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HTC is nearly nearly ready to release its next VR headset, the Vive Cosmos, which launches globally on October 3. In the meantime, it is accepting preorders. The Vive Cosmos costs $699 and comes with a set of controllers. HTC is also tossing in a 12-month Viveport Infinity subscription as a preorder bonus. This grants unlimited access to over 600 games and apps. It normally runs $12.99 per month, or $8.99 per month if paying for an annual sub. So, it's a value of $107 and change. HTC is switching things up a bit with the Vive Cosmos. It uses inside-out tracking, meaning the cameras (six of them) are built into the headset, negating the need to set up base stations in your living room or other VR space. The headset also sports a flip-up visor so users can jump in and out of VR without removing the headset. One of the unique aspects of the Vive Cosmos is its modular faceplate design. This paves the way for added functionality by way of attachments. To start with, HTC's first official accessory will be an external tracking mod. Even though the Vive Cosmos uses inside-out tracking, this mod allows it to be used with existing Lighthouse base stations. "Since Vive began our VR journey, we’ve continued to refine and improve on what a premium VR experience can and should be," said Daniel O’Brien, GM, Americas, HTC Vive. "Cosmos offers an unmatched experience and is also our most versatile headset yet—with inside-out tracking, options in the future for different faceplates, unlimited content in the box, and the new user interface, we see limitless possibilities for XR customers." The Vive Cosmos has an LCD display with a combined 2880x1700 resolution (1440x1700 per eye). That's higher than both the Rift S (1280x1440 per eye) and the new Valve Index (1440x1600 per eye), and represents an 88 percent increase over the original Vive. HTC also confirmed the Vive Cosmos offers a 90Hz refresh rate, which is higher than the Rift S (80Hz) but lower than the Valve Index (120Hz). The company had previously hinted at refresh rate, saying the Vive Cosmos allows users to experience VR at 90 fps.

OPPO participated in the recently held Google I/O 2019, Google’s annual developer conference, where the leading smartphone company showcased its strong capabilities in both Android development and 5G technology. During the event, held at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, Google announced that OPPO would be joining its Android Q Beta program as one of the OEMs to introduce testing of the next version of Android. The forthcoming version of Android, Android Q, became available as Beta earlier this year. As an early adopter of the operating system, OPPO featured its newest smartphone ‘Reno’ in an Android Q Beta demo at I/O, offering software developers in attendance the opportunity to experience and test the device. During the conference, Google also announced that Android Q Beta would be available on OPPO Reno smartphones starting from May 8th. Andy Shi, President of OPPO MEA, said: “OPPO places great emphasis on perfecting users’ experiences through the integration of hardware and software. We are glad to have Google as an integral and long-standing member of our ecosystem of partners as we deliver extraordinary experiences through innovative OPPO technology.” Reno’s inclusion among the first batch of smartphones to offer Android Q Beta for testing underscores OPPO’s strong capability in software R&D and its ability to take the lead in responding to the latest technology developments. OPPO will continue to update its Android-based ColorOS system with the latest versions of Android to provide the best possible experiences for users. As one of the world’s first smartphone manufacturers to bring 5G to market, OPPO also showcased its leadership in 5G technologies at the Android Sandbox area at Google I/O. At the Sandbox, attendees were able to demo the new Reno 5G phone and view a video feature on OPPO’s vision for the 5G era. “We call the 5G era ‘an era of intelligent connectivity’. Based on the advantages of 5G connectivity, OPPO has pushed forward into cloud storage, cloud gaming, cloud image & video processing and other services. We will provide smarter and more convenient services to our users,” Henry Tang, Director of Standards Research Center, OPPO Research Institute Having officially hit the market in Switzerland earlier this month, OPPO’s Reno 5G was the first commercial 5G smartphone to go on sale in Europe. OPPO will roll out Reno 5G to additional markets worldwide over the coming months.

it is not just big chunky ones that are unstoppable – we’ve tested a new Jeep Wrangler and Mercedes G-Class and will soon be in a Land Rover Defender later this year – but these days there’s about an evens chance that your family car is one, too. But it goes on. There are already performance passenger SUVs and now this: the pick-up made into a sports car, the Ford Ranger Raptor. In the US, Ford has sold an F-150 truck with Raptor badging for a while. It has an oversized, overpowered engine and is ‘how to really tick off the fun police’, according to the advertisements. Like RS or ST, though, the Raptor range is broadening, under the Ford Performance umbrella, so that it encompasses the smaller – by pick-up standards – Ranger for the first time. Between the F-150 and Ranger, there are common Raptor themes – chunky bodywork extensions, equally bulbous BF Goodrich boots and huge chassis modifications, which we’ll explore more later. But whereas the US-spec F-150 Raptor gives top billing to its engine, a 3.5-litre Ecoboost V6 making 450bhp and 510lb ft of torque, the Ranger – whose biggest markets are Europe and Australia but will make its US debut soon – has a more restrained powertrain, a 2.0-litre diesel, albeit a new unit with two turbochargers. The mix of heady engineering exercises in some directions but not others is typical of the schismatic nature of the Raptor: it’s a Ford Performance vehicle but its 0-60mph time is more than 10sec; and pick-ups are po[CENSORED]r because of a payload that makes them commercial vehicles, yet the Raptor’s payload is so reduced that it’s no longer VAT reclaimable. They’re oddities that the Raptor will need to convince us don’t matter. Does it have what it takes? The Ford Ranger line-up at a glance Considering the high asking price, it’s surprising the Raptor doesn’t get the biggest engine in the range. That engine is the old 3.2-litre Duratorq diesel found in the high-spec Wildtrak Ranger. Meanwhile, the entry-level Ranger – the XL Regular Cab – gets a single-turbo 128bhp version of the Raptor’s twin-turbo diesel. Transmission choices are limited to a six-speed manual or the 10-speed automatic found in the Raptor. Price £47,874 Power 210bhp Torque 367lb ft 0-60mph 10.5sec 30-70mph in fourth na Fuel economy 24.4mpg CO2 emissions 233g/km 70-0mph 57.7m

Tunisia's deposed leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been hospitalised for "a health crisis" in Saudi Arabia, where he has lived in exile since the revolution of 2011, according to media reports. The former president's lawyer Mouni Ben Salha told Mosaique radio on Thursday that Ben Ali's daughter called him to say the 83-year-old is "very sick" after years of treatment for prostate cancer, the Associated Press news agency reported. The lawyer said Ben Ali is in a hospital in Jeddah. Ben Salha told Reuters news agency on Thursday that the former ruler was suffering from a "health crisis". The lawyer's announcement came as Tunisia prepares to hold a free presidential election on Sunday as it continues on the path of democratisation which began after mass protests drove Ben Ali from power in 2011, triggering the Arab Spring uprisings. It is Tunisia's second democratic presidential election since the 2011 uprising over corruption, unemployment and repression. It is the first time that Ben Ali's lawyer or family have gone public with news about the 83-year-old's health. Election Sunday's vote has been brought forward after the death in July of late President Beji Caid Essebsi, a former foreign minister under Ben Ali who then helped Tunisia steer through its transition to democracy after the revolution. In 2011, a Tunisian court sentenced Ben Ali in absentia to 35 years in prison on charges ranging from corruption to torture, and in 2012 a military court sentenced him to another 20 years for inciting "murder and looting". Ben Ali brooked no dissent or challenges to his authority during his 23-year rule but was eventually forced from power when Tunisians rose up in outrage following the self-immolation of a vegetable seller whose cart had been confiscated by police. He flew to Saudi Arabia in 2011 after weeks of mass demonstrations, seeking refuge in a state that prized stability in a region, and which later worked to counter uprisings in Bahrain and Egypt. Given Tunisia's economic troubles since Ben Ali's removal, some have called for his return. But he remains detested by others.

Borderlands 3 is The Family Circus by way of Spencer's Gifts, a game with long, earnest quests about how darn good coffee is punctuated by gore and gun violence. Borderlands 3 walks by dog poop, points at it, and laughs, and then sets it on fire. Borderlands 3 stays up until 11:30 pm drinking soda and googling crass Flash animations, taking detailed notes. It's stuck in the late '00s, when surface level vulgarity was enough to qualify as edgy—Borderlands 3 is seriously obsessed with turds—and when the series was first conceived. It's stuck in a time when memes lasted months rather than days, when referential humor was still a novelty and not exhausting, when you could point at something the slightest bit abnormal or gross and call it a joke. Simpler times, not necessarily better times. Our distance from the era Borderlands 3 evokes makes it feel like a retro shooter rather than alive and present in modern humor and pop culture. It's simultaneously repulsive and compulsive, an FPS RPG that excels when its weapon generation system spits out guns that feels great to shoot, adorned with broken attributes capable of turning hordes of goons, bugs, and soldiers into clouds of red mist, elemental particles, explosions, and big damage numbers. Then it tells one of its many long, bad jokes and the cloud dissipates. I have horrific whiplash. With Borderlands 3, a few things have changed, but to little effect. It's still a Diablo-like masquerading as a shooter, now with new traversal moves, gorgeous gun models, and improved weapon feedback. But Gearbox has done little to build on the Borderlands formula, while chucking the pitch perfect writing of Tales from the Borderlands in the bin. It's the best and the worst of the series at once. Skagological Tales from the Borderlands proved that the Borderlands universe could balance goofy slapstick comedy with great character work, gracefully swaying between fourth-wall breaking gags about videogame clichés and heartfelt drama. It irreversibly changed what I expect from the series. But Borderlands 3 opts for a best-of approach, something like a sitcom clip show. The new space travel setup takes the player on a tour of the galaxy in search of yet more vaults, each stop an excuse to roll out an old character only for them to disappear or fade into the background as soon as they say hello, shoot some folks, and crack a few one-liners in sidequests that do little to reveal anything about them or test them in any way. Most don't change or press on the main narrative in vital ways, functioning as conduits for strained laughs or the rare serious moment, but rarely both. Some even disappear for good, with little ceremony or reflection. It's as if I'm meant to come to Borderlands 3 with a preexisting deep affection for them all, and just seeing them should be enough to win my heart. The new big bads, the Calypso Twins, are murderous livestreamers whose motives and histories only become clear in the final act. Until then, they're just two cartoon villains who take up beef with the vault hunter, gunning to open the same vaults and collect the power within. There's not much more to them besides long, obnoxious monologues about how much I suck. Even as a parody of livestreamers, they offer no cultural commentary. They're just shitty, power hungry people who will do anything to rule the universe. Glimmers of heart are buried deep. I dug the cute relationship between Sir Hammerlock, a charming interplanetary big game hunter, and his new boyfriend on Eden-6, and the fiery spirit of a young, new adventurer studying under Maya, but there are few genuine jokes, dramatic beats, or interesting character moments in Borderlands 3. A few quests: I collect brown rock specimens (poop) for a guy obsessed with brown rock specimens (poop), Claptrap needs help building a 'friend' who is clearly a feminine robot for his creepy private purposes, I plant dynamite in a massive poop dam to save a farm, I help a guy open a burger joint while he yells about burgers a lot, I help a guy escape from a porta-potty for a poop-spewing rocket launcher—it's borderline unbearable. There's a quest-giver who does their best Tommy Wiseau impression and talks about making movies, which is the whole 20-minute long punchline—the joke is simply knowing who he is. Another makes fun of exploitative microtransactions and buggy early access games with a boring quest that forced me to either spend in-game cash for an easy skip or perform tedious tasks. It goes on for so long that I gladly would've paid real money to skip it. Like many Borderlands bits, it's a joke that could've been a two-minute gag extended to 10 times that. My favorite quests were the least chatty and most shooty, a rarity, as the bulk of Borderlands 3 reads like teenage lunch table improv circa Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Worse, there's no way to skip through the dialogue. Quests lurch into motion like an old car: listen to an NPC talk for 30 seconds, press a button as if twisting the ignition, more talking, more heaving of the engine, pick up an object, more talking, spit, putter, and now the objective location is revealed. And we're off. Worst, I ran into a handful of scripting bugs where bits of dialogue repeated endlessly and quests became impossible to complete without restarting the game. Seeing markers for multiple quests at the same time isn't possible either. The inventory system is largely unchanged. Borderlands 3 is a bundle of aged design and frustrating inefficiencies. Under the guns The new locations are a welcome change of scenery from the muted deserts of Pandora, though it's still home to the most zones and where I spent the most time throughout the campaign. Eden-6 is your typical swampy jungle, where fire-breathing dinos and club-wielding, shit-tossing jabbers chased me around swamps and through the treetops. Promethea is a slick corporate dystopia composed of uniformly branded architecture and neon lighting. A few surprise locations mix things up further, though most environments are still a few open areas with branching corridors. Borderlands' signature comic book style hasn't changed much, but it looks significantly sharper in 2019, with characters and sweeping vistas that communicate scale and personality clearer than ever. Each location has its own enemy types, but in practice there's not much difference between fighting a swarm of COV soldiers spawning in from all directions or a swarm of bandits spawning in from all directions. Borderlands 3 usually tests players with a mess of enemies in open, multi-tiered arenas, more of a war of attrition than a tactical puzzle. Besides a few tough bosses, the true challenge came from deciding whether to shelve a badass electro-pistol that basically functioned as a super shotgun or a fiery SMG that shot bullets in a heart-shaped pattern for a plain weapon with an elemental damage affinity better suited to a region's enemy type. Corrosive dissolves armor, electric damage melts shields, and fire burns flesh. Radiation damage makes enemies explode, which is always fun. I just tired of repeatedly killing my darlings (fun guns) for lesser darlings (boring guns which are technically better for the situation). Trying new weapons is part of Borderlands' appeal, but there can be huge droughts between the truly good ones until the endgame. I'm partial to the Tediore SMGs. Rather than reload them, you toss 'em out and a new one materializes in your hands. I had one that would sprout legs and fire a few rockets before exploding after being tossed. My favorite shotgun chains electric damage to all nearby enemies, deleting the room's shields and dissolving handfuls of weaker enemies at once. Jakobs sniper rifles are ornate, gilded works of art, less playful but extremely lethal. I found a legendary that, if I land a headshot, will ricochet and pop another guy's head in the room. The view-models are gorgeous too, ranging from chunky, volatile machinery to egg-shaped flawless future tech. Guns whir and spin up and little pieces kick around as they fire, some smoke, some sigh, and some whine like a VCR mid-rewind. I've yet to tire of watching loot rain down from defeated enemies, the signal light for something I haven't seen before. Wild gear is the reason to play Borderlands 3, and the guns, as expected, are its fervently beating heart. As expected, it's better with friends, though the extra enemies and explosions run counter to the shooting refinements. With so much visual noise against a mess of flat colors and thick lines, I often can't see what I'm pointing at, making well-aimed critical shots an act of faith rather than intent and skill. Enemies react better to getting shot and now we can crouch-slide and ground pound and the guns look and feel much more like actual machines instead of cardboard DPS dispensers—and yet, combat still devolves into the same rhythms as the previous games. Enemies are too dumb and erratic and spongy to force tactical play. The most reliable plan: jump around, throw all the grenades, lay down on the fire button, use my Action Skill the second it recharges, and take cover only when necessary. It's good lizard-brain fun. Borderlands 3's new vault hunters don't break much new ground either. While they each have three diverse skill trees and accompanying Action Skills perfect for squads looking to complement one another, there's nothing in the combat that requires close cooperation between classes as of yet, despite the inclusion of some context-sensitive ping tools. Calling out targets and pointing out loot locations is easy. Moze summons a mech for some ridiculous damage-dealing, Amara is a siren with ghostly arms great for crowd control and AOE attacks, while Zane can summon a drone, shield, or decoy for more technical play. I spent the most time as FL4K, a robot with a pet companion, a great option for solo players. My build turns the Skag into a nightmare. Wherever he spawns, a radioactive explosion. Wherever he walks, enemies trail as he tanks them in a cloud of poison. Goons explode like bloody pustules in his wake, limbs whirling around a singularity while I—wearing a horse head and an American flag skin—fire rockets and toss grenades into the mess. This is what I love about Borderlands. I found it, beneath the thick sediment of poop jokes. I do this for around 30 hours, and while the novelty wanes the inherently repetitive action is propped by an endless font of cool guns, grenades, class mods, artifacts, and shields, each with their own ridiculous attributes. If Destiny 2's guardians are architectural blueprints with structure and purpose, Borderlands 3's skill trees produce Jackson Pollock vault hunters, spatterings of light and sound, where disorder is the point. Once I finished the campaign, swept up the majority of side quests, and hit the level cap—something like 30 hours of play—when the NPCs quit talking and the focus returned to ruining hordes of enemies and finding more efficient weapons to do it with, I settled into a comfortable routine and remembered why I have hundreds of hours logged in Borderlands 2. The clouds of red mist and particle effects returned, the numbers grew, and so too did my heart. The endgame had arrived. Sadly, the endgame is pretty shallow at launch. It's all about accumulating better loot, but I'm a bit backed into a corner. Mayhem mode modifies enemy difficulty for better rewards with three levels to work through. Think of Diablo 3's difficulty levels: juice the challenge to earn better loot until it's no longer difficult, juice it yet again for better loot. I'd say ad infinitum, but there are only three Mayhem levels at launch. The alternative is True Vault Hunter Mode, which kicks off a new campaign with all your loot and abilities in tow. Good in theory, I just never want to play the campaign again. A few repeatable timed gauntlets and waved-based horde modes are my only alternative, so I'll just wait for the DLC and hope the writing is better. Between the bugs, the extended non-jokes, the self-aggrandizing jabs at game design trends, and a few cameos I won't spoil but that made me audibly groan, Borderlands 3 has a lot in common with Gearbox fan events as of late. There's a lot of loud, extended posturing while holding what everyone really came for hostage. It's a shame, because Tales from the Borderlands found a delicate balance of absurdity, self-awareness, and genuine heart. A better Borderlands is possible, it's just not Borderlands 3. PERFORMANCE Borderlands ran like a dream at 2560x1440 on my souped up PC, maintaining 90-plus fps with a few dips when loading in new areas and during particularly chaotic combat scenarios. We'll have a thorough performance analysis up soon. NEED TO KNOW What is it? A chatty looter shooter with a pure heart and weak humor. Expect to pay: $60 Developer: Gearbox Software Publisher: 2K Games Reviewed on: RTX 2080, i9-9900k, 32 GB RAM, SSD Multiplayer?: 4-player co-op Link: borderlands.com

I found myself thinking about Chinese Democracy a lot as I slogged through Fallout 76. Remember Chinese Democracy? It was that long-awaited Guns n' Roses album that many assumed would never actually release. Years after the heyday of GnR -- decades after Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II, and long after Slash, Duff, and Matt were gone -- Axl finally got his shit together and released Chinese Democracy. It sucked. Critics mostly panned it, and GnR fans disparaged it even harder. It was not a good album, but, more importantly, it wasn't what people who loved GnR wanted to hear or were used to hearing. An artist's current works will always be compared against the standard of their past works. That's an inescapable inevitability of the way we process quality. Fallout 76 is the Chinese Democracy of video games. It's subpar in most ways, but it'll forever carry the burden of being egregiously offensive to anyone who claimed to adore Fallout in the first place. Fallout fans will wistfully remember the old times, much like GnR fans, and wonder if another Fallout title will ever recapture those good memories -- because Bethesda has clearly forgotten what made those games special. At least Chinese Democracy never locked up your CD player, forcing you to turn your car off and on again before continuing down the road. Fallout 76 (PC, PS4, Xbox One ) Developer: Bethesda Game Studios Publisher: Bethesda Softworks Released: November 14, 2018 MSRP: $59.99 Fallout 76 is Bethesda's take on a multiplayer Fallout game. From a narrative perspective, we're here because we were residents of Vault 76, which is home to the best and brightest citizens who are tasked with revitalizing the Wasteland after the nukes drop. Fallout 76 never again really touches on this thematic premise. No part of this game concerns itself with starting life anew. That, ironically, is fitting because the West Virginia Wasteland is so desolate in terms of other players. The map is absolutely huge and the servers can only host 24 concurrent players per session. Even though you know other players are there, you rarely see them. It's lonely for solo wanderers. This renders a major concern to nothing more than a mostly moot point. Fallout 76 handles its PvP combat in an unnatural way. Players can just shoot at anyone, slowly chipping away their health. The only way to engage in a proper deathmatch is for the other person to return fire. People were worried this would lead to all sorts of griefing. Not the case at all. This implementation is such a pain in the ass that, in my experience, no one even bothers. Coupled with the fact that everyone is so spread out, there aren't even that many opportunities. I haven't been shot at since the beta. However, other players can make it tough sledding in an inadvertent way. Fallout 76 has a nasty habit of spawning high-level enemies if a high-level player is in your vicinity. So, you might be level 15 and just trucking along when you're ambushed by some level 60-something wolves or super mutants or surprisingly-nimble biped robots. Only a fool sees those fights through. They're usually death sentences. There are balance issues like this all throughout Fallout 76, but this highlights a broader frustration: It's tough as hell to survive in post-nuclear apocalypse West Virginia. Or, rather, it's tedious as hell. Fallout 76 is relatively light on its survival systems, really just requiring you stay fed, hydrated, and healed while also staving off any diseases you might contract. Because of this, it's necessary to lug around food, water, and meds -- enough of each to remedy any given situation. They take up valuable inventory space which is literally always at a premium. Guns and armor degrade and break, so you'll have to carry backup equipment. And, you need room for all the junk and scrapped supplies you acquire along the way. There are a couple net effects to the constant inventory restrictions. First, anyone without masochistic tendencies will immediately beeline toward a Strength build. It's not really viable to keep a low Strength stat. Second, you spend a lot of time in the inventory menu performing a mental triage of what's expendable and what's not. Fallout 76 keeps you over-encumbered so often that you'll find yourself dumping stuff on the floor just to get back under the weight limit. I finished a late-game quest that awarded a rare missile launcher. It put me 40 lbs. over my carrying capacity with no quick way to free up space. I immediately resented that missile launcher. This inventory juggling is at direct odds with the single most identifiable theme of Fallout 76, which is to take everything that isn't bolted down. Fallout 76 encourages nonstop pilfering in order to craft equipment and build a home. But there isn't enough space to effectively accomplish this. Each player has a permanent stash that can store 400 lbs. worth of items. (Bethesda is raising this limit to 600 lbs. on December 4.) It's not nearly enough. Everyone is brimming with stuff and nowhere to put it. It's dispiriting to play this game the way it funnels you toward playing, only to put yourself in the constantly uncomfortable position of needing to ditch things that seem valuable. Base building might be the most novel thing Fallout 76 has going for it. Each player has a portable camp they can theoretically transport anywhere on the map. Ambitious wastelanders can build themselves sprawling fortresses with multi-level homes, self-sustaining farmland, and a turret defense system. I never felt the need. Bethesda's building tools are too finicky and cumbersome to bother with. I built myself a humble little base with some crafting benches and a bed to sleep on. At some point, the servers lost that data and reset my camp as if I had never touched it at all. I was irked. I can't imagine how I'd have felt if I dumped actual time and resources into making a base I could be proud of. Rather than dwell on the new, I played Fallout 76 in the way that I play all Fallout games: Exploring every location I came across, meticulously scouring every last corner for supplies, and reading up on as much lore as I could find. There were perfect moments where the frustration melted away. There were times where Fallout 76 squeezed the endorphins out of my brain in a way that quelled all the mounting issues, at least temporarily. Fallout 76 can feel like Fallout at times and that's a delicious comfort food. It can't consistently deliver that feeling, though. The main narrative-driven quests spend far too much time ambling along without any real urgency. Things pick up maybe 80 percent of the way through the story. Most players who get that far won't be invested because they want to see the narrative through; they'll be invested because they already sunk this much time into it, so they might as well finish. Fallout 76 also has bizarre difficulty delivering interesting locations -- something the series has excelled at in the past. A lot of the places seem like sound ideas. There's the Charleston Capitol building, complete with politicians' offices and a DMV. There's a futuristic city that's run entirely by robots. There's a sprawling high-end hotel that houses its own shopping center. All of it promising and ripe for exploring. But there's rarely a payoff. Most of these places are strangely empty and devoid of most anything that truly qualifies as fascinating, at least by Fallout standards. There's exactly one location that held my interest for good, and it's at the very end of the story. Fallout 76 is so hellbent on making players build their own gear that it hardly ever rewards exploration with unique weapons or armor. You'll fight through swarms of enemies just to find some medical supplies and a bunch of junk. It comes at a real cost to the world building. Most disappointing, however, is that I never felt as though I left my mark on this world. Fallout 76 strips human NPCs out, instead opting to have all the other real-life players as the only signs that humanity persists. Every quest chases tragedy. Most objectives amount to nothing more than fulfilling a dead person's last wishes. This is why Fallout 76 fails as a role-playing game. Its design prevents anyone from carving their own path. There's no good or evil. There's no dialogue interactions to mani[CENSORED]te. There's no irredeemably messing up and living with the consequences. You're just a guy who can carry a lot of (but not enough!) stuff. Lastly -- yeah, there are technical issues. On Xbox One X, I experienced: crashes to the Xbox's home screen; crashes that required rebooting the console; server disconnects (at very inopportune times); significant, frequent, and debilitating frame drops/stutters; quests that tracked incorrectly leaving me perplexed as to the next objective; all sorts of things glitching through the environment; phantom bullets that somehow missed the target even though they definitely shouldn't have; and loud, random repeating gunshots following me everywhere until I left the server. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch; those are just off the very top of my head. There's no sugarcoating it: Fallout 76 comes up short at nearly everything it aims to be. It's not a good role-playing game and it's not a good multiplayer experience. It never really feeds into the gradual RPG power fantasy but it's also inadequate as a survival simulator. In wanting to be so much, Fallout 76 doesn't amount to much at all.

Need for speed payback is one of the best games that EA's company make with the next generation of the need for speed with an amazing racing and amazing new cars. Game Story Tyler "Ty" Morgan (Jack Derges), Sean "Mac" McAlister (David Ajala), and Jessica "Jess" Miller (Jessica Madsen) are part of a crew in Silver Rock, Fortune Valley along with their friend and mechanic Ravindra "Rav" Chaudhry (Ramon Tikaram). After a friendly race between them, Tyler's childhood acquaintance and fixer Lina Navarro (Dominique Tipper) arrives, with a job for them: steal a precious Koenigsegg Regera belonging to Marcus "The Gambler" Weir with some high level tech inside. Tyler, posing as a test driver, successfully steals the car and evades the police. However, as he arrives at the drop point, he finds Rav knocked out. Lina appears, revealing that she set up Tyler and his crew to take the fall for the stolen car and she drives away, leaving them at the mercy of the oncoming police force. Tyler leads the cops away from his crew and runs into The Gambler, who demands his car back. On learning that Lina betrayed both of them, Weir is angry and decides to leave Tyler to be arrested, but changes his mind and asks him to come with him so that he can be protected from being arrested. Six months later, Tyler is working as a valet for Weir. As he delivers his car to his casino, Tyler spots Lina threatening Weir to hand over the casino to The House, a cartel who controls Fortune Valley's underworld. Tyler considers going after her, but Weir advises him to bide his time. Frustrated at the lack of progress, he decides to take matters into his own hands. Contacting The House as a racer, he enters a race and wins it, despite Lina having rigged the race for profit. Lina tries to have him taken out, but fails. Weir proposes Tyler a way to take down The House and Lina along with it. Tyler is to enter and win "The Outlaw's Rush", a massive street racing event that has the nation's top racers participating, which The House plans to rig for their own ends. Tyler refuses at first, but when his house is blown up by Lina as a warning, he decides to accept Weir's offer and get his crew back together. Since the failed mission, Mac has hit rock bottom, and has agreed to teach Internet celebrity "HashTiger" how to drift. Rav has decided to go legitimate as a mechanic, and Jess, on her own since the job, now operates as a getaway driver for the Silver Rock criminal underground. However, they agree to meet and hear out Tyler plan for taking down The House. In order to get into The Outlaw's Rush, Tyler and Mac must take down the street leagues in Fortune Valley to be accepted into the race. Meanwhile, Jess does several escorts and courier deliveries inside The House for a woman only known as The Broker. Tyler takes on and wins against La Catrina and her league, Graveyard Shift, while Mac challenges and wins against Udo Roth and his League 73. Afterwards, they get a chance to perform a heist, reclaiming Weir's Koenigsegg and delivering it back to him. Tyler and Mac then challenge two leagues, Big Sister and her league Riot Club, and Shift Lock led by The Underground Soldier. Jess finds out that Lina is paying off cops and racers alike to do her bidding whenever required, and learns that she and the crew are on the police and The House's watchlist. She also finds out that they are planning to bring something into the city called Skyhammer, and it would be operational soon. Later, Tyler is contacted by La Catrina for a rematch, but on reaching there, he finds Mac and Jess there too, who have been called there on different pretexts. Realizing they have been set up by Navarro, the three are pursued by the police. During the chase, Skyhammer is revealed to be an EMP killswitch placed on the pursuit helicopter which, when activated, is capable of slowing down a car or immobilizing it if focused on for long periods. The three manage to take down the helicopter and escape the cops. Exiled once again by The House, Tyler and Mac continue their quest to gain allies against The House by taking on three more leagues: The Silver Six, led by Tyler's childhood friend "Gallo" Rivera, Noise Bomb, led by Aki Kimura (originally from Need for Speed: ProStreet), and Free Ember Militia, led by Faith Jones. Jess, now inside The House, continues her intel gathering on The House's operations for The Broker. She learns of two gold plated cars fitted with illegal tech that The Collector, the head of The House, is putting on display, and plans to steal them with Tyler and Mac. However, Navarro and The Collector have anticipated this and plant bombs on the cars. With the police in hot pursuit, Mac, Tyler and Rav transport the cars out of town using a semi truck. After smashing through several roadblocks, Tyler and Rav manage to detach the bombs and throw them at the pursuing police cars, ensuring their escape. Jess, going back undercover, learns more about the House's activities with the help of Underground Soldier, who goes under when his cover is blown. Nevertheless, Jess manages to get the data to The Broker, where she learns The Collector is just a pawn and of something called Arkwright. Meanwhile, Tyler and Mac race against the final three leagues: Mitko Vasilev's Diamond Block, Holtzman's Hazard Company and Natalia "SuperNova" Nova's One Percent Club, all of whom are on The House's payroll. After winning, Tyler and his crew learn they have successfully made it into The Outlaw's Rush. Knowing that Navarro would do anything to ensure that they don't win, Rav outfits the cars with countermeasures that prevent them from being hit by the killswitches, which have been set up on several police cars as well. Tyler decides to run both the street and the off-road races. During the street leg, Navarro sends the league bosses under her payroll to stop him, but they all fail. During the off-road leg, Navarro resorts to sending the cops after Tyler ler, but all the crews he and Mac have gained as allies intervene by creating multiple distractions across Fortune Valley, to draw away the cops, as well as take down the units chasing Tyler . Left with no option, Navarro decides to race against Tyler herself. During the race, The Collector calls and offers Tyler to replace Navarro as his lieutenant by convincing him to lose the race, but he refuses. Tyler eventually wins The Outlaw's Rush for Silver Rock, while Navarro is left at the mercy of The Collector's thugs for her failure. The game ends with the crew deciding to race each other home. In a post-credits scene, Mr. Kobashi, a customer whom Jess had driven, calls Weir and tells him his gamble worked, and that The Collector is finished. He welcomes Weir to the aforementioned Arkwright and Weir hangs up, satisfied. Development In January 2016, Ghost Games began development on the next Need for Speed game to be released in 2017 Electronic Arts later confirmed in their January 2017 earnings call that the next game in the franchise was in development and set to be launched during EA's fiscal year 2018 (Comprising from April 2017 to March 2018). Game Idea Need for Speed Payback received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Luke Reilly of IGN praised Electronic Arts for repairing the problems of the game's predecessor, Need for Speed, but criticized its "scripted" story, lack of police chases during free roam, scripted police chases, loot box-like mechanisms during customization, poor car handling, unrealistic car damage and several other issues. PC World criticized the game for being full of microtransactions, the severely limited customizability of cars, gameplay mechanics, a lack of cockpit view and several more issues, even going so far as to compare it harshly to the Forza Horizon series. According to The NPD Group, Payback was the eighth best-selling title in the United States for the month of November 2017. Soundtrack The soundtrack features songs by A$AP Ferg, Action Bronson, Barns Courtney, Gorillaz, Jacob Banks, Jaden Smith, Nothing but Thieves, Queens of the Stone Age, Rae Sremmurd, Royal Blood, Run the Jewels, Skepta, Spoon, Post Malone and X Ambassadors. Payback also features DJ Shadow and Nas song "Systematic", which was created for the Mike Judge television series Silicon Valley. Minimum Requirements: OS: 64-bit Windows 7 or later CPU: Intel i3 6300 @ 3.8GHz or AMD FX 8150 @ 3.6GHz with 4 hardware threads RAM: 6GB DISC DRIVE: DVD ROM drive required for installation only HARD DRIVE: 30GB VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 750 Ti or AMD Radeon™ HD 7850 or equivalent DX11 compatible GPU with 2GB of memory DirectX: 11 Compatible video card or equivalent INPUT: Dual analog controller CONNECTION REQUIREMENTS: 192 KBPS or faster Internet connection Recommended Requirements: OS: 64-bit Windows 10 or later CPU: Intel i5 4690K @ 3.5GHz or AMD FX 8350 @ 4.0GHz with 4 hardware threads RAM: 8GB DISC DRIVE: DVD ROM drive required for installation only HARD DRIVE: 30GB VIDEO: AMD Radeon™ RX 480 4GB, NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 1060 6GB or equivalent DX11 compatible GPU with 4GB of memory DirectX: 11 Compatible video card or equivalent INPUT: Dual analog controller CONNECTION REQUIREMENTS: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection

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