While AMD is struggling to get its forthcoming flaghship processors out of the door, there is some good news for the company. It's officially launching its new range of CPU/GPU hybrid processors today, codenamed Llano. And the reception for the new chips has been good.

At its heart, Llano is a two or four core Athlon II processor with a low end 5800 series graphics chip bolted onto the side. Manufactured on a new 32nm silicon process, bundling the CPU and GPU together like this brings certain performance and power benefits over using two separate chips, and is more cost effective to manufacture.

Intel, of course, has been producing hybrid chips in the shape of its newer Atom and Core processors for a while now. AMD's first hybrid chips appeared under the Fusion marque earlier in the year in netbooks and tablets, and compared very well to their Atom rivals.

The new Llano chips are a step up from the existing C-Series and E-Series Fusion processors, and are being launched using A-Series branding.

The processor that has been doing the review rounds today is the AMD A8-3500M. It's not quite the fastest of the new A-Series chips, but is close. It's a quad core chip that runs at 1.5GHz when all four cores are under load, and can overclock itself to 2.4GHz when only one core is being used. The graphics core has 400 unified shader cores running at 444MHz.

The graphics component is key to Llano's success or failure. Intel's Sandy Bridge CPU cores are several generations more advanced than the AMD architecture here. What AMD does have, however, is its Radeon know how to integrate into the chip. That, theoretically, makes this the more interesting option for gaming.

Early reviews bear out these assumptions. Anandtech, looking at the desktop version of Llano, says "Finally, acceptable processor graphics". Our sister site TechRadar concludes that "Thanks to Llano, 'integrated' is no longer a dirty word when it comes to graphics".



What do I think? I'll reserve judgement until I get chance to review it hands on, but as far as netbooks are concerned, AMD's Fusion is the only serious choice right now and I think it's likely that an A-Series laptop will be a very good travelling companion: thin, light, cheap and good enough to enjoy the occasional game on.

I am, however, slightly more sceptical of AMD's naming conventions. I like the fact that it calls hybrid chips Accelerated Processing Units, or APUs, giving us a useful shorthand for the whole class of confusing chips. But that's where it ends.

Apart from the fact that there's no clue in the name as to how these new chips compare to Athlons and Phenoms, it's going to be tricky for consumers to tell an E-Series from a C-Series from an A-Series chip. Worse, while we were just getting comfortable with Fusion as the platform name, these mid-range processors have an entirely new moniker, Vision.

So today's launch is the AMD A8-3500M Fusion APU with Vision. I have another acronym to add to that. "WTF?"

If you're an avid League of Legends fan, you've probably heard a little bit about the two champions slated for release after Yorick: Leona, the Radiant Dawn, and Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard. (If not, have we got a scoop for you!) But save for a mention here or there about their abilities, these two champions haven't gotten much exposure beyond two spiffy pieces of concept art. That is, until now.

See, we at PC Gamer like to go one step beyond the provided fact sheet on Leona, the Radiant Dawn, and Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard. To us, it's not enough to deliver the hard facts alone; we want to tell you what we think of what's been revealed so far, and speculate on what the champions' other abilities might be, basing our guesses on clues we've picked up during our chat with Riot Producer Travis George and the stated overall concepts behind these champions. If it turns out a month from now that we were right, you can go ahead and call us the Nostradamuses of LoL. If not, well, these ravings of a madman will serve as a cautionary tale to those curious of the effects of a severe over-exposure to League of Legends. Either way, I hope it'll make for an entertaining read.

Leona, the Radiant Dawn
What we know for a fact: Leona is the long awaited response to fans demanding that there be a true, in-your-face-absorbing-your-damage female tank in LoL (Poppy and Kayle don't cut the mustard in long-term tanking scenarios). Riot heard the cries for a gal guardian, and Leona was built from the sturdy foundation of fulfilling a tank role. Brandishing a sword and shield (another first for the series!), Leona's best described, in the words of Travis George, as a "bad-ass female sun knight." The fiery blaze of the sun appears to emanate from Leona's shield, and her armor evokes that of a Warcraft paladin, albeit with a nice coating of "League of Legends sauce" (George's words, not mine). Though everything discussed here is subject to change, her planned ultimate sounds like just about the coolest thing ever, like a super-move straight out of Final Fantasy.

Ultimate (R)—Solar Flare: Leona shines a beam of light onto a large area from long-to-mid range, signaling to her teammates that it's time to initiate a group fight. Your opponents better take heed as well—if they're still standing in the beam after ~1-1.5 second delay, a gigantic meteor will come crashing down on top of them, stunning and dealing massive damage on impact.


 


Her ult seems perfect for kicking off a teamfight and trapping your enemies so that your teammates can unleash AoE-ability hell on them. Imagine with me for a moment: Sona ults, Leona drops a freakin' asteroid on their heads, then Fiddlesticks and Miss Fortune let loose their ultimates while the entire enemy team's HP bars melt away. Tears of future happiness are dripping down my cheeks just thinking about it. Lore-wise, Leona serves as a stalwart member of a sacred order of knights—no doubt she's a pure-of-heart ally of Demacia.

What our Magic 8-Ball said when we asked it about Leona:

According to her fact sheet, Leona's "main role in combat will center on disrupting groups of enemies." Shen's an all-star tank when it comes to disruption, thanks to his taunting Shadow Dash (E). But since that angle's already covered, perhaps Leona's disruption will be more in tune with her sun theme? It would be awesome to see the first true "blinding" ability in LoL—something akin to a targeted or skill-shot beam that, on contact, turns the player's screen white and prevents them from casting abilities.
 
Similar abilities exist in Bloodline Champions, and they're incredibly satisfying for both parties, despite what you'd think. If you're the one hitting the blind, you chuckle to yourself as your enemy runs around wildly swinging while your allies get away clean. If you're the one being blinded, it gives a rush of adrenaline and you get massive bragging rights if you somehow nail an enemy even when you can't see.
Leona's also described as "heavily armored and resilient," suggesting that her passive might work in a similar way to Rammus' armor-encouraging passive skill. A true tank needs to have no fear of jumping headfirst into a fight; the trade-off will likely be a diminished amount of total damage output, as having it both ways can get a little out of control (*ahem* Garen).
Leona's other heavy focus in what we know so far is protecting herself and others. If I were a betting man, I'd estimate that one of Leona's three remaining abilities will do one of the following: dash to a target ally and shield them from damage, or allow her to place a minor healing and armor buff on her teammates. No sense in lugging around that gigantic shield if you're not going to use it, lady! Note: the old version of Ezreal's Essence Flux (which would travel in a straight line healing any allies it hit and and dealing damage to any enemies it hit) seems like the perfect fit, visually and thematically, on a champion that's all about the power of light rays.

 
Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard
What we know for a fact:Skarner is all about isolating an enemy and unloading with single-target melee damage. This crystalline scorpion is said to be a rudely-awakened member of an ancient race who's an equal-opportunity killer if it means defending his people. Don't let his appearance fool you: Skarner has next to nothing in common with DotA's Sand King, save for the fact that they're both predatory arthropods. George just sees him as another unique entity in LoL's "huge, eclectic mix" of characters, and a nice addition to the non-humanoid category since Nocturne hit the scene.



Skarner's perfect for those with a one-track mind: through a combination of lifesteal and stacking debuffs, this aggressive scorpion will whittle away at the target's health with capabilities much like Trundle's incredible strength in one-on-one fights. That isn't to say that Skarner is useless in a teamfight—his claws actually house some vicious crystal pistons (you can see them in the concept art, highlighted in the lighter purple) that will deal cleave damage to nearby enemies even as he focuses down one target. But what if you can't get to your target because they're being babysitted by their allies? That's where Skarner's ultimate comes in.


Ultimate ability (R): Skarner's tail lashes out at a target, impaling them with his stinger and dealing damage. Skarner has a brief window of time where he can actually drag the target around on his tail, able to pull them away from teammates or keep them from escaping at the last second. This ultimate is the ideal way for Skarner to grab a squishy target from behind enemy lines, drag their sorry behinds into the jungle, beat them to a pulp, and escape before their allies can save them.


The half-forgotten Skarner prophecies that came to me in a fever dream:


Skarner's crystal carapace isn't just for show. At the very least, his thick casing will protect him from certain stats, such as ability power or armor penetration. What'd be really awesome is if you could toggle a defensive stance as one of your abilities—Skarner could either cower into a defensive position and become invulnerable for a short time (like DotA's Puck / HoN's Bubbles), or he would move slower but deal additional damage or stack debuffs more quickly, provided he can get in range.
Skarner can't just cross his fingers and hope for his enemies to be dumb enough to fight him mano-a-mano. He'll need some kind of crowd control ability—most likely a targeted stun move, perhaps similar to Taric's Dazzle (E) ability. That way, he can close the distance on those fleeing from him in terror, getting some melee hits off and letting a chain of debuffs compound until the target is eliminated.
His cleave sounds a little too powerful to be a built-in passive; I'm guessing that it'll be a passive ability that must be trained, and that the percentage of your cleave damage will increase as your level up that ability. In the end, the goal should be that if an enemy Skarner is attacking anyone near you, you don't want to stick around.

 
Bonus! What about the Monkey King!?
Way back in April, Riot teased us with a silhouette and some sweet zoomed-in concept art for the Monkey King, who looks to be a fighter hailing from Ionia. Based on the central character of the Chinese epic Journey to the West, this simian staff-wielder looks like it'd be tons of fun, if only we could play him! But he may not be that far off. Judging from the video, his idle, taunt, and dance animations look complete, as well as his character model. It's been stated that Skarner is a long way's off—my money's on Leona being released after Yorick, followed by our good friend the Monkey King. I mean, honestly—if you don't want to play as a champion who served as the inspiration for Dragonball Z's Goku, you need to get your priorities straight.

So, you've heard what we have to say about the upcoming champions. What do you think? Let us know your predictions in the comments—I for one will certainly be checking back here once the champions are released, just to see who was scarily close to being right. Either that, or who's a cheater from the future with all the answers, à la Biff Tannen.

Last time we checked in with the Magicka devs, they were debunking the ancient technique of "water bombing" and the frustrations of losing character control. Come take a seat at the Arrowhead campfire and listen to tales of PvP glory and fights to the death.

Another week, another Dev Diary! This time, we're going to talk about the various PvP modes—the different ways you can blast your friends to oblivion. Game modes have been a hot topic of discussion, both on the forums and here in the office. Without further ado, let's get into this.

When pondering what game modes we should have in Magicka, we took a good, long look at other games and the solutions they adopted; we also listened closely to the solutions posed by the Magicka community. Certain things about PvP seem fairly obvious: for example, we always knew we would need a classic Deathmatch mode. You know, the standard kill-people-until-they-all-die game mode. Creating the mode was a relatively simple matter of establishing a time limit and a kill counter. Throughout development, we reserved the word “Deathmatch” for this normal everyday meaning: it’s a very well known expression, and it means a very specific type of game mode which all players easily recognize.



But there’s more than one way to blast your friends to giblets. Considering a slightly different flavor of PvP, but something still quite familiar, we turned to the Brawl game mode. Brawl is largely inspired by Super Smash Bros., which doesn’t count how many kills you’ve scored, but instead gives each player a set number of lives. There was some question early on if this was really different enough from Deathmatch for it to be included, but after much heated discussion, we decided to implement it. Once we started playtesting, we found that it made for very different gameplay experience compared to Deathmatch, especially when playing four-player Free-For-All. It was definitely unique enough to warrant its own game mode, but familiar enough that players would immediately feel at home with it.

The final game mode we’re offering is a tribute to our awesome community—and the individual who created the very first Magicka PvP tournament. We call it Krietor’s Tourney mode. For those unfamiliar with his history, a forum member by the name of Krietor made a mod for Magicka shortly after it was released, implementing the rudimentary PvP functionality that was left in the game (which, for reasons of time, we had to cut before the main release). Instead of just publishing the mod and calling it finished, Keritor followed through and kept improving the mod for a very long time. He introduced an interesting tournament style which included a time limit, and set up timed rounds. Whenever someone scored a kill, the playing field was reset, with everyone healed up to full strength, and stripped of any spells or other effects. This introduced structure and fairness to an otherwise chaotic PvP environment. He also implemented a system whereby Magicks were unlocked based on how far the tournament had progressed. As you got further into a match, more powerful Magicks were unlocked. This made for very interesting tournaments—and we thought it a brilliant idea to implement these ideas in our official Magicka PvP release.



The official version of Krietor’s Tourney mode will feature the same basic functionality as Krietor's original home-made version, polished and refined a bit so it fits perfectly into Magicka PvP. Each round has a certain time limit, and whenever only one person or one team remains (yep, every game mode supports team play), time stops, and everyone is replaced at their spawning positions to begin the next round, with all remaining spells and effects removed for a clean start. This means that no matter who won the last round, nobody will have an edge from one round to the next. Magicks will be unlocked after certain time intervals, and the order and time at which they unlock is unique to each PvP map. The goal of Krietor’s Tourney mode is to make matches as fair as possible, while at the same time keeping things very interesting. (By contrast, randomization is basically fair, but when it comes to competitive multiplayer, randomization rarely generates interest.)

These three new game modes come with lots of new settings, and the lobby we have in the current version of Magicka has no way to represent the various options. So we've reworked the lobby to include PvP. When designing the new lobby, we tried to make it as flexible as possible, so we can easily add more features and options in the future.

It's our hope that these three game modes will satisfy the community’s PvP cravings. We all really enjoy them ourselves, and feel that each game mode contributes its own little piece of fun. We hope that this introduction of PvP will bring an exciting new facet of Magicka to light!

It is frustrating that Valve insist on telling the world very important news just as everyone in the office turns off their PCs to go home. That leaves it to me to tell you that Valve have added microtransaction support for free-to-play games to Steam, with five available immediately: Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, and Alliance of Valliant Arms.

Starting tomorrow, each of the five games will offer exclusive in-game content to those players who try out the "free-to-play game of the day." That likely means Champions Online will soon be inundated with new players wearing Pyro masks or wielding Gordon's crowbar, which can only be a good thing for all involved.

Read on for a few more thoughts.

You can find all five games in the new free-to-play section of the Steam store.

The news here is that Steamworks' micropayment functionality is being used across all the games. The tech was originally rolled out for Team Fortress 2's Mannconomy update, and it has been generating wads of money for Valve and prompting occasional ire from gamers ever since. Given that these games were already free-to-play with micropayments though, it seems like little cause for further consternation.

Instead, it seems like a good thing. Free-to-play games vary in quality wildly, and there's so many of them from so many developers that it's difficult to work out which are worth your time. Having a bunch of them in a central place like Steam, where you can see what your friends are playing, should make it easier to work out what's worth your time. It'll also stop these games being so marginalised and take away a little of the stigma of playing them. If that results in the good free-to-play games getting the attention they deserve, then that's great.

Hackers are everywhere, protect your passwords! That's the motto of today's story of the continued web attacks on high profile game sites. Luckily, there are no reports that any of the stolen information has been misused, yet, but it's a worthwhile reminder that forum and game accounts may not be as secure as we think.

In other news, Call of Duty Elite is looking incredibly successful, and it's not even out yet. In fact, it's not even in beta. You know what is out? The latest issue of PC Gamer UK. Find out what's in the latest issue here.

E3 is over, so there's no news, right? Wrong. There's always plenty happening in PC gaming. Stay up to date with the handy link list below.


Rage developer Tim Willits defends id's decision not to put deathmatch modes in Rage, comparing standard console shooters to McDonalds. "There's a McDonalds on every street corner," he says, "and I love McDonalds, but I don't want to eat McDonalds every day. Sometimes you need to have steak."
ParmdeepDre tweeted us with a video of Black Ops map, Summit, which he's faithfully recreated in Minecraft.
EA say they're listening carefully to fan feedback to Dragon Age 2.
A Redditor has created a flowchart showing all the different ways the player can complete a single Deus Ex mission. There are a lot.
RPS report that Homefront will be getting a sequel, but Kaos Studios, who made the first game, will be closed down anyway.
THQ Core games boss Danny Bilson says a new Relic game will be unveiled at Gamescom this year. Dawn of War 3, Homeworld 3, or Company of Heroes 2? Let the speculation begin.
Need for Speed The Run gets a new trailer.
Dirt 3 DLC will add new cars to the game tomorrow.
Bioware counter criticism that The Old Republic is "highly derivative" of World of Warcraft.

 
Today in the PC Gamer office, the search for a PC Gamer UK mascot continues. Also, we suddenly remembered that PCGamer.com's first birthday happened on Friday. We plan to celebrate in true PC Gamer style. We're one year old! How's the first year been? What would you like to see more of in year two?

 
Ballsy indie art-basher Rock of Ages has a release date, say VG247. We'll be smashing our way through art history on August 31 this year. Ten weeks is a mere stone's throw away. It'll be sphere in no time, in fact, but why not have a ball with the lovely Rock of Ages E3 trailer above while you wait? The developers told Joystiq Rock of Ages will go on sale for a price somewhere between $10 and $15. It looks utterly charming.

Epic and Bethesda are the latest victims of wave of cyber-crime that has so far seen data stolen from a number of games company sites, including Sony Online Entertainment, Nintendo, Eidos and Codemasters.

A post on the Bethblog yesterday revealed that the game publisher's site and forums had suffered "an unlawful intrusion" that resulted in the theft of an undisclosed number of forum and website passwords and email addresses.

On Friday, Epic sites also experienced downtime in the aftermath of a similar attack that compromised a number of forum accounts. Thankfully, both companies report that no credit card information was stolen. Other companies have been less fortunate.

Epic founder Tim Sweeney released a statement in the wake of Friday's attack confirming that the "Epic Games web sites and forums were recently hacked.

"The hackers may have obtained the email addresses and encrypted passwords of forum users," he said, adding that "we have reset all passwords. The Unreal Developer Network (UDN) hasn't been compromised. Thankfully, none of our web sites ask for, or store, credit card information or other financial data.



In a similar statement on Bethblog, Bethesda staff revealed that "while no personal financial information or credit card data was obtained, the hackers may have gained access to some user names, email addresses, and/or passwords.

"As a precaution, we recommend that all our fans immediately change passwords on all our sites — including our community forums, statistics site for Brink, and here on the blog.

"If your username/email address/password is similar to what you use on other sites, we recommend changing the password at those sites as well. As we don’t know what further plans the hackers may have, we suggest that you keep an eye out for suspicious emails and account activity."

Epic and Bethesda are the most recently targeted sites. Sony Online Entertainment endured a very serious attack earlier this year in which hackers illegally obtained millions of SOE account details, and the credit card information of more than 12 thousand "non-US" customers. Sony Online Entertainment MMOS came back online last month after a long period of inactivity thanks to the attacks.



In May the Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Eidos Montreal sites were hacked. Square later confirmed that 250 resumes and thousands of email addresses had been stolen in the attack. Just last week, Codemasters revealed that they, too, had been compromised, losing thousands more customer details in the course of the intrusion.

MCV report that Nintendo have also suffered security breaches. It's not clear whether the attacks are part of a single organised campaign, or the responsibility of a number of competing hacking communities. Hacker organisation Lulz Security took responsibility for the Ninetndo hack, while the Eidos hack was attributed to Gnosis. Sony blamed Sony Online Entertainment and Playstation Network failings on Anonymous.

Whether they're the work of a single group or a collection of different attackers, attacks are set to continue amid fears that services like Steam, and other digital distribution channels like GamersGate and Direct2Drive may be targeted, with much more serious consequences for customers.

As reported on Gamasutra, Call of Duty: Elite has already had two million sign-ups. The massive figure was announced on the blog of Activision's Dan Amrich.

Exact details as to how the new service will work are yet to be announced. According to Amrich, the final service will evolve depending on feedback taken from the beta anyway. He also mentions that fans of the series shouldn't be discouraged by the popularity of the service, saying "Two million volunteers among 30 million Call of Duty players is a small amount. More would be even better. Once you’ve signed up, just watch your email inbox for an invite."

We do know that Elite will let you obsess over your stats to an unhealthy degree, there will be free and paid versions of the service, and that some form of TV show will be incorporated, featuring "top Hollywood Talent."

As far as we can tell, it's going to be a bit like a Facebook profile, but where every picture, status update, and awkward message will be COD-focussed. Your photos will feature camo, your status updates will be concerned with weapon attachment unlocks, and your messages will be littered with words like n00b t00b and base-rape. It'll support Call of Duty: Black Ops and the upcoming Modern Warfare 3.

Read more about Call of Duty Elite in Activision's latest FAQ, and sign up for the beta here. Amrich has created a handy information hub too - what a nice chap.

Two games of reporter-punching have prepared Shepard well for the final showdown in Mass Effect 3. Now he has some sort of nano fist-fist blade that lets him punch even harder. If I was a Reaper, and sadly I'm not, I would be worried by this. The latest Mass Effect 3 trailer that shows Reapers reaping and Shepard super-punching his way through a variety of alien foes. Mass Effect 3 is coming out on March 3 next year.

On our cover this month: master assassin Ezio, not quite managing to hide in plain sight. We were going to ask him to smile, but then we realised he has more knives than fingers, and thought better of it. The star of new Ezio is older, more experienced and deadlier than ever. Find out the truth that lies behind the beard in the massive feature on Assassin's Creed Revelations, in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK.

It's not all about assassins, of course. This month we delve into Dwarf Fortress, chat to Bioware about writing The Old Republic, review all the latest releases and much, much more. Read on to discover the treasures hidden within the pages of our July issue.



Tom Francis skips between two alternative future universes in this month's preview section, with words on Mass Effect 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Richard Cobbett fights for survival in ambitious zombie apocalypse sim, Project Zomboid and braves a wild island with Lara Croft to bring us a preview of the new Tomb Raider game.

But what about the rest of the team? Many of us died this month, actually, in many amusing ways. Steve Hogarty created stumpy facsimiles of the PC Gamer UK staff and sent us all to hell in Dwarf Fortress. Bones were broken, demons ran amock, and Graham tunnelled into the underworld (his natural inclination when bored). Tom managed to escape the madness and hunts down BioWare writing director to ask him how BioWare go about creating the largest universe they've ever made in our feature on Writing The Old Republic.

In our reviews section, we deliver judgement on The Witcher 2, Fable 3, Brink,, Dirt 3, Red Faction: Armageddon, Dungeon Siege 3, Mount and Blade: With Fire and sword and more. Then it's over to our titanium tech expert, Adam Oxford for The Hard Stuff. There he reviews the latest gaming laptops, dual-wields graphics cards in this month's special report, and takes an advanced look at Windows 8.

But that's not all. Tom S descends into clone hell and becomes his own worst enemy in Dawn of War 2: Last Stand in this month's Extra Life. Tim battles Owen in Portal 2, Rich saves a life while playing StarCraft 2 and Tom F uses his giant robotic tentacle to throw cars at policemen in Jack Claw. Then we dive into the Minecraft-like wargame, Ace of Spades, and round up some of the best Dragon Age 2 mods in Top Ten Downloads

That's not all. There's plenty more to discover in this month's issue. You can order it online right now. If you'd like toget PC Gamer delivered to your door every month, clad in our glorious subscriber covers and released before the issue hits stores, you can subscribe, too, and save up to 35% on the cover price. If you live outside the UK, or would like to read PC Gamer on screen anywhere, anytime, check out our fancy new digital edition.