Leading Military Charity Partners with Brooke Army Medical Center to Provide Wounded Veterans Entertainment and Occupational Therapy through Video Games

Military charity Operation Supply Drop (OSD) – the world’s most generationally relevant support organization for veterans and active duty military – is proud to announce that on November 18, 2015, it delivered its most impactful video game care package (“Supply Drop”) to date, benefiting the approximately 800 patients treated annually by the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR) Burn Center, located at Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio, TX, the United State’s largest and busiest military hospital.

In partnership with USAISR Burn Center and through generous support from video game developers, publishers, hardware manufacturers, and both private and institutional donors, OSD was able to offer stress-reducing entertainment and support occupational therapy efforts for patients at BAMC. The military hospital provides care for more than 4,000 patients each day and comprises five separate clinics: Fort Sam Houston Primary Care Clinic, McWethy Troop Medical Clinic, Taylor Burk Clinic, the Schertz Medical Home, and the Corpus Christi Occupational Health Clinic. In addition to being the nation’s largest military hospital, BAMC is a Level-I military trauma center and provides industry-leading burn injury treatment to military and civilians.

“There’s no limit to the potential use of games as a therapeutic tool,” said Major Erik Johnson, Chief of Occupational Therapy for the Burn Center at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research. “You can use the current generation of video game consoles, such as the XBox with Kinect motion sensor, for a wide range of supplemental treatments. These include improving range of motion in the upper extremities and balance enhancement activities, even with patients who have suffered a brain injury. Perhaps the biggest benefit I’ve observed, however, is that when we engage patients in this type of therapy it significantly boosts their emotional state. And anything we can do to provide them positive emotional feedback is a huge deal for us.”

For more information about this great charity, please visit www.operationsupplydrop.org.

Battlestate Games, a Russian game development studio, has revealed the first gameplay video of Escape from Tarkov, the hardcore online shooter with RPG features.

Two private military companies, USEC and BEAR, clashed in conflict on the streets of a Russian city, forcing the local civilian population to flee. However, anarchy and lawlessness stroke a chord with some people, who are now called Savages around these parts. They flock into packs and fight for territories and resources on par with professional soldiers.

Shots and screams are incessant sounds hanging in the air, and tossed grenades are referred to as a “present”. Harsh reality is abound in the game – one hit, and your character may be killed right away or bleed to death.

Follow the news and sign up for beta at the official Escape from Tarkov website.

22 June 1941. The German-Soviet border. The signal to unleash Operation Barbarossa has been given!

Strong Panzer groups break through the Red Army lines. Ambitious generals like Guderian and Hoth push their mechanized forces to their limits.

Initial resistance by a confused and surprised Red Army seems weak… and the Soviets take massive casualties.

But soon the realities of war on the Eastern Front will become clear.

Play as the Germans and experience the chain of command from the inside. Fend off the demands of your superiors and corral your strong-headed subordinates into working together as a coordinated team. Politics and people and are just as important as the sweeping advances conducted by your Panzer Divisions.

Take the side of the Russians and be prepared to ruthlessly execute a ferocious defense. Overcome the (largely self-inflicted) limitations of the Red Army. Make the required sacrifices and ensure that examples are made of those who fail to rise to the occasion. While General Mud may save Moscow you’re there to see that back-to-the-wall fortitude and tenacity carries the day. You’ll shoot anyone who says otherwise!

Whether you assume command of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) or the entire Red Army… you will discover the Eastern Front as you have never seen it before!

View the launch trailer here.

Grab Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa now!

Developer Diary 10 explores the game’s soundscape

Hundreds of carefully crafted sounds constitute the vast and varied audio of World of Warships. The latest installment of Developer Diaries invites players behind the scenes to discover how the soundtrack for World of Warships was created in the St. Petersburg studio.

This massive undertaking began when the game was still in development. From every shell fired, ship damaged, and wave broken, the team has worked diligently to create a cinema-grade soundscape that narrates a player’s battlefield journey.

Explore the most difficult and exciting aspects of sound design for World of Warships: getting the deafening salvos and angry reports of gunfire just right, forming a ship’s “sound passport”—consisting of dozens of unique clips—and recreating a tangible atmosphere of naval combat. Learn how the audio design adjusts and adapts depending on where the player is in relation to their surroundings and changes when going from first-person to third-person to create a real sense of warfare.

Follow the Audio Team in their quest to build the musical score that engages the player and ratchets up the tension during key moments of battle.

For the latest game information, visit the official World of Warships website.

Shrapnel Games has announced their annual Holiday Sale has launched and runs through December 15th. Included in this years sale are Sherman Tanks, wooden ships, modern choppers (the helicopter kind) and space bunnies. Just check out the complete list of games and sale prices to decide what titles need to be under your Christmas Tree this year.

Be sure to stop by Shrapnel Games for complete information on any of the games on sale, or to download demos. To purchase any of our titles visit our e-store, the Gamers Front, to take advantage of this special sale.

The Age of Charlemagne Campaign Pack is an epic expansion for Total War: Attila; set in the Middle Ages, long after Attila’s reign has ended and as one of the greatest kings in history endeavours to bring peace to the continent… by whatever means necessary.

In the largest Total War: Attila expansion to date, a brand new campaign map resplendent in medieval-style artwork focusses on Europe from the year 768AD. With the introduction of Knights, Housecarls and other new era units, battlefield conflict takes an iconic turn. With over 50 conquerable provinces and new campaign mechanics, a detailed and vibrant geopolitical starting position will offer hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Opportunity presents itself in tying together vast new kingdoms; powerful new states that can be marshalled under a banner of civilisation drawn from ashes. Greatness awaits you, if you have the steel and vision of Charlemagne.

Watch the new Total War: Attila - Age of Charlemagne video here.

Total War: Attila - Age of Charlemagne is out on 10th December and is available to pre-order today from 6pm GMT via Steam.

For more information on Total War: Attila - Age of Charlemagne visit the Total War Wiki.

The final video in the Just Cause 3 Developer Diary series takes a look at the technology behind the game: the Avalanche Engine. Talking about the combination of mechanics the engine allows for, procedural destruction models and enemy AI behaviors, the final video is a fantastic insight into how the Avalanche Studios team has brought Just Cause 3 to life.

Square Enix and Avalanche Studios are excited to broadcast the first hour of gameplay from Just Cause 3. With a game world as vast, varied and as open as Medici – with its 400 square miles of beautiful beaches, towering mountain peaks and Mediterranean inspired towns – your first hour of play might be wildly different to ours. That said, we thought we’d focus on some of the early missions and content to whet your appetite ahead of next week’s launch.

More game information available at the Just Cause 3 website.

Paradox Walks You Through Major Improvements

Just when you think you’ve mastered the grandest of grand strategy games, the developers come along and change everything again – for the better!

With Europa Universalis IV: Cossacks one week away, Project Lead Martin Anward thought you all should get a quick rundown of the major changes coming your way in this, the sixth major expansion to Paradox Development Studio’s hit historical strategy game.

Anward runs through the improvements we’ve made to domestic politics, diplomacy, culture, nomadic steppe nations and more. If you’ve missed our written developer diaries over the last few months, this six minute video will get you and all other Europa Universalis IV fans up to speed.

Cossacks will arrive on digital storefronts, including the Paradox Store, on December 1, 2015.

For more information, visit the official Europa Universalis IV website.

By Hilbert Hagedoorn @ GURU3D

In this review we test the GeForce GTX 980 Ti with the longest name evah! The new GeForce GTX 980 Ti Extreme Gaming WaterForce GPU review from Gigabyte. This product impresses by design as it comes in an all custom design with liquid cooling in the form of an AIO LCS kit. The result is a card that offers excellent game rendering performance at silent noise levels.

Read The Review Here

AMD today released its completely reimagined graphics software suite, Radeon Software Crimson Edition, giving users an exceptional new user experience, 12 new or enhanced features, up to 20 percent more graphics performance, adjustability that can nearly double generational energy efficiency, and rock-solid stability across the full spectrum of AMD graphics products. The release is the first from the Radeon Technologies Group, which recently announced a renewed focus on software placing it on par with hardware initiatives.

Radeon Software Crimson Edition includes:

• Radeon Settings – A new, streamlined user interface: Engineered to get the best performance on AMD graphics hardware, the user-friendly and feature-rich Radeon Settings is lightning fast, starting up 10 times faster and initializing displays 3 times faster than the AMD Catalyst™ driver. It also offers a more intuitive navigation, a new game manager, new overdrive, and new video, display and AMD Eyefinity technology sections letting users easily apply game settings, adjust performance settings, and apply various features and configurations to their computing experience.
• 12 new or enhanced features: A wide range of new and augmented capabilities help ensure that users enjoy the best experience possible across gaming, video and productivity applications.
• Supercharged performance and energy efficiency: Radeon Software Crimson Edition enables up to 33 percent faster game load times5, up to 20 percent more game performance, and up to 1.8 times more energy efficiency capability than its predecessor which can increasing system performance-per-watt by as much as 23 percent.
• First public support of AMD LiquidVR™ technology: GCN’s Asynchronous Compute Engine helps to dramatically improve frames per second (FPS), responsiveness and latency in Virtual Reality applications for an exceptionally smooth gaming experience on all GCN-based hardware.
• Seamless stability: With twice the number of test cases across 15 percent more system configurations than AMD Catalyst™ Omega, and the implementation of a huge number of community-driven requests, Radeon Software Crimson Edition delivers exceptional stability across a range of experiences.

Radeon Software Crimson Edition is available for free download today at http://support.amd.com/en-us/download.