[Update: The previously teased patch for the PC version of Unity has gone live. The patch notes are here. The next patch, meanwhile, has just been detailed on Ubisoft's Live Updates blog. It aims to fix problems with the AI/crowds, and to prevent Arno from getting stuck in yet more hay carts.]

Assassin's Creed: Unity, famously, has had a bit of a shaky start, but at least Ubisoft seems serious about putting it right. Following some information about the next update—which is set to stop hero Arno falling through the floor, like a big clumsy physics-defying idiot—comes an exhaustive forum post detailing all of Unity's known issues. Ubisoft have suggested workarounds to many of the game's problems, with promises that they're "working on" the others. The ones in green, meanwhile, have been "fixed".

It's worth a read if you're waiting for Unity to become a bit more stable before you pick it up, or if you've stuck with the game despite its rocky...well, its bouldery launch. The biggest problem I've heard—the less-than-stellar framerate—seems to have something to do with the game constantly connecting with the internet for various things, and indeed one of Ubisoft's suggested workarounds for a poor framerate is to disconnect from the net while playing. Meanwhile, you'll be pleased to hear that Arno will no longer "get stuck in a hay cart next to the Pantheon in the Bi vre district", which was a silly thing to be doing if you ask me.

Tom's Unity review went live yesterday. He wasn't overly fond of it in its current state.

So, this is Dorian, and if you don't already know, he's one of the new companions in Bioware's Dragon Age Inquisition - a mage, a Tevinter, a man who knows how to rock a lion tamer's moustache, and the designated Team Snarky Guy for the titular Inquisition. Of course, what he's most known far right now is being Bioware's first 'fully gay' party character. That's not my words, by the way, but his writer, David Gaider. (Prior to this, party members have been either straight or bisexual, though there have been exclusive opportunities for both genders with supporting characters - notably Traynor and Cortez in Mass Effect 3. There was also Juhani in Knights of the Old Republic, but she's a complicated case due to both canon and cut-content.)

I don't want to reduce the character down to just his sexuality, because as you'd expect from both Gaider and Bioware, it's not particularly what defines him - nationality, magic, friends, family all play a far larger role  in his conversations and snarking, as you'd expect for a world where nobody particularly cares who you sleep with as long as it doesn't create a terrible god-baby. Sometimes not even then.

It's interesting to see the implementation though, and some of the details that Gaider makes a point of adding - not least that he's introduced with a young and admirable man, Felix, who he's clearly enamoured with on multiple personal levels, but is genuinely surprised at the suggestion that anything might have been going on between them - at both the idea, and that he'd be impolite enough to abuse his former master's hospitality so. At the same time though, his personal quest does go more or less exactly where you'd expect - his father who once tried to change him, and the attempted reconciliation between the two that probably deserves a tinkling bit of music and an "It Gets Better" type slogan appearing for good measure.

This feels both appropriate and unfortunate; appropriate because it's what's expected, and unfortunate for exactly that reason. It's a tricky problem for any writer, addressing the elephant in the room while still pointing out that there's other stuff in that room, and one that often goes wrong - the second X-Men film's infamously ham-fisted "Have you tried not being a mutant?" line springing to mind.

(It's also somewhat notable given the evolution of Traynor's story in Mass Effect 3, which the writer originally had following similar lines in focusing on her sexuality, before being given a polite dope-slap by colleagues and managers to not be so specific and reworking her story as a fish out of water tale that would ultimately lead to gaming's funniest joke about a toothbrush. Again, Citadel is fantastic.)

What matters though isn't really the execution, but the willingness to try. Bioware is a fascinating study into sexuality both for what they've gotten right, and what they've gotten wrong over the years. Mass Effect 2 for instance dropped a major clanger when BioWare co-founder Dr Ray Muzyka declaring Commander Shepard to be straight due to being 'a defined character with certain approaches and worldviews'. This isn't in itself an issue, and it's perfectly fine for any developer to give their characters whatever sexuality they choose. It did however jar severely with the multiple Asari relationships on offer for a Shepherdess (and really, it'll take more than a codex entry for them to not be outright blue-skinned space babes) and the bonus romance with her PA, Kelly Chambers for an unattached Shepard at the end.

With each game though, Bioware has gone out of its way to Do Better, and not always by heading down the obvious path. Dragon Age 2 for instance infamously made all of its romanceable characters (the entire party save for Varric and Aveline) bisexual so that any player would be able to get with anyone they wanted. Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect 3 reverses that approach, deciding that sexuality is an important part of the characters and that it can be as jarring for everyone you meet to be an option as to be politely refused. Some characters are still bisexual. Most now have their preferences, with Dragon Age expanding on gender to factor in species as well. Qunari especially seem limited in who they can give the horn.

This doesn't however mean that Bioware is stepping back from the trickier issues. One of the new secondary characters is a transgender man in a Qunari run mercenary group, who hotly denies any suggestion of simply 'passing'. Like Dorian, the implementation of the scene is a little on-the-nose, mostly by having his boss make a point of adding that his people are cool with that so that there can be an unspoken "Don't say you're less tolerant than the Qunari?" It works though, largely because the character in question gets plenty of screen time before that point to reinforce that they've neither earned what they got because or despite of this, but because they're tough. It's also interesting that this very PC scene is immediately followed by the entire group, male and female, cheerily singing a rowdy drinking song with lines like "No man can beat the Chargers, cause we'll hit you where it hurts. Unless you know a tavern with loose cards and looser skirts!" in a pretty clear statement of "And now, relax..." It's a game, not a sociology passion play.

The fact that Bioware's push for inclusiveness and increasingly not defining characters by their sexuality first makes for better and more well-rounded games though isn't the real reason we should be glad that they do it. The big advantage is that in doing it, it demonstrates to the rest of the world that it can be done. Lest we forget, in the last few years Bioware has been taken to task by Fox News for simply showing a few seconds of alien buttocks on screen, been inundated with letters about LGBT content in its games, and even had to fight its own fans over expectations and entitlement. This is not a small amount of pressure, and the path of least resistance is to crack, especially in the US where fears over sex trump those of violence any day of the week. Instead, Bioware repeatedly doubles down on diversity, which is all the more notable when put next to its capitulation over the Mass Effect 3 ending. That was simply a matter of spaceships and explosions. Whatever. This however is something very close to its creative heart, and is treated as such.

The result of this is that smaller, more vulnerable companies get to see directly that even if someone does make a flap, it doesn't actually mean a damn thing, as well as being able to point to an increasing range of high profile examples of different character types, sexualities and storylines. By and large, things are only controversial once, provided they're wide enough spread to draw attention. Being big enough to have the spotlight and willing to take that hit for the industry as a whole, even if it is primarily because they think it's worth taking for their own games, makes Bioware a very important company. It's not that if they do it, everyone else has to do it, as some people fear. It's that if they do it, other people who want to do it can, or at least, have the tools to make a powerful argument in its favour to the powers that be. 

It's for everyone's good. Really. The more taboos are broken, the more uncharted ground explored, the more exciting the possibilities we get to see. And before anyone starts throwing around letters like SJW, there's a side for you too. Where for instance was Fox News when, say, The Witcher 2 was doing graphic sex scenes like this one? Nowhere, that's where, because that battle was done, over, and deemed boring right from the second that the world did not in fact end. May Bioware sign itself up for many more such fights in the future, because they're in all our interests. In success, hurrah, fantastic. In stumbling, they show how much further we still have to go, and how even the best of intentions doesn't always pay off as you might think. Either way though, I'm grateful they keep trying, and setting an example worth following.

That said, if they ever do a Towers of Hanoi puzzle again, I'm nuking 'em from space.

It's the PC Gamer Show! This week, Evan and Tim sit down to talk about their experiences playing Overwatch at BlizzCon. Then, Tim and Tom go into geeky detail about the which cards excite them most from Hearthstone's newly announced Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion.

This week we're also giving away four headsets courtesy of Turtle Beach, this episode's sponsor. Click here to enter the giveaway.

Each Friday PC Gamer s writers punch their way out the shallow grave we keep them in, howl debasedly, then shrink back into the glittering darkness. Wait, when was Halloween again?

THE HIGHS

Tom Senior: Snapping pics in Paris My eyes and ears and brain have been full of revolutionary Paris this week, and I adore the place that Ubisoft have created for Assassin's Creed Unity. I hope there's a future when the bugs are all patched out, the optimisation is improved, and everyone can focus on what they've done with that place.

Moving to one city after AC4 gave players a whole archipelago is risky, but it pays off. When you spend a long time in one place it becomes familiar, even more so when it's structured with the authenticity of Unity's Paris. The gritty little docks on the river don't feel like they've been placed by a game designer, they seem to grow organically out of a slightly run-down district of workers. To the north, streamers hang over suburbs of rich folk. You can snoop around their houses and admire all the filigree and silk.

More than any other Assassin's Creed game, I spent a lot of time walking on street level, listening to the hum of the crowd, watching street sellers and throwing noise bombs to watch them react. My screenshot folder is teeming with amazing vistas, a fitting tribute to a beautifully built game world. Of course, Unity's city hasn't been making the headlines, but that's a matter for this week's lows.

Tyler Wilde: BioWare being sweetI don t feel like this sort of thing happens in real life. When a Mass Effect fan asked BioWare to help her propose to her partner, BioWare went above and beyond, building a new level just for them and concocting a fake contest to bring the couple into the studio. Technically the story was posted last week, but this is the week I read about it while cutting onions and also it was raining on my face.

Samuel Roberts: Valkyria rules Valkyria s transition onto PC is this week s best success story for me—the port is fantastic, and the game has held up in the six years it took for it to cross over from PlayStation 3 to PC. It even reached number one on the Steam charts, beating out Call of Duty and other bigger titles. Six years old and a giant killer. Nice work, Sega. This is the battle cry to every major publisher: bring the best of your back catalogue to Steam, regardless of past formats, and there may well be an audience.

Tim Clark: The con that Blizz builtIndulge me, dear reader, as I bend the very fabric of space and time with my high this week. Because I want to talk about BlizzCon, which, okay, technically, ended last Saturday night, but as I ve still been posting about it this week, it definitely still counts. Judged purely on the announcements—Goblins! Gnomes! A brand new FPS playable on the floor right now!—it would have been easily exciting enough. But it s testament to what a special show BlizzCon is, (this was my first visit, I hope to make many more), that what stood out was how welcoming, enthusiastic, and just plain lovely the communities Blizzard has built around its game are. The vibe of inclusion and celebration was established from the outset by Blizz CEO Mike Morhaime s brave speech at the opening ceremony, and continued throughout the weekend. To me it felt less like a consumer show and more like a 20,000-strong party. A nerdy one, sure, but hey we all know what we signed up for here. *strokes Murloc plushie*

Evan Lahti: Tis the Season for CS:GO Valve launched Operation Vanguard for CS:GO this week, and with it came a half-dozen new community-sourced maps. I m still trying them out today for next Monday s Triggernometry column, but it s been great so far feeling unfamiliar again in CS:GO, and having new maps to feel out and discover the nuances and chokepoints of. Season, by our friend FMPONE, is my favorite so far. I m less crazy about Workout, which I found to be a little too spacious for great competitive play, but I love its theme: a sports complex with a yoga room, basketball court, and other gym zones. I ve always liked how CS has felt when you re fighting in more playful, non-industrial spaces. More on what I don t like about the latest update in my low below.

Andy Kelly: Piracy is goodEveryone s talking about Assassin s Creed: Unity at the moment—our review is here—but I m all about the last game, Black Flag. I have Unity, but I won t be touching it for a while. I m in the thick of Edward Kenway s piratical adventure right now, and it s just so damn fun. That liberating feeling of setting sail and exploring the Caribbean… how could I ever go back to boring old dry land? There s a magic in Black Flag that I don t think any other game in the series has captured. I ve always thought II was the best one, but I reckon IV is my new favourite. I ve only played an hour of Unity, but I doubt it ll ever match the fun of boarding ships and listening to sea shanties. More ships in the next Assassin s Creed, please.

THE LOWS

Andy Kelly: World of Warcraft revisited As I type this, I m downloading World of Warcraft—and I have no idea why. I got into WoW when Cataclysm launched, and I had an amazing time. I probably clocked up 100 hours, which is, of course, a few seconds to some veteran players. But then I got bored of the grinding loop and quit. But I look back on my time in Azeroth with a certain nostalgia, and the release of the Warlords of Draenor expansion has compelled me to return. The worry is that I get sucked in again and lose another hundred hours, but I m risking it. The download is almost finished. But I hear Blizzard are having some server woes at the moment, so I may not even be able to get on. Which might be for the best.

Tim Clark: Dusting off Hearthstone I was delighted to learn that Blizzard is doing the right thing by the Goblins vs Gnomes expansion and not creating a new type of crafting dust. That means that those players, like me, who are sat on a small dust mountain—a dust hillock, if you will—can expect to be able to forge their favourite of the new cards as soon as the set launches next month. At least I was delighted until I noticed this Reddit thread, which mathemagically breaks down exactly how much dust you would need to make all 120 of the new cards: the answer, number fanciers, is 51,680. And it turns out I m 47,580 shy. Oh well, guess I can look forward to more of those jaunty receipt emails from the Blizzard accounts goblin who takes my IRL money and literally turns it into dust. Now, about those bloody deck slots...

Samuel Roberts: Fantasy Lost Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be released in December this week, and I would be optimistic were it not for the quality of the port of XIII. More encouraging to me is that Square Enix is patching in the resolution options that were lacking from the game s original release—and the same options will be included in XIII-2. That s not the only problem with the port of the first game, though: framerate on mid-ranged cards seemed to be locked at 30fps for most of the time, and that needs addressing as much as the resolution. 

Tom Senior: Reviewing a nearly game Assassin's Creed Unity frustrates me, not just as a fan of the series. It frustrates me because it's bursting with potential, but let down by technical faults. It ended up down in the 60s when the same game, free of all those silly errors, would have done much better. Check out our reviews policy for an indication of what our score brackets represent. A 60s game is an interesting idea poorly expressed, something you'd only recommend with caveats, and Unity is exactly that. Wait until the patches are in, read up on some benchmarks to find out how it runs on your graphics card. It may become the game that it should've been at launch in time, but for now, when it comes down to it, if you're asking for $60 for a product and major on-the-box features like co-op aren't working properly, the game's going to suffer at review. Hopefully future Assassin's Creed releases will be polished and beautiful, and make me as happy as I was when I gave Black Flag a big fat 90 last year.

Evan Lahti: Valve s arms market Valve launched Operation Vanguard for CS:GO this week, and with it also came 44 new missions, a ladder of in-game tasks (like Get 20 kills in Demolition mode on this map ) across different webbed campaigns. CS:GO has become a weird beast in terms of monetization—if it weren t for the issues of hacking and smurfing, I m sure it d be free to play.

Valve understands that disrupting the core balance of the game with many more new weapons or mechanics would be unwelcome, so it continues to roll out new paintjobs and knife models and still more of these underwhelming missions, which are essentially achievements that you pay ($6) to get access to so that you can have the right to pay Valve more money to unlock weapon cases. What s also frustrating about this is that Valve hasn t addressed most of CS:GO s core issues as its grown to be the second-biggest game on Steam.

Tyler Wilde: Who is gaming for? Blizzard Senior Vice President Chris Metzen said last week that he wants to do better at representing women in its games: less bikini armor, at the least. I thought some of his wording was clumsy—being  sensitive and all that, as if not making women sex objects requires some kind of special training—but I like the sentiment. Good on Blizzard, I say. What I find ridiculous is those arguing that men are the market for games, and therefore should be catered to with boobies. This also happened last month when we reported on a research survey which concluded that a large number of PC gamers are women.

The ridiculous claim that they only play Facebook games, spoken by some commenters, simply isn t true. Secondly, even if it were, what does anyone gain by arguing that gaming is and should remain a penis club? How does that enrich anyone s life? Do they think that listening to and considering women is somehow going to ruin games? I don t know. It baffles me that it s an argument.

Yes, we re all aware there s money in catering to men—we have heard of the porn industry. People who are not men also have money. And anyway, if your biggest concern is how much money a developer will make, maybe you should consider why you re more concerned with capitalism than culture.

Electronic Arts has announced that Final Stand, the final DLC release for Battlefield 4, will be out in early December. But if you're a Battlefield 4 Premium subscriber, you can start playing it a whole lot sooner.

Announced back in September, Final Stand will add four new maps to the game, all set in the wintry north of Russia, along with weapons, vehicles, and gadgets, including a snowmobile, a hovertank, and the Rorsch MK-1 railgun.

Final Stand will be available to all on December 2, but Battlefield 4 Premium subscribers can get their hands on it from November 18. Details are up now at Battlefield.com.

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor didn't have the smoothest launch ever, thanks in part to digital riff-raff who launched a distributed denial of service, (DDoS, to its friends), attack against the game, driving up latency and making it difficult for players to connect. But in spite of the problems, it's taken mere hours for players to start hitting the new level cap.

The Warlords of Draenor expansion launched yesterday, November 13, and by later the same day, Eurogamer reported that 24 people on the European server Bloodscalp were listed as being at level 100, the new level cap established by the expansion. Prior to the release of Draenor, the maximum World of Warcraft character level was 90.

Some users were reportedly taking advantage of exploits to hit the cap in just an hour, while others had practiced leveling routes during the beta and were able to power to the top despite the launch troubles, which Blizzard confirmed were caused by a combination of the overwhelming number of players and the intentional efforts of troublemakers.

Blizzard has since sounded the all-clear, although there may still be a few bumps in the road. "Realms are once again available, however we do expect that during the initial rush to log in there will be a period of delays and potential errors," an update posted at 11:50 am PST states. "We expect these to resolve within 30 minutes or so as players successfully log in, and strain on the authentication and login servers subsides."

As for the most important question—Is it any good?—our man on the ground is taking a little more time with it than the aforementioned 24, but you can read what we've got so far in our World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor review in progress.

Draenor is Blizzard going back to World of Warcraft's roots. Bleak as it became by the end, Mists of Pandaria was something of a holiday after broken Outland, the armies of the Lich King and the cataclysmic threat of Deathwing. It was cheery. It was sunny. There were comedy pandas, in arguably the biggest joke gone too far since Boris Johnson. Warlords of Draenor means business. It's the expansion about reminding us why orcs were once Azeroth's biggest threat, and giving them one hell of an upgrade as we head back in time to see them at the height of their power.

This expansion takes no prisoners. If you remember being impressed by the welcome on the steps of the Dark Portal (a huge gate in space and time that sounds impressive, but has been an "Oh yeah, we have one of those..." for the last few years) back in The Burning Crusade, get ready for a welcome that multiplies it by a factor of 'goddamn'. The portal is now a terrifying, pulsing gateway big enough to send whole armies into battle, and those armies are waiting for exactly that chance—along with a tank called "The Worldbreaker" for good measure. Meet the Iron Horde, an alternate history version of the Orcs that didn't drink demon blood for power and then find it's not easy being green. Instead, they've teamed up with Garrosh "Wow Did I Screw Up Last Time" Hellscream to try and rewrite time itself.

Aside from that vista, the intro missions aren't as cool as some that Blizzard has made in the past, though they do set a pace that continues in at least the first zone. Mechanically, so far at least, they're business as usual. Collect 10 that, kill 20 that, take out a big boss or man a turret, or whatever happens to be worth the next squirt of XP. This time though, Blizzard is pushing two things—the scale, with whole tribes clashing as early as the first zone, and the feeling of importance that you honestly deserve. While before characters would sniff and yawn before giving you crapwork, now they call you Champion, and speak truths like "Is that Seneschal? They say she's the greatest mage that ever was!" Before, uh, giving you crapwork.

But hey, it's the thought that counts!

I'm not as far into Draenor as I was hoping to be by this point—again, this is first impressions, review in progress, not our full review, which will be coming soon. That's because of some unfortunate technical issues, from the inevitable difficulty logging in at the start of the expansion, to killer lag, to a few weirder things like ending up alone in a deserted landscape. At the moment things are playable, but still glitchy, with the usual teething problems like too many heroes not leaving enough mobs to go around.

What I've seen so far though is promising. The Horde's first zone is Frostfire Ridge, which would later become Blade's Edge Mountains for players who remember The Burning Crusade. (Time travel plots do not lend themselves to fluid sentences.) Alliance players meanwhile start over in Shadowmoon Valley, which we previously saw as the very different... uh... Shadowmoon Valley. This version of it looks a hell of a lot nicer than that green wasteland though, just as Frostfire Ridge is a far more interesting place on this visit—valleys of ice scattered with pools of lava beneath a vivid sky, dominated by cruel ogres and the weapons of war.

Draenor immediately gets started with the big, big enemies—giants like the son of Gruul, introduced being held back by about five straining orcs—and impressive fights. Before the starting mission is over you've fought through an arena where you and your team have to take out a hundred orcs, and it's not long after that before you're teaming up with Thrall and watching him blow a whole army away with his elemental powers. Where you'd normally run through a cavern to get to the first real boss, the ruler of Bladespire Fortress, now you run up a long hill with huge fiery boulders rolling down into your face. There's plenty of generic combat and encounters too, of course, but Blizzard hasn't run out of cool things to do with its template.

Something I really like about this expansion too is that it doesn't waste your time before getting to the good stuff. For starters, everyone who buys it can boost one character to Level 90, and I entirely approve of this. Draenor is where all the action is going to be for the foreseeable future, so there's no point forcing new players to work their way there through four expansions of almost entirely deserted, lonely terrain—though it's all still there if they want to experience what came before. If it's Draenor that interests new players though, then paying their entrance fee should give them Draenor. There's enough in-game tutorial now to teach everyone the nature of their class just fine, especially now many mechanics have been simplified and the basic interface upgraded with most of the information a regular player needs. There is no good reason not to get everyone battle-fit, especially at this point in WoW's life.

More importantly though, Draenor's biggest addition—the Garrison—is introduced almost immediately once past the introductory mission. I'm still pretty early on through the campaign, but so far I like this a lot. I like the little detail that it has my character's name on it. I like the new mechanics it adds, both sending followers out on missions (each one has specialities that affect their success) and what I've seen of what building it up offers in terms of unlockables. There's a lot of building blueprints to find or buy, which can both improve the base itself, and give you extra abilities and toys to play with. For building your first Barracks for instance, you get a skill called Call To Arms that magically summons some assistance in battle. 

This is particularly fun as a Frost Mage, meaning that a tough enemy can be left facing the combined force of (deep breath) myself, my Mirror Images, a Water Elemental, and a couple of archers. That's a pretty satisfying amount of firepower to bring to bear. Or should that be frostpower? Whatever.

Garrisons are however the most glitched part of the game right now, with it often not possible to even travel to them, never mind do anything inside. Hopefully Blizzard will get that and its other issues under control soon, though it seems, ah, unlikely that this weekend's inevitable population flood is going to help things. Players have also been vocal about pre-launch problems having predicted much of this in advance, though coming to it fresh, I can't say to what extent Blizzard deserves a rap on the knuckles versus this just being the usual MMO teething problems.

On a wider level though, so far I'm not feeling as invested in Horde lore as Blizzard likes to assume. The intro mission is full of the titular warlords appearing with dramatic oh-shit title cards like "BLACKHAND" and "KARGATH" and "KILROGG", and the correct response is probably not "Oh, god, I'm never going to remember all these bloody warlords." My alternate title so far remains World of Warcraft: Too Many Orcs.

It's early though, and a good chance to actually dig into the lore in more interesting ways than simply reading a Wiki. I'm very curious to know what effect the whole alternate timeline will have. It could well be just a reset, but that would be very boring given how closely linked this story is with that of the Burning Legion that's been waiting in the wings for a decade now, and how much scope there is to do something really interesting, like have the orcs on each server decide their ancestors' fate and have that ripple out into what follows. I'm not outright expecting that or anything, just pondering that it would be more interesting than just another raid boss.

So far then, Draenor is proving pleasantly surprising... when it works, at least. It's been a while since I was last in World of Warcraft, and I'm enjoying the nostalgia factor of being back with my mage and going on a fresh adventure, and so far the adventure is proving worthwhile. If you've burned out on Azeroth then the new stuff isn't likely to drag you back, but it's a good start for this new, old world. Full verdict coming as soon as possible, but needless to say, I've got a lot more questing to do before then.

[Update: AMD has issued a statement disavowing Huddy's "speculative" comments. "Richard Huddy does not speak for Microsoft, and he was unfortunately speculating from Microsoft s publication of key dates and milestones for Windows 7 lifecycle and mainstream support policy," the company told GameSpot. "Richard has no special insight into Microsoft s Windows or DirectX roadmaps."]

Original story:

DirectX 12 promises both dramatically increased performance in games, thanks to reduced CPU overhead and better support for multithreading, and significantly reduced power consumption, a real boon for owners of gaming laptops. It will of course be built into Windows 10 and compatible with Windows 8 as well, but the news isn't so good for Windows 7 diehards.

Speaking at a PDXLAN presentation earlier this month, AMD's Chief Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy said Windows 7 remains Microsoft's most popular operating system: 52 percent of all Microsoft OS users are still on Windows 7, and that number is actually growing. "It's a very, very popular operating system," he said in comments starting around the 20:30 mark of the video.

But in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, he continued, "One thing that's not going to happen to it is DX12. Yup, DX12 is not coming to Windows 7."

The Steam hardware survey confirms the popularity of Windows 7—47.8 percent of users run the 64-bit version, compared to 21.4 percent for the second-place finisher, Windows 8.1 64-bit—but the lack of compatibility isn't entirely surprising. It's getting a bit long in the tooth, and as we noted in its announcement, Microsoft isn't shy about using new, better APIs to "encourage" people to upgrade to a new version of Windows. Let us also not forget that Microsoft announced this past spring that mainstream support for Windows 7 will come to an end in January 2015. 

Windows 8 obviously hasn't caught fire and at this point obviously isn't going to, so I would expect Microsoft to be more aggressive in pushing Windows 10. But if DirectX 12 can actually deliver on its promise, I'd be willing to bet that a lot of us Win7 laggards won't really mind.

I am 100% in love with the beautiful aesthetic of else Heart.Break(). It's a faux-isometric, almost PS1-era look; filled with charm and colour and big, chunky geometry. The game seems nice, too—as you can see from this six minutes of footage.

What is else Heart.Break()? Why is it called else Heart.Break()? The official site explains:

"Sebastian has just landed his first job in the distant city of Dorisburg. He moves there to start his adult life and figure out who he really wants to be. Among a strange collection of people, hackers and activists he finds some true friends perhaps even love. But can they stop the terrible deeds of the people ruling the city? And who will get their heart broken in the end?"

else Heart.Break() is due out "pretty soon".

Cloud Imperium said a couple of years ago (yes, it's been that long) that Star Cititzen will require fairly hefty hardware: A dual-core CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a GTX 460 display adapter. Six months later, a follow-up forum post jacked the minimum spec up even higher, to 8GB of RAM.

Of course, Cloud Imperium has never made any bones about the demanding nature of the game—you will recall the bit about how consoles "couldn't possible handle" it—but if you were thinking you'd be able to coast through with the mid-range rig you built in 2011, think again: When asked by DSoGaming if the minimum requirement could be cut back again, Engine Technical Director Sean Tracy said, "Likely not."

"We are creating this game with the PC gamer in mind. Of course performance will be optimized much further than our current version of Arena Commander but I wouldn t expect that we would drop the system requirements any time soon," he explained. "Additionally on the Direct X 10 front, as almost every engine/rendering we d like to put in relies heavily on DX11 and even DX12 or Mantle I can t see DX10 cards even existing much longer. It s difficult to say, but I don t expect that the majority of gamers would even have DX10 cards anymore and so for us to continue support it wouldn t make sense."

Of course, if you're gaming on a PC with 4GB and a DirectX 10 card, the odds are that either you're playing Peggle, or you're already looking into a fairly major upgrade. And by the time Star Citizen rolls around, which isn't likely to happen for a couple more years, that sort of system will be just about completely untenable for any kind of gaming that isn't built into Windows.

For the record, the minimum system requirements as they currently stand are:

• Windows 7 or 8, 64-bit only
• Dual-core CPU - Intel Core2 Duo 2.4Ghz or AMD Phenom X2
• 8GB RAM
• Nvidia GeForce 460GTX or AMD Radeon HD5850, DirectX 11 only

An Intel Core i5 2500 and a GTX 670 GPU is recommended, while "a smooth experience at maximum settings" will demand an R9 290X or GTX 780. To play it properly in 4K, you'll need to either slap together a pair of mid-to-high end cards, or wait for Nvidia or AMD to invent something new.