Protecting your privacy doesn’t mean your gaming has to suffer – we tested the top VPNs to find out which is the best for gaming.
Largest Esports Venue in Southern Hemisphere Coming to Melbourne
A new video gaming and esports entertainment venue is being developed at Emporium Melbourne and will open in early 2020. The facility, which will reportedly be the largest of its type in the Southern Hemisphere, will span 2,700+ square metres across two floors.
“Fortress Melbourne” will boast 160 gaming PCs, console gaming suites, dedicated streamer pods, an RPG and tabletop game play area, function rooms, a restaurant, two bars, and a 200-seat esports arena with production facilities.
“Melbourne has become the epicentre for video gaming and esports culture with major events like Melbourne Esports Open and PAX Australia, so we’re excited to be opening our first flagship venue in Melbourne and offer Australians a unique entertainment space that they can enjoy all year round,“ said Fortress Esports CEO Jon Satterley in a statement.
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GameStop Mentions Unannounced Splinter Cell Game In Product Description
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Splinter Cell: Blacklist was released seven years ago, and fans of Sam Fisher’s stealth adventures have been clamouring for a new entry in the Ubisoft series ever since. The gruff protagonist made an appearance in a Ghost Recon: Wildlands expansion with voice actor Michael Ironside reprising the role, and Fisher also featured at E3 earlier this year as part of a mobile game called Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad.
Now, GameStop may have just inadvertently revealed a new entry in the Splinter Cell series is on the way. A Reddit user discovered a new listing for Sam Fisher replica goggles available for pre-order on the retailer’s site. The description says, “For the first time since the introduction of Splinter Cell in 2002, after nine top-selling AAA+ titles, and with the 10th release on the horizon, this is your first chance to own Sam Fisher’s signature Ultra High-Frequency Sonar Goggles.”
A 10th release on the horizon? Maybe this is just an honest mistake on GameStop’s part in presuming a new Splinter Cell is on the way, or maybe it’s something much more than that. For what it’s worth, the listing has now been removed with the link redirecting to an “access denied” page. It’s also a curious time to release a new pair of replica goggles–slated for release in November–when Splinter Cell hasn’t been part of the gaming lexicon for a number of years.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot recently explained the wait for a new Splinter Cell game. “When you create a game, you have to make sure you will come with something that will be different enough from what you did before,” Guillemot said. “Last time we did a Splinter Cell, we had lots of pressure from all the fans saying, ‘Don’t change it; don’t do this; don’t do that.’ So some of the teams were more anxious to work on the brand.
“Now there are some things and some people that are now looking at the brand; taking care of the brand. At one point you will see something but I can’t say more than that,” he added. “Also because of Assassin’s Creed and all the other brands taking off, people wanted to work on those brands more. So we have to follow what they like to do.”
In other Tom Clancy related Ubisoft news, the Ghost Recon Breakpoint closed beta kicks off this weekend, and GameSpot has all of the details. The company also launched Uplay+, its new subscription service, but not without its share of teething problems.
The Acer Predator Thronos Air Will Massage Your Back for $13,000
Last year we were blown away by Acer’s Thronos gaming cockpit, but its $30,000 price tag made it unapproachable for anyone but the most well-off gamers.
Well, Acer has heard your cries and made a more affordable Acer Predator Thronos Air that only costs $13,000.
Okay, that’s still a lot of money, but it is less than half the price of the original Thronos. To bring the price down to insane levels (rather than inconceivable levels), Acer cut down the motorized features. So now you’ll have to manually adjust the monitor arm and the angle of the gaming chair.
Acer Announces Its First 300Hz Gaming Laptop
240Hz gaming monitors and gaming laptop display have been the fastest screens you can get for competitive gaming for a while now. But Acer is amping things up with one of the industry’s first 300Hz gaming laptops with the updated 15-inch Acer Predator Triton 500.
This gaming laptop’s new 300Hz Full HD display isn’t just fast it’s also outpacing every gaming monitor currently available. 240Hz displays could already deliver a constant stream of crisp images completely devoid of motion blur, but adding another 60Hz here makes games look even smoother. Like velvety smooth.
It Chapter 2 Features A Great Cameo
It Chapter 2 hits theatres this week. Reviews for the sequel to one of the highest-grossing R-rated movies of all time are mixed, but one thing that cannot be debated is that it has a fun cameo from author Stephen King.
Adult Bill, who is played by James McAvoy, is an author in his grown-up life. As part of a gag that extends through the whole movie, he is taken to task for writing unsatisfying endings. The joke here, in case it wasn’t obvious, is that King’s work is criticized for failing to stick the landing. That’s what makes the cameo from King so good.
Bill visits an antique shop in Derry, Maine, and it’s none other than King–wearing a Neil Young Harvest Moon t-shirt–himself who is behind the counter. The character King plays recognizes Bill as the author of books with bad endings, and the meta joke continues with King himself delivering the line.
It 2 is directed by Andy Muschietti and stars James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, James Ransone, Andy Bean, Isaiah Mustafa, and Bill Skarsgård.
GameSpot’s It 2 review called it a “messy finale.”
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan – Gruesome Character Deaths (Spoilers)
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, the new game from the developers of Until Dawn, is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Like Until Dawn, Man of Medan is a choice-driven game that follows the story of a group of young adults who find themselves in a lot of trouble. The characters you meet and bond with can die based on your decisions and other factors.
We’ve rounded up every death we could find into a montage to let you see what can happen when things go south. And things can indeed go south. Check out the video above to see some of the grisliest deaths that Man of Medan has to offer. Like the Saw franchise, Man of Medan gets very creative with how it dispatches with characters. Fair warning, this video is not for the squeamish.
Man of Medan is the first entry in Supermassive’s The Dark Pictures anthology series. Multiple more entries are on the way, though they have yet to be formally announced, beyond a teaser after the credits rolled on Man of Medan.
Red Dead Redemption 2 Online’s Big Summer Update Arrives Next Week
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Rockstar is rolling out a big update for Red Dead Redemption 2‘s online component, Red Dead Online, next week. The game’s Summer Update arrives on PS4 and Xbox One on September 10 and adds a variety of new challenges, Dynamic Events, items, and gameplay adjustments, along with new specialized roles for players to take on called Frontier Pursuits.
Rockstar describes the Frontier Pursuits as “an ongoing series of Roles for players to inhabit, delivering a wide array of themed activities that each offer unique items, skills and more as you progress through each Role.” As you complete these activities, you’ll earn Role XP that will help you unlock new Role Ranks, which in turn will net you Role Tokens, special items, new skills, and even role-specific Free Roam events.
The first three pursuits are the Bounty Hunter, Trader, and Collector, with additional roles coming in the future. The Bounty Hunter focuses on tracking down criminals; the Trader lets you open up a shop and sell animal pelts and meat; and the Collector specializes in searching for valuable treasures. You can read a more detailed breakdown of the three roles on Rockstar’s website.
In addition to the Frontier Pursuits, next week’s update will include new Free Roam events for each of the new roles, as well as other welcome tweaks like additional Stable slots and the ability to reset your character’s appearance without resetting your progress. Rockstar is also making balance adjustments to “reduce reliance on headshots as the primary kill method in PvP.”
In other news, Red Dead Redemption 2 recently surpassed 25 million copies shipped, Take-Two Interactive announced in its latest earnings report. Rockstar was also listed as the publisher of something called Bonaire according to the Australian Classification website. It’s still unclear what Bonaire is, although there has been speculation that it could be some kind of DLC for Red Dead Redemption 2. That, however, is unconfirmed.
The New Razer Blade Stealth has Nvidia GTX 1650 Graphics
Razer has updated the Blade Stealth with Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics, finally making it the gaming Ultrabook it always should have been
While this isn’t the first Blade Stealth to come with discrete graphics, this year’s model offers significantly more graphics power than its Nvidia MX150-powered predecessor. In fact, with the new GPU onboard I was able to play Doom at 60 frames per second with 1080p and Ultra quality settings turned on.
What’s more impressive is the new Razer 13-inch laptop is just as thin as last year’s model at just 0.66-inches. However, the gaming Ultrabook is a bit heavier, weighing in at a maximum 3.26 pounds (rather than 3.04 pounds) due to the addition of an extra heat pipe to mitigate the extra heat from the new graphics processor.