Inaugeral season for the very first Overwatch League begins!

Blizzard has launched the inaugural season for its very first Overwatch League. Teams from 12 different cities have been gathered to fight it out in the massively successful multiplayer first-person shooter. These teams are composed of the best Overwatch players around the globe. While playing and competing for the title is a big reward in itself, Blizzard has a total amount of USD $3.5 million as performance bonus out of which almost 50% of the amount will go to the players along with the usual salary!

You can join in the fun by either tuning into the Twitch Overwatch channel or going to MLG.  The first match of the season will begin 4 pm PT, that is at 5:30 am on January 12 here in India. In case you want to experience the event in person, you will have to be in California as the matches are being held in the Blizzard Arena in Burback.
The tickets for that can be found here - https://goo.gl/SAUFXw

 

Rocket League India's New Delhi meetup to be held on 14 January 2018

Fans of the famous game, 'Rocket League' in Delhi can have a great time on January 14, 2018 (Sunday) as it is the Rocket League Meetup. The event will be held at Battle-Ground, Pitampura and will begin at 12 pm onwards. This is a casual event and there is no entry fee, so make sure that you bring along a few buddies and have a blast! There will be a 2v2 tournament and giveaways from the sponsors as well. People attending stand a chance to get signed RLI mugs and even some gaming accessories.

This is going to be the biggest Rocket League Meetup in Delhi as the sponsor list includes the like of Zotac, Twitch India, Alien h, Gamdias and Acro Engineering Company.

More details  about the event can be found by clicking here!

Black Desert Online early access in Southeast Asia now live

Southeast Asian Adventurers are packed up and ready to take their first step into the Black Desert. Although the official launch is a week away, adventurers can get ahead of the game and get started with Early Access.

Adventurers who have purchased a Legendary Package will be able to freely roam around the vast open world of Black Desert Online. Whether it is to destroy monsters, face off against other players or just start building your life in a quaint village outside of the city, the whole world is at your feet. Do with it what you will, it is yours for the taking.

Early Access players will also get a welcome gift, a ‘Splat Fisher’s Hat (7 Days)’ and ‘5 Elion’s Tear’.

For those who love social media, you can create an alternate universe version of yourself in the game with the amazingly detail oriented character customization feature, unique to only Black Desert Online, and share it with the world for a chance to win a Polaroid camera! More information about these ongoing events can be found on the official Facebook.

The early access period for each package is different. You can check the official countdown page to see when you can access the game.

Xionx inspired arcade game for PlayStation 4, Plox Neon released

Indie developer Desert Owl has released their latest arcade game, Plox Neon for the PlayStation 4. Plox Neon’s classic arcade inspired visuals and electronic music track turns this mentally challenging game into an entrancing experience.

In Plox Neon players must use their wits to find the best way to clear areas of the map and trap monsters to earn points.  The challenge is learning the characteristics of each monster and how they interact within the map to exploit their weakness while minimizing the risk of being attacked.  New levels are unlocked by reaching the clearing goal for each preceding level, and players can set their own high score for each level.

The game has:

• 60 Challenging Puzzle Levels
• 8 Monsters, each requiring their own strategy to overcome
• 6 Electronic Audio Tracks
• Stars and High Score system to challenge yourself
• Colorful mix of organic and retro arcade visuals

You can get your hands on Plox Neon via:

• PlayStation Store
• Steam (Rs 199)
• Google Play Store (Rs 190)
• Apple App Store

Emotional Games Awards 2018 jury members revealed

The 2nd edition of the Emotional Games Awards will take place on Friday the 2nd of March 2018 in Laval, France. A jury of professionals will give prizes to reward the video games which cause the strongest emotions. Names of some members of this jury have already been announced:

Wael Amr founded Frogwares in 2000, an independent video game development studio based in Ukraine. Its first adventure game was released in 2002 : Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy. The first in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series.

Mark Cecere  has over 15 years of experience in the video game industry in Canada. After a BA from Concordia University, he has worked for 8 years at Eidos and for 12 years as a freelance game designer. He joined Warner Bros Games Montreal as Narrative Designer and Game Writer in 2016.

Laura Glibert has a master degree in cognitive psychology. She was part of the Research & Development team at Ubisoft UR Lab. She has worked on many games ( Assassin's Creed Origins, Far Cry 5, The Crew 2,Tom Clancy's). She’s now Game User Researcher at Sony Playstation in London.

Damien Mayance is a French indie game and software developer. He is also the co-founder of Pixelnest Studio in 2013, where he created Steredenn and numerous other projects.

Swann Pichon is a scientific investigator at the University of Geneva. His research is to understand how emotional states and personality traits contribute to affective functioning. He is also working on adapting the technology of video-games for training specific brain functions.

As a graphic designer, but also producer, Jehanne Rousseau has worked for 17 years in the video game industry. In 2008, she is the co-founder of Spiders, an independent video game development studio producing its own creations (The technomancer, Greedfall) as well as offering full productions for third parties.

Mathieu Triclot is a french philosopher, specialised in history of science and technology. He develops his reflection on video games, with his book Philosophy of video games. He is a lecturer at the Belfort-Montbéliard University of Technology.

Why you should not build a PC right now

Whether you are a gamer looking to buy a new system or a professional looking to build a workstation, you should not be building a PC right now! Why you ask, let me explain.

AMD APUs on the horizon

Processors are an integral part of any computing system and the two major desktop CPU manufacturers, Intel and AMD both have great products for consumers. Although recently AMD has been gaining the upper hand since the launch of their 'Ryzen' CPUs. The Ryzen chips have been loved by many due to their higher core counts, easy overclocking capability and cost effectiveness. But recently at CES 2018 AMD announced that it will be launching its Ryzen based APUs in February 2018. The Ryzen CPUs released till now lack any sort of integrated graphics which is a bummer for people who want to build a system from scratch and do not have enough money to buy a dedicated GPU. So if you are one such unlucky bloke then you wont have to settle for a cheap GPU solution as there are two chips planned as of now and they come with RX Vega based graphics complete with support for features such as AMD FreeSync, Radeon Chill, Enhanced Sync and Radeon ReLive. The first one being the Ryzen 3 2200G with  4 cores and 4 threads. This CPU can clock at 3.7GHz with 8 graphics compute units and a max GPU clock of 1100MHz. The Ryzen 3 2200G is going to be launched for a price of USD $99. The more expensive (yet affordable) Ryzen 5 2400G is prriced at USD $ 169 and is more powerful as it gets 4 cores and 8 threads with a max frequency of 3.9GHz. With 11 graphics compute units and the GPU clocking at a maximum of 1250MHz, you can expect smooth 1080p gaming without the need of a GPU.

Price cut on current AMD CPUs & 2nd Gen Ryzen CPUs to launch in April 2018

In case you are not excited by these new Ryzen APUs and still want to go with the already available Ryzen CPUs, it would be wiser to wait as AMD announced price cuts on their existing CPUs and that will take some time to reflect in your local market (the prices are still the same in India at the time of writing this article). Lastly, a little more time into the future, April to be precise, AMD will have the 2nd generation of Ryzen CPUs based on the Zen+ architecture ready to ship. These 2nd gen Ryzen CPU will have better performance for sure and will put Intel in a tight spot once again.

Lack of cheaper Intel motherboards

If you are on the Intel side of things then you might think that the latest 8th gen CPUs are going to stick around for quite a while and it is no harm to buy them. Well you are not entirely wrong, the next generation will take some time before it comes out, however, if you are someone looking to buy a Core i3 or an i5 CPU belonging to the 8th gen then your will be in a bit of loss. Currently Intel has only Z370 motherboards in the market which are compatible with these 8th gen CPUs and these are expensive due to their flagship nature. While they do pack in a lot of features, everyday consumer looking for cost effectiveness would hardly be concered about them. It  makes no sense to put an i3 8100 in a motherboard that supports overcloking (as this particular CPU isn't overclockable) and that cost more than the processor itself. It would be wiser to wait till the lower tier boards show up.

THQ Nordic Announces MX vs ATV All Out to Release Worldwide On March 27 2018

THQ Nordic and Rainbow Studios have announced that their complete off-road racing and lifestyle experience, MX vs ATV All Out, will launch worldwide on March 27, 2018 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

In MX vs ATV All Out, players start out on their own, private compound where they earn valuable upgrades while honing their racing skills. Upgrades include gear, parts, MX bikes, ATVs and UTVs. Players can choose to explore massive open-world environments or compete in Supercross, Nationals, Opencross, Waypoint, and Tag events on all the biggest tracks with many top pro riders from around the world. All of this plus an insane stunt system in freestyle mode, two-player split-screen, and 16-players competing online.

Players who pre-order MX vs ATV All Out at participating retailers will receive the Champion’s Pass which includes instant access to gear, parts, vehicles and vehicle upgrades valued at 100,000 Moto Coins. All this is equivalent of eight hours of top, in-game performance. Players who pre-order MX vs ATV All Out from PlayStation Store or Xbox Store will get 4 days Early Access prior to the game’s release.

Pre-order Now: http://mxvsatv.com/#order-here