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Intel's upcoming Raptor Lake processors were not on the roadmap until two years ago, when Intel decided to rush to battle stations and get to work on what would become the 13th Gen.
Intel's Isic Silas, general manager of client platforms and corporate VP, confirmed today at the Technology Tour here in Israel, that Raptor Lake was something of a last-minute (in CPU roadmap terms) addition to Intel's roadmap. Usually Intel would plan chips for many years in advance. Even if the public doesn't necessarily know about it. Raptor Lake, however, was a relatively late addition.
"Raptor Lake was not on the Intel roadmap just two years ago, there was supposed to be another product," Silas tells us.
"So we predicted, okay, the next one, which was very complex from an architecture point of view, would not make it on time. So we have two options, one to close our eyes and say everything should be okay and I can go and pray to the synagogue and make it happen.
"The other option was to go back to management to give us some small amount of resources in order to do a product and this is where we started Raptor Lake."
Intel then set out to make something out of the 12th Gen Alder Lake architecture that would take the form of the 13th Gen. That's not necessarily easy, though Silas says there was plenty of impetus to find increased performance somewhere on account of what it would be up against in the market.
Starting out with a performance expectation of around 16 - 20% multi-threaded performance increase over Alder Lake, the design team quickly realised it needed to go further, for two reasons.
"One, we have much more competition than we thought," says Silas. "Second, we internalised the fact that Raptor Lake needs more time in the market."
The Raptor Lake processor architecture, launching sometime soon, is going to have to lead Intel's charge against AMD's Zen 4 architecture until Meteor Lake pops up late in 2023. It's the result of a lot of back and forth with multiple departments and teams to make something out of an architecture and process that's in many ways similar to Alder Lake.
Intel says 6GHz clocks are within reach on these new chips.
However, there will be few key changes. "We have a very small change to the Raptor Lake core, to the P-core," says Silas, "we have no changes at all to the idea of the E-cores, no changes to the graphics."
Intel is still playing it coy with the full details, but generally the performance is reportedly looking good. Intel is talking about a 15% single thread performance improvement over Alder Lake, and up to 40% higher multi-threaded performance. By comparison, AMD's competing CPU architecture, Zen 4, is promising its Ryzen 7000-series processors can deliver up to 13% higher IPC than its own predecessor.
As Silas explains, to reach this sort of uplift in performance is, considering it's ostensibly the "same architecture, same process. In my view, a miracle."
Intel has begun teasing some of what we can expect from the coming 13th Gen chips. For one, Intel says 6GHz clocks are within reach on these new chips, which would be quite a milestone, it wasn't too long ago that 5GHz became a more mundane target. Of course, there are also plenty of rumours as to what Intel might have in store with its upcoming chips, if you're curious.
Your next machine(Image credit: Future)
Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines from the pros
Best gaming laptop: Perfect notebooks for mobile gamingThe next-gen product to follow Raptor Lake is Meteor Lake, the chip generation set to use Intel's new tiled approach in CPUs and one which promises a big uplift in integrated graphics performance. Though that's currently set to arrive sometime in 2023 by today's roadmaps. I'm told that Intel considers this chip to be on track to launch on time—as in, Meteor Lake's current release window is accurate and up-to-date—and that the roadmap was adjusted around the time Pat Gelsinger arrived at the company as new CEO.
Though we don't have an exact date for Meteor Lake's launch, this time next year sounds as good a guess as ever.
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It's summer 1941, and Operation Barbarossa rolls its way east. The Wehrmacht is pouring into Soviet-occupied territory, and I've been given the task of holding the Germans back. Which is fine, great, peachy even. There's just one small problem: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.
The opening mission for Men of War 2's preview demo—one of three available—has dumped me into the thick of an entrenched battle between the Soviets and the Nazis, across a wide, flat frontline crisscrossed with trenches and sprinkled with pockets of both friendly and enemy forces. Taken aback by the scale of the battle, I cautiously move my soldiers to man a couple of nearby mortars, and use them to drive the Germans out of their hidey holes.
"Good," says Men of War 2. "Now take these artillery guns and hold off the main offensive."
Main offensive? Oh, 'frack'.
Across the frontline, a thunderhead of German armour rumbles into view—dozens of tanks accompanied by dozens more soldiers. I frantically manoeuvre the artillery—some of which are drawn by horses, by the way—into even-ish positions across my line, then decouple them from their transports. Immediately, they begin raining hell on the German armour, turning tanks into smouldering husks and scattering ragged bodies from obliterated half-tracks.
(Image credit: 1C)I'm flying entirely by the seat of my pants, but a glance at the minimap tells me that the German armour is pushing deep into my right flank. I move one of the guns from the centre to stop this rapidly growing salient, and a well-placed shell instantly halts an entire column of armour behind a freshly wrecked tank. At this point, the tide of the battle turns, and it isn't long before the Germans are in full retreat. I'm about to sit back and bask in the glory of my (very fortunate) victory, but then the commander tells me to take a bunch of tanks and destroy the bridges that the Germans have just fled across.
Shock and awe
Men of War 2's opening demo mission showed me two things. First, Best Way's strategy sequel is no slouch in the fireworks department. The battle I just fumbled my way to victory in represents one of the most impressive spectacles I've seen in any strategy game. From the way-tracer fire from rifles and machine guns kicks up dirt at the feet of enemy soldiers, to the way shells thud into enemy armour and burst buildings, sending splinters and rubble flying. When its combat engine is in high-gear, Men of War 2 is dramatic, cacophonous, and exhilarating.
Second, and this may seem counterintuitive, but Men of War 2 is shaping up to be surprisingly accessible. While my introduction to the game was rather fraught, most of my comprehension problems came down to a lack of proper tutoring. Don't get me wrong, there's a still a lot of depth to grapple with—this is a game that lets you take control of both individual soldiers and entire armies. But what I needed to do was always clear, while how to do it was always easier to fathom than I anticipated.
(Image credit: 1C)Take the frontline mechanic, which is one of Men of War 2's big new features. The frontline is a demarcation of territory that dynamically adjusts based on the position of infantry units. In game terms, your frontline affects factors like where you can call in reinforcements, or your ability to build defences like trenches and fortifications. But it also provides an at-a-glance overview of a battle, letting you see where you need to shore up your defences, and where your opponent might be vulnerable to attack. Moreover, while each individual unit can perform a wide range of different actions, from throwing items like grenades and knives right down to switching the fire mode on their weapons, the UI for all this is fairly pared-back and straightforward, meaning it doesn't take too long to figure out the basic functionality of units.
Balance the scales
Yet it's important to stress that, while Men of War 2 can play effectively at this larger scale, it isn't specifically about that. It aims to offer similar tactical chewiness at a smaller scale too. The demo's second mission whisks players away from the Eastern front to the hedgerows of Normandy, where you're given command over a trio of Sherman tanks and tasked with escorting a convoy through German-occupied territory. It's a more stringent exercise in resource management, and also highlights the depth of the game's vehicle simulation. In typical fashion, your tanks are strong at the front but vulnerable at the rear, but taking hits from tank shells or panzerfausts can also wreck your tracks, disable your gun, and even kill off specific members of the tank crew, affecting its function.
This mission also provides a fine opportunity to test out Men of War 2's Direct Control system, which lets you personally assume agency over a specific unit. I order two of the Shermans to assault a German checkpoint, while jumping into the driver's seat of the third. When an armoured German relief unit appears on the flanks, I'm able to draw the fire of the enemy tanks and direct my shells into their flanks, while the other two Shermans safely pummel them from a distance. While it's hard to judge how useful direct control will be when there's a larger number of units to manage, it's useful for getting the upper hand in skirmishes or positioning units exactly where you want them to be.
(Image credit: 1C)The third mission zooms in further still, putting you in control of a single squad of US paratroopers who must seize control of a nearby German communications station. They're massively outgunned, however, so their first task is to steal an armoured car patrolling the nearby forest. My first attempt at this mission is a slow stumble toward failure. I heedlessly attack the patrolling car, hoping the woods will serve as cover. But trees aren't the best protection against heavy machine gun fire, and not only do I lose two of my five squaddies, a rogue grenade thrown by a surviving paratrooper blows the car up. I manage to nab a half-track parked further up the road, but this proves insufficient to push the Germans out of their entrenched position at the station, and I end up losing the mission.
Duck and cover
For my second attempt, I'm more cautious, using my squad's ability to build fortifications to erect a small wall of sandbags by the road. This provides ample cover from which to take out the crew of the armoured car. I then use the car to eliminate the crew of the half-track as well, meaning I have two armoured vehicles to assault the communications station with. I take the station with ease, suffering zero casualties.
Together, the three missions highlight the flexibility at the heart of Men of War's 2 systems, how your low-level decisions can snowball into a scenario that makes or breaks your entire mission strategy. The effect of your choices is always visible. That it is visible in such explosive style is a welcome bonus.
(Image credit: Fulqrum Publishing)What's important now is that Best Way ensures that the onboarding helps players grapple with the game's depth. While I muddled through the scenarios to a reasonable degree, it wasn't without some frustration. Managing infantry is particularly tricky—not because they're especially complex to command, but because they are so incredibly vulnerable, and a single misplaced move can see half your forces shredded by an MG42 or blown into the stratosphere by an 88.
Players need to be equipped not just with tooltips and basic instruction, but proper tutorials that provide detailed tactical overviews, like how to approach a fixed gun emplacement with an infantry squad. But if the Ukrainian studio can make Men of War 2 sufficiently easy to learn, I can see myself spending many hours mastering it.
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Square Enix has been one of the most bullish of the major publishers in announcing its intention to seriously invest in blockchain technology. At the start of the year, president Yosuka Matsuda said the company intends to "ramp up our efforts to develop a business accordingly, with an eye to potentially issuing our own tokens in the future."
What exactly that might mean remains to be seen, though one unexpected outcome was Square Enix selling off its Western studios and series like Deus Ex and Tomb Raider to Embracer group for roughly $300 million. A good chunk of this money was earmarked for Square Enix's crypto projects and, when discussing last year's financial results, it kept on banging the drum for blockchain, NFTs and other things that fung in the night.
Now, Square Enix is going to become part of a blockchain. It will be one of 21 'node validators' of the Oasys blockchain, which like all of them claims to be eco-friendly and not like all those other blockchains. A node validator is an entity that maintains a copy of a given blockchain, and has a role in verifying and keeping records of all its transactions. No word yet on what the Gallagher brothers think about the name.
The Oasys project does have some serious Japanese talent behind it, including Hajime Nakatani (president and CEO of Bandai Namco's research division), and Shuji Utsumi (a founding member at Playstation, co-founder of Q Entertainment, and current co-COO of Sega), and it has secured commitments from several big publishers, including unsurprisingly Bandai Namco and Sega as well as those crypto-fanciers over at Ubisoft.
Yosuke Saito, the director of Square Enix's Blockchain Entertainment Division, said:
"Our shared enthusiasm for Web3 gaming makes this an exciting partnership for us and we look forward to gaining insights that can advance the creation of all-new gameplay experiences for gamers across the globe."
Most concerning for the gamer in the street will be this line from the press release: "As part of this initiative, Square Enix and Oasys will explore the feasibility of harnessing user contributions in the development of new games on the Oasys blockchain."
Well, we had a good run everyone. Oasys doesn't yet have a firm launch date but it's expected to happen later this year. Then I suppose we'll get our first glimpse of what happens when Final Fantasy fans get offered the chance to buy 'one-of-a-kind' moogles.
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It's been a while since we've checked in on this year's most farcical (and yet high-stakes) non-acquisition, Elon Musk's abortive attempt to buy Twitter outright, and for fans of internet drama this thing is the gift that keeps on giving.
A quick primer: Musk originally offered to buy Twitter for $43.4 billion in April, entering into a definitive agreement roughly a week later, then spent several weeks griping about bots on the platform before announcing he was going to pull the plug. No way dude, said Twitter, and launched a lawsuit that could ultimately force Musk to go through with it (though this outcome is extremely unlikely).
Musk's legal team has since then tried unsuccessfully to have the trial moved to 2023, while Twitter's lawyers took off the gloves and outright accused the billionaire of 'sabotage'. With the trial date set for October 17, Musk's lawyers have been trying to come up with various reasons for why the deal should be terminated and received manna from heaven in the form of Twitter's former head of security Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko: who in August became a whistleblower, telling CNN about "major security problems that pose a threat to [Twitter's] own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy."
Needless to say, Musk's lawyers have focused-in on Zatko's testimony and now his severance payment. Among Zatko's claims were that Twitter was using suspicious metrics in order to downplay the number of 'fake' accounts, which Zatko must have known would feed beautifully into Musk's bot narrative. Musk's lawyers responded by filing a termination notice based on the revelations last month, essentially saying Zatko was proving Musk's point, before issuing a subpoena to Zatko demanding a deposition and various documents. They also tried to use this as another excuse for a delay, which was turned down last week.
Things have now taken yet another turn, following a Wall Street Journal report last week that claimed Zatko received an eye-watering $7 million when leaving the company (he'd only been hired in 2020), which Musk's lawyers say violates a clause in the acquisition agreement. In a notice filed with the SEC on Friday, one of Musk's lawyers writes that the "severance payment violated Section 6.1(e) and cannot be cured. Defendants are thus not required to close under Section 7.2."
This is the third termination notice they've filed, which leads to the following rather convoluted but amusing clause:
"Although the Musk Parties believe this termination notice is not legally necessary to terminate the Merger Agreement because they have already validly terminated it pursuant to the July 8 termination notice, the Musk Parties are delivering this additional termination notice in the event that the July 8 Termination Notice or, alternatively, the August 29 Termination Notice is determined to be invalid for any reason."
The idea that the world's richest man thinks an inflated Silicon Valley payout is reason for not concluding the deal is, of course, something of a stretch. But clearly his lawyers are going to try any and everything.
(Image credit: Twitter)Twitter, for its part, denied Zatko's claims and said he'd been fired for poor performance. That's one heck of a payout for poor performance! It should also be noted that, among people who know about these things, Zatko's reputation is extremely good.
One final interesting thing happened in recent days. Former Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke about when the House of Mouse considered acquiring Twitter in 2016, before having second thoughts as the nature of the company became clear. Iger was speaking at the Code Conference, as reported by Vox, and said some things that will probably result in yet another termination notice being filed by Musk's lawyers before too long. Iger said:
Yes, it’s a great solution from a distribution perspective. But it would come with so many other challenges and complexities that as a manager of a great global brand, I was not prepared to take on a major distraction and having to manage circumstances that weren’t even close to anything that we had faced before.
Interestingly enough, because I read the news these days, we did look very carefully at all of the Twitter users—I guess they’re called users?—and we at that point estimated with some of Twitter’s help that a substantial portion—not a majority—were not real.
I don’t remember the number but we discounted the value heavily. But that was built into our economics. Actually, the deal that we had was pretty cheap.
Then you have to look, of course, at all the hate speech and potential to do as much harm as good. We’re in the business of manufacturing fun at Disney — of doing nothing but good, even though there are others today that criticize Disney for the opposite, which is wrong. This was just something that we were not ready to take on and I was not ready to take on as the CEO of a company and I thought it would have been irresponsible.
Well well well. The trial date is set for October 17, and the Musk strategy seems clear: bots, security, payouts, anything will do really. Musk for his part has laid off the more public twitter beefing, though after complaining about the male characters in the new Lord of the Rings series he did claim that 90% of replies to the tweet were from bots (with a screenshot that only shows two bot accounts, but whatever).
"Musk apparently believes that he—unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law—is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away," Twitter's suit reads. "This repudiation follows a long list of material contract breaches by Musk that have cast a pall over Twitter and its business."
Should the court compel Musk to complete the deal, which is one of the powers of a chancery court, it would be at the initially agreed price of $54.20 per share, which values the social media company at approximately $45 billion. The current share price is just under $42. The penalty fee for welching on the deal would be $1 billion.
That outcome is less likely than some sort of settlement down the road, though the wildcard here is Musk himself, who is both an individual of remarkable accomplishments and someone who occasionally does bizarre and outright trollish things. Twitter may just want a decent settlement: what Musk ultimately wants or ever wanted remains a mystery that won't be solved with poop emojis.
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Finally, an F1 game with all that boring driving nonsense taken out. F1 Manager 2022 gives you all the decision-making power and crushing responsibility of a team principal, but doesn’t ask you to get your hands dirty in the cockpit.
Your first season can be a real voyage of discovery, and a list of what ifs gradually emerges as you figure out, much too late, that you should have been developing a new front wing ages ago.
Worry not, first-time F1 managers—consider this guide your handover doc from the departing team boss you just replaced. It's a cheat sheet that tells you all the important aspects of your job, how to manage efficiently and, most importantly, how to start winning races.
F1 Manager 2022 tips
Start designing new parts before the first race weekend
Above all, F1 Manager 2022 is a race to develop the best car parts and install them on your car the quickest. Every other team is constantly iterating on their designs, so if you don’t, you’re not just staying still—you’re going backwards.
If you’re at a team with some money in its pockets—Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, and even Alpine and McLaren—starting a new design project should be one of the first things you do. This ensures that nobody will be developing at a faster rate than you.
This being a management game, it’s not quite that simple. Every team has its own strengths and weaknesses in the car it’s developed, and parts take longer to design and manufacture depending on whether you select ‘normal’ or ‘rushed’ in the menus when you’re setting the project up. If you can afford it, rush through the first season’s upgrades. You’ll miss out on extra XP for your staff, but on the plus side, you’ll get new parts on the car sooner.
As for precisely what you should be designing and manufacturing first, here's what you should be prioritising.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Prioritise underfloor, front and rear wings
There are several areas of the car you can redesign throughout the season:
- Front wing
- Rear wing
- Underfloor
- Chassis
- Sidepods
- Suspension
Again, every team has some parts that are better than others. You may have the third-best front wing on the grid, for example, but only the ninth-best engine cooling. Hit ‘E’ after setting up a new design project and entering the part selection menu to see how your components stack up against the rest of the grid.
There’s a dilemma here: do you develop the weakest parts, hoping to catch up, or focus on making the best bits even better so that you don’t lose your advantage in that area?
Neither. Simply focus on the front and rear wings, and the underfloor. These three parts will give you the most performance gain per upgrade since they affect more of the car’s performance criteria than any other part.
It’s definitely still worth working on new suspension, chassis and sidepods, too, but get these done using fewer designers, CFD and wind tunnel time than the rest so that you can push the important stuff through at a faster rate.
Don’t scrimp on CFD and wind tunnel time
You have limited testing time throughout the season, regardless of your team’s budget and lofty aspirations. This is actually a good thing if you’re managing a team further towards the back of the grid because you’re not penalised in this area for having less budget. Red Bull can’t throw more money into the wind tunnel to get more hours.
However, it’s worth knowing that the allotted hours you get for computer simulation and wind tunnel testing replenish roughly every 40 days—the number you see isn’t your allocation for the season. Make use of every second available to you—you can’t roll them over into the next period. They’re a lot like annual leave, in that way.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Start the race in the red
Races are the moments in a team manager’s life when shirt armpits get drenched, knees start nervously bobbing, and glorious victories can turn into ignominious P4s with a few bad strategy calls—just ask Ferrari on any given Sunday throughout the season.
There’s a lot to getting good results on race day, most crucially all the development work you’re doing between race weekends. But you can give both your drivers a fighting chance by setting their driving modes to all-out attack before the lights go green.
In the same menu where you set tire strategies before the race, check out the Driver Settings menu. This is where you can access the pace, fuel burn and ERS settings that you usually have access to mid-race.
Set your pace to full red, fuel to maximum consumption, and ERS to deploy, before the race begins, and leave it like that for both your drivers for the whole of the first lap. Trust me—every other driver around you is doing it, so it’s attack or be attacked in this very early phase in the race.
One lap on full attack won’t take too much out of your tires, and you won’t need to enter the dreaded conserve mode later just by burning a bit more fuel on the opening lap. Keep using these settings every race start, and you’ll avoid losing positions off the line and into turn one.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Tweaking setups is tedious but worth it
One of the more game-fied aspects of Frontier’s take on being Christian Horner is the car setup system. As your drivers rack up the laps in practice sessions, you’ll see that the ideal range for each car setup setting narrows. The fun twist, however, is that reaching all those ranges isn’t as simple as dragging sliders about.
Instead, the settings are all connected to each other, so if you change toe-in, your ride height changes too, and so on. Fiddling around with the sliders so that you’re within the ever-narrowing ranges feels a bit like picking a lock in a clunky old ‘90s RPG, but if you can stand it, the performance gains are worth it.
Each of your drivers has a maximum of 15 performance points that can be achieved before qualifying. These are unlocked through a mix of car part familiarity and setup confidence. Don’t worry about the others for now—getting new parts on the car regularly is a must. Setup confidence is a biggie though, and the difference between someone pootling around on a performance level of seven versus going full send on a performance level of 12 or above could be several tenths. It’s much easier to gain that time with a good setup than it is with several upgrades.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Use safety cars and VSCs to harvest ERS and save fuel
Races are a constant resource management balancing act, and both your fuel and ERS battery level are vital resources for maintaining pace, defending against attacks and making overtakes. It makes sense to have some in reserve, then.
Safety cars and virtual safety car scenarios are a good opportunity to do that, and also to eke out a bit of extra life from your tires. As soon as you hear from your race engineer that a safety car or VSC has been deployed, change all your driver settings down to the minimum—tires, fuel, and ERS into harvest mode. That’s regardless of whether you intend to pit immediately—even half a lap spent in this mode will give you a bit of surplus performance later in the race.
Remember to warm everything up before the race resumes, though. You don’t want to be caught on cold tires. As soon as you hear that the safety car’s coming in this lap, set the driver pace to attack, and consider setting ERS to deploy too so that you don’t get passed in the first few corners when the race restarts. Basically, treat it like a race start.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Take everything out of your tires on your in laps
If you’ve been watching the sport for a while, you’ll have heard race engineer Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington telling Lewis Hamilton that it’s “hammer time”. While this has unfortunately never resulted in a display of flamboyant dance moves on the track from the seven-time world champion, it has instead prompted him to go all-out and set the fastest laps he’s capable of right at the end of his tire stint. And on balance, that’s been more effective than the former.
Once you hit your pit stop window, you don’t need to worry so much about conserving the tire. Thus, you can take absolutely everything out of them on your in lap, and even a lap before. It’s often worth increasing fuel burn and deploying some extra ERS on these in laps, too.
Because these crucial laps before and after pitting are your best chance to make up positions in the race. Opponents around you will likely have either just pitted, and will thus be on cold, fresh tires, or they’ll be scrabbling around for grip on worn tires at the end of their stint. In either scenario, you need to extract the maximum pace from your car in order to capitalise on your advantage.
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Management games are all about making the right decision at the right time—that, and clicking the left mouse button—and F1 Manager 2022 is no different. Two of the biggest decisions you can make in F1 2022, a licensed take on being a team principal from Frontier, are which team should employ you, and which drivers you should subsequently employ.
The former basically dictates which difficulty mode you’re playing on. Red Bull: very easy. Williams: New game +++. And the latter, if you pick out a child prodigy and get him on a cheap contract, might turn around the fortunes of a midfield minnow and send you to the podium.
With that in mind, here’s what picking each of the ten teams means for your playthrough, along with the best young drivers you can get to drive your cars.
The best teams in F1 Manager 2022
The pacesetters: Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes
Choose one of these top three teams for an easy life in F1 Manager 2022. Mercedes are lagging slightly behind the other two for pace at the beginning of the season, but all three have much more in the way of finances, starting performance and driver talent than the rest of the grid.
Which of the trio is outright quickest? At the very start of the season before the opening round, it’s probably the Ferrari. Red Bull usually slot into second place, and Mercedes are usually just ahead of the Alfa Romeos in third, or P5 and P6 on the grid.
It’s definitely easier to start winning races and fighting for constructor’s and driver’s championships with these top three teams, but the board and sponsor expectations are really high, too. They’re aware that you already have a fantastic package, and they’re expecting podiums. Regular, immediate podiums.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Frontier Developments)The midfield: Alpine, Alfa Romeo, McLaren, Haas, Alpha Tauri
Consider this your medium difficulty setting—an office in the headquarters of one of F1’s midfield teams. There’s not much to separate these five teams for performance at the start of the season, but Alfa Romeo and Alpine tend to start with a raw pace advantage over the others.
This pack is also where some of the most romantic potential storylines lie, though. Can you bring a long-awaited third world championship to the veteran Fernando Alonso, at the very team where he won the first two nearly 20 years ago? Are you the managerial visionary who can return McLaren to its winning ways after nearly a decade away from the front? Can you embarrass parent outfit Red Bull by beating them with your Alpha Tauri? As for Haas—well, it’s going to take an awful lot to recover from Nikita Mazepin. Maybe if you win absolutely every round in 2022 people will forget this team once employed him.
The trickiest thing about operating a midfield team is that you need to develop like crazy in order to catch up with the top three teams, but you don’t have as much budget as them to actually design and manufacture parts. It’s therefore essential that you hit every possible sponsor objective, and save money wherever possible—even consider letting go of your current driver talent if they’re on expensive contracts, and spend a few seasons paying rookies a pittance while channelling the extra funds into building a faster car.
Image 1 of 5(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Image 2 of 5(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Image 3 of 5(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Image 4 of 5(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Image 5 of 5(Image credit: Frontier Developments)The backmarkers: Aston Martin, Williams
Finally, the teams that are pleased just to make it out of Q1. Aston Martin and Williams, both former race winners, the former back when they were called Jordan and the latter throughout the 1970s-2000s, now find themselves at the back and in dire need of development.
These are the real heart-over-head picks. They offer the greatest potential reward—what an achievement it would be to get Williams back to the front! Or to get Vettel a winning car once again, for that matter. But it’s not going to happen overnight. This is a long-haul team pick.
While Aston Martin does at least have some budget for development, Williams is operating on a relative shoestring, and it’s not like you’re even paying for a world champion driver’s salary so there aren’t obvious costs to be cut. You just need to make shrewd decisions, in every aspect of the game from contracts to car upgrades to sponsors, for several seasons.
Image 1 of 2(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Image 2 of 2(Image credit: Frontier Developments)F1 Manager 2022: best young drivers
Scouting the young driver market is where F1 Manager 2022 takes on a Football Manager-like aspect. Terrible car? Disastrous finances? Just find the next Michael Schumacher from this pool of scowling teenagers and it’ll all be fine.
It is quite a big pool, mind you, so I’ve picked out the drivers not currently in F1 who’ll do you proud and develop into title-hunters. All these drivers have a high potential, meaning they accrue XP at a fast rate when you put them in practice sessions or go all out and give them a race seat. As XP accumulates, you earn points that can be spent on upgrading that driver’s individual stats. Having a high growth rate, then, is absolutely vital.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Oscar Piastri, age 20, 75 OVR, Average Aggressiveness
In reality, Piastri just signed a contract with McLaren for 2023 after some confusion with Alpine, who thought he’d be driving for them. But at the start of F1 Manager 2022, he’s an Alpine test driver and fair game. His 75 overall stat is pretty great for a 20-year-old, and his F2 title speaks for itself.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Jack Doohan, age 19, 72 OVR, 73 Aggressiveness
Son of motorcycle racing legend Mick Doohan, Jack is quite the precocious talent on four wheels. His 72 overall is a real outlier among the database’s teenagers, and he’s a super-aggressive driver too so he won’t be shy about overtaking.
Jack’s perhaps ready for a race seat right away if you’re in charge at one of the lower teams—everywhere from Alpine backwards, really.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Theo Pourchaire, age 18, 71 OVR, 24 Aggressiveness
The man who went front wing to front wing with Piastri all season in his hunt for the F2 title, Pourchaire’s two years younger than his Australian rival and that gives him plenty of time to catch up to his stats.
Theo’s not one for sending mad lunges down the inside in a braking zone, with a low aggressiveness rating, and that means he’ll stay on track for you—but you might have to manage his settings manually to get him moving through the pack in a race. Signed to Ala Romeo as their reserve driver at the start of the game.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Frederik Vesti, age 20, 71 OVR, 79 Aggressiveness
The young Dane is one of the oldest drivers on this list at a stately 20, but his stats are already well developed. If you’re running Williams, you might be tempted to promote him to racing duties right away instead of Latifi or Albon, to give him the maximum chance to earn XP and buff those stats.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Zane Maloney, age 18, 64 OVR, 39 Aggressiveness
Zane’s 64 overall isn’t turning heads in this list next to such illustrious company, but the lad is only 18 and the F3 driver already has tons of racecraft. He’s not one to bring up to F1 right away, but get him in a reserve role early and you could save millions on his contract. Just make sure you’re giving him practice sessions to earn some experience.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)Olivier Bearman, age 16, 65 OVR high Aggressiveness
Finally, little Olivier Bearman. Only 16 years old! I was barely holding down a spot in set 2 history at that age, and he’s competing in F3. Again, 65 isn’t a prodigious overall rating at first glance, but if you were prepared to put him in a race seat early, a combination of his age and his high potential puts his performance ceiling way up in the atmosphere.
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The latest rumour on the YouTubes is that Intel's foray into discrete graphics cards with Arc desktop GPUs is over, before its first generation of cards has even hit the shelves. But Raja Koduri, executive vice president of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics group at Intel—basically Mr. Intel GPU—says otherwise.
we are
about these rumors as well. They don’t help the team working hard to bring these to market, they don’t help the pc graphics community..one must wonder, who do they help?..we are still in first gen and yes we had more obstacles than planned to ovecome, but we persisted…September 12, 2022See moreKoduri had his own say on the recent reports of the death of Intel's discrete GPU adventure. Speaking out on twitter, he reacted to a huge response around an otherwise innocent tweet about checking out an Arc A770 Limited Edition card in a Toronto validation lab.
"We are
about these rumours as well," he writes. "They don't help the team working hard to bring these to market, they don't help the PC graphics community."This is all a reaction to a video on the channel, Moore's Law is Dead, which claims to have spoken to several sources within Intel who have said that, from the executive level, it is halting the project. That will potentially happen after Battlemage, the next Arc GPU architecture already in progress.
The most damning of the four sources claims that the decision isn't even just being floated around the company, but that it has already been decided. "The decision's been made at the top to end discrete," claims the channel.
"One must wonder," speculates Koduri, however, "who do [the rumours] help? We are still in the first gen and yes we had more obstacles than planned to overcome, but we persisted…"
It doesn't help that CEO Pat Gelsinger has set speculation aflame given that he publicly stated that it's going to continue to focus on its core competencies, and likely get out certain businesses as it does so.
(Image credit: Moore's Law is Dead)Talking about the decision to kill its Optane memory business, Tom's Hardware quotes Gelsinger as saying: "I sort of joke that Intel exited the memory business 40 years ago, and they've just kept making that decision. Right? Well, I'm gonna close that frickin' door, and we're gonna stay out of the memory business and really get a cleanliness of our business strategy around logic.
"You know, we have a few more that we'll likely exit as we continue to prune and get more focused."
Some folks have taken that as tacit confirmation that it's been looking at the graphics card division as one to 'exit' but realistically graphics is one of Intel's core competencies. Though I use the notion of competency under advisement here given that the discrete cards have at least been seriously delayed.
Intel is one of the largest suppliers of graphics silicon to PCs the world over, via its integrated graphics chips. Granted, they're not going to be the sort to deliver high frame rate gaming, but it's still been designing and shippin GPUs for years.
Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the restAnd after the debacle of Larrabee, the last time it tried to do discrete graphics and bailed out before the release of one card, I find it hard to believe that it would seriously ditch the Arc plan after struggling with its first generation of Alchemist GPUs.
In the datacentre too, where it is losing out to the competition, Intel needs graphics cards in there to deliver on the growing demands for AI acceleration. Though if Gelsinger really sees no likelihood of a return on its investment maybe the wise course is to back out sooner rather than later.
Personally speaking, I hope that's not going to be the case. And I would also be surprised if Intel really thought that even in two generations it would be able to get to the same level that AMD and Nvidia are functioning at in terms of GPU delivery and is itself surprised at not hitting the ground running straightaway.
Whatever the truth at the top is, Intel is still publicly backing its graphics cards, and Raja even returned from his latest holiday/sabbatical to the same job this time. When things went horribly wrong with Vega at AMD he went on sabbatical and never returned… but he's back at Intel and still defending his GPUs.
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Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has defended the company's efforts at reforming itself following an explosive wave of harassment allegations against senior staff in 2020. Speaking to GI.biz, Guillemot repudiated reports that the company had made minimal progress in the wake of the harassment scandal, speaking in-depth about high-profile dismissals, new company structures, and why he didn't quit as CEO when it became clear how toxic Ubisoft's workplace had become.
The interview comes three days after Ubi staff from the A Better Ubisoft campaign sat down with the AC Sisterhood blog to criticise the speed and scale of the company's response to reports of employee abuse. Staff from the campaign—speaking anonymously—highlighted that numerous Ubisoft employees accused of abusive behaviour remain at the company, with some of them even receiving promotions in the last two years.
Guillemot wasn't confronted directly with the criticisms made by A Better Ubisoft, but he touched on a lot of the same topics. "We have done a lot and I think we are a company that can be proud of itself," he said on the subject of alleged abusers still working at the company. He points out that the company "acted quickly in cutting some people's jobs" after abuse allegations came to light, and noted that any current Ubisoft employee named in a report has been subject to an investigation and either cleared or "appropriately disciplined and given an individualised action plan" to rectify their behaviour.
From A Better Ubisoft's point of view, those action plans have been hardly sufficient. "Not only do we believe it’s still happening but we can see it happening for ourselves," said one campaign member, with another adding that, while "global management may not be aware of it," few changes have been made on a per-studio level that "[... ]prevent the cultures that foster the protection of ‘the best people’".
Guillemot also spoke about the organisational changes that have been made at Ubisoft to better foster communication between executives and employees. In particular, he points to the introduction of a company-wide employee survey and regular meetings between employee groups and leadership teams—including Guillemot himself—as evidence of an ongoing cultural shift at the company. Guillemot told GI that the company was "open to criticisms," and that when employees find valid faults, Ubisoft "[goes] after them to solve them". Guillemot also points to the three elected Employee Representatives that now sit on Ubisoft's Board of Directors as evidence of the company's commitment to employee feedback.
Staff from A Better Ubisoft addressed a lot of these same issues in their interview with AC Sisterhood, lambasting Ubisoft's employee feedback initiatives as "patronizingly, paternalistically top-down… centrally controlled and carefully limited". The employee surveys were accused of being made up of "biased questions" and management's "own make-believe". They acknowledge that, while some changes have taken place and "the vibe has changed a bit," deeper reform efforts are stymied by the continuing presence of alleged abusers in management and the limited scope of the changes Ubisoft has made thus far.
Finally, Guillemot addressed the elephant in the room of his own continuing leadership of the company. Given that the toxic culture that's blighted Ubisoft developed under his watch (as, indeed, has pretty much everything else: Guillemot has been CEO of the company since 1988), many questioned why he didn't step down when the scale of the problem became apparent.
"It was obvious for me that I had a responsibility to take care of the situation so that we could get back to what we were before: a company where people feel they can be themselves and come together to create the best games," Guillemot explained. "My goal when I co-founded the company was to create a place where you can always be yourself," and realising that the company was failing to achieve that goal was "really disturbing" for its longtime CEO. "It was obvious for me to go and take care of that situation, so we could go back to what we have been for a long time".
It's a pretty glowing self-assessment from Guillemot: a personal sense of responsibility obliged him to remain and right the ship, and it's hard to take that completely at face value. Still, Guillemot deserves credit for building Ubisoft into what it is, and with regards to the working environment does fairly point out that 600 of the 4000 people Ubisoft has hired this past year have been returning former employees.
Between the interview with Guillemot and the testimony from A Better Ubisoft, it feels unfair to say that the company—even in the rarefied airs of management—isn't genuinely committed on some level to fixing its problems. It's just that the company's ability to do that is being pulled in multiple directions: fix the company culture, but do it without generating bad PR, without surrendering too much power from the executive to the employee level, without impacting revenue too badly, and without causing a ruckus. It doesn't seem possible, which is no doubt why current criticisms of the company focus on the minuscule scale of the progress made in the last two years.
When asked how they would bring wide and lasting change to the company, A Better Ubisoft had one answer: "... any real solution to safety in the workplace and addressing toxic management can only come from the bottom up". Only the "voluntary recognition of unions is the way we gain that seat at the table" that staff continue to demand.
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World of Warcraft's Frostbrood Proto-Wyrm is a new mount that you can add to your collection in preparation for Dragonflight. It's relatively easy to get, so you won't have to spend hours—or years—farming the same dungeon or raid to acquire it. Instead, you'll need to spend a couple of hours in Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
There are hundreds of mounts to collect in World of Warcraft, with more added each expansion. This particular mount is tied to the upcoming WotLK Classic release though, and this guide explains what you need to do to get it. So without further ado, here's how to get the World of Warcraft Frostbrood Proto-Wyrm mount, and where you can use it.
Chill out and take off!Complete the #WrathClassic DK starting experience to earn the Frostbrood Proto-Wyrm in WoW.Details: https://t.co/LkliFBlb5F pic.twitter.com/a21IUdTHEiSeptember 8, 2022
See moreWorld of Warcraft: How to get the Frostbrood Proto-Wyrm mount
To get your hands on this icy-cool mount, you'll need to hop into Wrath of the Lich King Classic, create a Death Knight, and level through the starting area of the Scarlet Enclave.
Originally, you had to have an existing character of level 55 or higher on the realm you wanted to create your Death Knight. However, in WotLK Classic, this restriction has been lifted for the first Death Knight you create. So once you've picked your realm—preferably one without queues—you can jump in and start questing.
Once your Death Knight has reached your faction's capital city and completed the relevant quest, the Frostbrood Proto-Wyrm mount will be available in your mount collection in WoW: Shadowlands.
Here is the final quest you'll need to complete (for each faction) to unlock the mount:
- Horde: "Warchief's Blessing" is completed in Orgrimmar.
- Alliance: "Where Kings Walk" is completed in Stormwind City.
It's important to note that, while you'll need to play a few hours of Wrath of the Lich King Classic to get this mount, it can only be used in retail WoW.
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Explore Sumeru these Genshin Impact 3.0 guides(Image credit: miHoYo)
Genshin Impact 3.0: What you need to know
Genshin Impact Sumeru: How to get there
Genshin Impact Dendroculus: Where to find them
Genshin Impact End of the Line: Get the fish-bowThe Genshin Impact Kalpalata Lotus is a bit of a strange flower. Instead of the other Sumeru specialities, this lotus prefers to grow on cliffs, and you'll find it hanging from sheer rock faces all across the new jungle region. Why would you bother to make the climb? Well, this flower is one of the ascension materials for the new four-star Electro character, Dori.
Considering the merchant's taste in rarities, perhaps it's appropriate that her ascension material is somewhat annoying to gather. After all, there aren't that many of them, and some can be a bit tricky to get to. In this Genshin Impact Kalpalata Lotus guide, I'll explain the best way to farm the flower so you can ascend Dori to her highest level and properly use her in your party.
Genshin Impact Kalpalata Lotus: Where to farm
There are quite a few Kalpalata Lotus near Vanarana (Image credit: miHoYo official Genshin Impact map)Unlike the Nilotpala Lotus that you need to ascend Tighnari, the Kalpalata Lotus is actually found on cliffs rather than in water. This Sumeru speciality is spread all across the region, but the best place to find it is to the west of Sumeru City and near Vanarana, though you can also find some in Avidya Forest, the Apam Woods, and in the ravine south of Vimara Village. This one really is scattered all around. You can find every exact location on the official Genshin Impact map, but just generally checking cliffs near water sources should net you a few.
You'll need 168 altogether to ascend Dori, but sadly like Kokomi's Sango Pearls, there just aren't that many Kalpalata Lotus around. If you were to scour all of Sumeru you'd still only get 59, which means you'll need three complete farms if you want Dori at max level. It's worth remembering that region specialities such as ascension flowers take two real world days to spawn, meaning your Dori farm may take a little time if you're intent on levelling her fully.
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Researchers at the University of Helsinki have published a study that examines the brainwave synchronisation of people playing a simple driving game in pairs. The headline claim, of course, is that the results suggest peoples' brainwaves synchronise while playing a co-operative racing game. The participants' brains were activating in a similar way to how they would during face-to-face interaction, and "inter-brain neural synchronization has been linked with empathy and cooperation" in such situations.
There are necessary caveats to this: the study is relatively small-scale (it examined 42 pairs of players), and, while it does show activity that suggests a particular conclusion, it wouldn't be reasonable to extrapolate this as definitive proof. With that said, it was also published in Neuropsychologia, which is a peer-reviewed and respected journal in the brain field.
Participants were physically separated in soundproof rooms, and played a game "Inspired by an episode of the British television series Top Gear (Churchward and Doyle, 2008), in which participants were tasked to drive double-deckered cars, with the person on top turning the steering wheel and the person on bottom operating the pedals." A simple videogame along these lines was created, and participants had to drive a car around a racing track as fast as possible, with one of them steering and one in charge of acceleration and brakes. The tracks featured obstacles to be avoided, and there were four circuits which all participants drove in both roles.
Take my word for it: this study contains some amazingly granular data about the length and timing of button presses.
The study notes that "Collaboration in the task was associated with higher synchrony in the alpha, beta, and gamma bands, when comparing the synchrony between real pairs and performance-matched false pairs." This admittedly limited data set shows a connection between performance in the game and gamma synchronization in particular, where the gamma waves associated with high cognitive function are synchronizing between participants.
What this actually means is not something this particular study set out to answer.
"We were able to show that inter-brain phase synchronization can occur without the presence of the other person," says doctoral researcher Valtteri Wikström, one of the study's authors. "This opens up a possibility to investigate the role of this social brain mechanism in online interaction.”
(Image credit: Psyonix)The study's wider context isn't so much about games specifically as the increased screen time that most of us now experience, and the concerns about how this is affecting both us and especially the younger generations who've grown up as digital natives. The screens aren't going away, so it's crucial to understand what our brains may be capable of during such interactions.
"If we can build interactive digital experiences which activate fundamental mechanisms of empathy, it can lead to better social relationships, well-being, and productivity online," says project manager Katri Saarikivi. I admire the optimism!
Wikström reckons that ultimately these measurements of brain synchronization during online co-operation can be used to measure the 'quality' of social interaction, and that understanding better how they work will allow software developers to build in this direction. That's a seriously big claim, and one that looks far beyond what this study has actually shown.
It is funny, though, to think about this in the context of my own never-ending love affair with Rocket League. I mainly play competitive 3vs3 with randoms, and lurk somewhere in mid-Diamond. And in some games you and your teammates are just on the same page: passing it around, covering for each other, moving into the right positions, without any explicit communication going on. Other times, none of you gel and it's a mess. This is obviously just my own anecdote about an unrelated game, but you sense there's something to this. Over a lifetime of online gaming, I've felt like I 'synced' with teammates more times than I could say.
Here is the full study, 'Inter-brain synchronization occurs without physical co-presence during cooperative online gaming', published in the journal Neuropsychologia. The researchers behind it are: Valtteri Wikström, Katri Saarikivi, Mari Falcon, Tommi Makkonen, Silja Martikainen, Vesa Putkinen, Benjamin Ultan Cowley, and Mari Tervaniemi.
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The best PC speakers bring impeccable sound to your gaming. Sure the best gaming headsets will give you a more intimate audio experience, but the top PC speakers break free from the confines of the earcup. Whether it's the thrum of your engine in F1 22 or the crack of the Kraber unleashing hell in Apex Legends, the best PC speakers will fill the entire room with your favourite game's resonant goodness.
Deciding on the best PC speakers can be difficult, but we'll break it down. First figure out how much space there is on your desk. It'll give you an idea of the kind of speaker footprint you can afford, or whether you need to get tidying in anticipation. If you have the space under your desk then you should go for the typical 2.1, left/right speaker setup with a sub-woofer on the floor.
Then there's PC soundbars, which have made a punchy comeback recently that puts excellent depth of sound and positional audio on your desk, but stays neatly tucked under your monitor. Some even come with a sub-woofer to really get the bass going. Even Razer has gotten into the PC soundbar game.Be warned, though; good speakers for your PC are likely to set you back money-wise. Thankfully, I earmarked a couple of decent budget options during my extensive testing, since we've not all loaded. These are my recommendations for loud, reliable PC speakers.
Best PC speakers
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Logitech)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Logitech)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Logitech)1. Logitech G560
The best gaming PC speakers
Weight: 3.9lbs (satellites), 12.1lb (sub) | Size: 5.8 x 6.5 x 4.6-inches (sats), 15.9 x 10 x 8.1-inches (sub) | Drivers: 6.5-inch subwoofer, 2-inch tweeters | Connectivity: USB, 3.5mm, Bluetooth
Immersive Lightsync RGB lightingBuilt in DTS:X Virtual SurroundSolid bass response from subwooferRGB LEDs don't turn off in standby mode unless manually disabledQuite loud, even at low volumeI couldn't recommend any computer speakers any more than these, and that's because these ended up being my long-time speakers at my desk at home. The G560s not only sound great, but they also look great too. It's ideal if you want to ditch the gaming headset for a while and play it fast and loose with your volume dial.
Chances are you either love or hate RGB lighting. The PC Gamer office is generally divided on this topic too, but there's one thing we can agree on: Logitech's G560 Lightsync feature is anything but gimmicky. If there's one RGB product I can recommend that will impact your PC gaming experience, this one.
The audio quality and clean-cut design have these speakers stand out among the crowd.
Logitech's software allows you to choose between two control modes for the speakers. Hardware control ditches the software and uses Bluetooth or AUX input for lighting. You get a gentle rainbow color cycle that acts as an audio visualizer, which flashes and brightens to the music's beat. The software control allows you to choose between fixed color, color cycle, breathing, audio visualizer, and screen sampler lighting modes.
The screen sampler, however, is where the G560 shines. Like ambient TV backlighting products, the software takes user-defined screen areas. It extends the colors outwards to create an immersive lighting experience like Philips' Ambilight tech on TVs. Since a good portion of this effect relies on the rear-facing LEDs, the speakers need to be positioned beside your display with their back against a wall to get the best result. Get it right, though, and the effect is incredible.
Fundamentally, though, the audio quality and clean-cut design have these speakers stand out among the crowd. I love how they sound out of the box, but you can also tweak them within the Logitech G Hub app. There's a lot of bass on offer, but the tweeters are just as capable of throwing out excellent audio.
Even when set to low volume on your PC, these speakers may struggle to keep the noise down, but I didn't pick them for calm and quiet gaming. No, we love the Logitech G560's powerful audio and surprisingly refined RGB lighting. If both of those sound good to you, look no further.
Please read our full Logitech G560 review.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Creative)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Creative)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Creative)2. Creative Pebble Plus
The best budget computer speakers
Weight: 5.5lbs | Size: 4.5 x 4.8 x 4.5-inches (sats), 5.9 x 7.7 x 8-inches (sub) | Drivers: 4-inch subwoofer, 2-inch tweeters | Connectivity: 3.5mm
AffordableSmall footprintExcellent clarityTangle of cablesBass is a little lackingWhen you're out shopping for budget PC speakers below $50, it's easy to be overwhelmed by choice. It doesn't help that reliable brands have multiple options in the same price range. The low-end differences can be minimal, but the Creative Pebble Plus speakers stand apart from the competition with their big sound despite the compact size.
With a total power output of 8W, I found that these speakers pump out crisper audio more than competitors using two to three times the power amount. While they won't produce the loudest sound around, I heard little distortion even with the volume maxed out. The only complaint here is a lack of bass control to complement the convenient volume knob located on the right speaker.
The Pebble Plus speakers may lack some raw oomph, but they make up for it in clarity. This is why we highly recommend these speakers for students and those who move around a lot, as the speakers are small enough to fit on any cramped desk surface. They're easily the most portable system I tried and performed best in a smaller bedroom or office.
Like any other pair of speakers below $50, the Creative Pebble Plus speakers are easily shamed by a mid-range set. You are missing out on wireless connectivity, and there are lots of fiddly, easily tangled wires to deal with if you're moving around a lot. However, these speakers are the clear winner for gamers on a tight budget, and for under $50, these get the job done well.
Image 1 of 2(Image credit: Logitech)Image 2 of 2(Image credit: LOGITECH)3. Logitech Z407
Best speaker and subwoofer combo for around $100
Weight: 8.8lbs | Size: 13.5 x 10.7 x 8.4-inches | Drivers: 2.3-inch tweeters, 5 inch subwoofer | Connectivity: 3.5mm, Bluetooth, micro usb
Great PriceWireless control knobEasy to set upBooming soundShort cable runsSubwoofer needs a little more oomphIf you don't want to stretch your budget to the flashier Logitech G560 speaker set, the company's much more tame Z407 set offers a great alternative for less money. They're effectively a similar set of two tweeters and a subwoofer but ditch all the gamer stylings and lights of the fancier kit.
The Logitech Z407s pretty much win the award for most deceptively awesome computer speakers around. This 80W speaker system connects via Bluetooth, 3.5mm headphone jack, or micro USB, so you can easily connect to them with your phone, gaming laptop, or PC. Keeping with the wireless theme, I fell in love with the wireless control knob, which let me control my media with satisfying spins.
That's one of the key benefits over the much cheaper Creative Pebble Plus, but don't ignore their simple and effective design. The two tweeters come with small stands for your desk, and the subwoofer is compact enough to not take up to much space under your desk.
What was not satisfying was the unusually short 4ft cables, which limit how you can set them up. However, being able to lay the speakers vertically or horizontally is a nice touch. The sound achieved surprisingly balanced audio for a speaker set for only $80—a strong yes for anyone looking to upgrade their current dinky desktop speakers.
Best gaming headset | Best gaming monitor | Best HDMI cable for gaming
Best microphone for streaming | Best SSD for gaming | Best CPU for gamingImage 1 of 2(Image credit: Razer)Image 2 of 2(Image credit: Razer)4. Razer Nommo Chroma
Simple yet stylish computer speakers
Weight: 4.41lbs | Size: 5.5 x 6.7 x 8.7-inches | Drivers: 3-inch | Connectivity: USB, 3.5mm
Fun, subtle RGBCan go very loudBulkyNo dedicated subwooferThe Razer Nommo Chroma is a huge upgrade from your old dinky desk speakers. The large cylindrical speakers look a bit like the engines of the USS Enterprise but provide crisp, clear audio and deep bass. That bass is driven by rear facing bass ports that offer a more booming response on the low-end than your traditional two-tweeter setup might. Though we do miss a dedicated subwoofer with this package.
The RGB ring under the speakers is a really nice touch, and once again it feels like these computer speakers are rather tastefully designed. Perhaps the best bit of the Nommo Chroma design is that one speaker offers volume and bass knobs, which really help keep the noise down at night if you don't want to wake up your bedfellows. The bass can't crank up as high as some on this list, but at least the automatic gain control keeps it distortion-free for the most part.
At $150, Razer's Nommo Chroma directly competes with several other options on this list. They may not match the sound quality and feature set of the Logitech G560, but the Nommo remains a smart choice for PC gamers who want a pair of great-sounding speakers without the hassle of moving around a sub-woofer. I'd guess that's mostly people that plan to move around a whole bunch and want something simple, otherwise the Logitech Z407 is a less flashy but more full-featured option.
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Logitech)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Creative)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Creative)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Creative)5. Creative Sound Blaster Katana V2 Soundbar
Best gaming soundbar
Weight: 3.4lbs Sound Bar, 14.1lb (Sub Woofer) | Size: 23.6 x 3.7 x 2.4-inches (Sound Bar) 5.9 x 14.4 x 14.4-inches (Sub) | Drivers: 2.5-inch (64mm) Upfiring Midbass Drivers, 1.3-inch (34mm) High-excursion Tweeter, 5.25-inch (133mm) Subwoofer Driver | Connectivity: Optical, 3.5mm, Bluetooth, NFC, USB-C, AUX
VersatileWell designedPlenty of connectionsDesigned for gamingBluetooth issuesExpensive for a soundbarLarge for some desksCumbersome appIt's been a while since we had a soundbar on this list. Mainly because many soundbars out there are tuned and made for TVs and not PC gaming. Often, the soundbar is too big for your desk or too small, and the sound lacks any oomph. However, that's not the case here, and the Sound Blaster Katana V2 earns a top spot among computer speakers during our time testing it.
The Sound Blaster Katana V2 is a significant upgrade from last year's model with a sleeker look and, more importantly, better-sounding tweeters and subwoofer. They're well placed to face your ears while gaming at a desk and pretty powerful. The subwoofer's 5.25-inch drivers provide the V2 that little kick in the butt you want when you playing shooters and still have a decent enough soundscape for listening to music. Thanks to its many connectivity options, it can also be plugged into pretty much anything you own.
You are sorely mistaken if you thought this soundbar would miss out on RGB lights. The Katana V2 has bright RGB lighting that accents the bar's underside and adds a little flair. Though this is quite a large unit for any desk, it might be a tight fit if you don't have much room to spare for the near 24-inch soundbar.
The downside to the Katana V2 is the hefty $350 price tag, which makes it more expensive than most gaming soundbars you can buy right now. Another problem was setting up premium features like SXFI, and Battle mode has to be set up through a cumbersome app. Some nagging odd Bluetooth connectivity issues drove me a bit mad. Weirdly enough, the fix was cycling through different inputs every time.
The Sound Blaster Katana V2 is a great soundbar. It's small enough to sit comfortably on a decent-sized desk without taking it over and loud enough to easily be featured as your living room sound system (thanks to its subwoofer).
Image 1 of 5(Image credit: LG)Image 2 of 5(Image credit: LG)Image 3 of 5(Image credit: LG)Image 4 of 5(Image credit: LG)Image 5 of 5(Image credit: LG)6. LG UltraGear GP9
Best wireless speaker
Weight: 3.4lbs | Size: 14.8 x 3.3 x 4.2-inch | Drivers: Tweeter 20mm x 2, Woofer Unit 2-inch x 2 | Connectivity: Optical, 3.5mm, Bluetooth, NFC, USB-C, AUX
WirelessGreat Surround SoundGood battery lifeVery expensiveDifficult to pick out team chat from in-game audioAt a glance, it's easy to mistake the GP9 as just a standard gaming soundbar. It's way more than that. For starters, one of its many tricks is that the GP9 can act as a wireless speaker with around 5 hours of battery life. So this means you can drag this small speaker right to the living room and give your TV a sound boost (assuming it's Bluetooth) or connect your phone and enjoy some tunes outside.
The tiny three-pound, 15-inch speaker, does a fantastic job of producing virtual 3D surround sound using its FPS mode setting. If it is late and you can't blast audio, the speaker will output 7.1 virtual surround sound to any headset you plug into it with a 3.5mm headphone jack. It plays nice with multiple devices and consoles, and an easy-to-understand smartphone app does all your customizations like RGB lighting and EQ options.
Another feature you won't find in other entries on the list is that this Bluetooth speaker has a built-in mic for voice chat. Between work calls and Discord chatting, my voice was clear and sounded good. If you're someone who hates wearing headsets all day, it's a nice feature.
However, I did find myself having some difficulties trying to parse between voice chat and the sounds of gunfire and zombie death gargles during more hectic sessions of Back 4 Blood. When things get wild, it's hard to hear your teammates let alone try to have a conversation with them without feeling like you need to scream to be heard despite its in-game sound-canceling working its best.The GP9 pretty much does everything and then some, which would explain the super-high $499 price point. But if you are looking for an incredibly versatile gaming speaker that sounds incredible and can do it all. The built-in microphone is nice, but I don't see it replacing a headset/microphone combo for team games that require a little more coordination.
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Ruark)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Ruark)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Ruark)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Ruark)7. Ruark MR1
Best looking computer speakers
Weight: 7.7lbs per pair | Size: 6.6 x 5.1 x 5.3-inches | Drivers: Ruark Audio 20mm, long throw 75mm woofer | Connectivity: Bluetooth, optical, 3.5mm
Beautifully DesignedGreat SoundCompact sizeNo USB connectionLack of gaming featuresThe reason we like the MR1 isn't that they are powerful compact Bluetooth speakers, but they are maybe hands-down one of the best-looking bookshelf speakers we've tested. Something about the walnut finish and gray fabric grill screams classy.
It's not always about looks, though, and the MR1s doesn't disappoint in the sound department. They deliver mighty powerful audio and hit you with some strong bass without needing a subwoofer (though you can plug one in).
While the MR1 is hands down one of the best pairs of computer speakers we've gotten to mess with, they aren't gaming speakers. There are no custom EQs or preset game modes though I'd argue that these punchy speakers already do a great job and don't need to be tweaked. Out of the box, these Ruarks make listening to music an absolute joy and turn chaotic action games like Back 4 Blood into near cinematic experiences.
Though, I was bummed to see no USB as a supported connection. This limits you to Bluetooth, optical, and 3.5mm connections, which isn't the end of the world, but if you want to plug in a PS5, you have to do it through 3.5mm from the Dualsense controller. Not the most elegant solution.
The Ruark MR1 Bluetooth speakers' superior sound quality and design make it a fantastic choice for anyone looking to jazz up their workspace despite a lack of gaming features. But honestly, you won't care about any of that after ten minutes of listening to these speakers in action.
The best computer speakers FAQ
Do I need a 2.1, 5.1, or 7.1 setup?
You'll mostly find 2.1 setups for the PC market covering just left/right channels and a subwoofer—perhaps more often than that, even devoid of a subwoofer for a 2.0 setup. That's mainly because that fits the bill for a desktop and monitor, with the speakers in front of the user for decent stereo sound.
Living room speaker setups and home cinema systems will take that a little further, often offering at least five surrounding speakers in most cases. You could hook such a system up to your PC and find decent support for such a configuration, but we're hesitant to recommend such a setup due to the sheer number of wires involved around a single desk. It doesn't bear thinking about.
Some companies will tout virtual 5.1 to make up for the lack of physical speakers, often at the expense of sound quality, including Windows' Sonic function. Don't forget many games use clever 3D audio techniques to generate positional game audio with great accuracy, so you may find you don't need much of a helping hand.
How do we test computer speakers?
We tested each set of speakers in-game for several hours through a wide range of games with rich soundtracks and sounds, including Doom Eternal, Call of Duty: Warzone, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Afterward, we ran listening tests, which included snippets from the film Jurassic World and various albums in lossless FLAC format, such as Daft Punk's Random Access Memories and Psychic from Darkside.
One of the most important features to test for was the left/right balance with gaming in mind. To check this in-game, we used the CS: GO Audio Test Chamber workshop project by geri43. It's a simple tool that allows you to reproduce all sorts of in-game sounds, including ladder movements, sniper scopes, gunfire, footsteps, and more. Moving around the map or behind a wall allowed us to manipulate the sounds' location and test how easily we could identify their direction with the speakers.
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I can offer you all the help you need to make today's Wordle a breeze, and if you'd simply like to skip straight to the answer to the September 12 (450) puzzle then you can do that too. Hoping to find some general advice? No problem. Scroll down and you'll find lots of bite-sized hints, as well as links to our extensive guides.
Nothing pops my Wordle solving ego-balloon quite like being sure I've got the right word and then the game revealing all I've done is eliminate two new letters… and one I already used earlier and somehow forgot about. Oops.
Wordle hint
Today's Wordle: A hint for Monday, September 12
Today's word is an informal term for alcohol, one that sometimes—but not always—has a slightly derogatory tinge to it. There are two vowels to find today, although one of them repeats.
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 450 answer?
Mondays should always start with a win. The answer to the September 12 (450) Wordle is BOOZE.
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 11: TIBIA
- September 10: LOFTY
- September 9: THEME
- September 8: CLASS
- September 7: LEERY
- September 6: TAUNT
- September 5: WHOOP
- September 4: INTER
- September 3: GULLY
- September 2: CHARM
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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Almost every workplace chat has that one person who considers themselves a bit of a GIF lord. If you're lucky, your workplace may actually have one. Someone who nails the perfect response GIF every time, brightening your day and the days of all others in the channel. More likely you have someone who replies to everything with weird unpleasant GIFs and considers it their life's crusade to police the pronunciation of the format.
Well regardless of legendary status, it's time to cast a wary glare over those GIF happy coworkers. Bleeping Computer tells of an exploit in Microsoft Teams that uses GIFs to potentially install malicious files, perform commands, and even extract data via these fun moving images. Yeah that random and completely out of place reaction GIF Blimothy posted last week doesn't seem so innocuous now, does it.
Thankfully there are a few steps to the process. First of all the intended target needs to install a stager to execute the commands given via these naughty GIFs. Given phishing attacks are still successful in this, the year of our GIF lord 2022, it's not that unlikely. Especially considering these likely come from a trusted in work source, it's likely an innocent and easy mistake to make.
From here that stager will run continuous scans on the Microsoft Team logs file, looking for any evil GIFs. These GIFs will have been given a reverse shell by the attackers. This will contain base64 encoded commands which are stored in Team's GIFs, that then perform malicious actions on the target machine. You can find out more about how these GIFShell attacks work via the discover, Bobby Rauch's, Medium page.
Perfect peripherals(Image credit: Colorwave)Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming
Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend...
Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audioOnce the GIF is received, it's stored in the chat log which is then scanned by the stager. Seeing the crafted GIF it will then extract that base64 code and execute and extract the text. This text will point back to a remote GIF which is embedded in Teams Survey cards. Due to how these works, it then will connect back to the attacker to retrieve the GIF, allowing the attackers to decode the file and gain access to further attacks.
Essentially this takes a bunch of different available exploits in Teams to work, so hopefully a fix should be coming from Microsoft soon. A change to where Teamlogs are stored or how the program retrieves GIFs would likely be enough to throw a spanner in the works of any evildoers. For now, at least you have an actual reason to tell someone off for using weird GIFs.
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During Ubisoft Forward it was announced that free-to-play multiplayer platform-fighter Brawlhalla will feature two Castlevania characters as part of an event called "Brawlhalla-vania", beginning on October 19. Simon Belmont and Alucard will join the Smash-like developed by Blue Mammoth, though only as skins for existing characters rather than brand new Legends.
Alucard will be a skin for Ezio, who was added to Brawlhalla in July, and Simon Belmont will be a skin for Jhala, who also has skins that transform her into Maggie from The Walking Dead and Finn from Adventure Time. (Finn and Jake are in both Brawlhalla and MultiVersus, as is Garnet from Steven Universe. And with this crossover, Simon Belmont will be in both Brawlhalla and Smash Bros. Just something to think about.)
The cartoony designs make Simon look even more like a He-Man character than he did in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I'd rather have Trevor from the surprisingly good Netflix Castlevania series, but what are you gonna do. Alucard makes the transition to big-headed brawler character with a little more panache, but then of course he does.
Previous Brawlhalla crossovers have added characters from Shovel Knight, Rayman, Hellboy, Tomb Raider, Ben 10, Kung Fu Panda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Street Fighter, G.I. Joe, and the WWE, as well as the aforementioned Assassin's Creed, Adventure Time, and Walking Dead crossovers. It's available on Steam.
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Just days ago, I said how excited I was about the upcoming Intel Core i5 13400. The addition of E cores is certainly the biggest improvement over our favorite budget CPU, the i5 12400, but there’s some new information that leads me to put an asterisk next to the word excited.
According to leaked slides from Igor’s Lab (via 3Dcenter.org) the non-K i5 chips won’t be based on the Raptor Lake architecture, but instead be based on the existing 12th Gen Alder Lake with its Golden Cove P cores. This means the likes of the 13400, 13500 and 13600 will miss out on the Cypress Cove P core improvements that come with Raptor Lake, including cache size increases.
This means the i5’s will have a tougher time against AMDs upcoming Zen 4 chips, particularly the Ryzen 5 7600X and possibly take a little of the shine off of what we’d otherwise expect to be excellent budget gaming CPUs.
It’s important to remember that a 13400 or 13500 would be very much like locked versions of the i5 12600K. That’s already an excellent CPU, and with a 65W TDP and hopefully competitive pricing, 13th Gen i5’s can still be very competitive chips, not just for gaming, but in general use too.
(Image credit: Igor's Lab)It’s expected that K series i5’s will include Raptor Lake upgrades, as well as all i7 and i9 chips. The reasoning behind this assumption is the slide above that states only i5 K series processors and higher will include more L2 cache.
If locked i5’s are to be Alder Lake chips, then future i3 13300 or 13100 models are certain to be as well. That’s a discussion for the future though. They can be expected to go up against variants of AMD’s Dragon Range or Phoenix APUs.
None of this will mean a lot to the market. Locked 13th Gen i5 CPUs, even if they are based on Alder Lake, will still offer a good improvement over their 12th Gen predecessors. They’re clocked higher, include E cores and maintain 65W TDPs, so if they’re priced right, there’s no reason that Intel won't remain competitive in the entry and mid-range CPU markets.
Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the restWe’ll have to wait a while though, as the locked chips are not expected to launch alongside the enthusiast-oriented K CPUs, instead launching in early 2023, possibly at CES.
It’s all going to come down to which chips offer the best balance of price, performance and power consumption. Plus, there’s the fact that Zen 4 systems require the purchase of a new motherboard and RAM. The i5’s compatibility with currently available motherboards and DDR4 memory means they have a value advantage from the get go.
The first wave of Raptor Lake CPUs will consist of the 13900K, 13700K and 13600K along with their F counterparts, which lack integrated graphics. AMD competing Zen 4 CPUs are expected to launch later in September.
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Microsoft's augmented reality headset the HoloLens has been in the works for years now, but it's been a while since we've heard any news. We were seeing demos of it way back in 2015, but Microsoft has been pretty quiet on the tech in recent years when it comes to a consumer release.
What we've heard tons about is Microsoft's deal to supply the United States Army with HoloLens tech. We first got wind of the deal back in 2018 with talks of a $480 million contract to help "increase lethality" of combat missions. It wasn't until 2021 that Microsoft officially signed a much pricier $22 billion dollar contract with the army for military grade HoloLens supply.
It's taken a fair while to get there but now we're finally seeing that contract start to deliver. According to Bloomberg, Microsoft has begun shipping the first lot of military HoloLens headsets.
There have been delays with the deal thanks to the system needing tweaks to be fully army-ready. Though there have been reports of troubles within Microsoft's HoloLens team and leadership for some time that likely didn't help move things along. Still, that's a big deal and the US Army clearly wants the tech.
Virtual reality(Image credit: Valve)Best VR headset: which kit should you choose?
Best graphics card: you need serious GPU power for VR
Best gaming laptop: don't get tied to your desktop in VRThe HoloLens augmented reality tech provides a heads-up display giving the wearer additional information via a system called IVAS, which stands for Integrated Audio Visual System. It's been compared to what a pilot in a jet might see, built into a helmet for soldiers that also includes night vision.
The display could help in identifying structures, providing distances, highlighting moving objects, and so on. It sounds a lot like a videogame UI, which is a little concerning when you remember these are designed for use in actual combat.
Microsoft has defended its choice to work with the United States Military. CEO Satya Nadella said. "We made a principled decision that we're not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy," regarding the decision, following employee protests. It sure would be nice to see this tech used for more things like sending doctors to the ISS rather than warfare.
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If you're not into the chill deep-space vibe of Mass Effect 2's resource-gathering minigame, where you launch probes at planets and watch your pile of iridium tick up, other options are available. The One Probe All Resources mod, like the name suggests, gives you every resource on a planet with a single probe. Or you could just Cheat Engine your way to a massive stockpile and never run out of element zero again. If neither of those seems satisfying to you, now there's another way to get around hearing the words "probe launched" about a hundred times.
Nos Astra Mineral Exchange is a mod for Mass Effect Legendary Edition by beccatoria and Team Pyjak that lets you trade resources and currency on a galactic stock market, buying and selling commodities instead of—or as well as—mining them. In addition to being a spaceship commander, hostage negotiator, and advertising spokesperson, now Shepard can be an investor as well.
The mods also includes new missions, with additional lines for existing characters created with AI dialogue tool xVASynth and voice acting by modder Gaige Barker. To begin the mod, head to Nos Astra on the asari world of Ilium in the Crescent Nebula where you'll find terminals for public trading near the docks entrance. There you can sign up to buy and sell element zero, iridium, platinum, palladium, and galactic standard currency for varying trade rates.
As the mod's description explains, "Trade rates refresh after each mission, along with randomly generated economic conditions that have given rise to any surplus, steady supply or shortage." You can also play the market from a terminal on the Shadow Broker's ship. It's not the same as exploiting supply and demand in games like Elite or Wing Commander Privateer, but it's nice to have an alternative to planet-scanning that adds something rather than trivializing what's already there.
To install Nos Astra Mineral Exchange you'll need to download it from NexusMods or Mod DB, then install it with the ME3Tweaks Mod Manager. Apparently it's incompatible with the New Dresses for Females mod, since both alter content in the Ilium docks area, so I'm afraid you'll have to choose between playing the stock market or having every woman wear a minidress.
For more, here's our list of the best Mass Effect Legendary Edition mods.
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Keep that shotgun close, kids, because Quasimorphosis is an upcoming roguelike survival horror game that blends tactical gun combat with space station dungeon exploration. Set in a post-cyberpunk corporate future, it's the kind of world you wouldn't want to have kids in: especially now that someone's discovered how to summon eldritch demons and all that.
It was first released as a complete, finished roguelike proof of concept earlier this year—for free. That's called Quasimorphosis: Exordium, and it's still free, but development team MgnmScrptmDvs have teamed up with HypeTrain Digital to publish a fuller version of their game.
In it, you'll take control of a private military contractor on the trail of dark secrets and "the unforgivable things humanity has committed in the deep, dark depths of space." That'll involve "creatures from a parallel dimension" that are a "threat to all life." Classic.
It's a cool sounding concept, where you'll travel around the Solar system in your PMC's ship discovering things like "planetary bases, secret labs, spaceship wreckage, and other points of interest" in order to get sweet loot: New guns, new tech, new biological augmentations. Those bases are part of a politics system among corporations, where you need to balance how much the big dogs like you with your missions.
What's neat is that though it's a roguelike with dangerously high stakes and randomized hits, the tactical battles are balanced against the ability to copy your operatives' memories to a disk. Therefore valuable characters, and their experience, can be recovered to clone bodies.
There are tantalizing hints at other mechanics, like ever-shifting battlefields and character specializations. You can find some of that in the demo slash proof of concept slash first game, Exordium. We'll see more when the proper Quasimorphosis releases "soon."
You can find the free game slash demo, Quasimorphosis: Exordium on Steam, and you can find the page for the sequel slash expanded release under the relatively simpler name Quasimorphosis.
If you feel like you've seen something similar before, that's because you kind of have. Jupiter Hell is a much simpler roguelike that mimics Doom rather than the complex structure Quasimorphosis is going for.
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On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that's a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we've gathered the best PC games you can play right now and a running list of the 2022 games that are launching this year.
Circus Electrique
Steam page
Release: September 7
Developer: Zen Studios
Launch price: $20 | £17.49 | AU$27.95Circus Electrique imagines a London overrun by suddenly murderous citizens, and it's up to you, a circus master, to use your gaggle of performers—"Strongmen, Fire Blowers, Escape Artists, Clowns"—to fix this up. What follows is a narrative-driven RPG with tactical turn-based combat, as well as a management component. Those aforementioned circus performers are the archetypes you'll be taking into the strategic battles, which by all appearances strongly resemble Darkest Dungeon. Back when the game was announced in June, Andy asked: "Have you ever wondered what Darkest Dungeon would be like if featured a neo-Victorian circus troupe battling murderous zombies in the streets of steampunk London?" I actually have. Regularly. But this still looks like something really unique.
Justice Sucks: Tactical Vacuum Action
Steam page
Release: September 9
Developer: Samurai Punk
Launch price: $18 | £14.39 | AU$22.49Do not fret: this game's title is not suggesting that justice is bad, it's alluding to the fact that it stars a vacuum cleaner. Studio Samurai Punk also developed Roombo: First Blood, so they've got experience creating violent playable vacuum cleaners, only this time there's some stealth involved, though you'll still be soaking walls in blood. There's hacking as well, so consider this a more complex, tactics-minded take on the burgeoning vacuum 'em up genre. Protagonist Dusty (ie, the vacuum cleaner) can even recruit pals, including a cat, which is undeniably appealing. The whole thing comes coated in a retro '90s theme, known among vacuum cleaner enthusiasts as the heyday of automatic cleaning technology.
Extremely Realistic Siege Warfare Simulator
Steam page
Release: September 8
Developer: Screambox Studio
Launch price: $16.19 | £12.59 | AU$23.35Not since Tomb Raider has a game had such a usefully literal title. Or is it literal? Actually, this "tactical strategy" game has a fantasy backdrop, and the realism resides mainly in the clever physics simulation, which allows for a huge amount of improvisation. Played from a top down perspective, you'll command your soldiers to perform tasks, and then sit back to enjoy the chaos that unfolds. In a fascinating twist, if you want to get down and dirty you can take control of any one of your soldiers at any time for some swift third-person action gameplay. There's several modes including multiplayer support, but the game will keep growing during its estimated 18 month Early Access period.
Tower Princess
Steam page
Release: September 9
Developer: AweKteaM
Launch price: $18 | £13.94 | AU$26.05Tower Princess is a 3D platformer, but it's also a roguelike. That means the playable knight will navigate whole new layouts of a castle with every run, along his way to save the princess. These procedurally generated levels are filled with traps, and combat factors more heavily than in the more mascot-oriented platformers: you can fight ranged or up close, and both the sword and the rifle can be upgraded. It's the simplicity of the concept that appeals—there are surprisingly few 3D platformers that are also roguelikes—but there's some nostalgic appeal here too, what with the cartoon graphics style and the promised "cheerful atmosphere full of encouragement and support".
Jack Move
Steam page
Release: September 9
Developer: So Romantic
Launch price: $18 | £13.94 | AU$26.05Here's an utterly charming sci-fi adventure with all the trappings of a 16-bit JRPG. Protagonist Noa Solares is on a solo mission to save her kidnapped father, whose disappearance likely involves the ubiquitous cyberpunk "mega-corporation" Monomind. Rather than the usual drab weaponry, Noa Solares uses her hacking smarts in turn-based battles, which will be fought against thugs, punks, corpos, and all manner of other neon-hued villains. The narrative setting sounds interesting, but it's the lovely pixel art that stands out to me.
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Nova Lands is an upcoming survival, exploration, and crafting game that looks like something between Satisfactory and Forager. It sticks you on an alien planet and has you explore ever-further along an archipelago while discovering new buildings, materials, and resources.
It's a promising-looking game, and one that looks to have that automation twist while delivering somewhat lower-key, more charming gameplay. The automation is about telling little logistics bots how to maintain your production chains, rather than setting up complex systems of belts, mergers, and inserters.
The description says that your island will be one of many, and that there are other denizens to meet—so you might get to scratch that Terraria or Core Keeper village-building itch in addition to your base-building one.
Nova Lands also has combat, allowing you to use your blaster to twin-stick shoot your way around the islands and defeat bosses. That sounds cool, but it sounds especially cool because the devs also promise that you can "go the full pacifist route and remain a kind guest to this planet - even when boss creatures are concerned. Be prepared to offer valuables to make peace with them, however."
Developer Behemutt is a two-person shop based in Brazil. Their previous, and first, game was Mana Spark. You can check out an old demo of Nova Lands, from when the game was called Nova Islands, on itch.io. The full game will be published by HypeTrain Digital.
You can find Nova Lands on Epic Games, Humble, and Steam. A prologue chapter called Nova Lands: Emilia's Mission will release on October 17th, and that already has both Epic Games and Steam pages.
Anyway! Nova Lands seems pretty cute. I will leave you with this critter, whatever it is, as an example.
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Marvel's Spider-Man: Remastered has already given us some unexpected, funny mods. I figured that would end sooner rather than later as people got tired and moved on. I figured wrong. You can now be Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, or Donatello in Marvel's Spider-Man.
That's right, kids: You can fight crime in New York as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Heroes in a half shell. Turtle power.
Modder SpaceDasher has given us this creation, replacing four of Spider-Man's outfits with skins of the four turtles. I'll suggest, as the modder clearly implies, that you go ahead and load these up for the levels that take place in subway tunnels and sewers.
In a way, as you can see in the video above or on YouTube, it's a real testament to how the animation work that Insomniac developers did fits the agile fighting style of a comic book character like the Turtles or Spider-Man. The tuck-roll jumps, leaps and slides, spinning kicks, and leg-lock grabs fit the Turtle models so well that the only thing that really feels out of place is all the web-shooting.
I gotta say, though, that this really emphasizes how goofy the Turtles' feet are. They're huge. Just like, giant floppy two-toed, pizza-slice shaped slap-happy flippers on the end of their legs. They bend at the weirdest angles. I say flippers on purpose man how can they even walk with those feet.
You can find the TMNT mod for Marvel's Spider-Man: Remastered on Nexusmods. To use it you'll also have to download the invaluable SMPC Modding Tool.
Oddly, the turtles aren't the first green thing we've seen modded into Marvel's Spider-Man: You can play as Kermit the Frog too.
This is the second time I've cared about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles this year, after they got that million-selling Shredder's Revenge game released. Dominic Tarason called it "an absolute joy to look at and listen to" in the PC Gamer TMNT: Shredder's Revenge review.
Oh, and remember to be respectful: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are gods, after all. Or at least able to battle them on an even playing field. I shudder to revisit the concept.
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Have you ever wondered what would happen if you made Nero and Dante and Vergil into something arguably-more-murderous? Well, one modder has wondered just that and then acted upon this thought: Behold, the robots of Ultrakill brought into Devil May Cry 5.
Ultrakill is a wild ride of a retro-shooter that has robots bathing in the blood of their enemies to heal, which in our Chris Livingston's opinion is "even more metal than DOOM." Devil May Cry 5 is a third person action brawler in an iconic series that we're all still a bit peeved we didn't get the proper special edition of on PC.
Made by modder sparkie1j, the Ultrakill Megapack series of mods wildly mashes one game into the other like a trendy 2010s t-shirt site, except with a modicum of taste and skill instead. It also has work by modders Haise, sugarflow, and jacksys.
The mods do a lot of stuff: The knucklebuster, shotgun, some swords, the whiplash arm, sentry head—it's a lot, ok? Their key feature, really, is to put modder SamuelJB's models of robots V1 and V2 into DMC5 along with a suite of swords and weapons designed by other modders. Once you've done that, well, bam: Devil May Cry with sarcastic boomer shooter gunbots.
Ultrakill Megapack 2 is actually a continuation in a series of mods adding more and more Ultrakill stuff to DMC5. Previous packs in the series did smaller stuff, but this new pack's additions of stuff like the rocket launcher and knucklebuster make it much more iconically Ultrakill.
Honestly, to me, the funniest part of this is how understated the mod description is on Nexusmods. "A huge mod pack to replace a bunch of dmc 5 stuff with ULTRAKILL stuff" reads the description. Nonplussed, as though it did not involve hundreds of hours of work and study to pull this off.
You can find Ultrakill Megapack Act 2 on Nexusmods. It's dependent on the previous mods in the series. You can find instructions on how that works, but the short story is that you need to install v1 over nero, BIBLE, and Ultrakill Megapack 1 first, in that order.
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Isle of Arrows is a neat, clean tower defense that hit Steam this week, and though it's styled minimally I had to resist the temptation to call it "little" because it's pretty beefy once you get stuck in. It's solo-developed by Daniel Lutz, who previously worked as creative director on Hitman and Lara Croft GO at Square Enix Montreal.
Isle of Arrows takes more inspiration from tile-placement than traditional tower defense. Rather than emphasizing upgrades, it emphasizes planning and careful positioning.
At the same time it has the low-key commitment of a good mobile game. You make smart choices to win, but it's heavily influenced by what kind of cards you get and when. It's a try, try again kind of game that might be good for when you're tired or distracted by something else.
Each wave you get a random tile to place on your island. It might be something to extend the tower path, a tower to attack, or a tile like a garden or statue that gives you a bonus. You can also pay money, which you get more of each turn, to place the next drawn tile—and so on and so forth.
Once ready you pop the button that sends in a wave and see how you do. Once the wave is over you get a new tile to place for free, but you also might get a random event like a black market to buy things from or a game of chance to win bonuses on. The further you get in each wave the more stuff you unlock, later placing buildings that give benefits to adjacent towers or change how they target, in addition to traps and other tower types.
You can find Isle of Arrows on Steam. It's $13, or 10% off until September 15th.
Ubisoft finally realises everyone hates NFTs, says it's just 'researching', honest
in Gaming News
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Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft's long-reigning CEO, has spoken about the company's future plans for blockchain integration in its games, its history with blockchain tech, and the communications blunders the company has made around the topic in the past.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Guillemot made several comments that suggest Ubisoft's love affair with NFTs has reached a cooling-off period. Ubisoft is "looking at all the Web3 capabilities" in order to find out if they "really answer the players' needs" before pressing ahead with them, said Guillemot. I feel like I can tell you the answer to that one right now, Yves.
It all adds up to Ubisoft still being "in research mode" on NFTs in games, according to Guillemot, and it's a far cry from the company's previous bullishness on blockchain integration in videogames. Back in 2021, the company defied negative responses from the public and its employees alike to press ahead with its plans to develop "play-to-earn" games that made heavy use of blockchain technology. Those projects bore (some) fruit: Ubisoft's Quartz platform, which let you pick up little NFT-ified hats for your Ghost Recon character before Ubisoft shuttered the shop in April.
But it looks like the company has finally realised there isn't a silent majority of consumers with a burning passion for artificial scarcity. Less than a year after Ubisoft VP Nicolas Pouard said players "don't get" the myriad wonders that NFTs can offer, Guillemot has admitted that the company might have messed up its messaging a bit. Ubisoft was "not good at saying we are researching," he told GI, adding that the company "should have said we were working on it, and when we have something that gives you a real benefit, we'll bring it to you". Better late than never, I suppose.
Ubisoft has faced no end of censure and more than a little ridicule for its big talk on NFTs. Between the dubious benefits the tech has for players and the environmental costs of running "proof of work" blockchain systems (to his credit, Guillemot emphasises that Ubisoft's research is focusing on less-disastrous "proof of stake" tech), the company's dauntless advocacy of the technology has been at times surreal. It appears the message has finally broken through, though, at least temporarily. Let's hope Ubisoft remains in its quieter "research mode" for some time to come.
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