By Stace Harman @ Eurogamer

There’s a lot riding on the arrival of Total War: Attila. While the eponymous anti-hero and fearsome leader of the Huns is borne on box and horse alike, this title also carries with it the hopes of the long-running series’ significant fan base. After the learning process necessitated by Total War: Rome 2‘s post-release incremental updates, this is The Creative Assembly and Sega’s chance to prove their reach no longer exceeds their grasp, and they can launch a stable, balanced and content-rich title straight off the bat.

Read on…

Total War: Attila is now available to purchase at retailers and available for digital download. View the official launch trailer HERE.

The Dark Ages approach. A time of famine, disease and war, where refugees in their thousands flee from a sweeping tide of destruction and death. Desperate barbaric tribes rally against the ailing might of a dying and divided Roman empire; the light of civilization gutters and dims. In the great steppes of Scythia, a vast and terrifying force gathers, led by a warrior king whose thirst for conquest is utterly unequalled.

The Scourge of God, the very herald of the apocalypse, Attila the Hun.

In the next instalment in the multi award-winning Total War series of strategy games, Total War: Attila introduces exciting new gameplay mechanics which improve and add to numerous core turn-based and real-time Total War systems. The world will darken around you as Attila’s forces descend on your homeland creating a unique vision of survival strategy.

For more information about Total War: Attila please visit www.totalwar.com.

By Tarinder Sandhu @ Hexus

Storage company Plextor has experimented with producing solid-state drives (SSD) using various form factors. SATA remains the overriding favourite even though it’s limited in terms of interface speed, but Plextor has also released drives using the M.2 and PCIe form factors. This hybrid approach leads to the M6e drive mating a Marvell 88SS9183 controller with Toshiba NAND connecting to the system either via the bare M.2 drive or via AHCI-compliant PCIe through the use of an adapter card. Selecting the older AHCI standard enables Plextor to get the latest M6e Black Edition out to retail quickly without having to wait for the controller manufacturer – in this instance Marvell – to qualify NVMe drives, though such support is coming soon.

Read The Review Here

By Ian Cutress @ AnandTech

In our recent run of overclocking focused motherboards, we have had a couple of interesting contenders. Sub $300 is a difficult market to attack for X99 overclockers, and MSI brings the X99S MPower which is the focus of today’s review.

Read The Review Here

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.

• Acer Announces XG270HU Monitor with AMD Freesync
• AOC Announce New Q2778VQE 27-inch WQHD Monitor
• AeroCool Announces GT-RS ATX Cube Chassis
• Fractal Design Unveils Silent Series R3 and Dynamic Series Fans
• MSI to Sell Motherboard + Graphics Card Combos with Cashbacks
• EKWB Announces Supremacy MX High-Value Water Block
• EKWB Introduces Rampage V Extreme Monoblock
• ASUS Unveils the GeForce GTX 960 Mini
• Huntkey Launches New MVP Series PSUs
• MSI Unveils Xield5 Gaming Mousepad
• Sharkoon Adds Shark Zone C10 and Sharkoon QB One
• ICY DOCK Announces ToughArmor MB998SP-B Drive Cage
• ICY DOCK Announces EZConvert Lite MB882SP-1S-3B SATA SSD/HDD Converter/Mounting Kit
• PNY Launches Clip Design HP x710w USB 3.0 Flash Drive
• Amped Wireless Shipping Industry’s First High Power Touch Screen 802.11ac Wi-Fi Router
• ASRock X99 and Z97 Motherbaords To Get USB 3.1 Connectors
• ASUS Announces RT-AC3200 Twin 3×3 802.11ac Router

The Battle of France June 1940

By John Dudek @ The Wargamer

Time: 0900 hours 5 June 1940

Location: The village of Vandy France

The French artillery officer crouched low over the camouflaged WW I vintage, 75mm. cannon pointing towards the turn in the road a hundred yards away from the French farmyard they were concealed in. His gun crew were itching for action that was guaranteed to be not long in coming. As he looked through his binoculars, a column of German tanks, trucks and support infantry vehicles swung into view a few hundred yards distant and the gun crew quickly made their gun elevation and directional corrections. They aimed at the lead tank and awaited the “firing” order. The first round missed the lead tank but nailed the second one immediately behind it. That tank slewed out of line and drove off the road into a ditch to begin burning and “brewing up.” The second French artillery round nailed the lead tank squarely as well and it too began to burn, its crew evacuated the vehicle, only to be taken under flanking fire from hidden French automatic weapons fire. The third tank halted abruptly to begin sweeping the farmyard with machine gun and tank gunfire as the trucks and half tracks behind it began disgorging its supporting troops onto the ground. This was what the French officers in the farm house were waiting for as their Major emerged shouting and waving his sword. “Mes amis! Mes frères! Baïonnettes de charge!” (My friends, my brothers! Charge Bayonets!) A company of enraged, blood thirsty French infantry with bayonet fixed rifles and with their officers leading them, charged the shocked and surprised dismounted German infantry to quickly put them all to the sword, sparing only the rare few who managed to flee. A badly wounded German gefreiter, (private) lying next to one of the burning trucks coughed up blood as he tried to hold in his guts that had been recently pierced by a French poilu’s bayonet. He shook his head in disbelief saying: “I thought the war in France was over.”

Read on…

I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy..” (William Westmoreland – Chief of Staff of the US Army from 1968 to 1972)

Vietnam ’65, the new counter-insurgency strategy game by Every Single Soldier, has an official release date! We’re releasing on March 5th and streaming it live tomorrow at 2 pm EST/20.00 CET.

Developer Every Single Soldier aims to capture the specifics of the Vietnam War. At the head of the US forces, you will have to forget what you have learnt from other strategy games and think differently to destroy the enemy: building a safe logistic chain, gathering intelligence through the local villages, calling in air support on time, revealing the Ho Chi Minh trail, and minimizing casualties will be crucial to securing political support and eliminating the invisible Viet Cong threat!

Check it out tomorrow as we are going to give you a sneak peak of the game on the official Twitch channel of the Slitherine Group!

Get more information on Vietnam ‘65 from its official product page.

Source: GameInformer

The special edition of Creative Assemblies’ newest strategy sim, Total War: Attila, will include three new playable factions, a 64-page biography, and a double-sided poster, but you don’t want me yammering on about this game. Watch someone take an arrow to the knee while trying to do an unboxing. One of these developers is about to get the short straw when trying to do an unboxing video.

Zombie Army Trilogy  rising March 6th!

Independent UK studio Rebellion has confirmed that its intense, upcoming shooter Zombie Army Trilogy will be released globally on March 6 for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Available as a digital download on Steam, Xbox Live and the Playstation Network, the console editions will also see a physical release in most regions, marking the studio’s first foray into retail publishing.

Zombie Army Trilogy is the first chance for console owners to experience the blood-pumping co-op shooters that became a cult sensation on PC. Delivering 15 missions of intense solo and co-op survival, Zombie Army Trilogy comes packed with exclusive new content including a new third campaign, new horde mode, new player characters and more.

As a thank you to those fans who supported the series on PC, Rebellion is still offering an exclusive discount of up to 60% to owners of the first two Nazi Zombie Army games via Steam.

To celebrate the announcement Rebellion also released eight blood-curdling new screenshots which can be viewed on the official Zombie Army Trilogy website.

Author: MAC @ Hardware Canucks

All the way back in June, Crucial – the consumer arm of semiconductor giant Micron – announced their Ballistix Elite DDR4 memory modules. These sticks boasted fairly standard speeds of DDR4-2666 and DDR4-3000, but what really caught our eye were the heat spreaders. Frankly, they were sleekest and most badass heat spreaders that we had ever seen, and combined with the black PCB it made for an unusually eye-catching stick of RAM. Not only that, these modules featured built-in thermal sensors that allowed for real-time temperature monitoring via a custom Ballistix utility. A fast, great-looking memory module with sensors and its own utility? Sign us up!

Read The Review Here