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Zagreus, the son of the ruler of the underworld, Hades, against the will of his father, is trying to escape from the kingdom of the dead – upward, into the mortal world, in order to meet with his own mother and understand why she left him immediately after birth. But to his misfortune, the dungeons separating the hero from the goal are replete with entities of different forms and talents, united by one goal: to bring the prodigal son home (the fastest way, of course, is murder). Time after time they succeed: Zagreus returns to the palaces of Hades, but only in order to make a new attempt to escape. With each sortie, he becomes stronger, more agile, acquires useful connections “above”, but most importantly – information. And now the escape becomes not an end in itself, but a way to find out the secret of his own birth, to establish relations with his father, to help mythical characters and, of course, to talk for the first time in his life with Persephone, his own mother …

⇡ #Twelve Feats of Zagreus

The hero’s path lies through Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium and the Temple of Styx, whose rotting catacombs were chosen by unscrupulous satyrs. Each world is unique both in terms of visual implementation and in terms of game content. In the first world of Zagreus, fierce battles with mounds of skulls, spirits of scoundrels and thieves await – Tartarus also has a supply for the hero of elite enemies like the stone of death, which releases deadly rays, and damned assassins who strive to get away from a daring blow.

Asphodel promises a blazing danger – hot magma will not allow you to take a step beyond the earthen islets. Frequent Demolitions sow damage and destruction even after death, and the elite Megagorgon does what she does best – turns the hero to stone. But the coven of witches who have settled here, which can fill the entire screen with murderous clots of magic, is especially disliked.

Taking a breath in the ancient Greek paradise, Elysium, will not work either! The warriors who got here as a reward for glorious battles do not even think to give up their craft, trying in every possible way to defeat Zagreus. Even after the next death, their spirit still strives for weapons and if it reaches out, it will regain its combat form. The higher we go, the worse: the Temple of Styx and its rotting dungeons meet the hero with poisonous puddles and giant rats, and the previously mentioned satyrs will not welcome an uninvited guest …

The culmination of a journey through each of the worlds is the traditional boss fight for the genre. Battles with furies, the skeleton of the Lernaean hydra, famous heroes and monsters from myths are moderately difficult and always intense. Mainly due to the wide range of their attacks and abilities: here and crushing circular blows, and violent attacks, and area damage, and even invisibility.

But Zagreus – not without reason the son of the ruler of the underworld – has an impressive arsenal. In addition to the typical sword and bow, there are the more non-trivial spear and twin gloves, as well as the particularly extravagant Chaos spiked shield and adamant cannon that resembles a submachine gun welded to a grenade launcher. A funny detail: one of the supreme gods notices that if mortals find out about this weapon, then the appearance of the war will change – as he looked into the water …

However, even the innovative developments of Olympic gunsmiths do not guarantee success. Here you cannot do without divine intervention. And fortunately, the Olympians are almost always on our side …

⇡ #Gods to help

The most interesting part of Hades’ game mechanics during sorties is the acquisition and distribution of divine gifts, which can be obtained as a reward for a skirmish or bought in Charon’s shop for hard currency. First, you have to communicate with the donor deity (and at the same time a relative of Zagreus), who can both praise the heroic undertakings of the son of Hades, and reveal part of the colossal plot of this world, or leave a snide remark about a neighbor in the pantheon. The replicas, it is worth noting, are skillfully written and in a very non-trivial manner.

After exchanging pleasantries, it’s time to choose a reward. Usually the assortment consists of three items, all are improvements for Zagreus’s abilities. Each mythical god has its own quirks, which are reflected in skills: the gifts of Dionysus allow you to impose the effect of poisoning on opponents; Aphrodite specializes in weakening enemies; Zeus, as befits a thunderer, grants buffs related to lightning damage; Artemis will increase the chance of inflicting critical damage and increase its multiplier; and the goddess of agriculture and fertility Demeter – appreciate the irony – gives freezing bonuses …

Since each trip promises Zagrei a meeting with different patrons, the characteristic bonuses are combined. During one run, the sword will smash enemies with a powerful circular attack, enhanced by Ares’ deadly mark, while reflecting the projectiles of opponents back with the power of Athena. And in another one will have to break through to the top with rapid – thanks to Hermes – blows of twin gloves, charged with the power of the ocean by Poseidon himself. It also happens this way: having noticed a certain gift of a colleague, an Olympian can offer a double talent that combines the bonuses of two deities. But it also happens otherwise …

In some halls, not one – two gifts lie enticingly! But, having made the first choice, you will have to face the fact: the Olympians are extremely jealous and cannot stand it when they honor someone else. The wrath of the rejected god naturally falls not on the chosen donor, but on Zagreus. But if you survive the terrible punishment, then the second gift can be taken away. It is fortunate that higher beings are easy-going …

But not by divine forces alone – on the way, talents from the mirror of the night located in the hero’s chambers will also be useful (they, unlike gifts, are permanent). Thanks to shards of darkness, health will become stronger, attacks in certain situations are stronger, and you can also get extra life or increase the chance of a rare or even epic gift! Here, too, variability was not without: each talent has a shape-shifter – similar, but still fundamentally different (both in color and in action). For example, if one ability gives a charge to a dash, then its reverse side will instead add an additional effect – a temporary increase in damage and a chance to dodge the attacker.

Hades has a lot of such nuances, the game is overwhelming with its combat variety: it is almost impossible to play the same set of talents twice in tens of hours. Some combinations can be especially effective against massive clusters of enemies, others will be good against single targets and bosses, but a completely non-viable combat combination will not be able to be assembled with all the desire. A case from the game: a set of talents, which at first seemed unsuccessful, ultimately defeated the final boss … By the way, as it turned out, the conditional first playthrough is not just the end, but only the beginning of a big and rich story.

⇡ #Best Loot – History

Hades is hardly a roguelike in the classical sense. Going through dungeons over and over again is motivated not so much by the opportunity to collect generous loot or pumping weapons with the blood of titans (although this, of course, too), as by the chance to find out more information about this world, see characters familiar from ancient Greek myths, communicate with divine relatives, find secret bosses or collect a particularly outlandish set of gifts.

I would especially like to note the dramatic part of the game. The plot is presented very organically, in moderate doses and, most importantly, does not rush to extremes. The authors do not divide the characters into good and bad, they do not expose the heroes in only one light, but they reveal each comprehensively – with their worries, aspirations and aspirations. The legendary Orpheus, for example, has lost his inspiration and can no longer sing. Bit by bit, receiving more and more sad details from him, you understand that the root of creative decline is in the once manifested cowardice, guilt and lack of determination to accept your mistakes and try to live with them further …

Or take the title character – Aida. Although he seems to be the main antagonist, his role turns out to be much deeper and more complicated, and behind the thick skin of the angry ruler of the underworld is a vulnerable and unhappy soul. The arch of Zagrei’s adoptive mother, Nikta, turned out to be very touching, who worries about her stepson as her own son and is ready to help him in every possible way in his aspirations, even in spite of fate. But why – it’s better to find out on your own …

The writers of Supergiant Games did not ignore the classic motif of the epics about the severity of fate, but developed it in an original way. However, more often Hades deals with common human problems that are close not so much to the ancient Greek gods as to ordinary people. A variety of topics are touched upon here: responsibility for actions, and the complexity of emotional seclusion, and courage to take a step towards loved ones. And they are revealed, to match the artistic style of the game, incredibly elegant!

Advantages:

• unmatched visual style with talentedly bold use of colors and contrasts;
• a sincere main story and lovely subplot arcs;
• an immense amount of game content and options for passing;
• amazingly beautiful song of Eurydice.

Disadvantages:

• to see the real ending of the story, you have to spend a fair amount of time.

Graphics	As usual, Supergiant Games’ game is divinely beautiful.
Sound	The musical content does not abound with compositions that you want to listen to over and over again (except for the song of Eurydice, of course), as, say, in Transistor. But the music is quite appropriate and very enjoyable. The characters are impeccably voiced – the actors accurately fall into the characters and skillfully play with their voice, revealing the subtle nuances of the characters’ personalities.
Single player game	Endless combinations of weapons, talents, and gifts, as well as pacts that vary in difficulty, make Hades an almost bottomless vessel for your time. Chronos approves.
Collective game	Not provided.
General impression	Hades is an amazing piece with outstanding and incredibly varied gameplay, a subtle and soulful story, and without a doubt a stunning visual style. Pure Ambrosia!

Rating: 10/10

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Gainward has officially unveiled the GeForce RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Phantom series graphics cards. New items, based on the new architecture NVIDIA Ampere, are ready to offer an unusual appearance of cooling systems, as well as factory overclocking of GPUs.

The company has unveiled a total of four graphics cards: two GeForce RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 models, including variants in the Golden Sample (GS) design, indicating more serious factory overclocking of GPUs. The maximum GPU clock speed of the Gainward GeForce RTX 3090 Phantom GS is 1845 MHz, which is 8.8% higher than the NVIDIA reference model. The card uses three 8-pin VGA connectors for additional power. The declared power consumption level of the new product is 420 W, which is 20% higher than that of the reference version.

The GPU of the regular version of the GeForce RTX 3090 Phantom received a minor factory overclock. The chip operates at 1740 MHz, which is 2.7% higher than the reference. The card also uses three 8-pin connectors for additional power. Its power consumption is 370 W, which is 20 W higher than the base value.

The graphics processors of the GeForce RTX 3080 Phantom GS model, as well as the version without the GS suffix, operate at a frequency of 1830 and 1755 MHz, respectively, which is 7 and 2.6% higher than the GPU frequency of the reference card from NVIDIA. Both Gainward video cards are equipped with three 8-pin auxiliary power connectors. The higher-performance variant claims power consumption of 370W, which is 15.6% higher than usual. The less overclocked version consumes 340 watts, which is 6.3% higher than the reference power consumption.

All four cards share a similar cooling design, with three fans, but use different PCBs. Unfortunately, the manufacturer did not present its versions of the GeForce RTX 3070. But, something suggests that they will not differ in appearance from the older models. The difference will probably only be in the different GPU usage as well as the memory type. As for the flagship versions of the GeForce RTX 3090, they are equipped with 24 GB of GDDR6X video memory. The GeForce RTX 3080 variants received 10 GB of GDDR6X video memory.

Gainward did not specify prices for its new products.

It appears that NVIDIA’s website has accidentally displayed the email addresses of some of its users for some time. This incident was reported last Friday by one of the forum readers Reddit… He indicated that someone’s address was displayed in the login line when he went to the site to check the status of the order of the purchased item.

PCMag was able to reproduce the issue on NVIDIA’s website using Firefox. Further web searches indicated that the address belonged to a Florida computer science student. Interestingly, the problem was not unique. The victim also turned out to be software developer Phil Bayfield, who said on his Twitter page that a complete stranger wrote to him in the mail on Monday. First, he told Bayfield that he would like to buy the GeForce RTX 3080 from him. To which Bayfield replied that he did not have an RTX 3080. Then the stranger admitted that he was joking, and in fact, he found Bayfield’s email on the status check page ordering from the NVIDIA Online Store. This page uses the login and password autocomplete form. Fortunately, the password did not appear on the corresponding line, but Bayfield’s email address did appear.

“At first I thought that someone was joking at me.”– said Bayfield in a conversation with PCMag.

@nvidia Also leaked my business email and I was contacted by someone who got my email from the NVIDIA store. I’ll be reporting this to the relevent authorities. However, I’ll be willing to accept a Founders Edition 3080 or 3090 card as suitable compensation. https://t.co/bNV2OOlczv

– Phil Bayfield (@bayf) September 25, 2020

Then he realized that this was not a joke, but a real leak of his personal data.

“The launch of the GeForce 30 series graphics cards turned out to be a real circus. First, bots bought all the cards, and then speculators put them up for resale. Now I’m not at all surprised that they [NVIDIA] leaked my email address “Bayfield added.

The resource turned to NVIDIA for comments. There he was told that they were checking the incident and would provide additional information upon its completion. At the same time, the company decided to disable the status check page for repair orders.

PCMag indicates the extent of the problem is unknown. It is not yet clear exactly how many users could be affected by an error in the NVIDIA website and how much personal data could be leaked to the Network. However, as some Reddit users point out, not only users’ addresses but also their credit card information could be at risk. At least two Reddit users said they saw partially displayed information about someone’s credit cards on the same checkout status page while it was still running.

An important part of the new SpaceX Starship has passed the first test. This is a version of the conventional Raptor engine for use in space vacuum. It successfully passed the first fire tests at the SpaceX site in McGregor, Texas, as reported by company representatives on Twitter.

The vacuum Raptor passed this test about three weeks after it left the SpaceX rocket factory in Los Angeles – on September 4, SpaceX announced that the new engine had been delivered to a Texas test site. In a tweet, the company described the firing tests as complete. It’s unclear how long the burn lasted: the tweet only includes a 15-second video that dims to black while the vacuum Raptor is still running.

Completed a full duration test fire of the Raptor Vacuum engine at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas pic.twitter.com/0GPSdSifnn

– SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 25, 2020

This variant of the Raptor is similar to the conventional version of the engine, but has a much larger nozzle, which improves efficiency in space environments. According to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, Starship will use three Raptor engines of each variant.

Normal and vacuum versions of the Raptor next to a person

These six engines will power the Starship 50 meters high, delivering it over long distances, such as the Moon or Mars. The transport ship will be powerful enough to lift off the surface of these two celestial bodies, but it will need help to escape from the Earth’s gravity well. Therefore Starship will leave our planet on a giant rocket called the Super Heavy, which will be propelled by about 30 conventional versions of Raptor engines.

SpaceX said both Super Heavy and Starship can be fully and quickly reused. Musk suggests that the combination of a spacecraft and a super-heavy launch vehicle will reduce the cost of space travel so much that it will make ambitious plans like the colonization of Mars economically feasible.

SpaceX is working on the final version of Starship, rolling around a series of prototypes. Recently, single-engine SN5 and SN6 passed test “jumps” to an altitude of about 150 meters, and three-engine SN8 is preparing for its own flight to an altitude of 20 kilometers in the near future.

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Rayman creator Michel Ancel announced last week that he is leaving Ubisoft and the gaming industry in general, despite the fact that his latest projects – WILD and Beyond Good & Evil 2 – are still pending. In light of this, the French newspaper Libération told how Ansel had made little progress in creating projects in seven years.

According to anonymous Ubisoft employees interviewed by Libération, the blame for such a long development of Beyond Good & Evil 2 lies with Michelle Ansel. They described him as a control freak with a penchant for sudden ideas that can lead to a ton of extra work. At the same time, he did little to soften the blow to employees who had to abruptly make changes to the project.

Also according to Libération, the Beyond Good & Evil 2 trailers shown in 2017 and 2018 were just “Made in a hurry” concepts that have nothing to do with the final vision of the game. According to one former Ubisoft employee, Ansel wanted to achieve an incredible level of detail in an open world with several planets that cannot yet be achieved.

Ansel’s constant change and harsh leadership style resulted in widespread depression, burnout, and requests for transfers within the team, according to Libération. In 2017, Jean-Marc Geffroy, who previously worked on Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, was transferred to Beyond Good & Evil 2. He needed to improve the production process, as Michel Ansel has preferred project its independent game WILD.

“To try and mitigate Ansel’s problem, they sent us some big-name people, these ‘talents’ with excessive egos, disgusting behavior and barely disguised superhero syndrome. All of them were convinced that they and only they would save BG & E2 “, – said an anonymous source.

What ultimately drove Michel Ansel out of the gaming industry is unknown, but according to Libération, Ubisoft is conducting an internal investigation. However, Ansel’s statement did take the team by surprise. The only thing left after his departure is one sheet of paper with eight points describing the main vision of the game.

Ubisoft has confirmed to Kotaku about the investigation into Michel Ansel.

Michel Ansel himself on Instagram commented on the Libération story as “Fake”… He explained that talking about his poor leadership is a lie, since the team also includes producers and managers – they are the ones who decide what to do.

“I always change my mind – a lie. For example, I have been explaining for years why you cannot remodel a city from scratch. He spent hours explaining that the characters were good enough and didn’t need to be tweaked. The same is about the planets and everything else. But sometimes some people on the team changed something, despite my advice. Managers are responsible for solving such problems “– he wrote.

He also commented on the words about the Beyond Good & Evil 2 demo. According to Ansel, the 2017 presentation was real and made the next demo possible. And in 2018, the shown build of the game used real streaming, procedural generation, and a functioning network mode. “It was a technological masterpiece”– he added.

“The article from Libération contains fake information from people who want to destroy me and the projects. This cannot be done if I do not fight for every line of this news. I gave the journalist enough time to look at all the mistakes. Let’s see what he will do “– finished Ansel.

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The crew of the 63rd long-term expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), as expected, went into re-isolation. The reason is the need to identify the location of the air leak.

The problem became known in August. To search for the source of the leak, the crew consisting of Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Wagner, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy, had already isolated themselves in the Russian segment of the station, but then it was not possible to identify the problem area.

The current isolation will last two days: the crew will again close in the Russian segment of the orbital complex. Expedition members will have access to the Zarya, Zvezda, Poisk modules, the Progress MS cargo ship and the manned Soyuz MS.

“During work, the crew will transmit operational information about the state of the atmosphere to the Flight Control Centers of the partner countries. The hatches are scheduled to open on Monday, September 28, 2020, after 11:00 Moscow time“, – said in the message of Roscosmos.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the State Commission for Flight Testing of Manned Space Complexes, a decision was made to launch the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft with the next long-term ISS expedition. The spacecraft will be launched on October 14, and its rapprochement with the ISS is planned to be carried out using a two-orbit scheme. The prime crew includes Sergei Ryzhikov (Roskosmos, spacecraft commander), Sergei Kud-Sverchkov (Roscosmos, flight engineer) and Kathleen Rubins (NASA, flight engineer-2).

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