Cyberpunk 2077, developer CD Projekt Red's next ambitious IP, has been taking the gaming community by storm lately. One quick glance at the YouTube views - passing 16 million views on its E3 2018 trailer, and 11 million on its impressive 48-minute gameplay demo - should tell you that the hype surrounding this title is no whimper. In a recent Q3 financial call for the developer, CEO Adam Kiciński explained, "this year we released two new trailers showcasing our upcoming release. The first of those appeared at the end of the second quarter, while the 48-minute gameplay trailer was released this August. As you can see, interest in Cyberpunk 2077, or at least in its trailers, is many times greater than in the case of The Witcher." The hype has not only matched The Witcher in terms of player interest, but greatly surpassed it. Of course, this isn't concrete proof that sales will equate to the hype, but it does give us a good idea how much consumer interest this game, even as a new IP, is generating. This also boils down to CD Projekt Red becoming one of the most prestigious developers in the gaming industry following their monumental success with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, so naturally, their name attached to a project is enough to garner plenty of hype and anticipation. Cyberpunk 2077 currently does not have a release date, but is expected to launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

The MSI G65 Stealth comes with more creature comforts than I can keep track of and an utterly unique visual design that doesn’t scream performance, so much as it whispers it. MSI has focused their attention on where it counts the most, and offer an almost no compromise notebook that can balance your gaming and productivity without so much as just switching a program. Specs Intel i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz GTX 1070 Max-Q Design 16GB of Ram Steelseries RGB Keyboard Thin bezel 144Hz 7ms delay IPS display CoolerBoost Trinity Design and Features MSI’s GS65 Stealth has a very split personality. From the front, the notebook looks like it’s made for a businessman with its predominantly metallic black with subtle gold accents, but comes with a rather game-centric RGB keyboard. If the MSI GS65 were a person, it would be a girl that you could take home to meet your mom, but knows how to party on weekends. This stealthy approach doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable when using the laptop out in public. Unlike most other garish-looking gaming notebooks, I often found people staring at the GS65 in awe of its simplistic beauty. The GS65 boasts a relatively comfortable keyboard and a very functional touchpad that is perfect for everything outside of gaming. The exhausts are featured on the left, right, and rear of the notebook. That paired with the thin bezelled 144Hz IPS panel, gives you a sense that the notebook was designed for multimedia consumption. Aside from the cooling - which I will touch on further in the review - and slight chassis flex, I found myself falling in love with the GS65. It truly is a beautifully packaged notebook and MSI have done an excellent job in packing this much horsepower in something that is thinner than a PlayStation 4 game case. Benchmarks and Thermals I honestly would have thought that the thin-design would immediately mean that I couldn’t get the most out of the GTX 1070 Max-Q. But once I tuned the notebook to the appropriate mode, I couldn’t get it to stutter even once. I did manage to get the notebook to a high 80 degrees while putting it under load, but the hardware point-blank refused to bog down. Cinebench scored a relatively justified 877cb and i7 proved to be functional in day to day activities. I shifted my entire workload to the GS65, and it handled a multitude of multitasking operations - and my ability to open a million tabs at once - with relative ease. Often cycling between emails, writing up articles, and browsing the internet for information (somehow memes manage to sneak their way into this,) tends to slow down a PC as the day continues onward, but outside of the GS65 heating up a bit, anything I threw at the notebook would often be with little-to-no hassle. That’s enough technical talk. How it performs in-game is where it matters. Thankfully, Battlefield V just dropped and I decided to put the G65 through its paces as I made my way through a multitude of modes. The 144Hz screen allowed me to soak up the beautiful scenery, and that 7ms delay really let me hone in on the little form of skill I have in first-person-shooters. I cranked the graphical settings to Ultra and it almost didn’t even phase the GS65. I say almost because I damn near feared for my life when the laptop started heating up. Games don’t slow down, but the keys that are closer to the aforementioned exhausts are borderline unusable. The heat transfer from the cooling system makes its way through the keyboard, which is a common practice, but playing games over a long period of time can start putting some strain on your fingers. Cooling is the one aspect of the GS65 that brings it down. I often found the laptop drowning out the sounds of my colleagues in the office. Sometimes, they would actually stop working to look at me with a rather perplexed look on their face. I would just tell them that I’m experimenting with new technology to send computer parts to Jupiter. That excuse worked more often than you would think (ed - Those damn Jupiter spies!). I wouldn’t mind the noise had the aforementioned problem regarding the keyboard not existed. What is anything gaming-themed, if not a pathway for tech-heads to overclock their rigs? Unfortunately, the GS65 didn’t come with MSI’s Afterburner program, but it does feature a Turbo mode that lets you safely overclock the system. Sadly, there isn’t much room to overclock. However, you shouldn’t even be overclocking this notebook, because its intended design is meant to be plug-and-play (we’re just a little deviant at Nexus.) Audio Fans of MSI know that their notebooks ship with Dynaudio and Nahimic Software. This just translates to an audio experience that you can cater to your exact needs. Nahimic can generally detect whatever type of audio source you’re using and tune the experience to best suit the device. For example, plugging in a set of headphones will prompt you to choose between music, gaming, theatre, and a room experience, so Nahimic knows how to adjust the outputted audio. The built-in drivers do a wonderful job at outputting audio. Watching a video, or listening to an audio clip in public can be heard clearly without any need to strain yourself. Playing games without headphones delivers a rich experience thanks to the directional sound offered by Dynaudio and Nahimic. You can’t expect surround sound levels of quality, but the speakers offered on the MSI are definitely no slouch. Battery Life Usually, battery life is one of the first things to be affected when you add the words “high-performance” to a notebook. The GS65 does a good job of subverting expectations as I could often go through a day without having to plug it in for charging. That was in conditions where I was doing more work-related content. The battery life would pull an average of about 6-10 hours, depending on usage. Many users fear that the RGB element sucks away at battery life, but the few percentages lost as a result is negligible. MSI, along with Steelseries, has clearly proven that they have what it takes to implement such inviting features, without hindering the functionality of the product When it comes to gaming, however, you will need to keep the GS65 plugged in. Not only because of the battery drain but due to the fact that the notebook won’t let you put it into Sport or Turbo mode until it is tethered to an electrical source. This wasn’t too much of a bother, as the charging brick supplied was not too chunky and could easily fit in the satchel provided with the notebook. The MSI GS65 Stealth is a subtle approach to high-end performance in a sleek, but eloquent design. What it lacks in cooling, the MSI GS65 stealth more than makes up for in form factor and raw performance. The gap between desktops and notebooks is slowly but surely dwindling as time goes on, and the MSI GS65 is a testimony to that notion.

Nintendo's awesome E3 2017 presentation gave us a lot to look forward to, namely Metroid Prime 4, the fourth mainline installment in the Metroid Prime series that fans have been demanding for years. Despite Nintendo being relatively quiet about the development process, or when we can expect to have the game in our hands, they've now teased that they have a release date in mind. In an interview with Mashable, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime teased that they know when Metroid Prime 4 will be released, but are waiting for the opportune moment to announce it. "Internally, we have expectations about when [Metroid Prime 4] is going to be released," said Fils-Aime. "We haven't announced it, but yeah, the game is well in development." Nintendo has been on a roll lately with some of their major first-party games scoring big in critical and commercial success, with both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey making a big splash in 2017; with the former winning several Game of the Year awards. Nintendo hopes to continue this string of success with their next big release, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, slated for release in December this year. It seems as if 2019 might be the year in which we see Metroid Prime 4 launch, and we probably won't have to wait long to hear more news about the game since Fils-Aime has been quite comfortable attending The Game Awards lately - which you can look forward to next month. Nintendo and The Game Awards have already teased the game making an appearance at the show. Currently, Metroid Prime 4 is "well in development" exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.

Astro Gaming, a longtime maker of popular gaming headsets like the Astro A40 and Astro A50, is now dipping their toes into the pro-controller market. The first gaming pad to come from the company is the new Astro C40 TR, a fully modular controller for PC and PS4 with some pretty cool features to suit your needs. The controller currently only comes in just one colour for now, matte black, and seems to be inspired by Microsoft's Xbox One Recon Tech Wireless controller that released last year. However, the C40 TR comes in with a multitude of customisable features. Speaking of which, Astro has listed the features, with one of the more predominant features being the ability to swap the analogue stick and d-pad positions, along with variable-length stick tops, programmable rear buttons, custom software, button remapping, custom profiles, and more. Naturally, all software tweaks will come from the app on your PC, but you will be able to manually swap out the d-pad and control stick to your own needs. While a pro-controller won't immediately up your game, it does give you a good way to hone your skills - if you can afford one. The Astro C40 TR is available to pre-order today on Astro's website for $200, and will be released in the US region first, with other countries to follow shortly after.