Memory specialists Kingston have hit us with a one-two combo of brand new solid state drives and a whole new memory module they’re calling the Beast.

As if the memory market wasn't already macho enough, Kingston are looking to sex things up with the latest addition to their Predator line-up of memory upgrades. It’s all ostensibly dual-channel DDR3 in speeds ranging from 1600MHz up to 2400MHz and in kits of up to 64GB (sixty-four gigabytes! I felt that needed emphasising), with a range of memory latency ratings too. The Beast title is being given to the modules carrying the new “viciously aggressive” heatspreader design and that 64GB capacity is the largest in the HyperX performance memory family.

Silly name aside, these should be pretty good sticks, especially at the lower latency end. And Kingston can usually be relied upon to get as aggressive with its pricing as it does its heatspreader design and naming conventions. Grr!

Not content with that Kingston are also releasing a new generation of SSDNow solid state drives, the V300. The V series of SSDs are Kingston’s value range of drives - that’s not to say though that they’re any slouches.



As is Kingston’s way, these new drives are all running the same SF-2281 LSI SandForce controller we’ve seen in countless drives, but this time it’s being paired up with new 19nm NAND Flash modules. Kingston have also been working with LSI to customise the firmware of the drive to optimise it for the new memory too.

That should help with the drop-off in performance you traditionally get when it comes to working with incompressible data using the SandForce controller. That’s already compressed files such as images and video, which we shunt around quite a lot.

You can pick the new SSDNow V300 series up in three flavours, 60GB, 120GB and 240GB, in either desktop or laptop upgrade trim. At the moment we can only find them in 60GB and 120GB capacities though, for £60 and £100 respectively.

We should be seeing review samples very soon.

In an effort to recapture the limelight a soldier from Fallout 3 has invaded the upcoming Dragonborn expansion for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Desperate to relive the glory days of 2008, when Fallout 3 was quite popular, the Brotherhood of Steel member tunnelled his way into Tamriel. His plan to set up a shop in Whiterun before Skyrim's release where thwarted by a poor sense of direction and an inability to see anything through his helmet's ridiculously tiny eye slit. "It was the worst thing that's ever happened apart from the thing with the giant robot," he said. "And no, I don't want to talk about it."

The soldier, who wishes to keep his identity a secret, broke down quickly under questioning, revealing that all he wanted was to have an adventurer stray within earshot so he could loudly announce his life story. "Am I doing it right?" he asked forlornly, before folding his arms and resuming a well-practiced idle pose.

Authorities vowed publicly to have the soldeir removed in due course, but added that they couldn't right away, as they were too busy admiring the weird creatures and "mad awesome sky-lizards" present in the latest batch of Dragonborn screenshots.

The Slender: Source mod, now known as "Faceless," has been having some trouble getting onto Steam despite heavy support from voters. "We've been the No. 1 game since the service launched and have yet to be Greenlit due to copyright issues with Slender Man, which is a free-to-use entity, and we've even gotten permission from the creator Victor Surge," designer, Justin Ross, told Joystiq.

Ross also pointed that similar games have already made it through the greenlight process. "We were happy finding out that we were the most popular game on the service," Ross said. "However, we feel a little bit screwed over as we have attained the highest rank, and yet some really arguable games have gotten in. Especially The Intruder, which is essentially the same premise of our game and from what I've heard uses the Slender Man mythos as well."

In a follow-up post on the Faceless Greenlight blog programmer Tom Clay insists that the mod hasn't been banned from Greenlight altogether, it's just being held up until its creators "have proven that we have the permission from Victor Surge’s option holder."

"Faceless is not being canceled, or halted. We’re continuing to develop the game, and we will finish it. Come hell or high water."

Release was scheduled for December, but that's been pushed back "to an unknown date." Judging from the brief trailers Ethereal have put out so far it could be the most accomplished take on the Slender format yet. It'll face competition from the likes of Slender: The Arrival, a high fidelity take on Slender: The Eight Pages which is due "in the coming months."

If Faceless never gets the Steam go-ahead, it'll still be released on ModDB. Head to the Faceless page to see more screenshots and videos, like the latest trailer, which I've plonked right here:

It's perhaps a bit cheeky of Rekcahdam - "Composer-Musician-Hacker-IndieGameDeveloper-Philanthropist" and, on his birth certificate, Roger Hicks - to embed a link to Celestial Mechanica's Bandcamp page within the game itself, but when he's just released the game for free, and that excellent soundtrack for a measly dollar, I'm ready to forgive him just about anything. Celestial Mechanica is a snappy exploration puzzle platformer - think Eternal Daughter meets Knytt - featuring wonderful music and pixel art, courtesy of Hicks and Super Crate Box artist Paul Veer.

If you're wondering where you know Hicks from, he also did the soundtrack for the similarly free Zelda-a-like Seedling. Hicks and Veer are currently working on an expanded version of Celestial Mechanica, which will be around 2.5 times bigger than this now-free now-taster version of the game.

Hicks thanks everyone who purchased Celestial Mechanica - "because of you guys I have food to eat and money to develop my next big project!" - but if you've paid money for it in the last two months and you're annoyed that it's now free, he's offering to "send you something for your troubles!" Which is awfully nice of him. You can grab the game here, for gratis.

This weekend, Guild Wars 2 capital Lion's Arch will be besieged by an army of giant crab monsters from the Sea of Sorrows in a one-time event. Get ready to defeat them on home soil, then launch a weekend long invasion culminating in server-wide assaults against a boss that will only ever be defeated once. Can't wait? We've put together a quick video to preview the new content - the invasion, their newly discovered island, and a randomised, infinite dungeon called Fractals of the Mists.



(Yes, that's how you pronounce 'weekend'. What of it?)

The Lost Shores is a free update for all active players, kicking off tomorrow - November 16th, to be clear, and November 16th 2012 for any time travellers who need an extra push - at 12:00PM PST / 9:00 PM CET / 8:00 PM GMT. The new enemies, the Karka, will start by invading Fort Marriner's western gate. One dev told us that everyone will be boosted to Level 80 while in this area, another not. Even at Level 80 though, these guys don't mess around. They get two health bars to represent their hardened shells, and armies of hatchling facehugger types to get in your way and slow you down.

After the initial invasion, players will be sent around Tyria in search of a solution - literally - capable of weakening the Karkas' shells and allowing for a more successful counter-attack. From there, Saturday sees an invasion of their island in the Sea of Sorrows, Southsun Cove, where everyone will work together with both the Lionsguard and a trading group called the Consortium. Here, everyone will be boosted to Level 80 for the duration. Finally, on Sunday, big boss the Ancient Karka wants to say hello..

Evil? No. Just a little crabby.

The Fractals of the Mists also opens for business this weekend, as does a new beta PvP map, and they'll be sticking around - as will the new island, though ArenaNet is hazy on what will actually be there once the Karka are dealt with. Fractals of the Mists offers a set of challenges, randomly selected, covering the classic RPG zones - volcano, aquatic, swamp, Aztec, Futuristic sorry, that's the Crystal Maze. After every three, you get a break. After every six, there's a boss fight with a tentacled monstrosity called the Jade Maw in the middle of a solidified ocean. Then, the difficulty rises, introducing enemies capable of inflicting Guild Wars 2's new Agony condition, but also serving up a new item tier, Ascended, and special infusions that let you mitigate and survive it. This tier has been a little controversial, but so far at least, its mechanics only apply to this one dungeon.

See the full details on The Lost Shores here. To take part, you simply have to be in Guild Wars 2 for the attack on Lion's Arch. If you miss the initial assault there, an in-game UI will point you to where you need to be for the duration of the event. If you miss the weekend, you're out of luck. ArenaNet is working on something for December though, so keep your eyes peeled for winter-themed updates.

Lara Croft and the Spear of Infinite Spearing would be a better name for this top-down Tomb Raider, which has won me over in the last half-hour by being both good and also sort-of free. RPS note that it's available to play in Chrome now through the Core site, which lets you watch ad to earn game time. Six minutes in, the game minimizes and a box pops up offering a choice of advertisements, each worth a different number of minutes.

I watched a one minute advert for Mini Ninjas and got 24 minutes of play, which seems like a reasonable deal if you're just looking to try it out. If you can't stand those sudden interruptions, you can play the ad-free version for $10. If you're not interested in this browser-based malarky a demo is also available through Steam.

The actor who played Bane in this year's Dark Knight Rises will become terrorism's reckoning in the upcoming Splinter Cell movie, Variety report. Tom Hardy will play gruff, stubbly neck-snapper Sam Fisher, immediately hiking the special agent's menace potential to a place somewhere between Blue Velvet Dennis Hopper and Sexy Beast Ben Kingsley. Neither of those characters are as good at Fisher at putting heads through toilet bowls, though.

Hardy's involvement certainly boosts the film's standing, though it hasn't even settled with a studio yet. Variety say that Ubisoft are talking to Warner Brothers and Paramount at the moment. The International's Eric Warren Singer is signed up to write the thing.

CEO of Ubisoft Motion Pictures, Jean-Julien Baronnet, seems quite pleased. "Tom Hardy is currently one of the biggest talents in the film industry, and he has a phenomenal ability to take on complex and varied roles with his broad range of acting skills," he said. "His involvement in the 'Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell' movie is exciting news for movie and video game fans alike."

What would you like to see from a Splinter Cell film?

The final episode of The Walking Dead, "No Time Left," will arrive next week. On Wednesday November 21, to be exact, according to a tweet from Telltale spotted by Joystiq. Will any of the characters make it out alive? Will YOU make it out alive? Or without screaming "nyoooo" at the loss of another comrade, or without shedding a tear for all those zombies you've murdered?

Almost certainly not, I'd wager. Though I haven't played episode four, so as far as I know everyone could already be dead and the fifth episode is three hours of empty parking lots and sad violins. It feels like Telltale have finally nailed the episodic adventure game format they've been playing with for the past few years so, unsurprisingly, there will be more. Senior Telltale marketing man, Steve Allison, told Polygon that "this will not be the last The Walking Dead game series that we do." Woot.

ArenaNet triggered a divisive debate when it announced the arrival of Ascended gear as part of the Lost Shores mini-expansion arriving this Friday. As a stopgap against the "Legendary wall" of end-game gear tiers, Ascended loot constitutes direct upgrades from the current Exotic armors. Scores of Tyria's defenders took to the forums lamenting the MMO's "grindification." In a message sent yesterday, Studio Design Director Chris Whiteside attempted to calm the rising storm.

"Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill," he explained. "Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from Exotic up to Legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on."

It's important to note the key difference between Exotic and Legendary tiers is purely a cosmetic one—Legendary items simply provide unique appearances or effects but retain the same stat value as Exotic. Ascended, meanwhile, represents an actual, full-fledged armor tier above Exotic with increased bonuses.

Whiteside also stated Ascended gear is acquired from both PVE and WVW modes "and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content." PVP itemization stays the same for the sake of balance.

Psycho has put on a little weight, hasn't he? Then again, he's lost his Nanosuit, and along with it its maximum slimming effect. Anyway, here's 6:19 of fresh gameplay footage from Crysis 3's domed jungles of New York, a setting that has the game resembling the genetic output of Crysis's East Asia and Crysis 2's urbanity.

One change in Crysis 3 worth noting, and noticeable in the footage: Crytek has decoupled sprinting from energy consumption. It still has a separate, invisible cooldown associated with it (and while you're cloaked, your energy meter will tick down faster if you run), but running won't take sips from your magic power juicebox. A related counter to this are the new EMP grenades carried by CELL soldiers, which drain your battery.

Crysis 3 is due in February.

http://youtu.be/dG7rnHrgxWU