Final Fantasy XIV has seen a massive influx of players, especially following the Endwalker expansion reveal and popular World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold playing the MMORPG to over 200,000 people earlier this month. The surge has resulted in a myriad of server issues such as instability and long queues. Director and producer Naoki Yoshida shared a lengthy blog post outlining some steps the development team will take to combat server congestion, which include implementing features like automatic logout.In the blog, posted to the game's official North America website, Yoshida said incoming features like auto-logout are "an effective means to temporarily combat [server] congestion." Though only a temporary solution, more permanent fixes are in the works. This includes things like increasing server capacity across the North America and European regions to allow for more simultaneous player logins, as well as upping the amount of data centers around the world to withstand the rush.Auto-logout will function just as it sounds when it arrives in Patch 5.58. If players are idle for an unspecified amount of time, they will be automatically logged out. This is to ensure those sitting in the queue, who sometimes are people creating a character for the first time, can log in to play.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Resident Evil Village has received an update for the Steam version of the game that adjusts the game's anti-piracy measures to improve performance. The update also adds AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) to the game, which uses upscaling and sharpening to make the game run smoother.Earlier this month, Digital Foundry determined through testing that the cracked (i.e. pirated) version of Resident Evil Village actually runs better than the official version of the game, a difference that is apparently caused by the game's DRM. Capcom quickly announced an update that would fix these issues, and that update is now live.An important update for Resident Evil Village players on Steam:- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) from AMD is now supported. FSR supports higher frame rates on PC for an improved gaming experience.- Adjustments have been made to optimize the anti-piracy technology. — Resident Evil (@RE_Games) July 20, 2021These stutters are a significant problem for PC players, bringing frame rates down from the low hundreds to 20 or 30fps during certain sequences. It's also worth noting that the Resident Evil Village performs better on consoles, even with ray tracing enabled. It's currently unclear if this update manages to fix these stuttering issues, but we'll have to see how the player base reacts. If not, perhaps modders can fix the problem, as was the case with Nier: Automata's resolution woes on PC. That issue was finally officially fixed this week on Steam.Info from Gamespot.com

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands' newest raid, the Sanctum of Domination, has finally been cleared on the game's Mythic difficulty following an intense world-first race between the game's top guilds over the last week.The honors went to the European guild Echo, who defeated the raid's final boss, Sylvanas Windrunner, after 176 attempts over four days and with zero deaths on their final attempt to boot, according to Icy Veins. For a while the race was neck and neck between Echo and the guild Complexity-Limit, but Echo managed to eke out the victory, despite taking a break overnight. You can see the race's final moments in the Twitch clip below.Echo even had to overcome a little divine intervention from Blizzard itself. One of the guild's initial Sylvanas strategies involved having one player tank an additional enemy, the Mawforged Colossus, in order to allow the rest of the guild to effectively ignore the Colossus and instead focus on bringing down Sylvanas as fast as possible. In theory, this would allow Echo to skip the boss's enrage mechanic, which would see Sylvanas pumping out significantly more damage.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Pokemon Unite launches on Nintendo Switch this week, and you can now preload the upcoming spin-off ahead of its release. A product page for Pokemon Unite is now available on the Nintendo eShop, letting you download the free-to-play Pokemon MOBA so that you can jump right in when it unlocks on July 21.According to the game's eShop, Pokemon Unite weighs in at only 928 MB. The game is free to download and play online, with optional in-game purchases in the form of cosmetic costumes for your trainer and Pokemon.Pre-download for #PokemonUNITE on Switch is now available! Pre-download now and get into the action even faster this Wednesday! ➡️https://t.co/S2k3xaqmtj pic.twitter.com/hXZ2nTvKUd — Pokémon UNITE (@PokemonUnite) July 20, 2021According to The Pokemon Company (via Serebii), Pokemon Unite preloads will unlock at midnight local time on July 21. However, the game will officially be live to play beginning at 12 AM PT / 3 AM ET / 7 AM UTC.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The first trailer for Malignant has been released. The latest horror movie from Conjuring and Saw director James Wan hits theaters and HBO Max in September.The plot of Malignant has been shrouded in secrecy since the movie was first announced in 2019, but now we know what the movie is about. Annabelle Wallis (The Mummy) plays a woman who discovers that the violent hallucinations she is experiencing are real visions of murder, happening in real-time. She sets about trying to find out why this is happening and soon discovers it's all linked to something scary in her past. It looks like another stylish and inventive chiller from Wan--check the trailer out below:Malignant also stars Jake Abel (Supernatural), Jacqueline McKenzie (CSI: Miami), Mckenna Grace (Ghostbusters Afterlife), and Maddie Hasson (The Finder). It's written by Wan, Akela Cooper (Jupiter's Legacy), and Ingrid Bisu, who also acted in The Nun and The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

In late 2000, MTV introduced the world to a new type of prank and stunt show featuring a new type of reality star with Jackass. Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn, Jason Acuna, and Chris Pontius created a moment in pop culture that has only been intimidated but never replicated.Their first movie, aptly called Jackass the Movie, was a box office hit in 2002. They followed up that success with three more films, each upping the ante of the stunts and performances with each successor. Now, the team is back with a brand-new movie, Jackass Forever. Check out the trailer below.As you can see, the contraptions and stunts have been exponentially upgraded, with guest appearances by the likes of Eric Andre, who is sort of the one-man heir to the Jackass throne with his absurd and abstract Eric Andre Show. Even AEW star Darby Allin will participate in the jackassery this time around.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

There are more games coming out now than ever before, but it's rare that we slow down and take notice when a lot of promising games come out on the same day. Tuesday, July 20 saw the release of an unusual number of promising games, including Cris Tales, Death's Door, Samurai Gunn 2, and Mini Motorways.Cris Tales is perhaps the most well-known of these games, having received quite a notable push over the past year or two. It's a indie JRPG created by a small Colombian team with a striking artstyle and unique time-traveling mechanics. Our review of Cris Tales is still in the works, but it appears to be garnering positive reviews as of this writing. It's available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch. It's also on Xbox Game Pass.Death's Door is a Souls-like action game with an aerial perspective and impressively fluid combat. It's garnered some very positive reviews so far. In GameSpot's Death's Door review, critic Alessandro Barbosa praised the game's satisfying boss fights and colorful artstyle, while noting its challenging gameplay and lack of an in-game map. Fans of Hollow Knight and the Souls series will probably be intrigued by this one. Death's Door is available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Wolverine is the best there is at what he does, and nobody sulks on a bed while caressing a photo frame better than Marvel's most popular Canadian. Collectibles website Mondo is preparing to bring Wolverine's most iconic moment to life as a new sixth-scale figure for Comic-Con, and yes, it comes with its own bed.Mondo explained to IGN that it "took great pains to capture Wolverine in this rare moment of repose, pining after his crush Jean Grey in a photograph."For the sake of context, here's the moment that became Wolverine's greatest meme:Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Zelda: Breath of the Wild challenge runs are nothing new, but one player managed to find a new way to push the envelope: by turning Link's adventure into a giant game of Snake. Game developer and streamer Everest Pipkin managed to beat the game without recrossing their path, an undertaking that took them eight months and six restarts.The Master Trials DLC added a mode to the game called Hero's Path, which allows the player to see where Link has travelled over the past 200 hours of gameplay. As such, Pipkin decided it would be funny to turn the game into a version of the "travelling salesman problem", calling it the Traveling Swordsman Problem as a joke.I DID IT. i beat snake in breath of the wild. it took me 8 months and 6 restarts and countless moments of terror as it began to rain, but it is DONE pic.twitter.com/OwHTxauYP5 — everest (@everestpipkin) July 1, 2021Pipkin finally managed to finish the run on June 30. As the above map shows, it's a surprisingly difficult route that they had to follow, as they opted to visit all of the game's towers to fill out the map. Additionally, the fact that the game doesn't track 3D space (and therefore elevation) meant that Pipkin had to make sure not to travel over the same space twice, even taking X and Y positioning into account. They actually failed their first run because a cutscene required them to stand on a roof of a building that they had already entered. For more details on this challenge run, check out Kotaku's lengthy write-up--it's pretty impressive stuff.Info from Gamespot.com

Fortnite Week 7 challenges are nearly here, with one of several Legendary Quests asking you to collect parenting books from Holly Hatchery or Retail Row when the quests go live on July 21 at 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET. This is a story-driven quest with one-off quest items involved, which means you can't even see these items on the map unless this quest is active for you. But here's the solution, so once it's active, you can complete it in a hurry.Fortnite Parenting Book LocationsYou need to find just two parenting books for this Week 7 challenge, and once you do, you'll unlock 30,000 XP toward your Season 7 Battle Pass. As is often the case, there are more collectibles on the map than you'll need, so pick whichever two of these six that work for you. Here's where to find parenting books in Holly Hatchery:In the living room of the house east of the landscaping storeIn the garage of the northeastern houseJust inside the front room of the northwestern houseWhere to find parenting books in Holly HatcheryIf instead your travels take you to Retail Row, you can find another three parenting books within Fortnite's shopping center. Here's where to find parenting books in Retail Row:Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Bandai Namco has announced that the servers to the fighting game One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows will shut down on February 28, 2022.In a tweet from the official Bandai Namco US Twitter account, the company said that offline game types, like 1v1 local multiplayer and story mode, will still be playable after the servers shut down next February. Players can also still create a character, as well as purchase any of the many DLC fighters.One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows multiplayer servers will sunset on February 28, 2022. All offline game modes, along with online 1vs1 game matches, will still be available for play. Thank you for your understanding and continued support. — Bandai Namco US (@BandaiNamcoUS) July 20, 2021This news comes about a year and a half after One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows launched on February 28, 2020, putting a two-year expiration date on this licensed 3D fighting game. It seems the brawler never found a substantial enough audience, with it receiving a score of 57 on PlayStation 4 and 59 on Xbox One according to GameSpot sister site Metacritic. It also holds a "mixed" review rating on Steam. And according to Steamchartz, the game didn't amass more than 16 concurrent players in the last 30 days, with SteamDB reporting a peak of 586 players some 17 months ago.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Overwatch's Summer Games event is now live across all platforms, bringing back the limited-time Lucioball and Lucioball Remix matches as well as a wide array of new cosmetics, some of which were teased ahead of time. The event will run through August 10.Throughout the three-week event, you can play nine games per week (for a total of 27) to unlock weekly rewards. Winning a game will count double as two games. Any games played in Quick Play, Arcade, or Competitive will count towards those goals. The rewards for those milestones will be sets of new Epic skins:Week 1: Ocean King WinstonWeek 2: Sunset PharahWeek 3: Nihon HanzoOf course, the Summer Games event will also introduce several new Legendary skins that are obtainable through regular loot boxes or in the shop. You can see each of those in the screens below. Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Valve announced its ambitious new portable PC platform, the Steam Deck, last week, with three distinct models with varying technical specifications to choose from. One facet of all three that was standard, however, was the amount of RAM each one will ship with, which now seems a lot better than initially suspected.In the original technical specifications, Valve noted that the 16GB of LPDDR5 memory was running in dual-channel, with an expected bandwidth of 5,500 MT/s. The latter figure is still correct, but Valve has updated the official product page to reflect that the memory is, in fact, quad-channel, not dual, offering up a lot more bandwidth to the APU powering the device.This confirms what some had already suspected when first presented with the technical specifications, given that the expected bandwidth relative to the APU powering the Steam Deck didn't seem to add up.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

It's nearly Fortnite Week 7, which means Week 7 Alien Artifacts are upon us. If you've been following along all season, you must have the bulk of the related rewards unlocked by now, but to complete the list, you'll want to keep playing and unlocking Alien Artifacts each and every week. Here's where to find all Alien Artifacts in Fortnite Week 7. These Alien Artifacts will appear in-game on Thursday, July 22, at 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET.Week 7 Alien ArtifactsThere are once again five Alien Artifact locations in Week 7. As always, what you're actually looking for are pink canisters that house four Alien Artifacts each, meaning you can find 20 Alien Aritfacts in total this week, and that's before you stumble upon the bonus Alien Aritfacts tucked away in Cosmic Chests, which randomly spawn each week when you play in teams of two or more. You'll find the Week 7 Alien Artifacts at the following locations:Inside a command center atop the Stealthy Stronghold wall, left of the southside doorsOn the bottom floor of the northernmost building at Dinky Dish west of Steamy StacksHanging in the air at Gorgeous Gorge, below where the boats are suspended from the ceilingInside the eastside building in Camp Cod (where Jules spawned during Season 6)In the bathroom at Dampy Dish, southwest of Slurpy SwampWhere to find Fortnite Week 7 Alien ArtifactsWith Alien Artifacts, you can unlock new cosmetics for Kymera. The Tier 1 Battle Pass alien character can be customized across a variety of features, including armor color, skin color, armor underglow, eye color, head shape, and more. Each category of Kymera's features includes a tiered list of options ranging from two to 17 Alien Artifacts per item, including a full set of free options which act as the default Kymera style. To unlock the most expensive item in any category, you'll need to first unlock all the others before it in the same category.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Actor Victoria Cartagena will be joining Season 3 of Batwoman, according to Deadline. Cartagena will take on the recurring role of Renee Montoya, the former Gotham City police officer, which she previously played in the Fox series Gotham.Deadline describes Batwoman's version of the character as someone who "left the force when she could no longer stomach the corruption inside the department." Montoya is still trying to work within the system, running the "'freaks division,' which hasn't seen a lot of action… until now. Righteous and pragmatic, and LGBTQ+, she's a woman with a very personal (and mysterious) mission to help clean the streets of Gotham in the right way, by whatever means necessary."It was also recently announced that Riverdale's Robin Givens is set to appear in Batwoman as Jada Jet, a new character created for the DC show. According to a previously released character synopsis, Jet is "a woman who has worked her way through life's ups and downs to climb her way to the top--all while being extremely protective over her impetuous son. A woman with a deep past that forced her to give up her first-born child, Jada is a woman with a good heart, but will do whatever it takes to protect her family."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com