Your JungleDrums host, AcuteJungle66, joined by Gimboid and SergeantJay, delve into this week’s latest tech and gaming news. 2nd Gen Ryzen CPUs, BR from the creators of Battlefield, Serious Sam teaser, and more!
- The 2nd Generation Ryzen processors from AMD appear to be receiving favourable reviews. Known as the Zen+ architecture, the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X offer solid performance gains over the previous generation, but if you already own a 1st gen Ryzen there is probably no need to upgrade. With that said however, the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 2700X certainly appears to gives the Core i7-8700K a run for its money, whilst the Ryzen 5 2600X clearly outpaces a comparable i5 and manages to keep up with the more expensive i7.
- The Battle Royale genre is certainly the hot commodity at the moment. Whilst Fortnite and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds fight it out for the top spot, other studios are setting their sights on this game mode. Joining Activision (Call of Duty will reportedly ditch single-player and add a BR mode) and Massive (the creators of The Divsion are allegedly working on a BR title), it appears that DICE will be throwing their hat into the ring as well. Battlefield V will reportedly have a BR mode, which should be interesting; hopefully they have learned a thing or two since Star Wars Battlefront II.
- Microsoft delayed the Spring Creators Update for Windows 10 due to ‘reliability issues’. As it turns out, these ‘reliability issues’ appear to have been high occurrences of Windows becoming unresponsive and displaying a BSOD. Microsoft is working on an update/fix to resolve these issues, and a separate build should be available in the near future. If however you like to live on the edge, you can download and install the update early; but you’ll need to be in the Windows Insiders program to get the necessary fix for it.
- Devolver Digital is one of my favourite studios (they published my GOTY for 2017), and I have also always had a soft spot for the devs at Croteam as well. So needless to say, when I saw the teaser trailer for Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass, it caught my attention. Whilst the trailer itself does not show much, it promises that more will be revealed at E3 this year. The promise of a Serious Sam game using a modern graphics engine is certainly enticing.
- An interesting piece of news that broke this week, Twitch is reportedly blocked in Russia at the moment. What appears to be a move to block Telegram–which is an encrypted messenger-over 20 MILLION IP address have been banned. It does not appear that Twitch was specifically targeted, but rather got caught in the crossfire as collateral damage. There are conflicting reports however, as some users have said that everything is fine.
- I am still playing Monster Hunter: World and the team at Capcom keep delivering free content updates; so the chances of me ever being truly ‘done’ with the game see unlikely. The latest update introduces a new limited-time Siege Quest, which allows an entire gathering hub of 16 players to participate simultaneously in hunting down the newest Elder Dragon (albeit in 4 groups of 4). This of course means new rewards such as armour for your Palico as well as yourself, and plenty of new weapons which are rewarded in a significantly different system than previously. Several other quality of life updates have been incorporated, as well as plenty of bug fixes. There goes my weekend…
About JungleDrums:
JungleDrums is a weekly news show run by Scholarly Gamers’ Content Coordinator, AcuteJungle66. Topics discussed in the show focus heavily on gaming, highlights, streams, and tech, but will typically hover around hot-button topics of the week. Joining AcuteJungle66 are a rotating selection of guests, ranging from friends and those interested in the topic at hand, fellow Scholarly Gamers, or members of raiding parties from gaming staples of his such as Destiny 2, The Division, Rainbow Six Siege, or Monster Hunter: World
