimed that Vanguard and Warzone run on the same Modern Warfare engine, which is notable because Cold War does not.
Activision declined to comment when approached by VGC.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is coming this Friday, June 11. It’s one of the PS5’s biggest system-seller games, showing off the power of the new console with a more cinematic presentation and inventive DualSense features. Reviews have been glowing, but how long can you expect it to last?
The answer varies quite a bit based on how much you want to plumb its depths. One member of the GameSpot staff finished the critical path in just eight hours, before going back to finish various collectibles and sidequests. I stopped to smell the roses, waiting to finish most of the collectibles and sidequests before venturing to the final stage, for a total of roughly 14 hours. So you can expect the range of critical path vs full completion to take approximately 8-14 hours.
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But there’s more to it after that. Once you’ve completed the game you open up Challenge Mode, essentially a New Game Plus, where you can carry over most of your progress to a new game. This creates an entirely separate save file, so you can still jump back into your original save to mop up any remaining quests. Challenge Mode brings over your weapons, armor pieces, and Gold Bolts.
Earning all of the Trophies in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is relatively easy. You don’t have to complete the game on a particular difficulty level or finish a mega-hard hidden boss. But there are a few that either can only be unlocked in Challenge Mode, or that are just easier to finish on your second playthrough. Completing these to earn the Platinum Trophy will probably add another hour or so onto your time, and of course, completing an entire second Challenge Mode playthrough could roughly double your total playtime.
“Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is flashy and technically impressive without feeling self-important,” reads GameSpot’s Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart review. “It’s just as silly, sweet, and earnest as the Ratchet & Clank series tends to be, while the new generation of hardware makes this entry look and play better than ever. Like the heroes and villains and their dimensional counterparts, this one may appear different or carry itself with a new accent, but there’s an underlying truth to the person underneath. At its core, it’s still your trusty old pals on another grand space adventure. That’s what’s important.”
Watch live streams, videos, and more from GameSpot’s summer event. Check it out
Another streaming platform is entering the fray. A new platform called Binge has been announced, and it describes itself as “the future of gaming entertainment.” Right off the bat, it’s important to stress that this Binge is separate from the streaming service called Binge that’s already available in Australia.
This new Binge is focused on gaming specifically. The platform will host “premium original series and shows” inspired by video games and creators. Allan Ungar, who directed Nathan Fillion in the Uncharted fan film, is the chief content officer for Binge.
“When I directed Uncharted, the film, with Nathan Fillion starring as Nathan Drake, it was designed to be a love letter for the gaming community but to also prove there was a place for these kinds of adaptations,” he said. “It was about staying loyal to the IP and the DNA of that world. The support the film received shed light on the fact that there is a real demand for this kind of content. Now we are thrilled to bring that same passion and fandom to binge.com. But, most importantly, to create an opportunity for gamers around the world to actively contribute and help define the future of games entertainment with us.”
Binge will officially launch in 2022 and will be available on basically all connected devices. The company behind it says the goal was to create “high-quality, premium entertainment content for gamers,” and a key part of this was to “do it in a way that respects the fans and the games that inspire them.”
Binge isn’t ready to talk specifics, but the company says it has already reached deals with “incredible partners,” including “the world’s most popular content creators, game publishers, and studios.” The new original series will cover retro, indie, and blockbusters titles alike. “From cult classics to the biggest hits, Binge provides a premium platform for every story,” reads a line from the press release.
Binge has a feature called Squad Parties which allows users to watch together and earn rewards for doing so.
“What sets Binge apart is that we’re bridging the gap between gaming and traditional entertainment–bringing the best of both words together,” Binge co-founder and chief strategy officer Cody Hackman said. “With our extensive background and expertise in production, gaming and development we’re fully committed to deliver high quality content that respects the games we love. Over the coming months, we’ll share more information as we set the stage to welcome fans to the ultimate platform for original gaming entertainment.”
You can sign up for updates on Binge’s website here.
Watch live streams, videos, and more from GameSpot’s summer event. Check it out
With the RTX 3080 Ti out the door, it’s time to pull back the curtain on the smaller, more budget-friendly RTX 3070 Ti graphics card. At $599, it’s marketed as a direct upgrade for RTX 1070 and 2070 Super users, but at $100 more than the standard RTX 3070, is it worth paying extra for? I’ve spent the last week testing the card to answer exactly that question and see what kind of upgrade this card offers for last-gen users.
Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition – Design and Features
Like the rest of this generation of Founders Edition cards, the RTX 3070 Ti is all about one-upmanship of the RTX 20-series. If you haven’t experienced a Founders Edition card from this generation, you’ll be in for a treat. Like the original 3070 (reviewed here), the 3070 Ti features a scaled back version of Nvidia’s dual-axial cooler, this time with only a single fan. Despite its compact size, the actual PCB is even smaller, which allows the heatsink to overhang, directly below the fan. Paired with a sizable vent along the back, air is whisked out the back of the card, allowing it to stay at safe temperatures and high clock speeds. This generation of Founders Edition cards represents Nvidia’s best work when it comes to its in-house coolers, and though this does run warmer than the dual fan version found on the RTX 3080, it’s a big improvement from the 20-series cards.
Under the simple yet eye-catching exterior of the card, the RTX 3070 Ti packs some impressive specs. It features 6144 CUDA cores and 8GB of upgraded GDDR6X memory. Both the RTX 2070 Super and RTX 3070 featured standard GDDR6. The bump to GDDR6X increases the total memory bandwidth from 448 GB/s to 608 GB/s. This boost allows assets to load and display faster; however, with GDDR6 already being quite fast, you might need a keen eye to spot the improvement in normal gameplay. The bigger concern is that 8GB just doesn’t feel like enough for a card of this caliber. AMD’s best competitors, the RX 6800 and RX 6700 XT, ship with 16GB and 12GB, and considering that there are already games that push the 3070 Ti to its limit at 4K with ray tracing enabled, they feel significantly more forward thinking in this department.
The rated Boost Clock also received a jolt and is now guaranteed for 1.77 GHz. The original RTX 3070 was just slightly less at 1.73 GHz. It’s on par with the 2070 Super’s clock speed – but since so much has changed this generation, that means less than it might seem. Regardless, thanks to Nvidia’s GPU Boost technology, you’ll likely blow right past these rated speeds anyway. When gaming, the Ti ramped up to 1920 MHz and would occasionally tip over to 1950 MHz. Under load, the card never actually dropped to the rated speeds.
The card does tend to run hot, however. Compared to the RTX 3070, the 3070 Ti uses more electricity (290 watts versus the former’s 220 watts), which in turn means more heat. My office was rather warm at 26C and the card peaked at 82C in an open case. The fan had to work harder to keep up, which generated more noise than the original RTX 3070. It still wasn’t enough to be distracting while gaming but a dual-fan design would have been a better fit, even if it meant a slightly larger card overall.
Like the rest of the RTX 30-series, the RTX 3070 Ti is built on Nvidia’s Ampere architecture. It offers big performance gains over Team Green’s last-generation GPUs while still following the same three-tiered approach to the core architecture. In short, RTX GPUs are composed of three parts: the programmable shader (rasterization), the RT core (ray tracing), and the tensor core (AI). Each of these carries a portion of the rendering weight and is measured in TFLOPS. Here’s how the RTX 3070 Ti breaks down in comparison to the RTX 2070 Super and RTX 3070:
22 Shader-TFLOPS (+144% FROM RTX 2070 Super, +8.4% from RTX 3070, -26.7% from RTX 3080)
42 RT-TFLOPS (+75% from RTX 2070 Super, +5.8% from RTX 3070, -27.6% from RTX 3080)
174 Tensor-TFLOPS (+142% from RTX 2070 Super, +7%, -26.9% from RTX 3080)
The gains from the RTX 2070 Super are large, so the generational leap is absolutely noteworthy. If you’re coming from ever farther back, like the GTX 1070 Ti, Nvidia says its new card offers “2x the performance.” Compared against the RTX 3070, the gains are marginal, however, which plays out in actual benchmark testing.
I won’t spend too long going over the “extras” that come with an RTX GPU, but they’re worth mentioning briefly as a reminder. The hallmark feature is, of course, DLSS. Nvidia’s intelligent upscaling technology has a significant lead on AMD’s upcoming FidelityFX Super Resolution and looks to remain an impactful feature for the foreseeable future, especially for users running 4K monitors. Streamers will enjoy Nvidia Broadcast, a suite of AI-enhanced tools that use RTX to effectively remove background noise or virtual greenscreen background removal. For esports, Nvidia Reflex is an excellent feature to reduce input lag and increase responsiveness with only a minor impact on overall performance.
If you’re a cryptocurrency miner, it’s also important to note that this card follows the RTX 3080 Ti and limits the hash rate when mining Ethereum. This is part of Nvidia’s effort to make the card less appealing to cryptocurrency miners. As the price of GPUs soars ever higher with the current worldwide shortage, this also means you’ll be less able to recoup the cost of your investment if you had been planning on dabbling in mining yourself. It’s a difficult and complex situation, and there are open questions about whether this is an effective way to dissuade crypto miners, but is definitely something to be aware of had you been planning on doing so yourself.
Finally, when it comes to outputs, the RTX 3070 Ti offers one HDMI 2.1 output for the latest and highest performance gaming monitors out there, and three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs for a total resolution of 7680×4320 (8K) split across all outputs. For video streaming, the card supports AV1 decoding. For creating your own content, it is compatible with Nvidia’s proprietary encoder for streaming and video work.
Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition – Performance
Our video cards are benchmarked using a series of synthetic tests and real world gaming benchmarks. Unless otherwise noted, all games are set to Ultra settings with ray tracing and DLSS on (set to Ultra) wherever possible. We strive to use Founders Edition or reference cards wherever possible but with older generation GPUs, this wasn’t always possible, so be aware that factory overclocks can account for minor performance increases on those cards.
Let’s begin with synthetics.
The first two synthetic tests I ran the card through were 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra and Unigine Heaven. In Fire Strike Ultra, the card offered a boost over both the standard RTX 3070 and the RTX 2070 Super of 6% and 41% respectively. I also included the RTX 2080 Ti results since the original RTX 3070 was compared directly to it, as well as the RX 6800 XT which has an MSRP of only $50 more. While the 3070 Ti beats the 2080 Ti handily, it doesn’t come close to the RX 6800 XT. Likewise, the RTX 3080 maintains a 15% advantage.
In Heaven, the results are much closer between the 3070 Ti, 3070, and 2080 Ti. Again, however, the RX 6800 XT dominates the charts.
Moving onto ray tracing specific benchmarks, the RTX 3070 Ti performs well but couldn’t top the RTX 2080 Ti in 3DMark Port Royal. It did top the RTX 3070 by 7% and the RTX 2070 Super by 41%, however. In the FPS-based tests, the RTX 3070 Ti bests the 3070 by 16% in Boundary and 3% in 3DMark’s ray tracing test. Against the RTX 2070 Super it leads by 52% and 77%. Stepping up to the RTX 3080 nets a 28% and 40% performance boost in these two tests.
Enough with synthetics, let’s see how it performed in games.
Beginning with our standard stable of benchmark titles, the differences between the different cards in real-world gameplay begin to become apparent. Compared to the RTX 2070 Super, the RTX 3070 Ti represents a solid upgrade by offering an average of 42% more FPS at 4K, 38% at 1440p, and 29% at 1080p. Against the standard RTX 3070, the results are much more narrow, averaging on 4% faster at 4K, 3% faster at 1440p, and 2% faster at 1080p. It’s also worth noting that the differences ranged from less than 1% to 9% in favor of the RTX 3070 Ti, so performance is close.
But what about if you wanted to step up? In that case, the RTX 3080 offers substantial improvements for the added $100 on MSRP. At 4K the 3070 Ti ran 80% slower on average, 18% slower at 1440p, and 15% slower at 1080p. Against the RX 6800 XT (with Metro Exodus removed due to the DLSS advantage), the 3070 Ti averaged 16% slower at 4K, 19% slower at 1440p, and 17% slower at 4K.
Of course, the performance of the card will depend on the games you’re playing, and this is a limited sampling, so I conducted some expanded tests at 4K. Here’s how it averaged there.
In this expanding testing, the RTX 3070 Ti averaged 43% faster than the RTX 2070 Super and 13% faster than the RTX 3070. Against the RTX 3080, it was 21% slower. When pitted against the RX 6800 XT and can benefit from DLSS in ray traced titles, the 3070 Ti averages 11% faster but with those titles removed comes in 15% slower.
As these results demonstrate, the RTX 3070 Ti is a good card on its own merits but offers only marginal improvements from the original RTX 3070. So who is this card for? If you’re coming from the GTX 1070 or RTX 2070 Super, there are major gains to be had, but that same thing holds true with the standard RTX 3070, and remember, that card was compared against the RTX 2080 Ti. The 3070 Ti edges it out in performance but it’s not huge. Instead, this card seems intended to compete with the RX 6800 XT, filling in a gap in Nvidia’s catalog for this price point, but it just doesn’t seem worth it when the RTX 3070 exists for less. Then there’s the matter of the card only featuring 8GB of VRAM, which could lead to an earlier upgrade and more money spent than if you just bought an RTX 3080 in the first place. As it stands, this card really only seems to fit for gamers who want to do a straight “gen-to-gen” jump or those who have a hard budget and want the fastest card under a certain price.
