Last week, the first of three shiny new Nvidia Turing cards finally pitched up on shop shelves – the RTX 2080. You can head over to my Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 review to find out more on what I thought of the card as a general pixel pusher, but the long and short of it is that you’re probably not looking at much of a raw performance increase over the current Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080Ti.

That’s probably not the most ringing endorsement you’ve ever seen – especially when the RTX 2080 is currently more expensive than the GTX 1080Ti – but the main attraction of Nvidia’s new RTX 2080 graphics card is something I haven’t actually been able to test yet. Namely, its nifty real-time ray-tracing reflection tech and its clever AI-driven bits and bobs like DLSS (deep learning super sampling), which you can also read more about by clicking that there Nvidia Turing link above. This may well turn the tables in the RTX 2080’s favour once said ray-tracing and DLSS games actually come out or are updated to support said nifty and clever features, but right now all we have is a list of confirmed games that will, at some point, receive ray-tracing and DLSS updates in the future – which thankfully has just got a bit longer and, more importantly, more specific about exactly which features they’ll be taking advantage of.

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Good gravy, don’t Nvidia’s Turing RTX 2080 cards look nice, eh? Yes, they’re just a teensy bit hideously expensive, but make no mistake. All three cards announced this evening, from the RTX 2070 right up to the RTX 2080Ti, have all been described to me as 4K, 60fps+ pixel pushers that are almost certainly going to be massive overkill for anyone still playing games at 1920×1080 or 2560×1440.

But enough about the graphics cards – there’s a whole article for you to read about those if you haven’t already. Here, I’m talking games>. Specifically, every game confirmed so far that will be benefiting from Nvidia’s oh-so-lovely ray-tracing tech that will hopefully make your RTX 20-series card feel like a worthwhile purchase. Here we go!

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HDR on PC is a bit of a mess, but provided you haven’t been put off by Windows 10’s hazy support for it or the astronomical prices of the best gaming monitors for HDR, then the next step on your path to high dynamic range glory is to get a graphics card that actually supports it. Below, you’ll find a complete list of all the Nvidia and AMD graphics cards that have built-in support for HDR, as well as everything you need to know about getting one that also supports Nvidia and AMD’s own HDR standards, G-Sync HDR and FreeSync 2.

We’ve also put together a list of all the PC games that support HDR as well. There aren’t many of them, all told, but we’ll be updating this list with more titles as and when they come out so it’s always up to date.

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Welcome to my nightmares. As chronicled last week, all human progress is wiped out by a Steam Sale. Where once we were a species that revelled in new, interesting ideas, pursuing our dreams, we are once more wedged neck-deep in the past, doomed to buy the same 40 five-year-old games until we rot and coagulate into a molten horror. Welcome to the Steam Charts! (more…)

We’ve just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It’s a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you’ll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.

2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets. (more…)

Hallo! Me again, filling in (slightly late) while John is handcuffed to a steering wheel for other duties. The Steam Charts were all shook up (mm mm mmh!) last week by the launch of Steam’s summer sale, including propelling a lump of hardware into the top ten for the first time in ages. A number of older games have rocketed back too, boosted by sale discounts, and displaced several games from their near-permanent spots in the hit parade. Let’s stroll down it and see.

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Sure, you might have tamed yourself an entire stable full of T-Rexes, but humans aren’t the apex predators in ARK: Survival Evolved anymore. At least, that’s the only conclusion I can reach when looking at a beastie with claws as big as your enormous dinosaur steed. Announced just today and due for launch this November is the third (and possibly final) expansion to the game, ARK: Extinction, featuring new environments, new tech and some very> large monsters.

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I do enjoy Ark: Survival Evolved‘s process of turning real-world historical(ish) creatures into video game monsters. The abilities of its reinterpreted dinosaurs and critters seem to stem from one question: what would they do in a cartoon? This logic is delightfully evident as developers Studio Wildcard continue to overhaul older beasties with updated art and abilities, turning crocodiles into stepping stones, making a honking dino into an ambulant alarm system, and of course having raptors pounce to pin prey. Anyone who’s seen dinosaur cartoons or movies knows that’s how they work. (more…)

Strange things are coming to the depths of Ark: Survival Evolved next month in the form of Aberration, its second expansion. It seems geared more towards the high-tech end of things, set in a significantly> more hostile location than the regular game. Read on for a trailer and some more info.

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I had it all planned out. I’d reach level 21 and unlock tranquiliser arrows, which I could then shoot at a triceratops to knock it out long enough to tame it. Then I d craft a saddle for my newly-owned Trike (as it s known in the game) and stomp around collecting more berries than I could feasibly eat in a lifetime. I d use those berries including Narcoberries, which help keep dinosaurs asleep while you tame them to breed a small army of raptors, more Trikes and a flying Pteranodon to transport me around this tropical island. It was one arbitrary goal among an infinite sea of possible arbitrary goals in Ark: Survival Evolved [official site], a sandbox craft-and-survive multiplayer game set in a world where dinosaurs can be mounted with cannons. The game left early access two weeks ago, and here’s wot I think. (more…)