Ubisoft has announced that the first of two free Incursion expansions will come to The Division on April 12. Entitled Falcon Lost, it will take place in an underground water treatment facility that now serves as a stronghold for the Last Man Battalion, and feature four new rare gear sets, each one tailored to a specific style of play, that will unlock a new, never-before-seen talent when fully equipped.

Falcon Lost has two difficulties: Hard mode, which is recommended for players whose gear score is equivalent to level 31; and challenge mode, which is even tougher, Ubisoft explained on its blog. Also, there aren t any checkpoints in Falcon Lost; if your team goes down, you ll have to restart from the beginning. Additionally, you can replay Falcon Lost and other upcoming Incursions as many times as you want and still be rewarded with new loot.

Gear score will enable players to boost their abilities beyond the character level cap, which remains at 30; Ubisoft described it as a new way of leveling up for top-level players. The update will also add the ability to trade loot with other members of your squad, which to be honest I'm surprised wasn't included right out of the gate, as well as Dark Zone supply drops, daily Assignments, and the ability to follow your teammates with the camera (and feed them tactical info) when you die. Enemies will now have the ability to employ aerial drones that will be difficult to bring down, and an armored personnel carrier "boss" that's impervious to bullets will also make an appearance.

The second Incursion, called Conflict, will be set in New York's Columbus Circle, and will bring even more new features to the Dark Zone, but there's still no date on that.

The folk at Larian Studios are working on Divinity: Original Sin II, but they're also working on amusing videos such as the one embedded above. Ostensibly an update on the sequel's development, CEO Swen Vicke also takes the opportunity to gently rib the fashion sense of people working in the VR industry. Oh, and there's a new secret in Divinity: Original Sin's Enhanced Edition, something to do with "free VR". 

Basically, if you collect the item in the location described in the video, you can make the game look like this:

"Fashioned by an ingenious imp from a far-off realm, these unwieldy spectacles were designed for gazing into rifts," the item description reads. "Use them on the regular world and you'll just be shrouded in darkness. But the exceedingly rare material they're made of, palmerite, just so happens to have a powerful side effect: Luck."

On the topic of Original Sin II, Vicke runs us through progress on the game's competitive multiplayer aspect, while also drawing attention to how the world's design will affect combat. For example, arrows and other projectiles have trajectories now, so if you're shooting from the top of a staircase, you can hit enemies below (provided you're good). 

The footage of the PvP stuff is off-screen, but it's promising: given the sandbox nature of Original Sin's combat, there will be a lot of quick thinking involved once the playerbase learns the ropes. For more on the game's development, why not check out this recent presentation from the PC Gamer Weekender. 

It s pretty clear that Oculus wanted the Rift to be a user friendly device. From the moment you open the box everything is neatly laid out in front of you, ready to guide you into the future of PC gaming without scaring you away with the coils of wires and plugs that lay beneath. With only one sensor and no touch controllers on launch, there s significantly less to set up than the HTC Vive, but that also means the experience, for now, is a more limited one.

While the built-in setup program does a good job of walking you through the basics, through using the Rift I've learned a few more steps that can optimize your whole experience. Whether you re about to take it out of the box, eagerly awaiting it in the mail, or just want to see what all the fuss is about, here s the best way to setup your Oculus Rift.

Before starting, clear off some desk space

Wes wrote a longer guide on preparing your PC and room for VR that s worth checking out, but after spending a long weekend with the Rift on my relatively small desk at home, the importance of giving it a clear spot cannot be overstated. You ll want to make sure you have a place for the sensor, as well as a consistent area to put down the included Xbox One controller, the Simple Input Device (basically a remote), and a larger spot to safely place the Rift itself—and that none of these things are obstructing your mouse or keyboard.

Unlike the Vive s controllers, the Xbox controller and the SID aren t tracked and can t be seen while the headset is on, so always knowing where they are on your desk can be important. There s nothing worse than fumbling for your remote to turn down the volume while blindly smacking everything in front of you. Give these things a safe spot on your desk so you know where to reach in the middle of a game, and so they don't feel in the way when you're not using the Rift.

Download and install the Oculus setup

This should go without saying, but you will need to run the official setup program to get your Rift working. Head on over to the official Oculus page, download the setup tool, and follow the instructions to install all of the correct software.

You may be startled to find out that currently you can only install your Rift software (and any Oculus store games) onto whatever drive you have Windows installed on, which is a huge oversight in my opinion. Oculus says they are working on a solution to fix this (in the meantime, see the final section of this article), but there s no word on when that will arrive. Fortunately, there s a workaround for installing games—which I ve explained below—but for now it s best to install the Oculus software and get the headset working before worrying about that.

While the setup will walk you through the process slowly, it s pretty much as simple as plugging everything in and following the prompts. Plug the Rift s HDMI cable into your GPU, the USBs from the headset and the sensor into available USB 3.0 ports, and then the Xbox One controller wireless adapter into any other USB port. You ll need to make sure the cord from the headset as enough slack, but that s pretty much all there is to getting it all hooked into your computer.

Positioning the sensor

Continue through the setup tool until it tells you to position your sensor and asks for your height. This isn t a difficult step, but there are some important things to know.

First, it will tell you to set up your sensor for playing while standing, but you're probably going to be playing most of your games on the Rift while seated. The sensor s field-of-view is pretty forgiving, so you should be able to point it towards your face when you are seated and have it still work while standing without having to adjust.

Whatever height you enter will be your default VR height while standing, but as long as you are standing when the sensor scans your position during the setup, it should be able to understand when you are sitting down. If it doesn't feel quite right, recalibration is easy: just hit the home button on your SID and select the option to reorient your position on the right.

Lastly, Oculus instructs you to place the sensor three feet from the headset, but you don t feel like you have to break out a ruler. As long as it s about an arm s length away, you should be fine. Setting up the sensor is a pretty forgiving process and can be adjusted on the fly. The most important thing is that nothing block the sensor itself. 

Adjusting the headset

Getting the right fit for your Rift is something that becomes easier with experience, but there are a few good tricks to know about. The biggest of which is that the Rift is more adjustable than just the three velcro straps. The headset can tilt up and down independent of the strap lengths, which can help when the top strap is snug but things are still a little blurry. You shouldn t need to strap the Rift painfully tight to your face in order to get a clear picture.

The setup tool will show you a green crosshair to help adjust lens spacing, and this screen can be accessed at any time by hitting the home button on the SID, then selecting the Adjust Lens Spacing button on the right side of the menu. It s a great way to learn how the Rift should be fitting on your face, and be sure to remember your lens spacing distance for next time. I went to this screen nearly every time I put the headset on, and soon found I could nail the positioning without needing to use the green crosshairs at all.

One thing I discovered the hard way is that if the bottom of your nose is above the bottom edge of the Rift, your breath might cause the lenses to blur as you continue to play. Shift the Rift to a higher position on your head, wipe off the lenses with the included cloth, and it shouldn t be a problem again.

A nice detail of the Rift's design, compared to the HTC Vive, is that the side straps have a little bit of a spring-action to them. Unless someone else used it last, you shouldn t need to undo the velcro once you ve gotten it in the right spot. Once you find the correct fit, you shouldn't need to fiddle with any of the settings again.

Tricking the Oculus into letting you install games on another drive

Annoyingly to some, the Oculus software takes up about 1.5 GB and needs to be installed on the C drive—or whatever drive you have Windows installed on. Palmer Luckey commented on Reddit that removing this restriction was near the very top of our roadmap, but that getting this working is non-trivial for a lot of reasons. But many gamers (myself included) opt to get small SSDs to run their OS with a larger drive reserved for games. So while it s going to be fixed eventually, those of you with Oculus Rifts in-hand and a very full C drive need a solution now.

And a solution I have, although it s not a bulletproof one. By creating a symbolic link (symlink) junction, you can create your Oculus store download and install directories on one drive and trick your computer into thinking they are still on your C drive without issue. The only problem with this is that you still need the amount of space it would take to install a game available on your C drive, or the Oculus store will say there s not enough space and won t let you download it—even though this method means it won t actually be using that space. So if you wanted to install EVE: Valkyrie with this method, you d need ~22GB of available memory of your C drive, but still be left with all of that space unused once it finished installing.

Here's how to do it: Download and install the Link Shell Extension program. Link Shell Extension is basically just a helpful shortcut for doing something you d otherwise have to do in a command prompt.

Next, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus and copy the following four folders: Downloads, Manifests, Redistributables, and Software. If you haven t installed any games from the Oculus store, a couple of these folders may not have been created yet. That s fine, just copy the ones that are.

Now paste the copied folders onto whichever drive you want the games to install. Make an empty folder and name it accordingly for any of the four folders that were missing before—for example, if Manifests was missing, make a new folder named Manifests in the same location you just pasted the others.

Select all four folders on the new drive at once, then right-click one of them and select Pick Link Source from the drop-down menu. Now go back to your Oculus folder on the C drive and delete the four original folders you copied. Write click inside the Oculus folder, hover over Drop as… , then select Junction from the drop-down menu. You should see the four folders reappear, but now with a little chain symbol on each of the folder icons.

This has created a junction between the folders on your other drive and the Oculus folder on your C drive. So while your computer thinks the folders are on the C drive itself, they are actually just linked from their real location. You ll need to actually have the memory required for your games free on your C Drive, but the data will then be installed and stored on the alternate drive.

Here are our impressions of all 30 of the Oculus Rift's launch titles, and more of our coverage during VR week. Got your own tips for setting up the Rift? Let us know in the comments below! 

Dark Souls 3 doesn't come out for another two weeks in most of the world, but it's been out since March 24 in Japan. That means speedrunners have already descended upon it, and they've gotten really good. While our reviewer James has already put 50+ hours into it over the last couple of weeks (you can read his initial thoughts here, and his full review soon) speedrunner Jung Ho Min has managed to beat the game in a fraction of that time, clocking in at an in-game time of 1:42:10. You can watch the full run above, though you can easily guess that it's riddled with spoilers. 

That's an absurdly fast time for a game that is reportedly a very long experience. What's crazier is that this is still on the cutting edge of speedrunning Dark Souls 3: the time is only going to get faster from here, as evidenced by Jung Ho Min having posted a previous world record time of 1:56:10 only two days earlier. Like the insane speedrun path that let people beat Dark Souls 2 in less than 20 minutes, this is an Any% run—meaning the runner only has to make it to the end of the game as fast as possible, allowing them to skip bosses and other large portions of the game entirely. 

It's an exciting time to watch Dark Souls 3 speedruns because the fastest routes and best time saves are actively being discovered. If you are interested in seeing more, popular Dark Souls speedrunner Distortion2—who holds the record for both Dark Souls 2's older Any% route and the current All Bosses route—has been livestreaming speedruns frequently and, literally while I was typing out this article, he clocked a time of 1:43:11 in an All Bosses run. There's no doubt runners everywhere will be trying to best the high bar that's already been set, but there's also no doubt they'll break the record in a hurry. 

[Update: Our review of Dark Souls 3 is up! Read it here.]

Dark Souls 3 doesn't come out for another two weeks in most of the world, but it's been out since March 24 in Japan. That means speedrunners have already descended upon it, and they've gotten really good. While our reviewer James has already put 50+ hours into it over the last couple of weeks (you can read his initial thoughts here, and his full review soon) speedrunner Jung Ho Min has managed to beat the game in a fraction of that time, clocking in at an in-game time of 1:42:10. You can watch the full run above, though you can easily guess that it's riddled with spoilers. 

That's an absurdly fast time for a game that is reportedly a very long experience. What's crazier is that this is still on the cutting edge of speedrunning Dark Souls 3: the time is only going to get faster from here, as evidenced by Jung Ho Min having posted a previous world record time of 1:56:10 only two days earlier. Like the insane speedrun path that let people beat Dark Souls 2 in less than 20 minutes, this is an Any% run—meaning the runner only has to make it to the end of the game as fast as possible, allowing them to skip bosses and other large portions of the game entirely. 

It's an exciting time to watch Dark Souls 3 speedruns because the fastest routes and best time saves are actively being discovered. If you are interested in seeing more, popular Dark Souls speedrunner Distortion2—who holds the record for both Dark Souls 2's older Any% route and the current All Bosses route—has been livestreaming speedruns frequently and, literally while I was typing out this article, he clocked a time of 1:43:11 in an All Bosses run. There's no doubt runners everywhere will be trying to best the high bar that's already been set, but there's also no doubt they'll break the record in a hurry. 

Jabba the Hutt is laughing at me. The corpulent crime boss rumbles ominously in Huttese, relishing my damning choice to strike a deal with him. What little light that struggles through his throne room s smoky haze is gridded onto the walls and floor through slatted vents. A stronger light source rests in Jabba s pudgy palm: a small holoprojector emitting a faint blue glow in the shape of a blaster pistol. I ve just agreed to a contract with a Hutt for that pistol.

The galaxy s ugliest kingpin and his Tatooine stronghold are the best parts of Outer Rim, the first major DLC release for Star Wars Battlefront. It s a sizeable start for Season Pass holders—four new maps, a new mode, four new weapons, two new heroes, new Star Cards, and a raised rank cap to 60—and a decent foundation for a DLC roadmap covering roughly one year. Where the luster fades lies in the exact same pitfall encountered at launch: a sustained lack of depth.

That s been something of a two-sided problem for Battlefront in the four months since its release. I ve heartily recommended it to friends seeking an approachable multiplayer shooter layered beneath a lavish dedication to the Star Wars films. I ve also steered people away from it for its formulaic kill-die-respawn design that, unless in the boots of a hero, permeates its infantry or vehicle combat. As Andy wrote in his review, Battlefront s soul feels hollow.

Palace of spine parts

Outer Rim doesn t buck that trend, but the fan in me still loves its nods to Star Wars lore. The new Jabba s Palace map helms that admiration as a twisting, close-quarters infantry arena liberally sprinkled with authentic touches. It s hard not to stop and ogle at the details, such as Jabba s docked sail barge, the throne room s triggered trapdoor, or the steadily decaying remains of the slain rancor below. The hastily stashed corpses of Gamorrean guards and the still-displayed, now-thawed carbon unit once imprisoning a frozen Han Solo makes the place feel like Skywalker and crew left just days ago.

The new 12-player Extraction mode naturally pairs with the Palace s smaller scale. Rebels escort a hovering pallet of precious cargo on a set route throughout the map while Imperials defend and delay for as long as possible. It s a mode intimately familiar for Team Fortress 2 Payload veterans—and though the inclusion of hero support occasionally adds exciting, tide-turning moments, Extraction isn t anything wholly innovative. The cargo often lies untouched in favor of dreary deathmatching until the expired timer delivers an Imperial victory, so Extraction feels lacking of a strong incentive to focus on the objective similar to the larger Supremacy or Walker Assault modes. On the upside, it s a grand opportunity to steep future content ever deeper in Star Wars nostalgia—Han Solo s horizontal exit from Cloud City to Boba Fett s Slave I practically designs itself.

I spent some time trying to figure out how Outer Rim s two lesser-known heroes managed to squeeze in alongside the great Darth Vader or Princess Leia, but their comparable deadliness trivializes the matter. The Rebels get Nien Nunb: he was Lando Calrissian s co-pilot in Return of the Jedi, a chuckle-happy Sullustan who s ace at area denial and chokepoint defense with his proximity bombs, pulse cannon, and a superpowered turret. I liken him to a beefy version of TF2 s Engineer class who can quickly set up an entrenched hardpoint—perfect for Extraction or other attack/defense modes—while retaining enough mobility to cover flank routes with bomb traps and his souped-up version of the DH-17 pistol.

Far more fun and interesting is Greedo, the ill-fated Rodian bounty hunter—he's better remembered as a ventilated corpse in A New Hope s famous cantina scene—who joins the Empire. He favors a risk-reward playstyle that increases his damage and the type of grenade he can lob out as he chains together kills. (His ultimate grenade, the Thermal Imploder, is a marvel of DICE sound engineering.) It's thrilling playing a hero who steadily ramps up his threat and efficiency by pushing the front lines, a mechanics-based encouragement to perform heroic deeds and get aggressive. And while it's weird seeing the lowly Greedo chum beside Palpatine as if he had the Emperor on speed-dial the entire time, he s a burst of creativity that Battlefront could use a lot more of.

Numbers and letters

Less exciting are Outer Rim s assortment of weapons and extra Star Cards earned through Hutt Contracts, a variation of Battlefield 4 s assignment system where meeting killstreaks and certain weapon criteria bestows an unlock of some sort. They re themed less around direct damage boosts and more for utilitarian purpose. Gun names still aren t memorable enough to pick out from one another, and determining what to use between monikers such as the Relby V-10 or the DT-12 gets cumbersome.

For all its devotion to its source material, Outer Rim hasn t notably altered what makes Battlefront grow stale after a while.

The two pistols and two targeting rifles are side-grades at best; their tap-fire characteristics—strongest seen in the DLT-19X s sniper-style single-shot mode—feel overly niche, and I wound up reverting back to my original arsenal after a few trial rounds. Ditto for the new Star Cards: the Dioxis gas grenade, health-boosting Stim, or hard-hitting Scatter Gun (which is really a slightly longer-range Scout Pistol) sound appealing on paper but sport little extra practical use compared to the direct punch of a Thermal Detonator or handy Jump Pack.

For all its devotion to its source material, Outer Rim hasn t notably altered what makes Battlefront grow stale after a while. There are definitely gems of easygoing fun to find, particularly when going crazy as Greedo or beating back a savage defense on Extraction. Overall, though, it suffers the same lack of punch hampering Battlefront s vanilla content, and its returns don t quite shore up the stiff $50 Season Pass price. It'll be nice to have when it inevitably comes bundled with the game down the line.

Remember that awful Doom movie with The Rock and Karl Urban? Bethesda Softworks remembers. You can tell, because the new live-action teaser for the upcoming Doom FPS is nothing like it.

To be fair, it's only a minute long, as opposed to the torturous 105 minutes of the film, but it gets right to the point about relentless combat, terrifying demons, and bad ass guns, as Bethesda put it. Amusingly, the video isn't nearly as violent as the game: Not a single creature, human or otherwise, can be seen dying in it. There's not even any blood, aside from a small, congealed puddle on the floor. Pretty cool song, though— Refused by New Noise, according to a commenter. (Which is apparently correct.)

The Doom multiplayer beta kicks off at 10 pm ET today, and even though access is restricted, you can get in if you grab one of the codes that will be handed out at GameStop and EB Games from April 1-3—while supplies last, so best not to dally.

The first time I reached out and snatched an oxygen canister in Adr1ft I felt tremendously satisfied. The first-person adventure takes place following a disaster on a massive space station orbiting Earth (if you ve seen the film Gravity you get the idea), and as I floated in zero-G amid clouds of wreckage and debris, my space suit was rapidly leaking O2. While struggling to control my movement with thrusters, small oxygen canisters spun and drifted just out of reach. I held down a button to grab one and my arm extended, my hand desperately reaching for the bottle as it tumbled past. A little more thrust in the right direction and my hand clasped the bottle, plugged it into a port on my suit, then discarded it, letting it spin slowly away into the void.

Unfortunately, grabbing O2 canisters is something you have to do dozens, maybe even a hundred times before the end of Adr1ft. Your suit continues to leak O2, and since your thrusters also use oxygen you need to replenish your supply almost constantly. As you make your way slowly through the enormous, shattered space station, activating computer terminals and restoring power to critical systems, you ll spend almost all of your time trying to spot spare O2 canisters and wall-mounted oxygen stations so you don t asphyxiate. Later you ll upgrade your suit to hold more oxygen, meaning less frequent top-ups, but it s still something you need to closely monitor. Like the number 1 crammed into Adr1ft s title, the O2 hunt feels intrusive and distracting, taking away from what might have been an immersive and haunting experience.

Space balls

Adr1ft is beautiful. Debris floats and spins through the station and in the surrounding space—some of it can be enjoyably batted away with your hand—and there are a number of interesting looking modules in the station: botany labs, communications arrays, and living quarters. The animation of your arms and hands as you open airlocks, use oxygen and repair stations, and grasp floating objects is fantastic. But the beauty of the game gets lost during your near-constant hunt for cans of O2, and by the tenth time I watched my arms open an airlock or haul my body into an EVA suit repair station—the same ten second animation every time—I'd seen enough of that. 

The other tasks involve reaching distant computer terminals, holding down a button, and waiting for some audio, text readout, or animation to complete. Even the majesty of space-walking between station modules wears off simply because it takes so long. It s hard to remain awestruck when there s really nothing to do but tap your thruster button for several minutes. And, of course, you can only stare in wonder for a few moments before you have to begin scanning the area for more air cans.

The sense of urgency makes me feel vulnerable and in danger, but I think being the sole survivor in a ruined space station promotes that feeling naturally without constantly forcing me to be on the verge of asphyxiation. Dying is another thing that s horrifying the first time: you see your hands helplessly clawing at your helmet in front of you, but after a couple of deaths I would just manually reload from the last checkpoint to skip the extended animation before it completed. Also making things occasionally frustrating is your minimap, which is presented in a flat 2D display, an arrow pointing you ever onward to your next objective. While you spin and float in 3D space, however, it can be more than a little tricky to figure out exactly where and what it s pointing to. Several times I drifted off into space, following a vague pointer, only to suffocate and have to restart.

R1ft

I played most of Adr1ft on my PC but also tried it in VR using the consumer version of the Oculus Rift. As you d expect, Adr1ft looks fantastic in VR. Since the Rift doesn t have VR hand controllers yet (I used an Xbox controller), it doesn t really feel like you re reaching for something any more than playing on a regular monitor does, but it s still a far eerier and more immersive experience, and the zero-G debris and views of Earth are stunning.

It s a little odd as well. Since your spacesuit helmet is fixed on your shoulders, turning your head doesn t mean you can look behind you: you just wind up looking at the inside of your helmet. So, you can t look over your shoulder to see a nice view of the Earth, you still have to physically turn yourself around to see behind you. You also have to crane your neck down at the inside of your helmet s visor to see HUD elements like the O2 readouts and minimap. It works in most respects: it does really seem like you re wearing a big-ass spacesuit. At the same time, I wish the HUD was a little easier to see, especially since you have to check your air supply so frequently.

I never felt sick playing in VR. Rolling myself from side to side gave me a brief, mildly uncomfortable feeling, but only the first few times. I should say that one of our video shooters and editors Max Barbanell also tried it, and he felt extremely uncomfortable after only a few minutes of play.

As long as you can stomach it, there are bits of story to find as you travel through the wreckage: audio logs you can pluck from in front of you and play (and plenty that play on their own) and personal emails to read (why I m reading emails while I m seconds away from death, I can t really say) to uncover the reasons behind the disaster. The voice acting and writing is well done, though I didn t find the story particularly compelling—as in Gravity, the visuals and setting are more important than anything else.

Exploration games like Dear Esther draw a fair amount of ire from players who don t consider them real games, but Adr1ft and its near-constant O2 hunt feels like it s trying too hard to be a game, and the experience suffers for it. While VR certainly adds to the immersion and excitement, it doesn t do anything to overcome the repetition of tasks that stifles the enjoyment I might get from really examining Adr1ft's space.