Cyberpunk 2077 Free DLC Includes Johnny Silverhand Photo Mode, Guns, And More

Cyberpunk 2077 won’t just have a free and significant upgrade waiting for players next time they update the game, but a number of free DLC will be made available via automatic game updates.

As part of Update 1.5 that was revealed in CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 stream, the free DLC includes new cars to drive, new clothes to wear, and more. Here’s a breakdown of what will be available inside the game soon.

V’s New Apartments

Available after starting Act 2, V can move into a cozy netrunner pad in Northside or call a swanky penthouse in Corpo Plaza their new home. Custom apartment makeovers will also be available, in case you need a change of scenery.

Budget Arms Guillotine SMG

Purchasable at Wilson’s Bangin’ Sale or found on the streets, this compact SMG packs plenty of stopping power.

Change V’s Appearance

Head to the mirror at your safehouse, and you can try out a new range of Night City cosmetic changes on V.

Johnny Silverhand Photo Mode

Finally, a chance to take a few candid snaps of the most breathtaking rebel in Night City. Simply open up Photo mode while playing as Johnny, and you can start snapping away.

Muzzle Brakes

Found at Wilson’s Bangin’ Sale or on the streets, muzzle brakes reduce weapon recoil and add more precision to your arsenal when they’re equipped.

Darra Polytechnic Umbra

Purchasable at at Wilson’s Bangin’ Sale or scavenged from enemies on the street, this weapon is designed to be an inexpensive and reliable option for getting jobs done quickly and cheaply.

Weapon Scopes

New weapon scopes from Arasaka, Tsunami, and Kang Tao will help you take aim at enemies. As usual, these can be acquired from Wilson’s Bangin’ Sale or on the streets.

Alternative appearance for Johnny Silverhand

Shorter hair, more stylish clothes, and the same rebellious attitude from the digital ghost.

V’s New Jackets

A multi-layered syn-leather jacket and a more luminescent punk jacket can be acquired from V’s stash in their hideout.

Archer Quartz Bandit

Lastly, you can explore Night City in a brand new set of high-performance wheels, once you’ve completed the Ghost Town job.

To see what else you can expect for the game, you can check out our guide on how to upgrade Cyberpunk 2077 on PS5 and transfer your save, more details on the free trial that’s available, and all the technical upgrades from the latest patch.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Free Trial Out Now On PlayStation 5 And Xbox Series X|S

As part of CD Projekt’s major news briefing about Cyberpunk 2077 today, the company announced and launched a free trial for the role-playing game to give players a taste of what’s new in the massive 1.5 update. The free trial is available across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S right now. It lets you play for up to five hours, and the trial itself is available for 30 days.

CD Projekt also confirmed that all progress from the trial will carry forward should you decide to pick up the game. During a livestream, a developer joked that some people will find a way to beat Cyberpunk 2077 within the five-hour limit, but that’s not representative of how most will play.

Cyberpunk 2077 is marked down to $30 right now on Xbox and $25 on PlayStation, so anyone keen to pick up the game can do so at a nicely discounted rate.

The free trial will let players check out what’s in the 1.5 update, and there is a lot. The 1.5 update updates and adds to the perk tree, introduces the ability to change your character’s appearance whenever you want, makes driving feel better, and changes AI so they act more realistically. This is just a small sampling of the changes–read up on what else is new in GameSpot’s coverage.

Cyberpunk 2077 originally launched in December 2020. It had a shaky launch, and CD Projekt has since spent time updating and improving the game, culminating in this massive 1.5 patch and related improvements for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, which includes ray-tracing and 4K graphics.

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Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Launch Trailer Gives A Peek At Savathun’s Past

Bungie released the launch trailer for Destiny 2: The Witch Queen just a few hours before Season of the Lost’s last weekly reset, as players near the end along with Year 4 of Destiny 2.

The launch trailer starts with Savathun referring to something or someone as an old friend and that she has chased them for a long time. The trailer is filled with clues and vague statements giving perspective to The Witch Queen but leaving some things up to players to discover when they play the upcoming expansion.

This trailer reintroduces clips from Bungie’s ViDoc along with a peek at Ikora’s understanding of Savathun. Another part of the trailer gave a glimpse of Savathun holding her worm on the Isle of the Dead-inspired island, looking off into the distance while the Traveler stands above her. This same rocky island is in Savathun’s Throne World trailer and the short cutscene showing the Worm Gods in the ViDoc. Clearly, this island holds importance to the story.

Other snippets shown include Zavala in his office with the Vanguard, with a worm sitting on the desk in front of them. Next, the Vanguard is on Mars in awe of Savathun’s ship revealing itself. After a few clips of gameplay inside her Throne World, the trailer ends with a bang–a first look at the upcoming raid where a Fireteam of six guardians stood ready to enter the Pyramid ship that will serve as the location of the raid that launches on March 5.

Throughout the Season of the Lost, Bungie was secretly building a bridge in the Astral Alignment activity, which may have something to do with the season finale. The upcoming Season of the Risen will launch with The Witch Queen expansion on February 22.

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Fortnite Update: 19.30 Patch Notes Detail Motion Controls On New Platforms

Fortnite is in motion with the 19.30 patch notes–literally. With the new update, players on new platforms can use motion controls previously seen only on Switch and Android platforms. Gyroscopic aiming and “flick stick” controls, created by input specialist Julian “Jibb” Smart, are now playable for the first time on PS4, PS5, and PC and improved on Switch and Android. Here’s more on those new accessibility features and everything else in the 19.30 patch.

Fortnite 19.30 patch notes

The optional motion controls can be found in Fortnite’s “Touch and Motion” page in the options menu. With these features enabled, players turn the controller to adjust the camera on their screen–think of it like lining up a bow shot in Breath of the Wild. The flick stick was made by Smart when he proposed to Epic that he could make Fortnite’s motion controls better. Epic liked the idea, and so here it is. All platforms previously with motion control options have received these updates as well.

With the flick stick controls enabled, gyroscopic motion controls can be supplemented with a flick of the right stick that works to quickly reset the camera in a way that is meant to give players a best-of-both-worlds element to their controller scheme–the precision of gyro controls with the snappy flick stick. You can learn more about how these controls work from the creator himself.

In addition to the new accessibility features, Epic has also removed the traditional landing page from Fortnite. No longer will players have to select Save The World, battle royale, or creative mode when they enter the game. Thanks to the improved discovery page that debuted last year, Epic is now comfortable throwing players right into the lobby, and from there, players can load into any game mode of their choice while defaulting to their most recently played mode.

Bug fixes

The 19.30 patch also fixes a few things in-game. Here’s the full list:

Fixed an issue involving some players only having two Tent slots available, as opposed to the intended three.Fixed an issue on mobile involving build pieces not being placed after players double-tapped the associated icon.Fixed an issue–occurring in competitive playlists only–involving Spider-Man’s Web-Shooters dropping from eliminated players with the full 20 uses even if they didn’t have the full 20 before the player was eliminated.

It’s sure to be another busy week in Fortnite thanks to the upcoming Fortnite Uncharted skins.

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Elden Ring PC Requirements Revealed

If you’re planning to venture into the realm of the Lands Between in Elden Ring on PC, you’re going to need more than just a sharp sword and durable armor. Publisher Bandai Namco has released the official minimum and recommended PC specs for the game, so you can see if your rig is tarnished enough to handle the open-world sandbox developed by From Software.

Elden Ring Minimum PC Requirements

PC specifications for #ELDENRING. pic.twitter.com/qdmBFlMuit

— ELDEN RING (@ELDENRING) February 15, 2022

Operating System — Windows 10Processor — Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 3 3300XMemory — 12GB RAMGraphics — Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, 3GB or AMD Radeon RX 580, 4GBDirectX — DirectX 12 (Feature Level 12.0)Storage — 60GBSound Card — Windows compatible audio device

Elden Ring Recommended PC Requirements

Operating System — Windows 10 / 11Processor — Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600XMemory — 16GB RAMGraphics — Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, 8GB or AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, 8GBDirectX — DirectX 12 (Feature Level 12.0)Storage — 60GBSound Card — Windows compatible audio device

The requirements listed above aren’t too taxing, and if you’re using an Nvidia GPU, you can also make certain that Elden Ring is optimized on launch day with the latest game-ready drivers available for that hardware.

In more Elden Ring news, you can check out 13 things that you probably don’t know about the game, game director Hidetaka Miyazaki teasing Dark Souls Easter eggs, and how Elden Ring’s difficulty has been designed to work within a sandbox experience.

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Intel to Acquire Tower Semiconductor for $5.4B To Expand IFS Capabilities

Continuing their recent spending spree in expanding their foundry capabilities, Intel this morning has announced that it has struck a deal to acquire specialty foundry Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion. If approved by shareholders and regulatory authorities, the deal would result in Intel significantly expanding its own contract foundry capabilities, acquiring not only Tower’s various fabs and specialty production lines, but also the company’s experience in operating contract foundries over the long run.

The proposed deal marks the latest venture from Intel that is designed to bolster Intel Foundry Services’ (IFS) production capabilities. In the last month and a half alone, Intel has announced plans to build a $20B fab complex in Ohio that will, in part, be used to fab chips for IFS, as well as a $1B fund to support companies building new and critical technologies for the overall foundry ecosystem. The Tower Semiconductor acquisition, in turn, is yet another piece of the puzzle for IFS, fleshing out Intel’s foundry capabilities for more exotic products.

As a specialty foundry, the Israel-based Tower Semiconductor is best known for its analog offerings, as well as its other specialized process lines. Among the chip types produced by Tower are MEMS, RF CMOS, BiCMOS, CMOS image sensors, silicon–germanium transistors, and power management chips. Essentially, Tower makes most of the exotic chip types that logic-focused Intel does not – so much so that Intel has been a Tower customer long before today’s deal was announced. All of which is why Intel wants the firm and its capabilities: to boost IFS’s ability to make chips for customers who aren’t after a straight ASIC processor.

The proposed acquisition would also see Intel pick up ownership of/access to the 8 foundry facilities that Tower uses. This includes the Tower-owned 150mm and 200mm fabs in Israel and two 200mm fabs in the US. Meanwhile Tower also has majority ownership in two 200mm fabs and a 300mm fab in Japan, and a future 300mm facility in Italy that will be shared with ST Microelectronics. As is typical for analog and other specialty processes where density is not a critical factor (if not a detriment), all of these fabs are based around mature process nodes, ranging from 1000nm down to 65nm, which sits in stark contrast to Intel’s leading-edge logic fabs.

Along with Tower’s manufacturing technology, the proposed deal would also see Intel pick up Tower’s expertise in the contract foundry business, which is something the historically insular Intel lacks. On top of their fab services, Tower also offers its customers electronic design automation and design services using a range of IP, all of which will be folded into IFS’s expanded offerings as part of the deal. Consequently, although the company has already brought on executives and other personnel with contract fab experience in past hirings, this would be the single largest talent transaction for IFS.

All told, Intel currently expects the deal to take around 12 months to close, with the company paying $5.4 billion in cash from its balance sheet for Tower Semiconductor shares. Though approved by both the Intel and Tower Semiconductor boards, Tower’s stockholders will still need to approve the deal. Intel will also need regulatory approval from multiple governments in order to close the deal, to which the company isn’t expecting much objection to given the complementary nature of the two companies’ foundry offerings. Still, as the last week alone has proven, regulatory approval for multi-billion dollar acquisitions is not always guaranteed.

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Mario Kart 8’s New DLC Courses Will Be Available To Play, Even If You Don’t Own Them–Here’s How

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is adding a whopping 48 courses as paid DLC by the end of 2023, and it turns out you don’t need to pay to play them, though buying them outright still sounds like the ideal way to go about it.

The Mario Kart 8 website (via Eurogamer) confirms that courses from Wave 1 of the Booster Course Pass, which releases on March 18, will be playable for anyone, whether or not they bought the pass. Starting March 18, the eight new courses will be playable locally or online in Friends and Rivals races, even if only one player owns the courses. Then starting March 22, Wave 1 courses will appear in random Mario Kart 8 online matches for anyone, whether or not the player owns them.

This might be a way for Nintendo to give players a taste of the new courses and encourage them to buy them outright to play offline or whenever they want.

As announced during the Nintendo Direct this month, eight courses will be released across six waves, for a total of 48 courses. The first eight are coming March 18, and those confirmed so far include Mario Kart Wii, Choco Mountain for Mario Kart 64, and Tokyo Blur from Mario Kart Tour.

The Booster Course Pass costs $25 on its own. It’s also included with the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass at no extra cost. Individual waves of courses cannot be purchased alone.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the Switch’s best-selling game of all time, with more than 43 million units sold, so it makes sense that Nintendo wants to keep the party going like this with additional DLC.

In other news, a commentator at the Olympics recently compared a bobsled track to Rainbow Road.

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Upcoming Star Wars Arena Shooter Announces New Characters And Maps

Ahead of its release later this year, arena shooter Star Wars: Hunters has announced two new characters and two new maps. The game is due to launch as a free-to-play title on Nintendo Switch and mobile, with support for synchronous cross-play between platforms.

The new Hunters include Skora, a Rodian cartel doctor whose kit allows her to heal allies and deal damage to her foes. The second new hunter is a cute-looking Mon Calamari called Sprocket, a tech genius commanding an arsenal of droids with both offensive and defensive capabilities. Both the new characters are supports, with the game’s simplified class system split between damage dealers, supports, and tanks.

The newly announced content also includes a new game mode, Huttball, which is returning from Star Wars: The Old Republic. Hunters will reinvent the game for its arena-style gameplay, though developer Jeff Hickman has said that Hunters’ take on Huttball still should feel familiar to fans of the original.

The new maps being added to Star Wars: Hunters include Dusty Ridge, which has been designed for Huttball games, and a new Escort map called The Great Hunt. In this map, players will be tasked with escorting a massive harpoon through the Tatooine desert.

Hunters is a 4×4 arena-style game set after the fall of the Galactic Empire, with its characters coming from the Rebellion and the former Empire, as well as the denizens of the universe’s expansive underworld.

The game is currently in soft launch on Android and iOS in certain regions, including India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico. For players outside these regions, the game doesn’t currently have an official release date, but promises to be available on both mobile and Nintendo Switch “later this year.”

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The Fortnite Champion Series Is Back For Chapter 3 Season 1

Fortnite‘s competitive events for the year will kick off this week with the Chapter 3, Season 1 Fortnite Championship Series (FNCS). The new season will once again mix up the format of Epic’s big esports event, with a shared prize pool of over $3,000,000 on offer for the champions.

In a change from last year’s Trios format, all FNCS events for 2022 will instead run Duos as the primary competitive game mode. This change to the format means more teams will be able to qualify directly for the finals from one of two qualifiers, with the top eight teams from each session going straight to the finals.

This year’s competitive season will also shake up the way both semis and finals work. The semis will put more focus on competitors achieving a Victory Royale, which is described as a “pinnacle Fortnite achievement.” Players who make it to the semis will either have to win a game or be one of the six most consistent teams in order to advance to the finals. A total of 50 teams will compete in the finals: 16 directly from the qualifiers, 11 from the first session of semis, 11 from the second session, and 12 from the final semi-final session.

The finals also have some format changes, with a new variable called Match Point. Under this new rule, a team will be able to bring home an automatic win by earning “500 total points and 3 Victory Royales,” even if all scheduled games are not completed. If no one triggers this by the end of 12 games, the finals will proceed as they have in previous seasons.

Running over two weeks, the Season 1 FNCS will begin on February 17, and include two Qualifiers, a Semi-Final run across three sessions, and the Finals running across two days. Here’s the schedule for the FNCS, which will be streamed live on Fortnite’s Twitch channel. Starting with this season, the event will also be broadcast live within the game from Legends Landing.

Qualifier 1: February 18Qualifier 2: February 20Semi-Finals: February 25-27 Session 1: 5 Matches; 2.5 Hours; 1st – 50th on the Series Points LeaderboardSession 2: 5 Matches; 2.5 Hours; 1st – 61st on the Series Points LeaderboardSession 3: 6 Matches; 3 Hours; 1st – 72nd on the Series Points LeaderboardFinals: March 5-6

Each day of play will run to the same broadcast schedule, as follows:

Show Begins:12:50 PM ET9:50 PM PT6:50 PM CETEU Live Coverage:1:00 PM ET10:00 AM PT7:00 PM CET (10 PM CET on February 18 only)Break:4:20 PM ET1:20 PM PT10:20 PM CETNAE Live Coverage:4:50 PM ET (9 PM ET on February 18 only)1:50 PM PTBreak:8:20 PM ET5:20 PM PTNAW Live Coverage:9:15 PM ET6:15 PM PT (9 PM PT on February 18 only)Broadcast Ends:12:20 AM ET10:30 PM PT

Chapter 3, Season 1 will have players competing for a share in a prize pool worth $3,000,000, with the winnings shared out between seven regions.

Fortnite players who aren’t quite at pro level will also be able to get a taste of the action with the FNCS Community Cup on February 28, which involves competing in 10 matches over three hours. While top teams in the Community Cup don’t get to compete for a cash prize, they’ll be able to unlock the FNCS 3:1 Champion Outfit and Winner’s Mark Back Bling for peak bragging rights.

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NBA Star Accused Of Cheating At Wordle

Considering how popular Wordle is at the moment, it can be tempting to cheat a little when it comes to posting your results to social media with the game’s trademark emoji grid. NBA star Karl-Anthony Towns has been accused of doing just that, after eagle-eyed fans noticed that something in his daily Wordle post didn’t add up.

Wordle 237 3/6
🟩⬜⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟨⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Morning 🌎! How ya do today???

— Karl-Anthony Towns (@KarlTowns) February 11, 2022

The Timberwolves player posted a cheery morning Wordle result showing a successful answer in just three tries–on a word that many players struggled with. In the replies, fans soon pointed out that, with the Wordle 237 answer being “ULCER,” Towns’ second guess just didn’t fit, as no existing word contains the combination “UC_ER.”

After accusations of cheating flooded Towns’ replies, the NBA player soon had to post a follow-up proving that he was playing the game as intended, including a video of the actual guesses he used–usually a big no-no for Wordle fans, but required in this case to clear his name.

I see the problem hereeeee…..My Wordle shows this as 237 so the word “ulcer” I never got but Lmaoooo if ya mad at my results, than you ain’t gonna be happy about @CallMe_NonStop score 👀 pic.twitter.com/CYu0zEBaUT

— Karl-Anthony Towns (@KarlTowns) February 11, 2022

As you can see from the follow-up tweet, the grid is referring not to Wordle 237 “ULCER” but the previous day’s solution, “PAUSE.” For whatever reason, the game marked it with the wrong number when Towns posted his results to social media. In the replies, some users claimed that this can happen if players begin the daily Wordle before midnight, but finish it after the reset has already ticked over.

Not only did the NBA star clear himself of cheating accusations by posting the video, he also showed off some impressive stats. The record displayed at the end showed that Towns has so far guessed six of his nine completed Wordles by the third guess, with one win on the second guess. It looks like basketball isn’t the only thing Karl-Anthony Townsis a pro at.

Looking to up your own game? Check out our best suggestions for opening words to help you get ahead.

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