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Initial release date: January 19, 2018 Engine: MT Framework Developer: Capcom Composer: Akihiko Narita Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows Awards: The Game Award for Best Role Playing Game With 2016's Monster Hunter Stories for the 3DS, Capcom transformed its real-time monster hunting series into something dramatically different: a colorful turn-based monster-collecting RPG. Despite the stark change in tone and gameplay, Stories offered a new perspective on the Monster Hunter universe, making it an enjoyable alternative to the mainline series. Its follow-up, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin, very much follows the template that the original 3DS game set, and despite some repetitive elements, it's another solid spin-off for the franchise. Like its predecessor, Monster Hunter Stories 2 trades monster slaying for monster collecting. Rather than casting you in the role of a hunter, the game puts you in the boots of a fledgling rider--someone who is able to form bonds with monsters and fight alongside them. While you'll still need to hunt down plenty of monsters during your journey, you'll spend most of your time exploring dens and collecting new "monstie" companions that you can raise and take into battle. This makes Monster Hunter Stories 2 fundamentally closer to Pokemon than to a traditional Monster Hunter title, but the game plays out much differently than Nintendo's monster-catching series. Foremost is the way you collect monsters. Rather than taming wild ones, you obtain new monsties by entering monster dens and gathering their eggs. These crop up randomly each time you set out into the overworld and primarily come in two varieties: standard dens, and golden "rare" dens that typically contain better eggs. Regardless of their type, the dens themselves are all fairly rudimentary in terms of their layouts; beyond some occasional branching pathways (which usually just lead to optional treasures), there are no real environmental puzzles to solve, so they're not particularly compelling to explore on their own. Despite this, the allure of discovering new kinds of eggs never grows old and makes trekking through dens ultimately worthwhile, especially as you progress through the story and begin encountering cooler monsters. In addition to regular monster dens, each major area in the game also features a handful of larger dungeons called Everdens. These are much more labyrinthine than standard dens and house some unique treasures such as rare eggs and Bottle Caps, which can be exchanged for special items and upgrades like increased storage space for your monsties. These upgrades make Bottle Caps among the most valuable commodities in the game, but they're not as satisfying to find. Like regular dens, Everdens don't offer much variety, so they end up feeling samey and aren't particularly enjoyable to navigate. Moreover, thanks to their winding pathways, you'll often hit multiple dead ends before you eventually locate the monster nest, which ultimately makes Everdens more of a chore to explore than regular dens. After you've obtained an egg, you can take it back to the stables and hatch a new monstie. Depending on the egg's rarity and weight, the monstie you obtain will boast different genes, which determines what skills and attacks it will be able to use during battle. These genes are crucial if you hope to get the most out of your monstie, and they become a sort of mini-game unto themselves. If you align three genes of the same color, you'll achieve a bingo bonus, which will power up your monstie even further. You can also pass genes between monsties through a process called the Rite of Channeling. This offers a pleasing amount of flexibility in how you customize your monstie's skills, and it feels rewarding to tinker around and devise new combinations. Your monsties primarily come in use in battle. Unlike the mainline series, encounters in Monster Hunter Stories 2 are turn-based. While there are elemental weaknesses and advantages to consider, battles primarily revolve around three different types of attacks: power, speed, and technical. Each type has an advantage over another: speed bests power, power beats technical, and technical overcomes speed. The crux of battles, then, becomes figuring out which type of attack the enemy monster will use and swapping in the right monstie to counter it. It's a simple yet satisfying system, and the game keeps it fresh by frequently introducing new kinds of monsters with different attack patterns to battle. The weapons you use also play a crucial role in combat. Weapons similarly fall into three varieties: slash, pierce, and blunt. This opens an additional layer of strategy. Different parts of a monster are susceptible to a particular type of weapon, so you'll need to swap out weapons frequently during the course of the battle and target specific parts to deal the most damage. Attack a part enough times, and you will eventually break it, causing the monster to drop a material and topple over. While a monster is prone on the ground, each attack you land will deal critical damage, and you can even halt some monsters from unleashing their strongest attacks by breaking a specific part of their body. These wrinkles make battles feel consistently enjoyable, and the game boasts some nice quality-of-life features, such as the ability to fast-forward animations and even end battles against lower-level foes immediately to mitigate the grind. Beyond their in-battle abilities, each monstie can also perform a certain action while you ride them out in the field, which will help you reach some otherwise inaccessible areas; the Yian-Kut-Ku, for instance, can smash rocks that are blocking the path, while the Tigrex can clamber up ivy-covered walls. However, these riding actions are disappointingly underutilized during the main adventure. Rather than opening up new pathways to explore, these skills are typically used to reach out-of-the-way treasure chests, whose contents are often underwhelming. As a result, the field skills feel largely unnecessary and don't really add anything to the experience. The weakest element in Monster Hunter Stories 2, however, is ironically its story. While the narrative is certainly more involved than a traditional Monster Hunter game, it largely stays within JRPG tropes and is fairly predictable as a result. The story also skews toward a younger audience, as evidenced by Navirou, your cartoonish, wise-cracking Felyne companion. Since your avatar never speaks, Navirou takes up most of the dialogue in your stead, and he frequently straddles the line between cute and annoying. That said, the story does broach some themes that the mainline series never explores, such as the seemingly incompatible worldviews of hunters and riders, and it's filled with humorous and touching moments. Overall, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin is an enjoyable Monster Hunter spin-off and an all-around solid JRPG, particularly if you enjoy games like Pokemon. While the title retains some of the series' hallmark elements, its emphasis on monster collecting and its fun turn-based battle system make it a decidedly different experience than Monster Hunter Rise, one that even those who've struggled to get into the proper Monster Hunter series can enjoy. System Requirements : MINIMUM : Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: WINDOWS® 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-bit required) Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4460, 3.20GHz or AMD FX™-6300 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 or AMD Radeon™ R7 260x (VRAM 2GB) DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 20 GB available space Sound Card: DirectSound (DirectX® 9.0c) Additional Notes: 1080p/30fps when graphics settings are set to "Low" Recommended : Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: WINDOWS® 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-bit required) Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 3770 3.4GHz or Intel® Core™ i3 8350 4GHz or AMD Ryzen™ 5 1500X Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 (VRAM 3GB) or AMD Radeon™ RX 570X (VRAM 4GB) DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 20 GB available space Sound Card: DirectSound (DirectX® 9.0c or better) Additional Notes: 1080p/30fps when graphics settings are set to "High"

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PUBG Mobile Version 1.5 Adds New Clan Clash, Revised Battle Pass, And Working Teslas PUBG Mobile's 1.5 update is launching today, bringing with it a huge map overhaul, a new Royale Pass system, and a partnership with the electric car company Tesla. With the update you can start an assembly line to claim a Tesla Model Y (in the game) and then drive it around the newly revised Erangel map. The Erangel map received among the biggest changes in this update, with shifts to its six main districts to center around a fictional company called Dynahex as part of the new Mission Ignition content. In the new Erangel, you can use new transportation and material search methods, and explore new buildings and interactive elements scattered throughout the map. HyperLines let you move between fixed points to connect the city, while dynamic moving parts like air conveyors and automatic doors allow differetnt types of travel. You can also ride an anti-gravity motorcycle, pick up a riot shield, or use a tactical marking device to find injured enemies or teammates in combat. Meanwhile, Tesla has built up Gigafactories across Erangel where you can start an assembly line to spawn a Model Y. A Tesla Semi will also spawn randomly throughout the map. The Model Y even uses Tesla's much-touted self-driving autopilot mode.

Cryptomining Bust Recovers 500 Graphics Cards, 3,800 PS4 Consoles The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) on Thursday reported that Ukrainian law enforcement has pulled the plug on a clandestine cryptocurrency mining farm in the city of Vinnytsia. The perpetrators had set up camp in an old warehouse and stealthily tapped into the city's power grid to mine cryptocurrency. The Ukrainian authorities reportedly seized up to 5,000 pieces of hardware, including over 500 graphics cards, 50 processors and 3,800 PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles, all of which are in short supply in the U.S. and beyond, as well as other tidbits. It's not surprising to see processors and graphics cards discovered, since they are required to power mining rigs. The PS4 consoles, however, seem to be out of place. Mining With PS4? The photographs showed an endless list of racks with PS4s that are apparently connected to the internet. While we've seen pictures of alleged PS4 mining setups before, there has never been any concrete evidence that you can actually mine cryptocurrency on a gaming console. Although, after seeing a DIY project with a Game Boy mining Bitcoin, anything is possible. And the fact that the Ukrainian miners had so many PS4s does suggest that they may have found a way to mine with them. There's a base level of compute performance associated with Ethereum mining. However, the bar is so low that the majority of graphics cards end up with more compute performance so memory bandwidth has a more prominent role. The PS4 features 8GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 5.5 Gbps. Across the 256-bit memory interface, the PS4 delivers a memory bandwidth up to 176 GBps. The Pro variant, on the other hand, has memory running at 6.8 Gbps, offering up to 217.6 GBps. For comparison, the Radeon RX 580, which is one of the best mining GPUs, has a memory throughput of 256 GBps. Hypothetically, the PS4 Pro could potentially come close to a Radeon RX 580 in Ethereum mining. Even if it is possible to mine with a gaming console, using a graphics card or ASIC would still be more efficient. Then again, the Ukrainian miners had put up bogus electricity meters and were stealing electricity, so efficiency probably wasn't on their agenda.

Continental strengthens software expertise with new development center in China “With this step, we are programming our organization for increased growth in China as the world’s largest automotive market. The key to success there is local value creation, which we are constantly increasing. Roughly one in ten Continental employees currently works in China, and they will be joined by a low triple-digit number of software and IT experts at our new development center by the end of 2021,” said Continental CEO Nikolai Setzer about the company’s latest strategic move. He added: “We are at the forefront when it comes to software, employing around 20,000 software and IT specialists worldwide and operating our own software academy. With the addition of Chongqing, we are further consolidating our global network of development centers and gaining even more expertise.” Without software, functions in modern vehicle concepts are unable to interact Vehicles of the future are intelligent and smart in that their components, systems and programs communicate with each other – constantly, quickly and securely. To do so, they must have a high degree of connectivity and automation, which is increasingly being made possible by versatile software applications. According to forecasts by a renowned consulting firm, global automotive software sales will multiply from $20 billion in 2019 to $50 billion in 2030 and China will be the largest market, accounting for around 34 percent of electronics and software revenue.

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Minecraft Gets A 19+ Age Restriction In South Korea While Minecraft is generally considered a great child-friendly game, a law in South Korea has resulted in the game being blocked off to all players under the age of 19. The ban isn't anything to do with any of Minecraft's content, but the fact that an Xbox Live account is needed to play the game. As reported by gamesindustry.biz, Microsoft recently informed South Korean players that they would need an Xbox Live account to continue playing Minecraft, with accounts only able to be made for people over the age of 19. The age restriction is due to a controversial South Korean "shutdown law," which prohibits children from playing games between midnight and 6am. The law has been in place since 2011. While some game providers have implemented technical solutions to prevent minors from playing their games between these hours, Microsoft instead chose to restrict all Xbox Live accounts for people under the age of 19. Until now, users have been able to sidestep that restriction by logging into Minecraft with a Mojang account instead. As explained by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, the law was controversial even before the Minecraft news, and there are movements dedicated to having it removed or amended. Critics of the long-running curfew have questioned how effective the law actually is, with many workarounds available.

Intel's Skylake Visionary Returns to Lead Client Chip Development Intel announced that it is bringing back another one of its famed chip architects, 28-year veteran Shlomit Weiss, as CEO Pat Gelsinger continues to rebuild the company's engineering roster. Weiss will lead all of Intel's consumer chip development and design. Weiss returns to Intel after a four-year stint as Mellanox/Nvidia's Senior VP of Silicon Engineering, where she ran the company's networking chip design group, a team of more than 1,000. Still, her achievements during her prior service at Intel are just as impressive. During her tenure at Intel, Weiss received Intel's Achievement Award, the company's highest award, for her work developing the company's dual-core architecture. She was then entrusted with leading the team that developed Intel's famed Sandy Bridge and Skylake processors. Intel's Skylake is perhaps one of the company's most famous chip architectures simply because the company shipped multiple iterations of the same design for six long years as it dealt with the fallout of its 10nm delays. Perhaps a testament to the potency of the design, Skylake played a big role in helping Intel survive an incredibly long delay between process nodes — the architecture spanned from Intel's sixth-gen to tenth-gen Core processors and multiple generations of server chips. Intel has ceded roughly 10% of its overall market share to AMD (~8% for server, ~10% for desktop/laptop) during that time frame, but that's surprisingly limited damage given the severity of the company's delays. Weiss rejoins Intel as the Senior VP and Co-General Manager of the company's Design Engineering Group (DEG) and will be responsible for all of the company's client chip development and design processes. It appears that Weiss will assume the same role previously held by Uri Frank, who recently left Intel to lead Google's SoC development. Weiss will work with Sunil Shenoy, another long-term Intel veteran that recently rejoined the company. Shenoy will co-manage the Design Engineering Group with Weiss in Isreal. We aren't clear on the division of responsibilities yet (he will likely lead the data center design initiatives), but we're following up with Intel for more details. Both will also work with famed chip architect Glenn Hinton, who also recently returned to Intel.

Ransomware hackers demand $70m after attack on US software firm Kaseya Between 800 and 1,500 businesses around the world have been affected by a ransomware attack centered on the US information technology firm Kaseya, its chief executive said on Monday. Fred Voccola, the Florida-based company’s chief executive, said in an interview that it was hard to estimate the precise impact of Friday’s attack because those hit were mainly customers of Kaseya’s customers. Kaseya is a company which provides software tools to IT outsourcing shops: companies that typically handle back-office work for companies too small or modestly resourced to have their own tech departments. Sign up to TechScape, Alex Hern's weekly tech newsletter, starting 14 July One of those tools was subverted on Friday, allowing the hackers to paralyze hundreds of businesses on all five continents. Although most of those affected have been small concerns – like dentists’ offices or accountants – the disruption has been felt more keenly in Sweden, where hundreds of supermarkets had to close because their cash registers were inoperative, or New Zealand, where schools and kindergartens were knocked offline. The hackers who claimed responsibility for the breach have demanded $70m to restore all the affected businesses’ data, although they have indicated a willingness to temper their demands in private conversations with a cybersecurity expert and with Reuters. “We are always ready to negotiate,” a representative of the hackers told Reuters earlier on Monday. The representative, who spoke via a chat interface on the hackers’ website, didn’t provide their name. Voccola refused to say whether he was ready to take the hackers up on the offer. “I can’t comment yes, no, or maybe,” he said when asked whether his company would talk to or pay the hackers. “No comment on anything to do with negotiating with terrorists in any way.” The topic of ransom payments has become increasingly fraught as ransomware attacks become increasingly disruptive – and lucrative. Voccola said he had spoken to officials at the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security about the breach but declined to say what they had told him about paying or negotiating. On Sunday the White House said it was checking to see whether there was any “national risk” posed by ransomware outbreak but Voccola said that – so far – he was not aware of any nationally important organizations being hit. “We’re not looking at massive critical infrastructure,” he said. “That’s not our business. We’re not running AT&T’s network or Verizon’s 911 system. Nothing like that.” Because Voccola’s firm was in the process of fixing a vulnerability in the software that was exploited by the hackers when the ransomware attack was executed, some information security professionals have speculated that the hackers might have been monitoring his company’s communications from the inside. Voccola said neither he nor the investigators his company had brought in had seen any sign of that. “We don’t believe that they were in our network,” he said. He added that the details of the breach would be made public “once it’s ‘safe’ and OK to do that”. Some experts believe the full fallout from the hack will come into focus on Tuesday, when Americans return from their Fourth of July holiday weekend. Beyond the United States, the most notable disruption occurred in Sweden – where hundreds of Coop supermarkets had to shut their doors because their cash registers were inoperative – and in New Zealand, where 11 schools and several kindergartens were affected. In their conversation with Reuters, the hackers’ representative described the disruption in New Zealand as an “accident”. But they expressed no such regret about the disruption in Sweden. The supermarkets’ closure was “nothing more than a business”, the representative said.

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