Matrix Games is pleased to announce that Afghanistan ’11 will hit your screens on March 23rd.

Afghanistan ’11 builds upon the very successful Vietnam ’65 and brings its original formula to the desolate mountains of Afghanistan, where the US armed forces, assisted by the local Afghan National Army, fought for years against an invisible enemy.

Afghanistan ’11 isn’t your standard wargame: if you want to win it won’t just be about eliminating the enemy on the battlefield, but you will need to conquer the Hearts & Minds of the locals by ensuring safety to villages, isolating and eliminating Taliban units, training the Afghan army and building and protecting infrastructure.

Logistics and organization will be extremely important as the Taliban and tribal militias will attempt to thwart your efforts with sneaky ambushes and sudden strikes – the enemy plays hide and seek and could be everywhere and only the most skilled strategist will manage to win the war in Afghanistan and help build a modern nation.

Afghanistan ’11 brings back the extremely successful formula of Vietnam ’65 and expands on it. The gameplay is now richer than ever! Extend your supply lines with a whole new modular FOB system. It will be the player’s duty to fight the war on drug production – destroy opium crops and deprive the Taliban of their economic sustenance. Oversee dynamic national elections which could affect your whole strategy! React to many unique political events which will add further unpredictability to your game! And much more.

Watch the introductory trailer here.

Visit the Afghanistan ’11 official product page here.

Last but not least, the Steam page is also now live!

Paradox’s Medieval Strategy Classic Still Going Strong Half a Decade Later

On Valentine’s Day 2012, Paradox Development Studio and Paradox Interactive released Crusader Kings II, a game about Medieval conquest, intrigue, diplomacy, and faith. Over the last five years, Paradox has updated, supported and expanded Crusader Kings II and it continues to challenge the development team’s imagination. Over the last five years, the game has sold over a million copies, not counting the many hundreds of thousands of sales for the many expansions and cosmetic DLC.

Crusader Kings II launched Paradox Development Studio into a new era of popular success, demonstrating that broad and complex games about serious subjects could find a large audience. For half a decade, the game’s community has shared stories of world conquest, daring Crusades, accidental empires and soul-compromising sins.

Let’s be honest; there has been a lot of murder.

To mark this milestone, Paradox will dedicate much of 2017 to celebrating Crusader Kings II and its community. The first step in this year of modern medieval pageantry is to give away a free portrait pack to everyone that owns Crusader Kings II. This South Indian portrait pack will add more color and personality for those who fight for control of the great subcontinent. The pack is available here.

And then tomorrow the celebrations continue with a celebratory video from LongGameShort. His humorous animated videos are firm favorites of the Dev team and the community, so it seemed only right to involve him in our celebrations!

LongGameShort will help in the celebrations with a video release on the 15th of February

Paradox is very grateful for everyone that has embraced Crusader Kings and hopes that you will join us through the year as we pay homage to the lord and master of role-playing grand strategy games.

Those who have not delved into the plotting and intrigue of Crusader Kings II can even pick it up with up to a 75% discount at the Paradox store here!

Source: PC Gamer

NVIDIA today released a new Game Ready driver package containing performance tweaks and optimizations for three games: Sniper Elite 4, For Honor, and Halo Wars 2.

The new driver, version 378.66, is WHQL certified and not a beta release. It’s a relatively minor update in that it doesn’t introduce any SLI profiles that weren’t already included in prior 378 drivers, though it did add 3D compatibility mode profiles for Sniper Elite 4 and For Honor, both listed as “excellent.” You can grab the release notes here.

You can download the new GeForce 378.66 WHQL drivers from GeForce Experience and GeForce.com.

Source: Guru3D

You can now download Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.2.1. This new driver adds support for For Honor and Sniper Elite 4 as well as offering a number of fixes. Check out the release notes here.

Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition is AMD’s advanced graphics software for enabling high-performance gaming and engaging VR experiences. Create, capture, and share your remarkable moments. Effortlessly boost performance and efficiency. Experience Radeon Software with industry-leading user satisfaction, rigorously-tested stability, comprehensive certification, and more.

You can download the Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Drivers version 17.2.1 here.

Source: EVGA

Featuring a total of 11 global patents (pending and granted), iCX from EVGA is efficiency perfected. With 9 additional sensors embedded on the PCB, a newly designed diecast baseplate and backplate, purposefully directed airflow chambers, and full control using EVGA Precision XOC, EVGA’s iCX is the very definition of Interactive Cooling.

With PC gaming growing, it is important to provide “Peace of Mind Gaming” to the user. With EVGA’s new iCX technology, users can have a better understanding of their cards operation. This includes temperature monitoring on key components (not just GPU), interaction with other devices and better cooling with asynchronous fan control providing better overclocking capabilities.

Watch a video to find out more about EVGA iCX Technology here. EVGA is also offering an ACX 3.0 to iCX Upgrade program. You can find out how to upgrade here.

F

Source: TechPowerUp!

Benchmarks have leaked on AMD’s upcoming Ryzen CPUs, and if accurate, these are the ones that will change the name of the game from “Hype Train” to “Reality Check”. Part of a verified Passmark entry, the test system consisted of an AMD Ryzen 8-core, 16-thread ES clocked at 3.4 GHz (which puts it closely on the Ryzen 7 1700X territory, though it isn’t known whether Turbo to its rated 3.8 GHz was active or not), seated on an entry-level MSI A320 AM4 motherboard (absent of overclocking functionality) and 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4 memory.

The tests include integer math, floating point performance, prime numbers, encryption, compression, sorting, SSE performance and physics. The AMD Ryzen 7 1700X outperformed every other CPU in 5 out of the 8 tests, including Intel’s fastest 8-core chip, the $1099 Broadwell-E i7 6900K. When put side by side against Intel’s slightly less expensive $999 8 core extreme edition Haswell-E i7 5960X, Ryzen was faster in 6 out of the 8 tests. The 1700X showed particularly good performance in integer math and encryption, workloads typically associated with server workloads (and where the bulk of the profit is).

Read on…

1943. Outnumbered and deep behind enemy lines, an elite specialist hunts a Nazi Officer through the streets of Southern Italy.

There’s a time to be stealthy and a time to be lethal. A time to go low and a time to go high. A time to strike and a time to move … TIMING IS EVERYTHING!

Sniper Elite 4‘s launch trailer shows agent Karl Fairburne use all of his cunning, adaptability and ruthless precision, just as players can when Sniper Elite 4 launches on February 14th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC!

Season Pass Detailed

Rebellion today also revealed that the Sniper Elite 4 Season Pass will give players access to ALL 12 of the game’s post-launch content packs, including 4 full campaign missions for 1-2 players!

The Season Pass includes the following:

ALL PRE-ORDER BONUS CONTENT

• Target: Führer campaign mission – Infiltrate a secret Mediterranean U-boat facility and use wits and creativity to take out the target in over 30 ways.
• Camouflage Rifle Skin Pack – Blend into the lush environments of wartime Italy with highly detailed skins for all seven of the game’s starting rifles, for use in any mode.

THREE HUGE NEW CAMPAIGN MISSIONS
• A completely new three-chapter campaign, separate from the main storyline, which features massive, diverse new environments that eventually lead Karl out of Italy for a thrilling finale.

THREE CONTENT-STUFFED EXPANSION PACKS
• Each expansion pack will be released alongside a campaign mission, and they’ll each include 3 new weapons, 8 new weapon skins and 2 new characters.

WEAPON AND CHARACTER PACKS
• Three further weapon packs – including silenced weapons, famous wartime Allied rifles, and equipment for taking on foes at close quarters…
• Three new characters for use in both co-op and multiplayer.

As previously announced, all new multiplayer maps and modes released after launch will be FREE for the whole community.

The Sniper Elite 4 Season Pass will be priced $34.99 / €34.99 / £29.99 and will be available at launch.

For more game info head to the Sniper Elite 4 website.

Today we have decided to take a more in-depth look at the next DLC in the Order of Battle series: Kriegsmarine.

Why the Kriegsmarine?

Well, mostly three reasons.

First, the upcoming Skirmish Mode has several naval maps available. By giving Germany an extensive roster of naval units, the nation can be also used on these types of maps.

Second, we haven’t had meaningful naval combat in any campaign since the release of the original Pacific War content. The Kriegsmarine DLC allows us to revisit this aspect of the game and gives us the opportunity to tweak and add gameplay mechanics to make naval warfare even more exciting.

Third… very few strategy games cover the Kriegsmarine in an extensive way. While its historical role was fairly small in comparison to the air and land battles waged by Germany, it none the less allows us to add a lot of exciting new units, scenarios and features to the game. It is an incredibly fascinating subject, and we felt it’d make for a unique and original DLC.

Read on…

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• MSI Announces New ARCTIC Range of ATX and mATX Z270 and B250 Motherboards
• SilverStone Intros the FG Series RGB LED Fan Mounts
• Lian Li PC-O11 Dual-Chambered Case Available
• EVGA Intros its iCX Technology Suite – 9 Sensors on the Card
• Jonsbo Announces Four New Cases, New RGB Fan Sets
• Intel i7 8th Generation to be >15% Faster than 7th Generation
• EK Waterblocks Releases RGB Monoblock for GIGABYTE Z270X Motherboards
• US Prices of AMD Ryzen Processors Surface
• AMD Confirms it Won’t Ship Ryzen Drivers for Windows 7
• NEC Announces MultiSync EX341R Curved Ultrawide QHD Display
• CORSAIR ONE PC Announced
• Intel Core i7-7740K and i5-7640K Codenamed “Kaby Lake-X,” 112W TDP, No IGP
• New Rosewill RK-9300 Gaming Keyboard Won’t Give Users the Blues

By Joseph Conner @ WWII Magazine

John Huston entered the U.S. Army in 1942 with distinctive credentials. In the previous two years, he had directed three hit films, including The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart, which garnered an Academy Award nomination for Huston’s adapted screenplay. The army put his cinematic talents to good use. Major Huston filmed two ambitious documentaries for the Army Signal Corps in the next three years—one on army life in the Aleutian Islands, the other about the fighting near San Pietro, Italy.

Now, he had a new assignment. As the war in Europe wound down and American forces approached the Japanese home islands, the army wanted to document the medical treatment of battle fatigue casualties evacuated back to the United States. Because the condition—an acute nervous reaction to the stresses of combat—had received little publicity during the war, the army feared that those affected would be “misunderstood, mistreated, and looked upon with suspicion” when they were discharged into the civilian workforce. It wanted to reassure the public, especially employers, that those former servicemen were not dangerous and could function as well as the next man.

Read on…