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The best capture cards not only fuel your content creation but make it a lot easier. Capturing footage of games can be a tedious process without a capture card that does it with ease and with a high quality picture. The best capture cards make recording on consoles like the PlayStation 5 or your PC simple. Without a good one, you'd lose your best plays and memorable moments.
Nowadays, capture cards come in all shapes and sizes and. Best of all, they no longer require you to pry open your PC and hope to God you've got an extra card slot next to your GPU to install. External capture cards are a lot more portable, so much easier to use, and in some cases, cheaper than their internal counterparts since they connect to your PC via USB 3.0 or USB Type C.
We recommend most people focus on a 1080p target resolution and at least 30fps with any potential capture card purchase. 60fps is great if your PC can handle the extra load, but play it safe if you're starting out. There are good 4K capture cards out there, but they're also expensive, and those files' storage needs are harsh. Plus, the bandwidth requirements often mean 4K is not worth the hassle for most streamers.
The picks below were tested using OBS and Xsplit, two popular broadcasting apps among streams, since that's the best to the most of your footage. A capture card is just part of our broader streaming ecosystem; you should make sure you're investing in the best webcam and best microphone to complete your setup.
Best capture card for PC gaming
Image 1 of 8(Image credit: Future)
Image 2 of 8(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 8(Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 8(Image credit: Future)Image 5 of 8(Image credit: Future)Image 6 of 8(Image credit: Future)Image 7 of 8(Image credit: Future)Image 8 of 8(Image credit: Elgato)1. Elgato Game Capture HD60 X
The best capture card for streaming and recording
Resolution: 1080p, 4K | Frame rate: 60fps (30fps @ 4K) | Interface: USB 3.0
Support for VRR and HDR passthroughGreat for modern gaming monitorsUSB Type-C connectivityGood looking 1080p 60fps captureSame launch price as HD60 S+Look elsewhere for 4K captureOnly simple to set-up at 1080pElgato's latest capture card, the HD60 X, aims to make streaming and recording a little more amenable to gamers with a modern, half-decent gaming monitor. With the option of 4K passthrough, there's a little more this device can offer gamers with high pixel count screens. Though it's also pretty handy if you use G-Sync of FreeSync technologies, which also receive timely support on the new HD60 X.
As with any capture card the speeds and feeds can be a lot to chew through. So let's break it down to basics for this $200/£190 option. With the HD60 X you're essentially looking at three key capture resolutions: 4K at 30fps, 1440p at 60fps, and 1080p at 60fps. Then for your passthrough resolution it's possible to run up 4K at 60fps or 1440p at 120fps, and there's support for Variable Refresh Rate technologies (VRR), such as G-Sync and FreeSync, and HDR (only on Windows).I don't have to sacrifice my own gaming experience to record it for others.
To save bandwidth on the HD60 X, it offers 4:2:0 by default. Corsair tells me 4:2:2 is available via non-default codecs and will work at 1080p at 60fps or 1440p at 30fps, but don't expect that out of the box.
It does look decent with chroma subsampling, too. And the thing to remember here is that, if you intend to use your content, say, online—which most will—then video compression is going to eat up a lot of the quality anyways.
The passthrough functionality of the HD60 X is, however, fully capable of running at 4:4:4, or in other words, uncompressed. So while your recording may lose some of that information, you don't have to suffer through a low picture quality while you're recording.
Though only a few of these 4K cards are standalone units, most being PCIe add-in when you get down to near the price of the HD60 X. Some of the flexibility is removed when you ditch the external connection from your capture card: Not only will you have to make space inside your PC, but you're removing the ability to run your stream or recording off a laptop close-by. You also lose the option to easily travel around with your capture card, though let's be honest I can't imagine that's of massive importance for many.Ultimately, a PCIe add-in capture card tends to get you more bang for your buck at 4K, and comes with heaps of benefits in other ways to make up for its lack of portability. So the flexibility of how you wish to set up your streaming setup is something to weigh up before hitting purchase on an external unit like this HD60 X.
As a user of the original Elgato Game Capture HD and then the HD60 S, I'll admit the HD60X doesn't feel like a revelatory new product. I'm yet to find any external capture card that makes capturing gameplay as much of a doddle as I'd like to think it to be. That said, there are some things I probably couldn't go without now that I have used the HD60 X. Adroit 1080p at 60fps recording, yes, though more so the low latency passthrough, VRR, and HDR support. All of which makes it so I don't have to sacrifice my own gaming experience to record it for others.Read our full Elgato HD60 X review.
(Image credit: Avermedia)2. Avermedia Live Gamer Duo
Best two source capture card
Resolution: 1080p | Frame rate: 60fps | Interface: PCIe 2.0, HDMI 2.0, HDMI 1.4
Can stream 2 HMDI sources at onceEasy set up and useHD onlyOnly does passthrough on 1 HDMI sourceAVerMedia might not be a household name yet when it comes to capture cards and streaming devices, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t turning heads. Its capture cards in particular always seem to come with an interesting innovation—and the AVerMedia Live Gamer Duo doesn't buck the trend.
Previously we’ve seen the Thunderbolt-only Live Gamer Bolt, and the 4K HDR streaming lineup, in the Live Gamer Ultra and Live Gamer 4K. However, one of the newer entries to the market is the Live Gamer Duo, an internal card that fits into a PCIe slot on your motherboard and can handle two HDMI inputs at once—a very useful tool for streamers and content creators.
The software setup was also fairly effortless. After downloading the drivers as well as the AVerMedia RECentral 4 software, all my PC needed was a restart and everything was working as expected. I’ve wrestled with capture cards not always picking up sources before but was very happy to lower my guard.A single one-time set-up unit that’s largely plug and play.
Even since the initial install I’ve only experienced problems when having two different programs trying to use the card at once. When the RECentral 4 software is running, while something like Xsplit or OBS are also getting signals from the card, the audio will feedback on itself in your recording or stream. It doesn’t seem to matter whether I’ve got PC audio turned on or any other settings. So you’re limited to only using one software at any time, which is actually very fair.
I probably wouldn’t even have come across the issue if I wasn’t using the RECentral 4 software as a screen to play games on rather than using passthrough. This is actually a testament to the latency because it was good enough that I didn’t really notice.RECentral 4 software can have problems when left open but not in use for long periods of time. The audio and visual information become distorted but are immediately fine again when restarting the program. It’s never happened while the software has been in active use or during streaming so has never felt like a problem that inhibited performance.
That’s what impresses me about the Live Gamer Duo the most. It does everything it advertises with relatively low effort. The full HD recording and high-enough-frame rate streaming just works and is immediately recognisable by third party software.Video processing, such as downscaling or frame rate conversion, is all done on the card itself, and I believe it. My PC is unbothered while the card is operating, though it still takes the usual hit from my streaming software. Meanwhile, the 4K passthrough has remained unhindered entirely by the process, though it would be nice to have passthrough options for both inputs rather than solely HDMI1.
Of course, it’s not without sacrifice. If you want to be able to record in 4K or higher than 60 fps this quite simply isn’t the device. What you get with AVerMedia’s Live Gamer Duo is a single one-time set-up unit that’s largely plug and play. It has especially made streaming easier by having a setup that simply works, and one which I can mostly leave in place. For anyone looking to include multiple sources for minimal hassle, AVerMedia’s Live Gamer Duo is a really smart choice that lives up to all its promises.Read our full Avermedia Live Gamer Duo review.
Image 1 of 5(Image credit: AVerMedia)Image 2 of 5Avermedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus (Image credit: Avermedia)Image 3 of 5AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus (Image credit: Avermedia)Image 4 of 5AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus (Image credit: Avermedia)Image 5 of 5AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus (Image credit: Avermedia)3. Avermedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus
Best capture card that uses a SD card
Resolution: 1080p | Frame rate: 60fps | Interface: USB 3.0
Ease-of-usePlay in 4K while you recordInconsistent frame rateThe Avermedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus packs smooth 60fps 1080p recording and 4K pass-through so you can still play in Ultra HD (even if it’s not captured in 4K), USB 3.0, Mac compatibility, and dirty great flashing lights to tell you if you’re capturing or have left HDCP on.
Besides an attractive form-factor, it also offers intuitive software for live editing and the ability to record straight onto a Micro SD card if you’d prefer to keep your HDD clear of space-absorbing video. This capture card is flexible, but particularly tempting if you need to record on the go. It works straight out of the box, too—always a plus.
Best gaming PCs | Best gaming laptops | Best gaming keyboard
Best gaming mouse | Best gaming chairs | Best graphics cardsImage 1 of 5(Image credit: Elgato)Image 2 of 5Elgato Game Capture 4K60 Pro (Image credit: Elgato)Image 3 of 5Elgato Game Capture 4K60 Pro (Image credit: Elgato)Image 4 of 5Elgato Game Capture 4K60 Pro (Image credit: Elgato)Image 5 of 5Elgato Game Capture 4K60 Pro (Image credit: Elgato)4. Elgato Game Capture 4K60 Pro MK.2
The best 4K capture card
Resolution: 4K | Frame rate: 60fps | Interface: PCIe x4
4K capture with 60fpsVideo encoding1080p @ 240Hz / 1440p @ 144Hz passthroughPriceyPro-users, who want nothing but the best, need look no further than Elgato’s 4K60 Pro. It may need a high-end PC to get off the ground, but this is an excellent piece of kit for those intent on capturing gameplay at the highest resolution and frame rate possible.
It’s worth making sure you’ve got enough storage space for all those videos, too, because they can get huge very quickly. And if you want to go big, Sabrent's 4TB RocketQ or even the ultra-expensive Sabrent 8TB SSD will be your dream tickets to storage nirvana. The 4K60 Pro's encoder can reduce file size and save you much-needed memory real-estate, but they can still be chunky in real terms.
Image 1 of 4Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro (Image credit: Elgato)Image 2 of 4Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro (Image credit: Elgato)Image 3 of 4Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro (Image credit: Elgato)Image 4 of 4Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro (Image credit: Elgato)5. Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro
Best internal capture card for beginners
Resolution: 1080p | Frame rate: 60fps | Interface: PCIe x1, HDMI 2.0
Advanced encoderBitrate of 60MbpsNo 4K captureIf you want to take your recordings from amateur to the next level up, Elgato’s internal HD60 Pro card is a good shout. Indeed, Elgato's website claims this card features “an advanced, onboard H.264 encoder that enables you to record unlimited footage in superb 1080p [60fps] quality, at a bitrate up to 60Mbps.” Not too shabby.
It can also stream at 1080p when using Game Capture HD, OBS Studio, and Xsplit. Petite, classy form-factor is in the HD60 Pro’s favor as well, although it does mean you'll have to install it on a desktop PC, so using a laptop to control your capture card is out. Still, if you're looking for a neat solution, this is pretty sweet.
Image 1 of 4EVGA XR1 (Image credit: EVGA)Image 2 of 4EVGA XR1 (Image credit: EVGA)Image 3 of 4EVGA XR1 (Image credit: EVGA)Image 4 of 4EVGA XR1 (Image credit: EVGA)6. EVGA XR1
Best capture card with built-in audio mixer
Resolution: 1080p (up to 4K/60fps HDR passthrough) | Frame rate: 60fps | Interface: USB-C
Customizable ARGB LEDsBuilt-in Mixer4K @ 120fps HDR Pass-ThroughHard to configureRead moreEVGA is best known for its graphics cards, so it was a surprise when it announced the XR1, its first external capture device for streamers. The flashy OBS certified capture device has a built-in audio mixer that'll show your levels using these neat-looking RGB LEDs on the unit itself.
The XR1 records and streams at 1080p/60fps and supports advanced Pass-Through of 1440p/120fps and 4K/60fps signals. This means the XR1 will take those native signals and spit them out at 1080p/60fps for your stream without needing to change any of your display settings while you game. The capture does a good job, although we did notice the colors were a little washed out; nothing a little tweaking in OBS couldn't handle, though.
Best capture card FAQ
Why do I need a capture card if I just use OBS?
OBS and other third-party capture and streaming software are great, but there are limitations, let's say you want to stream gameplay from a game console or use an HDMI camera instead of a webcam; the easiest way to get them to work your PC without an external or internal capture card.
With software like OBS, you are entirely reliant on your system resources, such as your CPU or GPU, when it comes to capturing video inputs. That can be a drain if you're capturing at a high bit rate and trying to play a game simultaneously. Modern CPUs have gotten good at the necessary multi-tasking, but a dedicated capture card can help lighten the load.Also if you dual-wield a PC and console, such as the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, an external capture card can help you pull footage from those devices.
Do capture cards reduce quality?
On the contrary, a good capture card could increase the quality of your stream, potentially lighten the load on your main PC, and improve the performance of your games while streaming.
If you're asking on purely technical terms, however, then yes, they can. Capture cards often use something called Chroma Subsampling to reduce bandwidth requirements, and that will reduce the quality of the final picture. Though it's worth bearing in mind that once you upload your footage to a service, such as YouTube, they will severely drop the quality anyways. So there's not a tremendous loss overall as a result.
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Everyone loves it when people control games with weird things. I've got a soft spot for instrument-based control schemes, and streamer DeanoBeano has delivered: Deano gets a sniper kill in Call of Duty: Warzone using a recorder, one of those plastic flutes people give kids as their first instrument. You've heard of a first person shooter, now here's a first person dooter.
In the clip, Deano uses the recorder to jerkily zero in on an enemy as they spin, flip, bunny hop, and turn from cover to cover, playing tones to adjust his aim. Suddenly, his target breaks into a sprint. Deano moves the crosshair to lead them and then...
Doot! It's a kill!
It doesn't matter that I knew what was going to happen. This is a clip that made me laugh so hard I woke up my dog, who burst off the couch and started barking madly and would not stop for about five minutes. I'm sure he figured I was also barking at some enemy he could not see. Good dog.
How's it done? It's pretty simple. The notes he's playing are picked up using a mic, and a program translates those sounds into a keyboard input. It's the same kind of magic someone else used to play Elden Ring with a harp.
DeanoBeano streams over on Twitch and maintains a YouTube channel. He's no stranger to playing with weird controllers. He's got clips of playing with the weird controller classics, like the Donkey Conga bongos and the Guitar Hero guitar, as well as more exciting devices: Allow me to direct your attention to this man playing Jak and Daxter with a whole entire drumkit.
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Hideo Kojima just doesn't have enough to do. There's Death Stranding 2, sure, and another unknown game, the odd book, and his new podcast… but that won't sate our modest hero, who has now announced via Twitter that Kojima Productions is working on a VR game that will be shown off very soon at TGS 2022.
Doing the final check of KJP VR that we are going to show at TGS 2022
🫶
pic.twitter.com/GFWZSc6OAcSeptember 14, 2022See moreTGS 2022 runs from September 15 through Sunday the 18th. As in, this weekend.
This means Kojima Productions currently has at least three projects on the go, with Hideo Kojima himself doing even more. In terms of games, Death Stranding's lead actor Norman Reedus simply blurted out that the sequel existed in May, responding to a question about the game with "We just started the second one." Kojima responded to this by telling Reedus to "go to his private room," an in-joke about his character in the game.
Then there was the recent announcement of a partnership with Xbox, where Kojima talked a lot about cloud technology. If this turns out to be a VR game I'll eat my hat. There are no details beyond Kojima saying during the partnership announcement that this "is a game I've always wanted to make. It's a completely new game, one that no-one has ever experienced or seen. I've waited very long for the day when I could finally start to create it."
In the announcement of the announcement, Kojima is wearing an Oculus Quest 2 headset and wielding the official controllers, so that's where the game will land. An underplayed element of Kojima's creations is the horror side to things (which finally got some expression in P.T.), and if he's going down that path… this thing is going to result in some soiled underwear.
Aside from this, Kojima's been busy doing a podcast about how great he is with Spotify. It's called Brain Structure and, as with all of Kojima's work, the title and image could be self-aggrandising irony, or dead serious. Judge for yourself here.
There are no further details on what Kojima Productions' VR game will be, unless we want to try and start extrapolating from the Joy Division t-shirt he's wearing. We'll find out soon enough.
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A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.
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Strike it big in the Season of Plunder(Image credit: Bungie)
Destiny 2 Season of Plunder: Everything you need
Destiny 2 map fragments: How to get treasure maps
Destiny 2 Delicate Tomb: Grab this fusion rifle exotic
Destiny 2 Cryptic Quatrains: Solve the riddles
Destiny 2 lost sectors: This season's daily rotationThe Destiny 2 Nightfall weapon changes on a week-by-week basis, giving you the chance to delve into enemy-infested lairs across the system and grab yourself a special gun. The only way to get a Nightfall weapon is by completing the activity, and even then, there's only a limited chance. You can also get adept versions of each weapon, though these are solely a guaranteed reward for the much-harder Grandmaster Nightfalls.
A couple of Nightfall weapons were retired last season, including the Plug One fusion rifle and Hothead rocket launcher. If you don't want to miss out on any weapons that might disappear by season's end, it's always a good idea to keep a weather eye on what's coming up next. Here I'll explain what Nightfall weapon is up for grabs this week, its best roll, and what you'll need to bring to beat the activity on higher difficulties.
What is the Nightfall weapon this week?
(Image credit: Bungie)The Nightfall weapon from September 13 - 20 is Militia's Birthright. This is a kinetic, lightweight frame grenade launcher, meaning you can remotely detonate its grenades after firing. The god roll you're looking for is Confined Launch, Blinding Grenades, Ambitious Assassin, and One for All, which allows grenades to stun enemies, overflows your magazine based on kills, and grants a damage bonus when you hit three targets, which you'd hope to do with a grenade launcher.
Other decent perks include Multikill Clip or Auto-Loading Holster if you just want to fire and forget. This week's Nightfall strike is The Disgraced, which you'll probably remember as the one where you hunt down the Hive wizard Navota in the Cosmodrome. If you're trying on Hero difficulty and above, you'll have to deal with Barrier and Unstoppable champions, and since there are Arc, Solar, and Void shields present, you'll want to split the elements between your fireteam, or just bring Arbalest to strip the more troublesome enemies. Lastly, it's an Arc burn, so you'll want to bring an Arc heavy like Stormchaser for DPS.
Nightfall weapon rotation for the Season of Plunder
You can find the Nightfall activity in the Vanguard destination (Image credit: Bungie)With each new season, some Nightfall weapons are retired to make way for new ones, meaning it's often your last chance to grab them for quite a while. The current Nightfall weapons in the seasonal rotation are:
- Militia's Birthright
- Mindbender's Ambition
- Duty Bound
- Horror's Least
- D.F.A
- Silicon Neuroma
Once Grandmaster Nightfalls begin on October 4, you'll be able to get adept versions of these weapons, which allow you to equip adept mods for increased stats and damage against certain enemy types.
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Weapon balance is a constant talking point in Destiny 2—something that every player has an opinion on. But does being the best at a game mean you know what's best for it? Late last week, Destiny 2 raid champ Saltagreppo tested that question with a tweet thread that called for a nerf to Divinity, one of the best support weapons in the game.
-removing most of the skill gap during DPS and making precision weapons way too easy to use.-forcing high risk high reward weapons such as Whisper of the Worm out of the meta, since they simply can’t be buffed, otherwise they would be S tier due to Div removing the risk aspect.September 8, 2022
See moreDivinity is an exotic trace rifle that works by creating a bubble around its target. Any damage to that bubble is increased by 30%. Meaning, while Divinity itself doesn't do much damage to its target, it causes other players to do dramatically more. In a six-person raid team, the DPS loss of having one person running Divinity is more than made up for by the 30% increase that each of the five other players can deal against a boss. It's a no-brainer of a pick.
Saltagreppo's point is that it makes DPS checks too much of a non-factor. Not only is the damage increase itself great, but the bubble is much easier to hit than, for instance, a boss's crit spot. Heads small; bubbles big. This is why it's trivial to run current boss DPS favourites like Stormchaser, which might otherwise be more skillful picks due to the difficulty of getting each of three-burst linear fusion's shots to land. Divinity is the answer.
The solution that Saltagreppo—a member of Clan Elysium, the team that won the last three of Destiny 2's raid races—proposes was pretty drastic. Essentially, he argues, if you need the big target that Divinity provides, it should come at the cost of damage modifiers. And not just Divinity's own damage modifier, but any other source of global debuff that you can currently apply.
The replies, by and large, do not agree.
What if Divinity kept giving the crit bubble but provided a 0% debuff that overrides any other debuff? So that for example using Divinity + Tether still resulted in no debuff as long as Div is applied.September 8, 2022
See moreThis, I am told, was a drama. Content creators sprang into action to offer up their take, which was less about Divinity, and more about the fact that it's dangerous to request nerfs in public. The overarching mood of YouTube commentariat can be summarised as: "Yeah, this is what happens when you poke the bear." A sort of amused sympathy is laced through the replies. They've been there, done that, and have the ratios to prove it.
But was this a community drama in any meaningful sense? Seeing content creators position this as some 'elite' vs 'casual' battle feels disingenuous. The Destiny 2 subreddit seemed bored of the discussion before it even began. Only a couple of posts on the topic garnered any real conversation, all of them heavily downvoted. And this is a forum that loves beating a dead horse—there are, months later, still daily posts about how Solar 3.0 is bad for Warlocks (it isn't).
Datto's video on the topic is instructive, precisely because it does what he accuses Saltagreppo of doing—missing the forest for the trees. He refers to Reddit and the Twitter repliers as the casual side of the community, opposed to the hardcore's calls for nerfs and higher difficulty. But the community is not a homogenous entity, and its most casual members certainly aren't active on Reddit or replying to raid champions on Twitter. Destiny 2's casual community, by and large, doesn't even own Divinity. According to Light.gg, less than half of users who registered to have their loadouts tracked by the site own the weapon—and that's already an incredibly self-selecting portion of the playerbase. If there are battlelines here, it already discounts millions of players who are just having fun in the game.
The responses to Saltagreppo's tweet are predictably excessive, but all they're really indicative of is that a bunch of people strongly disagree with his idea. I'm not sure there's a grander point here: one of the best raiders in the game is offering up ideas that will make things better for one of the best raiders in the game. The replies—be they nuanced, incredulous or depressingly rude—are responding to that idea from the perspective of people who aren't one of the best raiders in the game. These are fundamentally different experiences.
(Image credit: Bungie)Even the basic premise that "the community" reacts negatively to any call to the nerf is wrong, in my experience. Much of the response to yesterday's Loreley Splendor nerf was just, "yeah, fair enough". Plenty of people are willing to accept that, in light of the Light 3.0 reworks, Guardians are probably too good at clearing up trash mobs. And, frankly, people are just bored of running Arbalest—an exotic linear fusion that trivialises Match Game modifiers and deals with Anti-Barrier champions in end game activities. There are plenty of things in Destiny 2 that are obviously overpowered, and even the people that crutch on them are often willing to admit that's the case.
The community is not a homogenous entity, and its most casual members certainly aren't active on Reddit or replying to raid champions on Twitter.
That's not to say that there aren't people—perhaps even a large number—who will respond with vitriol for even the most reasonable take. Destiny 2 is a large game, and some of the people who play it have some truly baffling opinions. Datto brings up the response he received to pre-nerf Well of Radiance, a super that, if run with Lunafaction Boots, would automatically refill your gun's ammo as you fired. It was undeniably overpowered. It absolutely needed a nerf. I'm sure content creators who advocated for that nerf got plenty of pushback for their trouble. But that's not a reflection of some monolithic community opinion. It's just some people getting mad.
It's true that no player deserves to be piled on for their balance opinions, whatever perspective they're coming from. I think there's a real fear from some that top players and content creators have an outsized effect on Bungie's sandbox tweaks. The result being that some 'regular' players seem to try to counter the perceived size of a player's visibility with volume—hammering home their opinion as if to create proof it isn't widely supported. One of Bungie's social media managers weighed in on why that sucks.
Everyone from all skill tiers deserve to have their opinions heard. It’s our job at Bungie to listen and combine these thoughts with our own and move forward. No one skill tier “ruins the game”. Miss me with that mess.September 10, 2022
See moreBut just as opinions from every skill level can be heard, they can also be ignored. Whether Divinity needs a nerf is a question that, for Bungie, is more nuanced than a single player's opinion. It's also more informed than a few hundred people getting angry in the replies. The studio will have reams of data about the weapon's use, which will prove as if not more important than sentiment or vibes.
Does Divinity need a nerf? I do take Saltagreppo's point that it's very strongly tuned right now. It applies the highest tier of global debuff to its target with very little downtime and with relative safety. And because global debuffs don't stack, it nullifies the need for other methods of application, like Tractor Cannon or Tether. I certainly wouldn't be mad if it was knocked down to a lower tier.
But other than rebalancing its percentage debuff in a way that means more skillful players could apply better damage through other means—which, let's be honest, is hardly the game's biggest priority in terms of balance—it seems like it's operating as intended. Divinity is somewhat unique in the Destiny 2 sandbox in that it's a desirable boss weapon that offers a different playstyle to the norm. Support is a valid role for MMO design, and it's a nice part of Destiny 2's sandbox. And, frankly, the idea that it's nullifying difficulty in raids displays a gross overestimation of the overall playerbase's ability.
Ehroar offered the best take I've seen on Saltagreppo's proposed changes, which is that all they would do is disempower lower skilled players. At the more skilled end, players can already do what Saltagreppo is calling for. They already have the ability to stack global debuffs and hit headshots in such a way that the loss of Divinity would be felt, but easily overcome.
I've recently spent the last few months sherpa-ing the PCG team through Destiny 2's raids, and, let me tell you, over here, things look very different. Even with Divinity in action, we are not one-phasing bosses. We're going in with vastly varied loadouts and expertise, and—by and large—without the meta DPS picks that ensure a smooth and consistent experience. Divinity, for us, helps give these newer raiders the space to actually learn the mechanics without also worrying about enrage timers or optimal damage positioning and execution.
Put simply, and most obviously, the skill gap between the kind of person who can win three World's First raid races in a row, and the sort of person who's just stepping into their very first raid is insurmountable. It's not just mechanical skill, it's the very knowledge of how Destiny 2's systems work—the complicated and counterintuitive ways that buffs and debuffs can be stacked, and the importance of mod setups and stat distributions.
And there are far more people in that position—who are just getting a taste of what Destiny 2 raiding is like. I don't disagree that there are likely better ways to reward and incentivise the game's most skilled players without hurting the much larger portion of the playerbase that get value from what Divinity does.
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The Sims 4 is a financial monster of a game to get into, but it looks like EA is trying to make the entry point a little smoother. The publisher has just revealed that the base game is shedding its price tag and going free-to-play from October 18.
Hours before the official announcement word had already been going around—the game's Origin store page was already displaying a big ol' banner proclaiming "The Sims 4 will be free to play starting October 18." Instant Gaming also managed to get its hands on two screenshots advertising that the base game was free, which have been circulating on Twitter for most of the day.
It's worth emphasising that it is just the base game that's becoming free—something that has pretty regularly gone on sale for around $5 to $10 for the last few years now and received a permanent price cut back in April. The main moneymaker continues to lie in The Sims 4's countless expansion packs, but this is also the first time I can recall that EA has made any of its Sims games free while it was still current. Those who've already given their cold hard cash away for the base game will receive the Desert Luxe Kit for free which is a nice touch, but if you already own that too then you won't be entitled to any additional goodies. That's valid up until October 17, so if for any reason you feel spurred to buy the base game, now's the time to do it.
More players! More stories! More ways to chaos!
The Sims 4 will be FREE to download across PC/Mac & Consoles on October 18! More updates to follow during a special Behind The Sims Summit stream: https://t.co/89B3MDdeek pic.twitter.com/W4Gjg3xl75September 14, 2022See moreI can't help but speculate on why EA is actually doing this, especially when the base game is already so consistently cheap. It definitely feels like a great way to lure over curious simmers to try out the game, realise how many cool gameplay mechanics are locked behind expansions and then hope they drop a few bucks on them. Hell, it's basically how I ended up dropping heaps of money on the game. It could also spell a transition towards a more live-service model, drip-feeding content on a more seasonal basis. My copium would like to think that it means a Sims 5 announcement is imminent. After all, The Sims 4 is the longest-running entry in the series, celebrating its eighth anniversary earlier this month. There's been a noticeable winding down on larger packs as of late and with the base game so old by now, an upcoming sequel announcement just makes sense.
Regardless of the reasoning behind it, I'm sure we'll find out soon enough with a stream titled Behind The Sims Summit also happening on October 18. EA says it'll be "sharing more about what's in the works" for the game. That stream will be happening at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET / 6 PM BST over on The Sims YouTube and Twitch.
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Conquer Viking purgatory with these Valheim guides(Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)
Valheim guide: Ten beginner tips
Valheim flint: How to get it
Valheim trader: Find him easily
Valheim workbench: How to build and upgrade it
Valheim dedicated server: How to get one working
Valheim copper: How to get it
Valheim map: The best world seeds
Valheim portal: How to fast travel
Valheim seeds: How to plant them
Valheim iron: How to get itLooking for Valheim cheats and console commands? The Viking survival game may appear fairly peaceful when you're starting out but you'll soon find tough opponents and mythical Valheim bosses to battle as you travel deeper into the world. You may discover that you need a bit of help to survive some of the tougher regions—or maybe you just want to build the ultimate base without having to worry about gathering materials.
You can only use Valheim console commands in singleplayer mode but there are lots of fun cheat to use, including a god mode which makes you invulnerable, the ability to add skill points and spawn weapons and armor, and even the power to fly through the air like Thor. There's also a 'debug mode' that essentially lets you build without the need for a workbench or resources. For those in a multiplayer world, there are some console commands that can be used by server admins and these have also been listed below.
With all of that in mind, here are all the Valheim console commands and cheats you should know about.
Valheim cheats and console commands for singleplayer
Valheim cheats and console commands for singleplayer
(Image credit: Iron Gate Studios)Important Update! To activate the console, you will now need to set it as a launch option in Steam. By default, the command console is now locked.
Here's how to activate the console:
- Right-click Valheim in your Steam library
- Select Properties
- In the General tab, look for the Launch Options field
- In it, type -console
- Close the General tab
Once in the game, to activate cheats, open the console by pressing F5. Pressing F5 will close it again as well.
Type devcommands and press enter (previously, the command was 'imacheater' but that has changed). Then you'll be able to use the following cheats in singleplayer mode. They won't work on a multiplayer server.
To deactivate cheats, type devcommands and press enter again.
god - Enables god mode.
heal - Restores current max health.
puke - Empties stomach of food and resets health and stamina.
freefly - Activates the free camera.
ffsmooth 1 - Adds smooth movements to free camera.
ffsmooth 0 - Resets smooth movements to normal.killall - Kills all nearby enemies.
tame - Tames all nearby creatures.
ghost - Enemies will ignore you.
exploremap - Reveals the entire map.
resetmap - Hides entire map.
pos - Shows player coordinates.
goto [x,z] Teleports player to the specified coordinates.
location - Sets spawn location.tod - Sets time of day. Values are between 0-1 (tod .5 is noon, tod 0 and tod 1 are midnight. tod -1 returns time of day to default.
event [name] - Starts the named event.
stopevent - Stops the current event.
randomevent - Starts a random event.raiseskill [skill] [amount] - Raises the named skill by the value entered.
resetcharacter - Resets all of your character data.
dpsdebug - Toggles dps debug print on and off.
save - Forces the game to save the current world state.
players [nr] - Adjusts the difficulty scale. Enter 0 to reset difficulty.
removedrops - Removes all items dropped in the area.wind [angle][intensity] - Adjusts the direction and intensity of the wind.
resetwind - Resets the wind angle and intensityhair - Removes character's hair (permanently)
beard - Removes character's beard (permanently)
model 0 - Switches character to masculine body
model 1 - Switches character to feminine bodyDebug/creative mode commands
Valheim commands: Creative mode
Also in singleplayer, you can enter debug mode to access a few more cheats and what is essentially a creative mode, where you can build without a workbench or resources.
debugmode - Enters creative mode.
B - Toggle for creative mode building, no workbench or resources needed.
Z - Toggle to fly. Spacebar gives you altitude, Ctrl brings you back down.
K - Tap to kill all nearby enemies and creatures within range.Server admin console commands
Valheim console commands for multiplayer
Server admins can use the console to enter commands on the server.
To open the console, the admin can press F5. Then the following commands can be entered.
help - Shows all the available server commands
kick [name/ip/userID] - Kicks the named user
ban [name/ip/userID] - Bans the named user
unban [ip/userID] - Unbans the named user
banned - Shows a full list of banned users
ping - Pings the server to measure latency.
lodbias [number] - Sets the draw distance for the server. The number can be set from 1 to 5.
info - Prints the current system information.Spawn items list
Valheim spawn items list
To spawn items, type spawn in the console, followed by the item you want, followed by the amount of that item. For instance, if you wanted 50 coal, you would type:
spawn Coal 50
Important note: items are case-sensitive! Also note, some items are not fully implemented in the game yet. Items won't appear in your inventory but beside you.
Here's what you can spawn:
Amber
AmberPearl
AncientSeed
Barley
BarleyFlour
BarleyWine
BarleyWineBase
BeechSeeds
BlackMetal
BlackMetalScrap
Bloodbag
BoneFragments
Bronze
BronzeNails
BoneFragments
CarrotSeeds
Chitin
Coal
Coins
Copper
CopperOre
CryptKey
Crystal
Dandelion
DeerHide
DragonEgg
DragonTear
ElderBark
Entrails
Feathers
FineWood
FirCone
FishingBait
FishRaw
FishWraps
Flametal
FlametalOre
Flax
Flint
FreezeGland
GreydwarfEye
Guck
HardAntler
Iron
IronNails
IronOre
IronScrap
LeatherScraps
LinenThread
LoxMeat
LoxPelt
LoxPie
Needle
Obsidian
Ooze
PineCone
QueenBee
Ruby
SerpentScale
SharpeningStone
Silver
SilverNecklace
SilverOre
Stone
SurtlingCore
Thistle
Tin
TinOre
TrollHide
TurnipSeeds
WitheredBone
WolfFang
WolfPelt
Wood
YmirRemains
NeckTail
RawMeat
Resin
RoundLog
SerpentMeat
YagluthDrop
Armor
ArmorBronzeChest
ArmorBronzeLegs
ArmorIronChest
ArmorIronLegs
ArmorLeatherChest
ArmorLeatherLegs
ArmorPaddedCuirass
ArmorPaddedGreaves
ArmorRagsChest
ArmorRagsLegs
ArmorTrollLeatherChest
ArmorTrollLeatherLegs
ArmorWolfChest
ArmorWolfLegs
CapeDeerHide
CapeLinen
CapeLox
CapeOdin
CapeTest
CapeTrollHide
CapeWolf
HelmetBronze
HelmetDrake
HelmetDverger
HelmetIron
HelmetLeather
HelmetOdin
HelmetPadded
HelmetTrollLeather
HelmetYule
Arrows
ArrowBronze
ArrowFire
ArrowFlint
ArrowFrost
ArrowIron
ArrowNeedle
ArrowObsidian
ArrowPoison
ArrowSilver
ArrowWood
Weapons
AtgeirBlackmetal
AtgeirBronze
AtgeirIron
Battleaxe
Bow
BowDraugrFang
BowFineWood
BowHuntsman
KnifeBlackMetal
KnifeChitin
KnifeCopper
KnifeFlint
MaceBronze
MaceIron
MaceNeedle
MaceSilver
ShieldBanded
ShieldBlackmetal
ShieldBlackmetalTower
ShieldBronzeBuckler
ShieldIronSquare
ShieldIronTower
ShieldKnight
ShieldSerpentscale
ShieldSilver
ShieldWood
ShieldWoodTower
SledgeIron
SledgeStagbreaker
SpearBronze
SpearChitin
SpearElderbark
SpearFlint
SpearWolfFang
SwordBlackmetal
SwordBronze
SwordCheat
SwordIron
SwordIronFire
SwordSilver
Tankard
TankardOdin
Club
Torch
Tools
AxeBronze
AxeFlint
AxeIron
AxeStone
AxeBlackMetal
PickaxeAntler
PickaxeBronze
PickaxeIron
PickaxeStone
Cultivator
FishingRod
Hammer
Hoe
Magic Items
BeltStrength
Wishbone
HelmetDverger
Enemies
Blob
BlobElite
Boar
Boar_piggy
Crow
Deathsquito
Deer
Draugr
Draugr_Elite
Draugr_Ranged
Fenring
Ghost
Goblin
GoblinArcher
GoblinBrute
GoblinClub
GoblinHelmet
GoblinLegband
GoblinLoin
GoblinShaman
GoblinShoulders
GoblinSpear
GoblinSword
GoblinTorch
GoblinTotem
Greydwarf
Greydwarf_Elite
Greydwarf_Root
Greydwarf_Shaman
Greyling
Leech
Lox
Neck
Seagal
Serpent
Skeleton
Skeleton_Poison
StoneGolem
Surtling
Troll
Valkyrie
Wolf
Wolf_cub
Wraith
Bosses
Eikthyr
gd_king
Bonemass
Dragon
GoblinKing
Food
Bread
BloodPudding
Blueberries
Carrot
CarrotSoup
Cloudberry
CookedLoxMeat
CookedMeat
FishCooked
Honey
Mushroom
MushroomBlue
MushroomYellow
NeckTailGrilled
Raspberry
QueensJam
Sausages
SerpentMeatCooked
SerpentStew
Turnip
TurnipStew
Mead
MeadBaseFrostResist
MeadBaseHealthMedium
MeadBaseHealthMinor
MeadBasePoisonResist
MeadBaseStaminaMedium
MeadBaseStaminaMinor
MeadBaseTasty
MeadFrostResist
MeadHealthMedium
MeadHealthMinor
MeadPoisonResist
MeadStaminaMedium
MeadStaminaMinor
MeadTasty
Vehicles
Cart
Raft
Karve
VikingShip
Trailership
Vendor
Haldor
Trophies
TrophyBlob
TrophyBoar
TrophyBonemass
TrophyDeathsquito
TrophyDeer
TrophyDragonQueen
TrophyDraugr
TrophyDraugrElite
TrophyDraugrFem
TrophyEikthyr
TrophyFenring
TrophyForestTroll
TrophyFrostTroll
TrophyGoblin
TrophyGoblinBrute
TrophyGoblinKing
TrophyGoblinShaman
TrophyGreydwarf
TrophyGreydwarfBrute
TrophyGreydwarfShaman
TrophyHatchling
TrophyLeech
TrophyLox
TrophyNeck
TrophySerpent
TrophySGolem
TrophySkeleton
TrophySkeletonPoison
TrophySurtling
TrophyTheElder
TrophyWolf
TrophyWraith
Enemy Spawners
BonePileSpawner
Spawner_Blob
Spawner_BlobElite
Spawner_Boar
Spawner_Draugr
Spawner_Draugr_Elite
Spawner_Draugr_Noise
Spawner_Draugr_Ranged
Spawner_Draugr_Ranged_Noise
Spawner_Draugr_respawn_30
Spawner_DraugrPile
Spawner_Fenring
Spawner_Fish4
Spawner_Ghost
Spawner_Goblin
Spawner_GoblinArcher
Spawner_GoblinBrute
Spawner_GoblinShaman
Spawner_Greydwarf
Spawner_Greydwarf_Elite
Spawner_Greydwarf_Shaman
Spawner_GreydwarfNest
Spawner_Hatchling
Spawner_imp
Spawner_imp_respawn
Spawner_Leech_cave
Spawner_Location_Elite
Spawner_Location_Greydwarf
Spawner_Location_Shaman
Spawner_Skeleton
Spawner_Skeleton_night_noarcher
Spawner_Skeleton_poison
Spawner_Skeleton_respawn_30
Spawner_StoneGolem
Spawner_Troll
Spawner_Wraith
Misc.
GlowingMushroom
ancientbarkspear_projectile
aoe_nova
barrell
bed
bee_aoe
beech_log
beech_log_half
Beech_Sapling
Beech_small1
Beech_small2
Beech_Stub
Beech1
Beehive
Birch_log
Birch_log_half
Birch1
Birch1_aut
Birch2
Birch2_aut
BirchStub
blastfurnace
blob_aoe
BlueberryBush
boar_ragdoll
BombOoze
bonemass_aoe
bonemass_throw_projectile
bonfire
BossStone_Bonemass
BossStone_DragonQueen
BossStone_Eikthyr
BossStone_TheElder
BossStone_Yagluth
bow_projectile
bow_projectile_fire
bow_projectile_frost
bow_projectile_needle
bow_projectile_poison
bronzespear_projectile
bucket
Bush01
Bush01_heath
Bush02_en
CargoCrate
CastleKit_braided_box01
CastleKit_groundtorch
CastleKit_groundtorch_green
CastleKit_groundtorch_unlit
CastleKit_pot03
Chain
charcoal_kiln
Chest
CloudberryBush
cultivate
dead_deer
Deathsquito_sting
deer_ragdoll
DeerGodExplosion
DG_Cave
DG_ForestCrypt
DG_GoblinCamp
DG_MeadowsFarm
DG_MeadowsVillage
DG_SunkenCrypt
digg
digg_v2
dragon_ice_projectile
draugr_arrow
draugr_bow_projectile
Draugr_elite_ragdoll
Draugr_ranged_ragdoll
Draugr_ragdoll
draugr_axe
draugr_bow
draugr_sword
eikthyr_ragdoll
dragoneggcup
dungeon_forestcrypt_door
dungeon_sunkencrypt_irongate
eventzone_bonemass
eventzone_eikthyr
eventzone_gdking
eventzone_goblinking
eventzone_moder
EvilHeart_Forest
EvilHeart_Swamp
Fenring_ragdoll
fermenter
fire_pit
FireFlies
FirTree
FirTree_log
FirTree_log_half
FirTree_oldLog
FirTree_Sapling
FirTree_small
FirTree_small_dead
FirTree_Stub
Fish1
Fish2
Fish3
Fish4_cave
FishingRodFloat
FishingRodFloatProjectile
Flies
flintspear_projectile
ForestTroll_ragdoll
forge
forge_ext1
forge_ext2
forge_ext3
forge_ext4
forge_ext5
forge_ext6
gdking_Ragdoll
gdking_root_projectile
goblin_banner
goblin_bed
Goblin_Dragdoll
goblin_fence
goblin_pole
goblin_pole_small
goblin_roof_45d
goblin_roof_45d_corner
goblin_roof_cap
goblin_stairs
goblin_stepladder
goblin_totempole
goblin_woodwall_1m
goblin_woodwall_2m
goblin_woodwall_2m_ribs
GoblinArmband
GoblinBrute_ArmGuard
GoblinBrute_Attack
GoblinBrute_Backbones
GoblinBrute_ExecutionerCap
GoblinBrute_HipCloth
GoblinBrute_LegBones
GoblinBrute_ragdoll
GoblinBrute_RageAttack
GoblinBrute_ShoulderGuard
GoblinBrute_Taunt
GoblinKing_ragdoll
goblinking_totemholder
GoblinShaman_attack_poke
GoblinShaman_Headdress_antlers
GoblinShaman_Headdress_feathers
GoblinShaman_projectile_fireball
GoblinShaman_protect_aoe
GoblinShaman_ragdoll
GoblinShaman_Staff_Bones
GoblinShaman_Staff_Feathers
GoblinSpear_projectile
Greydwarf_elite_ragdoll
Greydwarf_ragdoll
Greydwarf_Shaman_ragdoll
Greydwarf_throw_projectile
Greyling_ragdoll
guard_stone
guard_stone_test
GuckSack
GuckSack_small
Hatchling
hatchling_cold_projectile
Hatchling_ragdoll
HealthUpgrade_Bonemass
HealthUpgrade_GDKing
hearth
HeathRockPillar
HeathRockPillar_frac
highstone
highstone_frac
horizontal_web
HugeRoot1
ice_rock1
ice_rock1_frac
ice1
IceBlocker
Imp_fireball_projectile
iron_grate
itemstand
itemstandh
Leech_cave
Leviathan
LocationProxy
loot_chest_stone
loot_chest_wood
LootSpawner_pineforest
lox_ragdoll
lox_stomp_aoe_OLD
marker01
marker02
MineRock_Copper
MineRock_Iron
MineRock_Meteorite
MineRock_Obsidian
MineRock_Stone
MineRock_Tin
MountainGraveStone01
mud_road
mudpile
mudpile_beacon
mudpile_frac
mudpile_old
mudpile2
mudpile2_frac
Neck_Ragdoll
Oak_log
Oak_log_half
Oak1
OakStub
odin
OLD_wood_roof
OLD_wood_roof_icorner
OLD_wood_roof_ocorner
OLD_wood_roof_top
OLD_wood_wall_roof
oozebomb_explosion
oozebomb_projectile
path
paved_road
Pickable_Barley
Pickable_Barley_Wild
Pickable_BogIronOre
Pickable_Branch
Pickable_Carrot
Pickable_Dandelion
Pickable_DolmenTreasure
Pickable_DragonEgg
Pickable_Flax
Pickable_Flax_Wild
Pickable_Flint
Pickable_ForestCryptRandom
Pickable_ForestCryptRemains01
Pickable_ForestCryptRemains02
Pickable_ForestCryptRemains03
Pickable_ForestCryptRemains04
Pickable_Item
Pickable_Meteorite
Pickable_MountainRemains01_buried
Pickable_Mushroom
Pickable_Mushroom_blue
Pickable_Mushroom_yellow
Pickable_Obsidian
Pickable_RandomFood
Pickable_SeedCarrot
Pickable_SeedTurnip
Pickable_Stone
Pickable_SunkenCryptRandom
Pickable_SurtlingCoreStand
Pickable_Thistle
Pickable_Tin
Pickable_Turnip
piece_artisanstation
piece_banner01
piece_banner02
piece_banner03
piece_banner04
piece_banner05
piece_bed02
piece_beehive
piece_bench01
piece_brazierceiling01
piece_cauldron
piece_chair
piece_chair02
piece_chest
piece_chest_private
piece_chest_wood
piece_cookingstation
piece_gift1
piece_gift2
piece_gift3
piece_groundtorch
piece_groundtorch_green
piece_groundtorch_wood
piece_jackoturnip
piece_maypole
piece_sharpstakes
piece_spinningwheel
piece_stonecutter
piece_table
piece_throne01
piece_walltorch
piece_workbench
piece_workbench_ext1
piece_workbench_ext2
piece_workbench_ext3
piece_workbench_ext4
piece_xmastree
PineTree
Pinetree_01
Pinetree_01_Stub
PineTree_log
PineTree_log_half
PineTree_log_halfOLD
PineTree_logOLD
PineTree_Sapling
Player
Player_ragdoll
Player_ragdoll_old
Player_tombstone
PlayerUnarmed
portal
portal_wood
projectile_beam
projectile_chitinharpoon
projectile_meteor
projectile_wolffang
raise
RaspberryBush
replant
Rock_3
Rock_3_frac
Rock_4
Rock_4_plains
Rock_7
Rock_destructible
Rock_destructible_test
rock1_mountain
rock1_mountain_frac
rock2_heath
rock2_heath_frac
rock2_mountain
rock2_mountain_frac
rock3_mountain
rock3_mountain_frac
rock3_silver
rock3_silver_frac
rock4_coast
rock4_coast_frac
rock4_copper
rock4_copper_frac
rock4_forest
rock4_forest_frac
rock4_heath
rock4_heath_frac
RockFinger
RockFinger_frac
RockFingerBroken
RockFingerBroken_frac
rockformation1
RockThumb
RockThumb_frac
root07
root08
root11
root12
rug_deer
rug_fur
rug_wolf
sapling_barley
sapling_carrot
sapling_flax
sapling_seedcarrot
sapling_seedturnip
sapling_turnip
shaman_attack_aoe
shaman_heal_aoe
ship_construction
shipwreck_karve_bottomboards
shipwreck_karve_bow
shipwreck_karve_chest
shipwreck_karve_dragonhead
shipwreck_karve_stern
shipwreck_karve_sternpost
shrub_2
shrub_2_heath
sign
sign_notext
silvervein
silvervein_frac
skeleton_bow
skeleton_mace
Skeleton_NoArcher
skeleton_sword
Skull1
Skull2
sledge_aoe
smelter
stake_wall
StaminaUpgrade_Greydwarf
StaminaUpgrade_Troll
StaminaUpgrade_Wraith
StatueCorgi
StatueDeer
StatueEvil
StatueHare
StatueSeed
stone_arch
stone_floor
stone_floor_2x2
stone_pile
stone_pillar
stone_stair
stone_wall_1x1
stone_wall_2x1
stone_wall_4x2
stoneblock_fracture
stonechest
stonegolem_attack1_spike
StoneGolem_clubs
StoneGolem_hat
Stonegolem_ragdoll
StoneGolem_spikes
stubbe
stubbe_spawner
sunken_crypt_gate
SwampTree1
SwampTree1_log
SwampTree1_Stub
SwampTree2
SwampTree2_darkland
SwampTree2_log
TentaRoot
tentaroot_attack
tolroko_flyer
TrainingDummy
TreasureChest_blackforest
TreasureChest_fCrypt
TreasureChest_forestcrypt
TreasureChest_heath
TreasureChest_meadows
TreasureChest_meadows_buried
TreasureChest_mountains
TreasureChest_plains_stone
TreasureChest_sunkencrypt
TreasureChest_swamp
TreasureChest_trollcave
troll_groundslam_aoe
troll_log_swing_h
troll_log_swing_v
Troll_ragdoll
troll_throw_projectile
tunnel_web
turf_roof
turf_roof_top
turf_roof_wall
VegvisirShard_Bonemass
vertical_web
vines
widestone
widestone_frac
windmill
Wolf_Ragdoll
wood_beam
wood_beam_1
wood_beam_26
wood_beam_45
wood_door
wood_dragon1
wood_fence
wood_floor
wood_floor_1x1
wood_gate
wood_ledge
wood_pole
wood_pole_log
wood_pole_log_4
wood_pole2
wood_roof
wood_roof_45
wood_roof_icorner
wood_roof_icorner_45
wood_roof_ocorner
wood_roof_ocorner_45
wood_roof_top
wood_roof_top_45
wood_stack
wood_stair
wood_stepladder
wood_wall_half
wood_wall_log
wood_wall_log_4x0.5
wood_wall_roof
wood_wall_roof_45
wood_wall_roof_top
wood_wall_roof_top_45
woodiron_beam
woodiron_pole
woodwall
wraith_melee
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In The Wandering Village you should think of the environment as a living, breathing entity. Mainly because, well, it is. In a world beset by toxic spores that have wiped out civilisation and much of nature, a group of nomads has grasped one last chance by climbing atop an Onbu, a gigantic, six-legged dinosaur-thing with a hard, flat back that sustains its own eco-system.
Up here there’s fertile soil and natural building materials, and by filtering moisture from the air you can even access fresh water. Yet all of this only functions if the Onbu keeps moving: so you’d better make sure it stays alive.
For the opening hours of this early access city builder, however, such concerns take a back seat as you establish your settlement. Food and shelter are pressing concerns, of course, so you have your gang chop trees and smash rocks, then construct tents, a berry gatherer’s hut (berries are the only food that grows naturally on the plateau), a small farm, air wells, storage units, and so on. As the buildings rise, you connect them with strips of dirt road, enabling your eager beaver pioneers to scurry faster, and the basic needs of life start to perpetuate themselves.
So far, so normal for this kind of game, but it functions smoothly, with a tidy interface to help you along. Setting up a farm, for example, is merely a matter of painting an area of cropland around the completed house, adding workers then selecting the kind of produce they should grow (to begin with, the only option is beets, but the roster expands).
Indeed, you don’t direct individual citizens in The Wandering Village. Rather, you assign staff numbers to establishments that are automatically pulled from a pool of ‘general workers’ (harvesters, carriers and builders) as long as you have some to spare. Anyone can do any job if called upon, then, or shuffled back into the manual labour force.
And thanks to the animations of your cartoon charges, it’s a pleasure to zoom-in to the closeup view of your village and watch these transitions and other routines play out. If you allocate an extra kitchen hand, for instance, you may spot one of your general workers returning from the fields to don chef whites. Or simply admire as another gathers fruit or carries logs on their head, or nips off to the pantry to slurp down some beet soup. It’s easy to get caught up in these ordinary lives, until you forget this is all happening on the shoulders of a million-ton herbivore.
Still, you can’t dawdle for long, since you are surrounded by a post-apocalyptic landscape, and because the village is always moving forward, changing climates and weather conditions don’t come to you, you come to them. Passing through spore clouds is one risk, causing nasty growths to form on Onbu that spread poison blight to trees and crops, or infect villagers, until you purge them. Now suddenly there’s a lot to do. You’ll likely need a doctor to cure the sick and a herbalist to grow medicine, and that requires scientific research, which in turn requires knowledge. So you’ll need a scavenger’s hut from which you can send expeditions into the world, bringing back more materials, additional nomads or ancient expertise that’s essential for technological advancement.
Environmental concerns
Image 1 of 5(Image credit: Stray Fawn)Image 2 of 5(Image credit: Stray Fawn)Image 3 of 5(Image credit: Stray Fawn)Image 4 of 5(Image credit: Stray Fawn)Image 5 of 5(Image credit: Stray Fawn)Meanwhile, different biome types (there are three at the moment, with more due) affect how crops grow. Enter a desert, say, and you can only collect water by growing cactus on your farm, and you’d better assemble a second farm to grow heat-resistant corn. More building, more research. From there, increasingly, much of your work comes down to strategically opening and closing various workplaces. Perhaps a patch of poison is spreading: so you shut your quarry for a while, stopping stone production, or swap doctors for more farm workers, since nobody’s ill, at least not right now.
As engaging as these travails are, though, the real 'X' factor in The Wandering Village is Onbu itself, a majestic beast indeed, and as it lumbers mile after mile you need to pay it more attention. Onbu’s status is measured by toxicity levels, hunger, tiredness and overall health, and as long as it can find food and uncontaminated areas to sleep, it largely takes care of itself. Eventually though, you’ll grow mushrooms that can be mashed into pellets then launched towards the beast’s maw, plus install an Onbu doctor, and a great horn through which you can communicate basic commands: telling it to run through poisonous areas, for example, or go north rather than south at a fork in the path.
Without you, in fact, the behemoth would eventually walk to its own death, and you can’t but form a bond with it as it splits your attentions. Yet as conditions worsen, you’re also given options to exploit the creature’s anatomy to make life easier. Collecting its dung for fertiliser is innocent enough, but what about extracting its bile to use as fuel, or drilling into its back for rock supplies?
Choose such paths and the penalty is erosion of trust, causing Onbu to ignore your commands. But it’s your decision how much your relationship shifts from symbiotic towards parasitic. It’s apt, perhaps, that zooming out from the village, your people do look a little like teeming, biting insects.
Currently, however, it has to be said that these decisions aren’t quite the sticky dilemmas they could be. On the medium difficulty setting, I managed to reach the game’s current ending (although you can continue indefinitely) without being tempted into vampiric pursuits, and only saw the game over screen once. More broadly, few events have dramatic consequences as things stand, and villagers are almost too efficient and easily pleased: you don't have to work that hard to keep them happy. While there are plenty of features in place, then, another layer of depth and friction will be crucial in the long run.
Still, The Wandering Village has strong foundations: even at this stage it’s hard to pick fault beyond the lack of challenge. My only complaints are that the notification system isn’t prominent enough, poison plants sometimes get obscured behind other scenery, and mouse wheel camera zoom stopped working a few times, but that’s all. Like the workers in the village, the systems are already pulling in the same direction.
And that’s the beauty of The Wandering Village’s thinking, even when it isn’t the most intense experience. Everyone works towards a common goal that takes into account the continuing health of the land on which it depends. Despite the toxic spores and hard work, this is a kind of mini-Utopia, devoid of rigid hierarchies, jealousy and greed. Living on Onbu feels like a privilege, so maybe it’s the city builder we need right now.
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Years after driving the last nail into the coffin of internet forums, Discord is resurrecting them with its own take on organized discussion called Forum Channels.
Forum Channels are basically the recognizable functions of forums (topics, posts, and comments) adapted to Discord's existing server ecosystem. Server admins can create forum channels with specified topics (like "tacos") that appear on the leftmost navigation bar where text and voice channels live. Click into a forum channel and you'll find a list of larger, boxy posts with bolded titles written by users. Click into that and you get what is essentially an old-school forum post: an OP with chronological comments.
Discord says Forum Channels are meant to "help your community server hold organized, meaningful conversations without drowning each other out." The feature is currently in testing in a "limited number of servers," but will be rolling out everywhere soon.
It's true that Discord has become the de facto place where forum-like chat happens on the internet, despite being a terrible place to have an organized discussion with lots of people. Discord attempted to wrangle its off-topic chatterboxes last year with the introduction of Threads, but the feature has seen little use in the servers I frequent. If Threads were a half-measure, Forum Channels are a full commitment to decluttering Discord. Forum Channels can be created with specific guidelines that steer the topic of discussion (lest the post be removed by an admin). Discord forums will also be compatible with Automod, the chat app's proprietary automated mod tool capable of, among many things, detecting if you're wrongfully posting about burritos in the taco forum.
(Image credit: Discord)It has always been possible for server admins to create text channels with their own posting guidelines, but the forum setup here comes with advantages that any old-school forum user is already aware of:
- Forum topics are front and center, making it easier to not get off-topic
- Forum posts are ordered by the most active, making it obvious what's being talked about right now and minimize duplicate discussions
- The post format allows topics to get as granular as desired without further cluttering Discord's already messy server navigation
- Forum posts look nicer than Discord's single string of never-ending chat rooms
I think Forum Channels are a good step toward making Discord's largest servers actually usable. I keep tabs on a few servers for games I like and, as it is now, text channels are just too busy to get an intelligible word in. Having proper, searchable forums should also be handy when you're trying to find crucial information that only exists on Discord (a thing that developers have started to do for some reason).
On the other hand, I see a few reasons Forum Channels could still be less useful than traditional forums. For one, the comments under forum posts appear to function identically to a standard text channel, meaning users are likely to communicate with many small messages instead of single large ones. Traditional forums work more like email threads, with people writing out entire thoughts on a subject before pressing send. Discord is more like texting, with stream-of-consciousness reactions sent as individual messages that can quickly crowd a vertically scrolling thread. It's more casual, but harder to parse.
There's also the fact that nothing on a Discord server can be viewed if you're not a member and nothing written within it can be found on Google. That's a barrier not only for folks looking for general information that only exists on one specific Discord server, but also for historians down the line who want to know what people were talking about in 2022.
I find it interesting that as Discord has grown it has started to adopt the complexities of the social platforms it essentially replaced. One of Discord's biggest appeals when it launched was its simplicity—press a few buttons and you have a place to type or chat instantly. Small servers like the one my friends and I use are still that easy, but dip into a mega community and you'll find premium memberships, verification bots, hidden channels, and role-based RPG systems in the same server. Hopefully the familiarity of forums can make it all a bit less daunting.
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When someone talks about TVs, OLED screens are almost always mentioned as the best for gaming. Because of its picture quality and pricing, you'll often hear that the LG C1 TV is the gold standard for gaming TVs. The Samsung QN90B Neo QLED might be the first non-OLED TV to give LG its first true challenge, offering a 4K 120Hz Smart TV that seems almost built for console and PC gaming thanks to its Mini LED backlighting and quantum dot filter tech. Which is fancy TV speak for, "it's bright and colorful."
The review sample I was sent was the 55-inch Class QN90B Samsung Neo QLED 4K Smart TV. There are models as small as 43-inches, but it can also come as large as an intimidating 98 inches for a whopping $15K, prompting a spit take and me mouthing to myself, "that's too much TV."
I think it's safe to say that the 55-inches is the sweet spot for a TV like this, especially for my cramped little office, though at 43-inch, you could almost make a case for a desktop screen. This version retails for $1900, which I'll admit is a bit pricey for non-OLED TV, though it's been off and on sale for $1500 over the last week or so, making it a way more appealing proposition, especially with the upcoming holiday deals season.The Samsung QN90B offers great connectivity with all four of its HDMI ports compatible with 4K/120Hz signals. That is a dream for gamers with consoles and a high-end GPU. I had an Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, Nvidia Shield, and a gaming PC plugged into the TV during testing, which covered all my streaming and gaming bases.
The Samsung QN90B Neo QLED might be the first non-OLED TV to give LG its first true challenge.
Toss in all the cloud gaming apps already on the TV, and there will be no shortage of video games to play. Audiophiles will be happy to note that there is an optical port if you're looking to hook up a soundbar or home theater sound system, too.
The menus for the TV can feel a little daunting at first because it throws quite a bit at you, with the media hub being littered with all sorts of streaming and paid-for movie options. Samsung has its gaming hub on a separate channel on the home screen, which is a little more organized than the media channel, and, therefore a little easier to navigate.
I wrote at length about how much I really like the embedded Xbox Cloud Gaming, and how it's a fantastic addition to Samsung's current line of Smart TVs. It's something that needs to show up on other smart TVs ASAP. Along with the Xbox App, you've got Nvidia GeForce Now, Google Stadia, and Utomik all available via the Samsung gaming hub. You just need a Bluetooth controller and a subscription to those services, and you've got a TV that can stream games in 4K (depending on the app and your internet connection) without a set-top box, game console, or PC.
I played a few matches in Fortnite using Geforce Now with an RTX 3080 membership. I was impressed with the overall latency as I bashed Batman over the head with Darth Vader's lightsaber as Super Saiyan Goku in mostly 4K. However, I did have moments where I got slammed with severe artifacting whenever my internet connection got hinky.
QN90B specs(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Panel size: 55-inch
Native resolution: 3840 x 2160
Refresh rate: 120Hz
Response time: 5.9 ms (4k @ 120Hz)
Panel type: QLED
Peak brightness: 3,000 nits
Sync tech: FreeSync Premium Pro, VRR, G-Sync
Inputs: 4x HDMI 2.1, 2x USB Type-C, 3x USB 3.2, Digital Optical out
Price: $1899In terms of the image, the QN90B offers a peak brightness of over 3,000 nits in HDR, which means as a living room TV you don't have to worry much about bright glares ruining your afternoon football game. Surprisingly, I noticed very little blooming, which generally tends to happen on brighter non–OLED TVs when watching movies. That's your Mini-LED backlighting coming to the fore right there.
For non-OLED TV, Samsung does provide a picture quality that is top in class and could easily hang with LG's C Series OLED TVs, which are among the best TVs for gaming. OLEDs will always be the way to go if you're looking for superior color and contras, but damn, does this come close.
In non-streaming games, I did notice an oversaturation of color, especially blues. It was evident in players' and fans' clothing in MLB The Show 22 and Midnight Fight Express. However, personally I always prefer more color for gaming over color being washed out, even if you could argue it's technically more accurate. It's not a deal breaker for me, but stick with OLED for color accuracy if you're a bit of a snob on that front, or if you plan to use this as a large format display for video and photo editing.
The QN90B's contrast and local dimming features are really impressive. I've been streaming The Sandman on Netflix, which features a lot of dark, gloomy, dreamlike scenes that take advantage of how the TV handles its blacks. It does this by dimming or brightening areas of the display depending on what's happening on the screen, enhancing contrast.
Image 1 of 7(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 2 of 7(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 3 of 7(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 4 of 7(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 5 of 7(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 6 of 7(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 7 of 7(Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)As much as I like the TV for watching movies and sports, it shines when playing games, especially via PC. After its recent update, I plugged in my test system with an RTX 3090 and fired up Cyberpunk 2077 to see how Night City looks in 4K at 120Hz. The colors popped as I was zipping around at night with all the dystopian pinks and purples taking over the screen, making full use of its HDR10 and HDR10 Plus support.
When you plug in a console, the TV automatically sets the picture to 'Game Mode' along with a pop-up displaying all the vital information like frame rates, HDR settings, etc. It's a quick way to tell you what's going performance-wise without digging too deep into menus.
Ironically, the only time I felt the TV didn't look its best was when I played in 'Game Mode.' It seems it didn't jibe well with the local dimming or HDR, so sometimes cutscenes in games like Saints Row or Resident Evil Village felt too bright, and blacks too grey. Once I changed it from Game mode to literally anything else, the difference was practically night and day.
Solar power(Image credit: Future)One small thing that surprised me was how much I liked the solar-powered remote, which you'll find bundled with all newer Samsung displays. It works on streaming devices plugged like a Roku or, in my case, an Nvidia Shield. This meant I could browse through my Shield without using a second controller, which is great.
Plugging in your PC requires an extra step, however. Since the TV didn't recognize my machine as a game source but as a media source, it didn't automatically adjust the settings when plugged in. It's a drag, but you are in for rock-solid PC gaming once you have everything set. I played through the entirety of Immortality with my PC plugged into the TV and parsing through the faux-archival footage looked absolutely amazing.
As a PC monitor, I can easily see someone mounting this thing right above their desk as a third support screen for watching media or playing games, since setting it as a PC monitor was relatively pain-free. Though if you do plan on using this as a PC monitor, I recommend sitting back a bit and maybe turning on some of the TV's eye comfort settings so you're not blasting your eyes with blindingly bright Twitter threads through the night.
In all, the Samsung QN90B QLED is an excellent TV for just about anything. With a robust and easy-to-use interface, this feature-rich smart TV offers great response time and input lag for console and PC gaming. And, if you really must, its bright color display makes for some great TV watching, too.
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Activision Blizzard has released the system requirements for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's open beta, including the rather oddball insistence that PC players "must" have their phone number linked to their Battle.net or Steam account. I doubt Bobby Kotick's going to be using it for late night booty calls but, all the same, why does a game need your mobile number to run on your PC.
Beta access is as ever predicated on pre-orders, and is more like early access to a finished product than a beta, so these requirements can be taken as applying to the final game. The biggest surprise is how relatively modest the requirements are for one of the biggest series in gaming: Modern Warfare 2 will run at minimum specs on a GTX 960, a card that launched in January 2015.
Modern Warfare 2 minimum requirements (1080p, 60fps, low settings)
- OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
- CPU: Intel Core i5-3570 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon RX 470
- RAM: 8GB
- STORAGE: 25GB
- SOUND: Any DirectX Compatible card
The recommended requirements aren't too much worse either, though you will need a decent amount of RAM. I also like how Activision Blizzard has a specific category for sound cards, but doesn't actually specify any sound cards at any point.
Modern Warfare 2 recommended requirements (1080p, 60fps, high settings)
- OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K or AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580
- RAM: 16GB RAM
- STORAGE: 25GB
- SOUND CARD: any DirectX Compatible card
The recommended GPU being a GTX 1060 shows nothing so much as how broad Call of Duty's appeal is. This card is now fairly described as 'venerable', but it's a workhorse and the publisher wants as many people as possible to be able to play this title. Still: the fact that it will apparently give you 1080p and 60fps in a 2022 tentpole AAA release is decent to say the least.
On that note, there isn't a huge step up between the minimum and the game's recommended settings—expect Modern Warfare 2 to have plenty of options for the graphics lovers and their mighty rigs.
PC players who pre-order will be able to access the open beta from September 22-26. Those who pre-order will also have early access to the Modern Warfare 2 campaign on October 20, one week before the game launches on October 28. Yes, it's enough to make you nostalgic for a time when games had one release date.
There'll be more on Modern Warfare 2 soon: the Call of Duty: Next showcase happens tomorrow, September 15, and will feature a multiplayer reveal and some sort of update on the next Warzone.
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Before yesterday's ESRB leaks, I'd given up hope of ever seeing the Judgment games on PC. A dispute between the agency for Takuya Kimura—who plays the game's lead character Takayuki Yagami—and Sega seemed not only to have killed hopes for a PC version stone dead, but possibly killed the Judgment series entirely.
Well, life comes at you fast. Because Judgment and its sequel Lost Judgment are both available on Steam right this second. Whatever problems Kimura's agency had with a PC version must have gone out the window, because we can finally get our hands on Yagami's adventures, including The Kaito Files expansion for the second game. Judgment's looking pretty good for something dead!
The first game puts you in the shoes of Yagami, a disgraced defence lawyer turned private detective, as he uncovers the truth behind a string of murders in the ever-recognisable home of the Yakuza games: Kamurocho. They play a lot like the pre-7 Yakuza games: combat proceeds in real-time and occurs frequently as you run into the various bands of thugs that litter Tokyo, but playing a lawman instead of a veteran yakuza bruiser lends the game a fresh and enjoyable edge.
Lost Judgment is similar, except this time you're going undercover at a posh high school to peel back the mysteries behind a bullied student's suicide. It can get pretty dark, but it's alleviated by the trademark goofy humour you'll recognise from the Yakuza games, and the story is well-told. The classic Yakuza gameplay formula gets mixed up too, with stealth, light platforming, and tailing missions across both games. It's up to you to decide if that last one is a positive addition, though.
You can buy them both now to find out. Judgment costs £34.99/$39.99 while Lost Judgment costs £49.99/$59.99, and you can pick up its expansion for £24.99/$29.99. You can also buy the whole lot as a bundle for a discount.
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I've never been able to kick my Star Trek Online habit. There are better MMOs, but there's no other game that offers so much Trek. And while the more recent obsession with Discovery and the modern Mirror Universe hasn't really been doing it for me, the frequent nods to classic storylines and characters keeps me coming back. With the latest story update, Ascension, Wil Wheaton's Wesley Crusher joins the ranks of Star Trek alumni pottering about in the MMO.
That aforementioned obsession with the Mirror Universe means that it's not old school Crusher that we're getting, however. No—this one is the latest Terran Emperor, all decked out in gold armour and spouting tyrannical rhetoric. "Emperor Crusher is one of the largest threats the galaxy has ever faced," according to Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment.
Naughty Wesley has merged with The Other, the Mirror Universe counterpart of V'ger, the Earth probe that transformed into a sentient ship and caused a bit of bother for the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. You'll need to duke it out inside this alternate V'ger in the new Task Force Operation, Storm Chasers, and progress through The Emperor's Will event. Upon completion you'll be able to get a new T6 ship, the Terran Sommerville.
Wheaton hams it up big time, as you'll see from the trailer above, though doesn't quite manage to convey the menace you'd expect from a bloke trying to destroy two universes and become a space god. To be fair, that also feels very true to the character, who's just a big ol' nerd who struggles to make friends.
Like Star Wars: The Old Republic, I'm really just holding out for a sequel that will probably never appear, but I'm glad we're still getting meaningful story updates this far into its lifecycle.
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Star Wars Galaxies was a 2003 MMO that, in the words of Chris Thursten, almost changed the world. It let players take jobs and find places for themselves in the Star Wars universe, whether they wanted to be traders, smugglers, bounty hunters, entertainers, or a wide variety of other options. It didn't last, closing down in 2011 after a series of disastrous patches, revamps, and alterations.
However, and you knew there would be a however, its fans won't let it die. Multiple revivals emphasizing different aspects and eras of Star Wars Galaxies exist, including Star Wars Galaxies Restoration, which has been in a kind of early access since May of 2021. SWG Restoration is about imagining what might have been if Galaxies had continued development, incorporating the space-travel expansion Jump to Lightspeed and parts of the New Game Enhancement patch, while letting players build unique characters using 32 skill trees, found their own cities, decorate houses, join factions, and visit places like Naboo, Kashyyyk, and Tatooine.
The team behind SWG Restoration has announced its plan to release version 1.0 on September 17, which will include Mustafar, the lava planet where Obi-Wan and Anakin fought their extremely silly duel. Version 1.0 also adds over 30 questlines, server-wide progression, various bug fixes and quality-of-life upgrades, and what the team calls "our secret and individualized Jedi unlock system".
When Star Wars Galaxies first launched, a planned system that would restrict Jedi to players who completed a randomized set of activities was cut. Instead of exploring and playing the game until eventually you developed Force sensitivity, a last-minute rush meant that instead using five random skills would unlock the option. Since skills were slow to learn that made Jedi rare, leaving plenty of room for all those players who wanted to open shops or become entertainers, but after being told by marketing that a Star Wars MMO ought to have more of the series' most iconic characters in it, the system was overhauled—twice. First a holocron was added that told you what skill to grind next on the path to becoming a sword-wielding space wizard, then Jedi were simply patched in as a class option at the same time as many of the MMO's other systems were taken out. None of these moves were popular ones.
So it'll be interesting to see how people take to whatever SWG Restoration has planned for the Jedi. Apparently there are "over 24,000 registered accounts eagerly awaiting launch", and presumably they won't all want to be moisture farmers. According to the roadmap, "the process of becoming a Jedi will be a demanding, stimulating, and individualized experience for every inhabitant of the Star Wars Galaxy. Discovery of The Force will require exploration throughout the ground and space on group and solo adventures. Everything encountered along the way, from artifacts and horticulture to creatures and conclaves, will play a role in your saga."
The roadmap also lays out plans for future patches that will add everything from minigame locations (a casino, a Huttball arena, and a podracing track), to galactic civil war systems, and fishing leaderboards. If any of that sounds like your cup of blue milk, you can create an account and download the installer from the SWGR website.
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Kiryu's back, everyone, but where on Earth has he been? At today's Ryu Ga Gotoku Summit, we saw the first trailer for Like A Dragon 8 (née Yakuza 8). It showed everyone's favourite musclebound, honourbound protagonist make a triumphant return to the soaking streets of Kamurocho, but the story of how he got there will come via a different game trailered at the same event: Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name.
Like A Dragon Gaiden will tell Kiryu's story between Yakuza 6 and the next game, showing us what the Dragon Of Dojima was up to while other people were starring in his games. In the reveal trailer, we see Kiryu meditating on a sweltering summer's day in 2018, being admonished (with a large stick) by a monk for not letting go of his family.
Turns out the monk is a hypocrite, though, because it's soon revealed that the monastery in which Kiryu's taken up residence is just a front for the Daidoji Family from Yakuza 6. Pretty soon, a figure emerges from the shadows to give Kiryu one last job: escorting "a certain individual" who remains nameless throughout. Kiryu, on the other hand, doesn't remain nameless: he's now referred to as "Joryu" by everyone around him, which his shadowy taskmaster refers to as his "codename". Perhaps our boy has gotten into a bit of criminal espionage in his old age?
That's about it for the trailer, but the Ryu Ga Gotoku devs at the summit did reveal a few choice details about the size and scope of the game. Unlike Like A Dragon 8, which is set to be the biggest game yet in the series, Like A Dragon Gaiden will be a bit smaller than the mainline Yakuza games. It'll also return to the action-adventure gameplay of the pre-Yakuza 7 games, if you prefer to beat your thugs senseless in real-time.
Like A Dragon Gaiden will launch some time next year, ahead of the release of Like A Dragon 8 in 2024. Its announcement comes alongside a deluge of news about other Yakuza games: we're also getting a remake and English localisation of Yakuza Ishin in February, and it's looking very likely that Yakuza spin-offs Judgment and Lost Judgment will head to PC in the near future.
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We got our first official look (that is, our first look that didn't come via monitors in the background of a YouTube video) at Yakuza 8—which appears to be officially just called Like A Dragon 8 now, even in the west—during the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio summit today. Ladies and gentlemen, Kazuma Kiryu is back and he too has made startling and dramatic decisions about his hair.
The trailer doesn't reveal too much. It features Kiryu and Ichiban strolling purposefully down the streets of Kamurocho as weighty voices at the edge of hearing intone solemnly in (unsubtitled) Japanese. Eventually, Kiryu says that he and Ichiban "don't have a choice," to which Ichiban responds, "Guess it's hero time!" And then, well, there's a close-up that reveals our beloved Kiryu has gone full DMC's Nero with his hair, which is now cropped short and turned aggressively, indiscriminately white.
And that's pretty much all you get, at least from the trailer. Ryu Ga Gotoku did reveal a little bit more about the game at the summit. You'll be switching between two protagonists—Kiryu and Ichiban—this time around, and the game will continue with the turn-based RPG style that the series adopted back in Yakuza 7, which the studio had announced previously. The developers also noted that this would be the "largest game to date" in the series. To be honest, I'm not sure if that prospect is enticing or terrifying.
Yaku—excuse me—Like A Dragon 8 will release in 2024. The game is still very early in development: RGG's Masayoshi Yokoyama said at the summit that the company was still in the process of recording dialogue. We liked Yakuza 7 quite a bit, but noted that it was "one of the most uneven Yakuza games in the series". Here's hoping the next game irons out the kinks a little bit.
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Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, chairman of the board of directors at Kadokawa Corporation, has been arrested in connection with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics bribery scandal that's currently engulfing Japan, the Japan Times reports.
Kadokawa Corporation is probably most familiar to you and me as the owner of FromSoftware, maker of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but the company has numerous and diverse holdings across the entire Japanese entertainment industry. Kadokawa executive Toshiyuki Yoshihara and manager Kyoji Maniwa have also been arrested in connection with the scandal.
Kadokawa, who has been chairman at the corporation since 2019, was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of offering somewhere around 69 million yen (approximately $481,000, or £417,000) in bribes to Haruyuki Takahashi, a former executive of the Tokyo Olympic organising committee. Takahashi was already arrested back in August—before being 'rearrested' last week—on suspicion of receiving about $380,000, or £315,000, in 'thank you payments' from Aoki, a high street suit retailer.
Prosecutors think Tsuguhiko Kadokawa made the payments to Takahashi for the advantage Kadokawa Corp enjoyed in its quest to become an official sponsor of the Tokyo Olympics. The company was granted official sponsor status in April 2019, becoming the official publisher of the Tokyo Games' guidebooks and records.
The scandal cast a pall over the 2020 games—which were already the subject of major controversy—and negatively impacted the country's bid to host the 2030 Winter Olympics in Sapporo. Beyond Kadokawa, the spiralling scandal has also ensnared leading figures in the Japanese business world and even ex-Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.
Kadokawa Corp most recently graced our pages for a share deal with Tencent and Sony worth over 35 billion yen (around £225 million, or $260 million) that laid the groundwork for FromSoft to start publishing its own games. While it's unlikely that the share deal—or the relationship between FromSoft and Kadokawa Corp—will be devastated by the bribery imbroglio, it's certainly a rapid fall from the high note the company was on only two weeks ago.
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You'll find a hint for today's Wordle waiting just below, and if you need a little something more—like the answer to the September 14 (452) challenge, for example—then you'll find that on this page too, ready whenever you are.
A very early pair of greens and a healthy dose of luck helped today's Wordle go so smoothly it was almost finished before I'd realised it had even started. There were still more than a few possibilities out there, but by using them as a helpful anchor to build my following guesses around, I was able to win with plenty of goes to spare.
Wordle hint
Today's Wordle: A hint for Wednesday, September 14
Today's five-letter word is pronounced almost exactly the same as a common four-letter one, although the meanings of the two couldn't be further apart. The answer here is a herb widely used in cooking, going well with everything from potatoes to stews and roast chicken. There's one standard vowel in here, and one part-timer.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
- A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants.
- A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
- The solution may contain repeat letters.
There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank.
Wordle answer
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)What is the Wordle 452 answer?
Still not sure? That's what I'm here for. The answer to the September 14 (452) Wordle is THYME.
Previous answers
Wordle archive: Which words have been used
The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle solutions:
- September 13: ALPHA
- September 12: BOOZE
- September 11: TIBIA
- September 10: LOFTY
- September 9: THEME
- September 8: CLASS
- September 7: LEERY
- September 6: TAUNT
- September 5: WHOOP
- September 4: INTER
Learn more about Wordle
Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.
You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns
️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. 
means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 
means you've got the right letter in the right spot.You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.
After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
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Google has cancelled its Pixelbook laptop and shut down its development team. According to reporting by The Verge, Google made the decision in order to cut costs and consolidate its product portfolio, though it's just as likely because the Pixelbook was simply unable to distinguish itself enough from the improving quality of other manufacturer's Chromebooks.
Well-made Chromebooks—which are ostensibly budget laptops—made it difficult for Google to justify the premium price of the Pixelbook. At its heart it's still a Chromebook, and that made it difficult to generate enough interest to compete with the likes of Macbooks or Microsoft's Surface.
Despite the tough competition, the Pixelbook showed off what a Chromebook was really capable of, combining a high spec and premium design with the Chrome OS and full Android support. But that combination relegated it to niche status. With Pixelbooks launching at $999/£999 and going up to $1,699/£1,699 it was always going to be a tough sell in a competitive market.
The next Pixelbook was reportedly in the later stages of its development, indicating other factors contributed to its cancellation. The post-pandemic downturn in the PC market is surely one of those factors. Chromebook sales boomed during the early days of the pandemic, as parents scrambled to buy affordable laptops for kids forced to learn from home during long lockdown periods. That kind of growth was unsustainable, and as we reported back in April, worldwide PC shipments fell by 7.3% in the first quarter of 2022. If Chromebooks are removed though, the market actually grew by 3.3%. Ouch.
Your next machine(Image credit: Future)Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines from the pros
Best gaming laptop: Perfect notebooks for mobile gamingFaced with that kind of drop in demand and the difficulty of convincing buyers to pay big bucks for what many users consider to be a budget platform, we shouldn't be surprised that Google wasn't confident in the Pixelbook going forward.
It's a bit of a shame really. Android's versatility remains a strength, and the Pixelbooks powerful hardware delivered a quality user experience, but that was in 2017. Smartphones are even more ubiquitous now, while Windows devices and Macbooks retain their own strengths, particularly with regards to professional applications, productivity, multitasking or the Windows UI.
The Pixelbook's hardware was great, but it was a niche product. Google is still committed to its Pixel phone and smartwatch businesses, leaving the Pixelbook as an interesting product in Google's history, but somewhat sadly, one that didn't live up to its potential.
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(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)
There's a military tactic beloved by wargamers called the hammer and anvil. You split your army into two forces, the slower and sturdier of which pins down your opponent, holding them in place—the anvil—while the faster force maneuvers into a flanking position—the hammer—and then you bring the two together. If you've played Total War: Warhammer 3 as Slaanesh, you'll know they're an army with no anvil. Slaanesh is all hammer, all the time.
Which is why it's appropriate for the Keeper of Secrets, a greater daemon of Slaanesh, to appear as a red card in Magic: The Gathering's Warhammer 40,000 crossover. Red's the traditional color of Magic's most aggressive cards, and usually the ones with keywords that speed up their attacks like haste and first strike.
The Keeper of Secrets has both. You don't need an anvil when you can just slam two hammers together for the same effect, right?
The Keeper of Secrets also has an ability called Symphony of Pain, which means whenever you cast a spell from anywhere other than your hand, you cause damage equal to that spell's mana cost. Keep an eye out for keywords to trigger that, like flashback (you can cast a spell from the graveyard), cascade (you exile cards from your library until you flip one with a lower mana cost, then cast it for free), and rebound (you cast a spell a second time the turn after it was cast). Or maybe the Chaos-themed Ruinous Powers deck will come with cards like Sen Triplets, which let you look at another player's hand and then cast spells right out of it. Honestly, that sounds like exactly the kind of dick move I'd expect from Tzeentch.
The Warhammer crossover will include four decks for Commander format, which is Magic's chill format where two or more players, usually four, take part in a free-for-all where each has a high-powered legendary creature to represent them in the field. The prebuilt Warhammer x Magic decks come with two options for your commander.
- The Ruinous Powers deck (red/blue/black): Abaddon the Despoiler and Be'lakor, the Dark Master
- Forces of the Imperium (white/blue/black): Inquisitor Greyfax and Marneus Calgar, Ultramarines Chapter Master
- The Tyranid Swarm (green/blue/red): The Swarmlord and Magus Lucca Kane
- Necron Dynasties (black): Szarekh, the Silent King, and Imotekhk, the Stormlord
Those 100-card commander decks will be released on October 7, but there will also be three crossover Secret Lair releases with even more Games Workshop-themed Magic cards available to order from October 17 to November 14. One will feature Warhammer 40,000's orks, while the other two will include cards based on Age of Sigmar and Blood Bowl.
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Hello juniichi22,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
juniichi22 joined on the 09/14/2022.
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Running for my life down a dim and cluttered hotel hallway, I'm laughing my head off. That's the experience of The Upturned, a comedy horror game a lot of us missed when it came out on Steam back in March.
The Upturned did get some attention—it has over 300 Steam user reviews, most of which are positive, and a few YouTubers played it—but it might've received a bigger ovation back in the mid-2010s when offbeat games like Jazzpunk were more novel. (Releasing a month after Elden Ring might not have helped it, either.)
It's not to late to correct this underappreciation, though, and we are entering ghoul season soon, so it's not a bad time for a spooky game.
The Upturned starts with a disconcerting name inputting experience (I don't want to spoil it), after which you find yourself in familiar horror game territory: alone in a spooky forest armed with only a flashlight. That won't last. Your first sign that this isn't going to be the tenor of your entire adventure comes when you find the unreasonably tall hotel where the rest of the game takes place. The hotel's revolving door spins demonically fast, but your nondescript, shadowy little protagonist leaps in anyway and is flattened against the glass Bugs Bunny-style before being deposited in the lobby.
That mixture of creepiness and slapstick comedy—which is rendered in a limited color palette that makes it look a little like 3D Movie Maker—keeps the short adventure fun and funny. Your partner, narrator, and general pain in the 'donkey' companion for the game is a strange creature named Ik, the bellhop and manager of the hotel. With Cheshire Cat meets Igor from Persona vibes, he directs you to the elevator, where your goal is to reach your room on the 1434th floor. Each floor you stop on along the way is a puzzle where you have to find a fuse to get the elevator moving again.
Upturned chucks chaos at you from start to finish: Floors that feature power plants, cowboy saloons, and underwater megastructures are filled with things that want to eat you, and the only way to buy yourself the time you need to escape is by hucking clutter at them—but you might be interrupted in the middle of a battle by Ik calling you for permission to bump some phat tunes. The spooky parts are spooky in the way Dr Who is, with strange mannequins and disconcerting cracks in the wall building up the eeriness before all hell breaks loose.
You can find The Upturned on Steam or itch.io for $10. It's been patched several times since its release, with bug fixes and a few additions, and its creator recently said they've started work on a new project. If you give The Upturned a shot, give Shrimp some pets for me. And watch out for Lawrence, he's a little cranky.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 beta dates and times
in Gaming News
Posted
It's nearly launch month for one of the more confusingly-named CoD games yet and, like last year, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 beta is taking place over multiple weekends for different subsets of players.
So far, Activision has said that "the Modern Warfare II Beta is set to feature a robust multiplayer experience going beyond the Core 6v6 experience with a variety of meticulously designed maps of various sizes, and an equally impressive set of Modes, Progression experiences, and other aspects."
Unsurprisingly, having a pre-order for the game will get you in earliest. There's a three-day weekend at the end of September that's the true open beta for all platforms, which is when PC players who want to try before they buy will get to play. Here's how and when to play in the Modern Warfare 2 beta:
When does the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 beta start?
The Modern Warfare 2 beta kicks off first for PlayStation players who pre-ordered the game on Friday, September 16. The beta will then open up to all PlayStation players on September 18 - 20. Sorry PC folks, we'll have to wait one more week to get in on the action.
The beta opens up to all platforms on Saturday, September 24 at 10 am PT / 6 pm BST and ends on Monday, September 26. That's the weekend when anyone on all available platforms can download and play.
Similar to the PlayStation exclusive weekend, players who've pre-ordered the game either on Xbox or through Battle.net or Steam can start two days before that on September 22. Here's how all the dates shake out depending on your platform and pre-order status:
Preloading appears to only be available for PlayStation pre-orderers, which was available beginning on September 14. Those of us on PC will have to wait for our allotted beta days during the cross-play weekend.
You'll also be able to earn a total of 10 in-game rewards by leveling up during the beta weekends. Level 15 will net you a "Side Impact" weapon blueprint, level 18 the "Collision" operator skin, and a tank skin and another weapon skin come in at levels 26 and 30 respectively. You can catch the rest of the rewards in Activision's post.
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