Warhammer. Warhammer never changes, as Wrong Perlman once said. But Dota 2 does, it changes loads, and its latest alteration is its support for Warhammer-themed items in the Steam Workshop. As that support was just announced yesterday, there are currently no Warhammer-themed items in the Dota 2 'shop, but I'm sure 3D modellers and texturisers are busy inventing them as I type this. Here's the Warhammer tag, looking all sad and empty.

An incentive to do so is the Call to Arms contest, which runs from now until the end of August, and will reward up to eight of the best entries with a coveted place in a new Warhammer-themed Dota treasure pack. They'll also get a load of Sega games, including Total War: Warhammer, along with all the other Total Wars. The rules are linked above if you fancy your chances, but the main one is that entries should abide by the "visual themes" of Games Workshop's series. Designers of big spiky shoulderpads and massive guns will be in their element, I reckon.

Update #2, May 3, 2016: Another patch came out today that fixes the problems discussed here. Testing can continue....

Earlier this week, Square Enix released their second installment of the latest Hitman, Sapienza see our full review. As one of the hardware geeks at PC Gamer, I'd been meaning to check into the DirectX 12 performance of the few games that currently support the new API. Hitman is one of them. With the second episode now out, it seemed like a good time to go run some tests.

Day one (April 26), right after the update to Sapienza, things were going okay. I started with Nvidia cards, since those were installed in my testbed, and I got numbers for DX11 and DX12 with the GTX 980 Ti. I also ran 980 Ti SLI, which not surprisingly showed that there's currently no support for multiple GPUs in the DX12 path. Nvidia's 980 Ti wasn't showing any benefit from switching to DX12, with performance slightly slower in DX12 mode and more stuttering (particularly at the start of the test sequence), but otherwise all was going according to plan.

Day two, there was an update in Steam, which I figured I should grab in case it fixed anything. There was a new graphics option (Ultra quality Level of Detail), and using that (instead of High LoD) resulted in lower performance for both DX11 and DX12. I tossed out my initial benchmark data and started again. Day three, Steam informed me there was yet another update. Sigh. So I grabbed that and prepared to restart all of my testing yet again.

But then a funny thing happened: launching the DX12 version of Hitman no longer worked. The spinning disk appears when you click Play, but the game never starts. Except Steam shows that it's running and it's listed in Task Manager as a background process. There's no way to switch to it, but it does use a chunk of memory and one CPU core; my only choice is to silently assassinate the rogue process and try again.

That doesn't work. Thinking maybe my agent has been compromised, I switch graphics cards, first to a GTX 970, and when that fails I go all double-agent and install a Radeon R9 Nano. But try as I might, Hitman with DX12 enabled now refuses to cooperate.

The good news is, everything works as expected in DX11 mode, but DX12 has gone AWOL. This is starting to feel like par for the course with DirectX 12. Ashes of the Singularity remains the high water mark, but mostly on AMD GPUs not really a surprise considering the game started as an AMD Mantle tech demo back in the day. At least Ashes runs on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs, and it even works with two GPUs of similar performance, allowing users to mix and match cards! Not that most gamers have both AMD and Nvidia hardware around, but it's still cool.

Meanwhile, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Hitman both fail to support multi-GPU in DX12 mode. Gears of War Ultimate and Quantum Break take it a step further and lock down things like display resolution and V-Sync, and Quantum Break at least has some serious performance issues.

Where is the DirectX 12 low-level API nirvana we were promised last year? My crystal ball may need a good cleaning, but right now my bet is that it will be at least another year before we see widespread support for the new API, and it might even be two years before we hit the point where DX12 games are superior to DX11 in performance.

Since being DX12 exclusive means losing out on Windows 7/8 users, I'd be pretty surprised to see any studios other than Microsoft looking purely at DX12. According to the Steam Hardware survey, 37% of users are now on Windows 10 but that still leaves the bulk of gamers still on various older versions of Windows. Until Windows 10 completely takes over, let's hope that if agent DX12 does reappear, he uses his time off to optimize performance a bit more.

(And yes, Vulkan is a possible alternative, though so far support on PCs has been even slower than DX12, with one title, The Talos Principle, currently running on Vulkan. Not surprisingly, that game also has a Linux binary available. We'll be keeping an eye on DX12 and Vulkan support, though, you can be sure.)

Update: It seems DX12 mode isn't completely broken; it just takes a really long time before the game kicks off. My system required about 14 minutes to start loading (meaning, the screen actually flipped into fullscreen Hitman mode), which is about 13 minutes and 45 seconds longer than most of us are willing to wait.

University provides a fantastic opportunity for students with shared interests to connect through societies. Perhaps most enviable of all, it offers the time and flexibility to truly invest in a wealth of temptations: sports, media and, of course, video games. With its ever increasing popularity, It should come as no surprise then that esports would find it s place too. As both player and spectator audiences grow, communities across the UK have developed to accommodate this new demand, with lecture theatres providing the perfect venues for League of Legends, Dota 2 and CS:GO viewing parties.

As a postgraduate researcher, I may not have the same freedom as I did during my undergrad years, but when I heard that an esports society had been created at Southampton University, I leapt at the chance to engage with players beyond my online team. I ve been playing CS for over ten years now, making it a not-insignificant part of my life. Despite my long relationship with the series, I d never really considered dabbling into the realm of competition beyond a few IRC-organised pick up games in the days of Source. Following a brief internal league however, I found myself on the shortlist to compete in the National University Esports League (NUEL) for Southampton s top team. Captained by Wildsam, and combining the might of Stubacca, Zack, Rennui and Ferno (myself), the 'Deadliners' were formed.

Started back in 2010, NUEL was designed to support students with a passion for competitive gaming. Though initially focused on League of Legends, the game roster has recently been expanded to include Hearthstone and Counter-Strike. With the CS league relatively unknown, It wasn t clear what level of competition we d be facing. At the time of entering I held the rank of Legendary Eagle which, according to current estimations, put me in the top 10% of players. Now while that s certainly something I m proud of, it s still a significant jump from the top 0.6% that comprise the Global Elite. If any universities were fielding players of that calibre, we d certainly have our work cut out for us.

Collected below are my experiences of each week of the league. I ll take you through our successes and setbacks, both in game and out. As a newly-formed outfit, Deadliners experience should provide a reference for what players new to the amateur competitive scene can expect. I can t guarantee your experience will match ours exactly, but hopefully you ll find the inspiration to take the plunge yourself.

The NUEL tournament consists of two stages. Teams play two best-of-one (BO1) games per week. The first two weeks are reserved for qualification. The top 16 teams enter a double elimination bracket in the subsequent weeks. The remaining teams are entered into the S-League and continue the BO1 format to compete for the highest possible position of 4th. Each week, the team dropped from the elimination bracket enters the top position in the S-League.

 Week 1: UoM GO (Manchester) and BathA 

Anxiety and anticipation. Excitement tempered by trepidation. In the hour running up to our first match my mind was racing. Why hadn t we scheduled the time to practice beforehand? Who would our opponents be? What ranks should we expect? The degree to which a minor alteration to circumstance can change the entire weight of a match caught me by surprise. Though playing the same game as I would do any other evening, the added element of ceremony to a scheduled match brought a sense of unease I was wholly unused to. When it was revealed that we would be facing the previous winners of NUEL s winter season, University of Manchester, it s safe to say my aspirations for the match were stunted at best.

Like most maps in CS:GO s roster, Cache is generally considered to be CT-sided, that is to say the CT side is expected to win more rounds in each half. We were therefore grateful to open in the stronger position. However, while the map may favour CTs, we quickly discovered that our team did not. Unable to maintain control of the centre, adaptation proved difficult and the lack of experience together quickly became evident, costing round after round. I had offered to play as our team s primary sniper, but with our economy in tatters I found myself barely capable of affording an AWP, let alone performing with it. Scraping together only a handful of rounds toward the end of the first half, prospects looked bleak.

Fortunately, the half-time changeover provided a much-needed ease of tensions,finally allowing our team to relax into a pace that suited us. With a strong start, I was finally able to find my personal comfort zone, shifting location round-by-round to catch people off guard. Unexpectedly, we found the momentum shifting in our favour, finally allowing us to dictate the flow of play. When it finally came, victory was near euphoric. Had we really just managed that? If we could compete with the previous winners, how far could we expect to go?

With our next opponents ready to play we had little time to celebrate, instead rolling straight into our second game and imminent demise. Where UoM had been precise, carefully timing peaks and flashes, Bath A were relentless. Piling onto sites in five-man pushes, the change in tempo blindsided us, overwhelming our shaken defence. Reeling from the high of a win, we suddenly found ourselves in the aftermath of a bloody loss. It looked like things wouldn t be so simple after all, but if we could just claim one match in the following week, our chances of qualifying for the elimination bracket were still good.

Weeks 2/3: Loughborough and Ulster, OXG (Hull) and Swansea Green 

Sadly I was unable to compete during the second week, leaving my team to find a substitute. Even so, the knowledge that we needed just one victory to qualify for the knockout stage kept me pinned to my phone during the evening of the match. The news that finally filtered through was far from positive. Confusion and disagreements betrayed the result: we had lost both matches and were likely relegated to the S-League.

Despite dropping to the lower league, I wasn t yet ready to give up, and together with my team resolved to give the remaining matches our all. The opportunity to play in a more formal setting and develop as part of a new team had given a whole new drive to my time spent in CS. I had already begun to see clear improvements to both aim and positioning, earning me a regular top spot in my matchmaking team.

The first week in S-League served as a polar introduction to NUEL s broad range of skill. First lined up against OX Gaming from Hull, we found ourselves comfortably surpassing our opponents and eased into an almost-casual 16-5 victory. The relaxed attitude this fostered left us utterly unprepared for the 16-3 bruising we then received from Swansea Green. Competitors in the winter tournament, they showed such confidence and ease together that we were taken aback to see them outside the elimination bracket so early. It s safe to say that we were thoroughly outclassed, but as tough as a heavy loss can be, there s a level of benefit to competing against a higher class of player and no shortage of insight to be gleaned. Expecting to suffer some humiliating defeats, I had made a mental effort to take positive factors away from each match. At the very least, our execution had been swift.

During the matches, we made a concerted effort to provide support toward each other beyond in-game actions. Our captain, Wildsam, was a constant voice of reassurance, never allowing the situation to shake him. Even while winning, it s easy for a player to set themselves off-kilter after losing a number of duels in a row. Usually found topping the frag count, Stubacca lost a series of contests early in the first match and was vocally shaken. However, support from the rest of the team meant it wasn t long before he was back on his feet. When playing as part of a team, it s important to make sure you re aware of your teammate s mental state and give them encouragement when necessary. After all, everyone has bad days.

Week 4: SHUES (Sheffield Hallam) and 5 Noobs Who Don’t Play CS (Portsmouth)

Week four shall henceforth be known as the week of the food coma. There are some interesting lessons to be learned in competing around a fixed schedule, and one of those is to plan your dinner well. Much like physical sports, it s a bad idea to consume a vast quantity of food, no matter how delicious, before playing CS:GO. While not suffering the same stomach issues as a game of basketball would provide, my body had instead decided that reaction times and logical reasoning were unimportant when compared to digestion. As a result my time spent in the first match against Sheffield Hallam was spent staggering blearily around the halls of Cache. Fortunately, where I proved lacklustre my team was more than ready to pick up the slack, each member earning over 20 kills to secure a second S-League win.

In a fitting twist of fate, the second game lined us up against Portsmouth s 5 Noobs Who Don t Play CS. Southampton and Portsmouth hold a significant University rivalry, sparring off against one another in each year s Varsity sporting competition. The prospect of a grudge match helped shake me out of my stupor, keen to uphold Southampton s winning record against our rival. Contrary to their name, we knew that Portsmouth was fielding at least one player of Global rank, an intimidating prospect for a team of Eagles. Playing on Overpass, far from our comfort zone, the match was a tightly-fought contest. If not for a herculean 30-kill effort by Zack, the match would have gone Portsmouth s way.

Impressive individual performances can do a lot to boost morale in a tough match, providing a source of inspiration while easing some of the load for those struggling. However, repeated success can be a double-edged sword. If one member is seen to be consistently playing better than the others, it can lead weaker players to question their value to the team in general. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to find that our top scorer would shift every week, and often led the pack by only a small margin. That we had such similar skill levels was a surprising positive, allowing independent highs to shine without anyone feeling that they were falling behind.

Unfortunately, this week also supplied its fair share of frustration, highlighting imperfections in the backend system for the league. Each week, match and server information was granted only within an hour of the scheduled time, causing some serious problems when the servers stop responding. After an exasperating 30 minutes of waiting and refreshing the NUEL site, we were all but ready to give up on playing when the information finally came through. Small failings like this are far from terminal, but marr the overall experience of an event, replacing anticipation with annoyance.

Week 5: Hullmans Mayonnaise (Hull) and UoL:A (Liverpool)

They found us. I thought the land of structured competition would be free of trolls, but still they come. HAHAHAHA they cry THE NEXT GeT_RiGhT? Within minutes of joining the server, chat was flooded and before long nothing intelligible was left. Then I remembered that CS:GO has a mute function.

It seems a sad truth that any competitive game will be marred by a sizable, unpleasant portion of the community. For every friend I ve made through online matchmaking, I ve had to wade through at least five vitriol-spewing antagonists. Combining a volatile mix of anonymity, young audiences and adrenaline-fueled competition, it s all too easy for players to approach both allies and foes with a hostile attitude. The most depressing aspect is that derogatory remarks can even prove rewarding. The right comment at the wrong time can do a serious number on a player s mental resolve. Placed in a tense environment requiring a great degree of finesse, it doesn t take much to push most people over the edge, and the further you fall down the slippery slope of frustration, the more difficult it becomes to recover.

That this kind of behaviour can be rewarding is infuriating to say the least, but to see it in a more serious competitive environment caught me off guard. You would hope that any team willing to commit to a weekly schedule would show some degree of maturity. Confrontational behaviour may sometimes provide immediate benefits, but it provides an unwelcome front for new players, and does little to progress the still developing realm of esports. Most competitive games have begun taking steps to punish abusive behaviour, offering temporary bans or time in purgatory but CS:GO still has a long strides to make in this regard. I should count myself lucky then that not a single member of my team took this approach. Even on the receiving end of our worst beatings, we stayed respectful. This resulted in a far more amiable environment.

To be fair to our opposition, UoL:A were far from directly offensive, simply filling the chat with endless, key-bound memes and lines. A brief check of the NUEL site informed that their team had in fact qualified for the elimination stage but fell out in the first round. Their team had even beaten Swansea Green, at whose hands we received a resolute 16-3 drubbing. It was in all probability that they had little interest in competing further, and after ending the first half 10-5 they all but collapsed. Likely hoping to be dropped from the remaining games, UoL:A even submitted an opposing match report following the game, contradicting our victory. The poor behaviour did little to sour our mood however, as four straight victories in S-League had put us within touching distance of a top ten finish.

Week 6: Surrey Lions and Warwick CS

I d love to say our NUEL experience ended on a high, conquering all odds to close our tournament run with a hard-earned win. I wouldn t be far wrong, but it wasn t quite to be. Following a loss to the capable but disrespectful Surrey Lions, we found ourselves pitted against Warwick CS in one of the closest games of the entire tournament. Our two sides went blow for blow against each other, trading rounds throughout the first half to end at 8-7.

With a strong pistol round, Warwick forged ahead, carving a five-round lead to reach 9-14. In what was probably my personal best performance of the tournament, both AWPing and rifling, we held the line. Clawing back round after round we finally brought the scoreline level. Then, just as it felt we had gained the upper hand, we were broken. A sloppy attempt to push onto Overpass B bombsite left our team in disarray. Warwick took the final round without competition. We had lost 14-16.

A win would likely have placed us around 10th out of a 60 team roster, and I found myself thinking back for days on how we could have changed the result. Due to conflicting schedules, our team had been forced to find a sub for Stubacca in the last hour before the match. While performing admirably, it was clear that our sub was a little out of their depth. If only we had the full team. If only we had pulled back on that last B approach. While I was devastated at the time, the better team deserved the win and I couldn t have asked for a closer match to round out the league.

Across the course of these twelve matches, each member of the team had gently gravitated into the roles that suited them best, and we found that we complemented each other well. Stubacca proved a competent solo player, more than capable of holding the B bombsite alone on maps that required it, while Rennui and Zack formed a stable rifling team to lock down control in a region. If I had to pick a weak point, it would regrettably have to be myself. Lacking in a dedicated AWPer, I had offered to play the role. Though I was more than capable of playing the aggressive T-side, I regularly struggled to hold the middle lane when defending. However, this trial by fire has since seen my sniping proficiency extensively honed, to the point where I can now comfortably say that the AWP is by far my best weapon.

On reflection

For a team of strangers, thrown together a matter of weeks before the league, I m extremely proud of our performance. Over the course of a few weeks, we developed together on all fronts of our game, from coordination to moral support. It s clear that the NUEL system is designed from the ground up for inclusion. While the elimination bracket is the main draw, the existence of the S-League gives new or inexperienced teams like our own the chance maintain a presence and vie with those of a similar capability. Competing in a league, even just at the bottom rung, gives a drive and energy to the game that can t quite ever be replicated in standard online play.

Since the start of the league I ve been playing more CS:GO than ever before, even pushing myself into a higher skill group. Given the chance and time to practice, I would run it all again to aim for that elimination stage, and happily with the same team. The majority of Deadliners had entered the league unacquainted, but I wouldn t hesitate to invite any of them for a game in the future.

This championship marks only the second NUEL foray into CS, and the back-end side is still showing some clear teething issues. With match information given only briefly before the start time, it s no surprise that server problems could lead to frustration. Re-use of a limited server pool once led to players for the following match joining the server for our still-ongoing game. There s also no clear way of checking the standings of either the elimination bracket of S-League on the NUEL site. Weekly fixtures list matchups and winners, but only within a group of five teams. To this day I still haven t been informed what place we finished.

In truth, NUEL is a far cry from the bigger online leagues like FACEIT, but it doesn t really have to be. A large part of appealing to the student demographic is to encourage new communities and talent countrywide. With the backup of an S-league for drop-outs, NUEL gives newcomers a place to test the waters of competition before they dive into its murky depths. Would I recommend NUEL? If you re a university student and interested in CS, certainly. If nothing else, I can think of no better excuse to find a team and get practicing.

If any the above sounded like your cup of tea, the current NUEL season has just ended, leaving plenty of time to practice for the next. If you re not a student (or not based in the UK) there s no need to worry as plenty of alternatives are out there: the Electronic Sports League (ESL) run an open league at no cost of entry, while FACEIT takes online matchmaking to the next level, scheduling games against other teams and running regular competitions for prizes.

We ve got a relatively quiet weekend coming up as League of Legends takes a break ahead of the forthcoming mid-season invitational. Even so, there s some top-tier European Counter-Strike to watch and a lot of great Dota 2 happening at WePlay s Season 3 LAN finals (rubbish greenscreen staging notwithstanding.) Some of the world s best Hearthstone players will be putting Whispers of the Old Gods to the test in Korea, too.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: CEVO Gfinity Pro-League Season 9

There's some top-tier CS:GO happening at Gfinity's arena in London this weekend. Play has been ongoing since Thursday, but continues with semifinals on Saturday and the grand finals on Sunday. Play begins at 12:00 BST/04:00 PDT on Saturday and at 15:30 BST/07:30 PDT on Sunday and you can find the livestream here.

Dota 2: WePlay League S3 LAN Finals

There s two more days of play left in the WePlay League Season 3 LAN finals in Kiev. There s been some really exciting, fun Dota played so far although the tone of the event has been set by a run of Shanghai Major-style production snafus. From a comedically terrible greenscreen set for the analysis panel (see above) to arbitrarily cutting away from games during crucial teamfights, it s been a bit of a shambles. That s part of the fun, though, and reason enough to tune in. Play begins at 08:00 BST/00:00 PDT on Saturday and at 10:00 BST/02:00 PDT on Sunday and you can find the English language livestream here.

Hearthstone: Seoul Cup World Invitational

An array of top Hearthstone talent including Thijs, Ostkaka, Reynad and more will compete for a share of $22,000 in Seoul this weekend. It'll be a relatively quick, single elimination contest with play spread across both days. Hearthstone s latest expansion has done a number on the metagame, so it ll be fascinating to see what decks succeed at one of the first serious competitions since Whispers of the Old Gods launched (you can find some pro predictions here, incidentally.) Watch the English language livestream here, but bear the timezone in mind: play begins at 14:00 KST both days, which is 06:00 BST or 22:00 PDT on the day before.

Long War Studios, the team responsible for one of the most cherished XCOM: Enemy Unknown mods, has more tricks up its sleeves for XCOM 2. Not satisfied with the distinction of releasing the first XCOM 2 mod back on release date, the studio has a total of five more mods coming, publisher 2K announced today.

The first of those releases today, in the form of the Toolbox mod, which adds a bunch of useful toggles to the game s menu. Here s the list of what it does:

Configurable camera rotation in tactical missions

Damage variation

Random stats for new soldiers

Random stats on level-ups

UI that shows soldier stats in various menus

UI and other support for up to 12-soldier squads

Red Fog (injuries affect stats)

The other four mods are expected to roll out over the coming months . A soldier class construction kit is confirmed in the form of the Perk Pack mod, while the Laser Pack mod will add a new weapon tier, and is expected to release on the same day. Meanwhile, the Alien Pack mod will add ten new alien enemies, while the details on the fifth and final mod are yet to be revealed.

This follows the launch day mods, which included submachine guns and a new set of leadership perks, among other things. For a convenient list of all the best XCOM 2 mods released thus far both useful and ridiculous Chris Livingston has you sorted.

You might not have been planning to brutally slay the living dead in Killing Floor 2 this weekend, but here's a reason to consider it: Tripwire is hosting a double XP extravaganza. Kicking off April 28 at 1pm EST, the XP boost will run in concert with an increased item drop rate (once per 24 hours) until May 2 at 1pm EST.

The weekend coincides with a significant patch to the Early Access shooter, which fixes a bunch of ongoing, niggling issues which you can read about in more detail over here.

More interesting is a new map uploaded to Steam Workshop by Tripwire level designer Matthew 'Fever' Lefevere. Dubbed 'Museum', it's a moody, dimly lit arena-like setting based in yeah, you guessed it a museum.

In other KF2 news, the studio rolled out a Versus Survival multiplayer mode earlier this month, in the form of the Revenge of the Zeds update. That also includes a new official map as well as fresh weaponry. You can read about that update in more detail over here. Now seems like a decent time to try the hyperviolent shooter, if you haven't done so already.

But what do you really know about these Lords of Cinder, these supposed legends? Let's take Aldrich, for one: a right and proper cleric, only he developed a habit of devouring men. He ate so many that he bloated like a drowned pig then softened into sludge. So they stuck him in the Cathedral of the Deep and made him a Lord of Cinder; not for virtue, but for might.

Hawkwood, the lowly defeated Undead Legionnaire that hangs his head low in Firelink Shrine, gives the player one of the first detailed descriptions of Aldrich, Saint of the Deep and unwilling Lord of Cinder. The dialogue triggers in a timely fashion, around the time you re progressing through the swampy lands below the bridge to Lothric and towards the Cathedral of the Deep. The line s light context is enough to color the state of the world you progress through, and in turn, the sludgy descent of Aldrich as a character all without uttering another word. (Unless you count the tortured groans of the poor folks left in a Aldrich s wake.)

Dark Souls 3 kicks off in pursuit of him Aldrich bailed when called upon to link the fire. In other words, he s meant to burn to prevent the apocalypse. Pay close attention and it s easy enough to get the sense that he wasn t exactly the saint his moniker ascribes same goes for his affiliated religious institutions. It may not be possible to determine exactly who he is, but turning an open ear to the creatures and environments Aldrich has altered is enough to fill out his character in a few ways. I m no lore aficionado, so look at this piece as a close reading of Dark Souls 3 and its power as a dense impressionist game not as the final word on our slimey man.

Moby trick

The first aural indication to mark my descent was easy to miss at first, but now it stands as my favorite bit of atmosphere that reminded me where I was going and who I was after. Listen closely:

It s a heavily forested area underscored by subtle, deep sea ambience. The white noise of wind through the trees dominates, lightly punctuated by the low hum of whales. There are plenty of connotations to unpack here: whales used to be viewed as creatures as old as the world itself, a sign of sentience and knowledge impossible for man to parse, and the ocean as a primitive bed of mystery and darkness, a place no human can naturally call home. Seeing that we re headed to the Cathedral of the Deep, I m starting to doubt that the deep can be a good thing.

The oceanic sounds run opposite to what I d expect to hear in a forest, and as my brain tries to conflate signs from two entirely different settings, I get uneasy, tense. Aldrich echoes the paradox: based on the opening cinematic, he resembles a massive glob of sea scum, algae you d scrape off the underside of a boulder on the ocean floor. But he s also supposedly sentient, a formerly respectable top dog in a local religious institution. I m immediately set up to expect the impossible, but not necessarily anything too dark. Forest and ocean ambience suggest elegance (maybe a pre-goo slash cannibalism Aldrich) even though their combination is dissonant.

Narrative chunks

Deep in the forest, skinny cadavers lazily trudge around a cathedral graveyard where Aldrich was holed up. If I get too close and they discharge (not ceaselessly) a hefty amount of vomit, the ingredients of which look like maggots and milk, a brand of cereal I can t quite get behind.

Dozens of these enemies dot this area, and even though they re easy to avoid, running past triggers puking for most of them, kicking off a cascade of vomitry that puts Mr. Creosote to shame. It s more overtly gross than anything I can recall from the previous games, but still serves to characterize the gluttonous goo man we re after. Every retch is an upsetting hybrid of a froggy croak and what sounds like a toilet flipping over, the exaggerated sound carrying connotations of overeating, sickness, and possibly trauma on a massive scale. I wonder if they died from this sickness and were buried in the cathedral graveyard in droves, or if the sickness is what caused them to rise from the dead. For there to be a graveyard in the open and not some guarded pit implies that this puking-slash-rising dead deal wasn t always a problem, and perhaps Aldrich s presence and transformation touched a certain dark magic the deep that ran wild and started to seep further out from the cathedral over time. Why should a church even need such a huge graveyard? What Aldrich did to cause such a sickness is uncertain, but our bellies are definitely meant to ache in gurgled harmony with the infected denizens affected by his presence.

Aldrich was a known hungry boy, so maybe these walking corpses are failed acolytes, like the rotten apple counterparts to the fresh grub men I run into next.

Wet and wild

It may sound like I was dancing around in ankle high water during this fight, but it took place on a stone surface inside a cathedral. Liquid sloshes around inside of the six or so maggot slug humans I m fighting. Every hit is like taking a butcher knife to a pile of rotting watermelons. They emit vaguely human gargles as they die, and I emit vaguely human gargles in response. It s unpleasant, in large thanks to the sound.

The resolute wetness echoes the earlier oceanic connotations. Looking like grubs is one thing, but because they move with such pronounced sloshy sounds, it s suggested that these maggot men are fairly sumptuous and juicy, perhaps disillusioned members of Aldrich s church that have a side gig in his snack drawer. I wouldn t be surprised if that was the case. A religious institution might hold a lot of influence over its desperate clergy during the very real end times. Aldrich wanted to stay on top, to stay strong, so he turned the process of plumbing up and eating his bros into an honorary religious rite even after he was gooified and scooped up and locked in his coffin. I get the impression his connection to dark magicks was strong enough to penetrate his prison and that he ran the place from the inside.

Rosaria, a vaguely woman-shaped pile of flesh and leader of the Fingers of Rosaria invasion covenant, seems to be head chef. The grub men hang out almost exclusively outside her chamber door, and upon completing a sidequest for her, she silently rewards you with a grub man of your own to kill. Do the thing, and you re rewarded with loot. There s no doubt these juicy boys are disposable, and I wouldn t be surprised if Aldrich disposed of them regularly.

Hollow there

Eventually, I stumble into Aldrich s coffin-chamber, where he s supposed to be imprisoned until someone like myself rolls in, ready to reduce the guy to ash and prevent the apocalypse. I m greeted by about two-dozen deacons with glowing red eyes, a boss fight foreshadowed by a prominent tableau located next to the first cathedral bonfire.

The deacons appear undead in the present, a hollowed remnant of their former selves and less capable of reason (a fairly obvious side effect of the undead curse), but what struck me about the tableau after revisiting it was that the deacons are depicted as undead in it as well. This implies that the church embraced the deep eldritch (Aldrich) knowledge from the get-go. The institutions set in place maybe have been constructed to build harmony around the mysticism of the deep s power, but once Aldrich arrived and grew in strength, it s clear from the devastation of the environments that all those plans have gone to shit. The deep s on the loose.

This further solidifies my belief that Aldrich was never actually held against his will after his transformation into sludge, but continued to rule the church, amplify its connection with the deep (a dark abyssal realm, I imagine), and use the churchgoers as a steady resupply station for food and power until he was ready to take off in search of a larger powers and entities to consume. Aldrich wasn t just begrudgingly hiding in wait until the Ashen One swung by to take him to Firelink Shrine, but was actually preparing to subvert the fire-linking process entirely by embracing the deep, the darker plane, and possibly becoming ruler of it altogether. He s not just a pile of sludge; Aldrich is a desperate, egotistic, cruel man on the run. He s one of the most obvious, influential, and nuanced villains in the Dark Souls series.

Exactly how he obtained that influence, who knows? Maybe he was cunning and charming, easy to trust. Perhaps he subsumed all these people and grown in size and power, literally a massive katamari of ooze tearing through the land. We could ve just encountered Aldrich as a boss after reading a few small pieces of lore, but Dark Souls 3 dedicates entire zones to characterizing the liquid lord, and the environment is the primary tool with which we can build our strongest perception of Aldrich, even if that characterization isn t definitive. The most engaging aspect of Dark Souls 3 (for me) are it s questions, and the trust it places on the player to puzzle them out. There are no easy conclusions here, nothing set in stone, just a pile of imaginative building blocks, and we re left in charge.

Update: A new graphically-demanding game is crowned. See which one it is!

At Maximum PC we love pushing our PCs to their limits by testing high-end games at maximum settings. To reach these limits, you'll need to fire up the most über-demanding games. What are the most graphically-demanding games you ask? We’ve thrown together a list of the gnarliest PC games that will give your precious gaming rig a kick-ass workout.

Testing Methodology:

We tested each game at maximum settings on a 1920x1080 display. Our modest mid-range test rig consisted of an i7-2700K CPU overclocked to 4.5GHz, a GTX 680 video card overclocked to 1140MHz, and 8GB of G.Skill DDR3 RAM. We first started out disabling motion blur, which is a frame rate crutch, and cranked up all of the other settings as high as they would go. Another setting that was crucial to disable was V-Sync, so that our frame rate was not capped with our 60Hz refresh rate. We played each game for 15 minutes, and recorded its average frame rate using FRAPS. Each frame rate listed below is that of our playthrough and may not be exactly repeatable because the frame rate averages were captured with real-world dynamic testing, which may vary from playthrough to playthrough, even on a rig with the exact same hardware. Still, our tests should provide an accurate measure of relative performance between titles. The rankings are listed from least taxing to most based on average frame rate count.

Call of Duty Ghosts: #11

Game Engine: IW Engine

The latest installment of Call of Duty isn’t too taxing to run as we experienced an average frame rate of 67.9 FPS. In our gameplay session we floated through space and ran around inside a few burning buildings during the game’s first mission. COD games aren’t very challenging to run because they still use the same game engine as COD 4, which came out over 6 years ago. To put it into perspective, the old engine is easy enough for last gen consoles to run at 60 FPS. Maybe the next installment in the series will finally change the game's outdated game engine so it can rival the graphical capabilities of other modern military shooters.

Crysis: #10

Game Engine: CryEngine 2

When Crytek made Crysis they wanted to make a “future proof” game and we can say that six years later, they have successfully done so by garnering the 10th spot on this list as we only garnered an average frame rate of 58.2 FPS . What’s to blame for the relatively low frame rate for such an old game? Particle effects are hot and heavy in Crysis and they caused our frame rate to dip while testing, throw in some extreme physics (not to be confused with PhysX), and some realistic water effects, and you get a six-year old game that’s even hard to run even on an overclocked GTX 680.

Hitman Absolution: #9

Game Engine: Glacier 2

We tested Hitman Absolution by sleuthing around the first level killing foes covertly snapping necks with our bare hands. We then got into a firefight with few of the security guards and killed several dozen more enemies before finishing our benchmark run. The end result was a frame rate that was 53.8 FPS and made Hitman our number nine game overall. Hitman is quite CPU heavy, so our relatively low frame rate could have been due to getting bottlenecked by our 2700K CPU not being able to muster physics calculations fast enough to keep up with our overclocked GTX 680 GPU.

GTA IV: #8

Game Engine: Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE)

Yes, we’re upset as anybody for the lack of a PC version of GTA V, but even the fourth game in the series (released in 2008) made our mid-range machine struggle. We only saw an average frame rate of 53.21 FPS , while driving around crazily through Liberty City, where we would eventually end up picking fights with random pedestrians. It’s hard to believe that this game came out almost five years ago! GTA IV, however, doesn’t look very impressive by today’s gaming standards and we blame the game’s demanding hardware performance on poor PC optimization. The engine behind the game's demanding performance uses an amalgamation of three different engines, including Rockstar's RAGE engine, Euphoria engine, and Bullet Physics Library. Hitman Absolution, by comparison, looks much better than GTA IV and has almost the same frame rate.

Click the next page for the top five most graphically demanding PC games!

Far Cry 3: #7

Game Engine: Dunia Engine 2

We started our playthrough in Far Cry 3 running through a tropical forest and then proceeded by stealing an abandoned dirt-splattered car. Once we were done joyriding around the island we went for a swim in the ocean and went to visit a neighboring island. We then got into an epic battle with some of the locals blowing up explosive barrels and stabbing our foes straight through the chest with our machete. Far Cry 3 lands at number seven on our list with its 41 FPS and this score is likely due to its large amount of particle effects when explosive barrels are, well, exploded, and also due to the fact that there’s tons of vegetation to be rendered as you walk around the various islands.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings: #6

Game Engine: REDengine with Havok Physics

The Witcher 2 gave us a heavy helping of medieval combat throwing us into a bloody gladiator arena where we faced hordes of enemies. We found one setting enabled which caused our frame rate to be cut down to a meager 32.62 FPS , which was the game’s Übersampling option. What’s Übersampling? It’s Super Sampling Anti Aliasing meaning that The Witcher 2 made our rig render the game at 4K, and then downsize that image to fit our 1920x1080 display. When we turned off Übersampling the game ran at a buttery smooth 60+ FPS.

Crysis 3: #5

Game Engine: CryEngine 3

Like other Crysis games, Crysis 3 does much of the same as its predecessors giving users a heavy dose of particle effects, high-resolution textures, and tons of crazy physics. We ran around the game’s first level, which had us going through a rainstorm, while quietly assassinating our foes with a silenced pistol and tactical bow. Exploding barrels of gasoline killed our frame rate in Crysis 3 just like in Far Cry 3 making it dip to an abysmal 13 FPS. In the end we were only able to get 28.08 FPS out of the title, putting it at number five on our graphically-intensive list.

ARMA 3: #4 (Added: 2-10-14)

Game Engine: Real Virtuality 4

In testing ARMA 3, we first disabled motion blur and cranked up depth of field as high as it would go. We then maxed out shadows, objects, and overall visibility. Finally, we put FSAA (Full Screen Anti-Aliasing) to 8X, and Anisotropic filtering to Ultra.

We started up ARMA 3’s first mission Drawdown 2035 for our test run. Yes, we understand our frame rate would have been lower if we had jumped into a multiplayer match, but we didn’t want connection issues to impact our frame rate score. Our playthrough consisted of a helicopter ride to a dusty-brown military base. From there, we grabbed a Humvee and drove down a grass covered gorge to find one of our fallen comrades. We then got into a firefight with some of the local militia and ended up with an average frame rate of 25.77 FPS , putting ARMA 3 at number four between Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider (2013): #3

Game Engine: Modified Crystal Engine

Crystal Dynamics brought everyone a Tomb Raider game that rebooted the franchise, and gave gamers stunning hair effects with AMD’s TressFX setting. We tested Tomb Raider thinking that TressFX would be the reason behind its super low frame rate, as we barely were able to scrape together 24.8 FPS . We looked at the game’s settings to find that it uses Super Sampling just like The Witcher 2 which made our GPU work extra hard to render the game at 4K to have it then downscaled to 1920x1080.

Our benchmark run consisted of killing many rabid wolves with our bow and arrow, while running through a dark, dense green forest. We tested the game with 2xSSAA and found our frame rate was increased to 45 FPS. The lesson learned from our testing is that SSAA is very demanding and by disabling it, yes, you’ll get some jagged edges, but you can receive a massive performance boost by either disabling it or scaling it back just a bit.

Metro Last Light: #2

Game Engine: 4A Engine

When the first Metro game came out it was a difficult title for PCs to play and made frame rates drop hard and fast. The second title, Metro Last Light, isn’t very different, as it takes the second spot on our Most Demanding PC Game list.

The game’s extreme PhysX effects and vast amount of tessellation are the culprits behind our low frame rate, which was an unplayable 22.3 FPS . With PhysX turned up, we saw tons of particle and water effects, which made everything sluggish, as we ran through the Russian swampland of the first level in Metro Last Light. We maxed out AA to 4XAA on top of that, which amplified how many times PhysX was rendered and ultimately this led to the demise of our rig’s precious frame rate.

Battlefield 4: #1 (Updated: 2/12/14)

Game Engine: Frostbite 3

When we first tested Battlefield 4, we set the Resolution Scale to 100% incorrectly thinking that was the highest setting. However, as one of our readers, doomsaint, pointed out, the scale actually goes up to 200%. We have retested Battlefield 4 with this new 200% scaling to find that its average FPS dropped to a mere 17.27 . This difference moves DICE’s game from 10th place all the way to first!

In testing, we played through the game’s first mission and saw our cover blown up by grenades, bullets, and mortars, causing our frame rate to dip to as low as 12 FPS. The highest it would go was 24 FPS. Ouch!

Benchmark Chart:

Here's a bar chart measuring average frame rate for each title.

Conclusion:

We’ve seen some interesting results with our tests and came away surprised by how graphically intensive an old game like Crysis still is. Tomb Raider also surprised us with how taxing it was too. It's worth noting that PC gaming willl likely get a large graphical leap with the recent release of the next-gen consoles. The next few months look promising with a plethora of graphically demanding titles coming out which include Watch Dogs and Titanfall. It will be interesting to see what titles populate this list in the years to come.

Old Adam Jensen has kept his head down for a while, but here he is on the job trying to ensure that the events of the past can't repeat themselves in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

The events of the past are pretty bad, all told. Augmented humans are exiled from the rest of society, which isn't likely to make Jensen's job any easier. He doesn't seem to be trying to blend in either: his own augmentations have been jacked up, as Tom discovered when he tried to use a wheelie bin to shield himself from a turret during his hands-on.

August 23 feels like an agonisingly long way off. You can now preorder, if you think that'll ease the tension.

Fallout 4's tough-as-nails survival mode is officially live, having cast off the uncertain shackles of beta. Survival adds monstrously increased damage, diseases, hunger and thirst and the need for sleep, and removes fast travel, so take care to plan your journeys.

Modders will be all over it in a flash, of course, sanding off the rough edges that Bethesda didn't catch. It's perfectly timed, what with the Creation Kit having hit open beta itself.

Never say Bethesda doesn't care about bugs however patch 1.5 squashes a few radroaches itself. The third-person camera has been improved in tight spots, stability and performance received a boost and a number of robotics-related issues introduced in Automatron have been resolved. Full patch notes here.