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The dispute over the future of a Microsoft-owned Call of Duty has taken on a little bit of a mano a mano sheen as a recent comment by Xbox boss Phil Spencer has brought PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan trucking out to "set the record straight."
One of the big sticking points in Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard is the Call of Duty series, one of the biggest games on the planet. It's been multi-platform from the start (the original 2004 release even had an N-Gage version developed by Nokia), and in recent years—going at least as far back as 2018—PlayStation owners have actually had an edge over the rest of us in terms of getting early access to COD beta tests. But Sony has expressed understandable concerns that Microsoft could end up making Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive if it gains control of the series.
Microsoft has repeatedly dismissed those concerns, most recently in a statement sent to The Verge in which Spencer said Microsoft sent a formal offer to Sony in January "to guarantee Call of Duty on PlayStation, with feature and content parity, for at least several more years beyond the current Sony contract." The offer went "well beyond typical gaming industry agreements," Spencer said at the time.
That sounds reasonable enough, but Spencer's counterpart had some harsh words for the specifics of Microsoft's proposition, and he clearly wasn't happy that Spencer was airing their laundry in public either.
"I hadn’t intended to comment on what I understood to be a private business discussion, but I feel the need to set the record straight because Phil Spencer brought this into the public forum," Ryan told GamesIndustry.
"Microsoft has only offered for Call of Duty to remain on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends. After almost 20 years of Call of Duty on PlayStation, their proposal was inadequate on many levels and failed to take account of the impact on our gamers. We want to guarantee PlayStation gamers continue to have the highest quality Call of Duty experience, and Microsoft’s proposal undermines this principle."
"Inadequate on many levels" is about as scathing as gaming industry corporate speech gets, especially words intended for public consumption, but what's especially notable is the timing. GamesIndustry is a UK-based publication and Ryan's comment comes less than a week after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority recommended an in-depth investigation into Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The CMA noted Call of Duty multiple times in its summary of its initial inquiry, saying that its investigation "pointed towards [Activision Blizzard's] content, especially Call of Duty, as being important and capable of making a material difference to the success of rivals’ gaming platforms."
"The CMA believes the Merger could allow Microsoft to make [Activision Blizzard] content, including Call of Duty, exclusive to Xbox or Game Pass, or otherwise degrade its rivals’ access to [Activision Blizzard] content, such as by delaying releases or imposing licensing price increases," the summary states.
"PlayStation currently has a larger share of the console gaming market than Xbox, but the CMA considers that Call of Duty is sufficiently important that losing access to it (or losing access on competitive terms) could significantly impact Sony’s revenues and user base. This impact is likely to be felt especially at the launch of the next generation of consoles, where gamers make fresh decisions about which console to buy. The CMA believes that the Merger could, therefore, significantly weaken Microsoft’s closest rival, to the detriment of overall competition in console gaming."
Microsoft and Activision Blizzard were given five working days to submit proposals to address the CMA's concerns and that window hasn't closed yet, so it's possible that approval will be given without the follow-up inquiry—and even if it proceeds, there's no guarantee that the acquisition won't be granted approval anyway.
In the meantime, though, Sony seems inclined to make the whole thing as much of a pain in the 'donkey' for Microsoft as possible, probably not to derail the process but simply to extract a better deal from Microsoft—which in turn could mollify the CMA's concerns about the likelihood of future Call of Duty exclusivity. Just business, in other words, despite the outwardly personal appearance of the dispute—and hopefully Jim and Phil can get together for some friendly beers and burgers when it's all over.
Call of Duty's future on PC, to be clear, by all expectations will remain intact and unaffected by this activity, as Microsoft continues to see Xbox and PC practically as an extension of one another, thankfully.
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Hello Zalupchik,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Zalupchik joined on the 09/07/2022.
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I've had my eye on Foxhole, a top-down war MMO that models logistics and supply chains, since it first hit early access in 2017. A WW2-era military sim with dual joystick controls and battles on the scale of Planetside is immediately intriguing, but I've been waiting for it to develop into more of a game.
Now sounds like the time to give Foxhole a proper shot, because its 1.0 Inferno update coming September 28 is adding drivable trains, factories, infrastructure tools, and new weapons.
By far, the trains and factories bit sounds like the biggest deal. The new train system will enable players to "design large scale rail networks, allowing key equipment—from tanks to supplies—to be transported quickly over long distances," developer Siegecamp wrote in its announcement. "With players needing to design and assemble their own custom track layouts, effective use of trains will have a huge impact on supply lines to the front."
Call of Duty lied to us, in other words: war is mostly about who can move their boxes around quickly. “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics,” as Marine Corps Gen. Robert H. Burrow once put it.
As someone who has the best time in Squad when I'm behind the wheel of a logistics truck making supply runs, the idea of laying down railroad tracks and choo-chooing loads of ammo across the battlefield has me immediately on board. (Not a coincidence that I really love Death Stranding, also.) In fact, Foxhole's revamped transportation reminds me of when Squad added helicopters, instantly transforming its logistics meta layer by lowering the time and effort required to transport soldiers. I imagine train networks will have a similar impact on Foxhole.
On the production side, factories are powerful new facilities capable of supplying your team with all the raw building materials, weapons, and ammo necessary to win Foxhole's weeks-long wars. Maintaining these facilities will require careful use of "power grids, oil pipelines, and mining." Sounds complex enough that the players who take up the mantle of production will probably be too busy manufacturing ammo to ever see combat themselves. But the effort is worth it—teams that work through the tech tree can eventually unlock flamethrowers, incendiary rockets, and new tank variants.
There's a whole lot of stuff going on in this Inferno update. In fact, there's a lot going on in Foxhole—the game has thousands of daily players who all share one big server, deploying on various fronts of its massive maps to fight over territory. To me, Foxhole's biggest draw is the fact that it's an action game that doesn't rely on twitchy FPS skill. I reckon that alone makes it more accessible to fans of the quietly popular military sim genre.
Foxhole's big 1.0 update drops September 28, though you can already play it on Steam.
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Stardew Valley is the golden child of farming sims. It's sold more than 20 million copies since 2016 and kicking off a torrent of farm life games on PC. But there's been no Stardew Valley moment for the monster-taming genre. Pokémon clones are now abundant, yet none have had a sliver of Stardew Valley's success, yet alone Pokémon's. If Stardew Valley hit on some magical formula for reimagining a classic Japanese series as a modern indie game, monster tamers haven't found it.
(Image credit: Concerned Ape)
"An RPG where [players] can create their own adventure based on the characters they know is of course appealing," say Jochem and Marcel, the indie developers behind this year's Coromon. The challenge for indies is "players would often rather stay with what they know than trying out new games," they say.
There have been some modestly successful Pokémon clones like MMO Temtem, which made headlines last year when it reached 500,000 copies sold in one month on Steam early access. Coromon passed 100,000 sales on PC and Mac, a number the Nintendo Switch version has undoubtedly added to. Yet that's just a fraction of Pokémon Sword & Shield's 24.5 million.
Eric Barone liberally based Stardew Valley on Natsume's Harvest Moon, but it far surpassed its inspiration in both popularity and sales. Temtem game director Guillermo Andrades says that Pokémon, by comparison, casts a long, long shadow.
"Right now there's a lot of reticence towards the games of the genre that are not Pokémon," he says. "I think we still have to move forward a bit, and a lot of games in this genre have to come out before players start seeing it as the monster-taming genre, and not the Pokémon-like genre."
"Once the general public is more into this mindset, games will get more leeway to have their own identity and not be compared to their big, enormous brother and predecessor."
Big brother Pikachu
(Image credit: Nintendo)Enormous really is the word. Just this year the Pokémon Company reported passing 440 million sales of Pokémon software. Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl together sold more in one year than Stardew Valley has in its lifetime.
Harvest Moon was successful, but not a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Pokémon is the highest-grossing media franchise in history. Perhaps many of us aren't invested enough in taming monsters other than Pokémon to learn 100 new ones. Developers haven’t given up on trying to turn Pokémon into a genre, though—and they're at least getting some attention, Stardew Valley's first step towards fame.
One of Stardew Valley's greatest strengths is its community. Barone regularly posted development blogs and kept an open relationship with followers. Temtem community manager Lucia Prieto says the team’s relationship with its community is one reason for its current success: Developers have even started marking community-suggested improvements with special icons in the patch notes.
"The game was going to be a much harder experience, with a higher entry barrier, and our community made us realize that wasn't as fun or enjoyable, and helped us dial the challenge to a satisfying degree," Prieto says.
Even smaller monster-taming games like Siralim Ultimate credit community for their success.
(Image credit: Thylacine Studios)"I don't think many developers are as lucky as I am to have so many players who are as effective at communicating their ideas and providing feedback," Siralim Ultimate developer Zach Bertok says. "When I read our forums, I often recognize names that have been around for nearly 10 years, and those same people continue to contribute their suggestions and help make the Siralim series the best it can be. While we may not have the biggest playerbase out there, I'll take quality over quantity any day."
Dedicated communities like Siralim Ultimate's also help to shape smaller monster-taming games into unique projects rather than pure clones.
Don't copy that Hoppip
Stardew Valley is the Harvest Moon PC gamers never got, but it's not just a copy. It has its own unique features: deeper character customization, same-sex relationships, mayonnaise making.
Some monster-taming games stick closer to the Pokémon formula than others. Coromon resembles the GBA Pokémon games where the new kid in town (or, in this case, the new adult) arrives as the guest of honor and receives a free Coromon as a gift from a professor. In Temtem, the child protagonist follows the same goal of becoming a "Temtem master." But Temtem, like Stardew, also has multiplayer.
"There's this whole social, MMO factor to it that's shiny and exciting," says Prieto. "This in itself already changes a lot of the core elements of the genre, but we built upon that. Combat is always in pairs, and there's no RNG whatsoever during battles… battles are challenging to a degree we think users don't expect."
The best "clones" take their inspirations as a base and build something distinct. That's part of why Denis Sinner, the managing director of Moi Rai Games, chose to make Monster Sanctuary part monster taming and part metroidvania. Sinner also felt Pokémon didn't have enough stakes or strategy, so his team focused on giving players more choice.
(Image credit: Moi Rai Games)"I tried to make Monster Sanctuary feel like you are rewarded if you come up with synergetic Monster skill builds or monster team compositions," he says. "Every Monster having a full individual skill tree is what gives players a lot of strategy options for every monster to build and try around."
Monster taming games have a tough road. Each one needs to somehow escape Pokémon’s shadow or at least grow within it. Developers have found moderate success with supportive communities and unique features, but that hasn't been enough to produce a smash hit. Jochem and Marcel explain say content creators still derogatorily refer to monster-taming indies as "Poke-clones" or "Pokémon rip-offs," but they're still optimistic.
"Now that more and more indie monster-tamer games are popping up, all with their own unique spin, more and more people seem to be taking on a different opinion on non-Pokémon monster-tamer games," they say. We might never narrow down the exact reason why no monster-taming game has been a gigantamax-sized hit. But that doesn't mean it'll never happen.
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We said earlier this year that Portal is "more sinister than you remember," a quality that arises largely from the presence of GlaDOS, the primary antagonist of the series, who's basically a passive-aggressive Shodan. In a recent interview with Kiwi Talkz (embedded above), GlaDOS voice actor Ellen McLain gave a little bit of a clue as to how she was able to pull that off so successfully: She occasionally dreams about murdering people.
"An actor, I believe, brings their whole intellect, emotional life, feelings, to any project," McLain, who seems like a lovely person in real life, explained. "You bring your whole self to the project. We all have everything in us. I've never been pushed to the point of murder in my own life, but I'm not saying that it couldn't happen under certain circumstances. If I had to protect myself or protect someone that I loved.
"Because I've had dreams—I've had murderous dreams. In my dreams I've murdered people ... I don't have murderous dreams very often, but I've had them, where I've murdered someone."
Okay then! I did not see that coming. To be fair, McLain clarified that she only murders people (in her dreams) in self-defense, which is reasonable and will no doubt help if she finds herself being interrogated by the dream police. She also said that she didn't share any of her murderous imaginings with the dev team for use in the Portal games, although not because was trying to keep the whole "I have murder dreams" thing on the down-low, but just because the murder suggestion box was already full: "Erik [Wolpaw, the writer of Portal and Portal 2] has plenty of ideas of his own," she said. "I don't have to give him any ideas."
The interview covers a lot of ground relating to Portal and other work McLain has done for Valve over the years—she's also the voice of Overwatch in the Half-Life games, among other roles—and it's all very interesting and mostly more serious than my admittedly not-very-serious suggestion that she might have put more of herself into GlaDOS than anyone realized. Other topics in the hour-long chat include where the GlaDOS voice originally came from, the famous Portal theme song Still Alive, and how the only work for Valve she ever did with her husband—John Patrick Lowrie, aka The Sniper—ended up on the Left 4 Dead cutting room floor.
And, of course, she said she's eager to get back into Portal 3. "Write in. Email Valve. You've got my blessing," McLain said. "Say, 'Ellen wants to do a Portal 3'."
She's not the only one: Back in February, Wolpaw—the writer with "plenty of ideas of his own"—also said it was time for Valve to get on with making a new Portal, and urged fans to "send mail to Gabe."
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Microsoft just revealed the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 'Core' controller, launching later this month for $129.99. Aside from the new white color scheme, the Elite Series 2 Core features the same design and features as the Elite Series 2 controller, also known as our favorite PC gaming controller.
The Core controller doesn't ship with a charging case full of interchangeable thumbsticks, d-pad, and paddles, usually bundled in the original Elite Series 2 controller. You have to buy the complete component pack separately for $60.But it does come with a thumbstick adjustment tool that will tweak the tension on the joysticks, and a USB-C charging cable. Not including the component pack is a good way for someone to pick up an excellent controller and not spend nearly $200, especially if you don't care for swamping out d-pads or thumbsticks.
The Elite Series 2 is still without a Share button. Instead, the center button swaps through your controller profiles. I never use the share button since I primarily play PC games, but if you want to use it on an Xbox Series X/S, you'll have to dig through some menus.
The new Elite Series 2 Core controllers are on sale on September 23, with preorders going live right now on Xbox and Amazon for $129.99, and the component pack is also available for pre-order for $59.99. If you're looking for a deal, Amazon has the black Xbox Elite Series 2 controllers, which includes the component pack, for $155.99, $25 off its usual retail price of $179.99. It’s cheaper than buying the Core and components together.
This holiday, Elite Series 2 controllers will be added to the Xbox DesignLab, allowing folks to customize the controller's color scheme. Microsoft hasn't said, but DesignLab Series S/X controllers are $69.99, roughly $10 more than the standard controller. So, Microsoft will likely follow a similar pricing plan for Elite Series 2 Core DesignLab controllers.
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Earlier this year CD Projekt Red announced a yet-unnamed The Witcher 4, the beginning of a new "saga" for The Witcher—which now seems likely to be a trilogy. "We said that there will be a new saga. We have in mind more than one," CEO Adam Kiciński said today during a financial earnings call.
"The first saga was three games, so now we are thinking about more than one game," Kiciński said. "But we are in pre-production of the first game from the second Witcher saga." Kiciński reiterated that the current sequel is being developed in Unreal Engine 5, a big shift away from CD Projekt's own internal tools.
CD Projekt's long-term planning makes it sound like the first game in its new saga could plant seeds for future entries, probably far more deliberately than the original Witcher did. The Witcher 2 offered up more connective tissue for The Witcher 3, including save files that carried over your relationships with several characters (and whether they're even alive).
If CD Projekt is sketching out a whole trilogy from the get-go, could we even see a Mass Effect-style throughline between games, with decisions that carry through all three? It's a cool possibility to consider, though it'll likely be a decade before we could see an idea like that bear fruit.
Whatever the name of the next Witcher game is, it won't actually be The Witcher 4. "The Witcher was designed as a trilogy and a trilogy cannot have a fourth part, can it?" CD Projekt's Marcin Iwinski said back in 2017. We don't know much more about it, other than that it's in pre-production, and that there's a good chance it focuses on the Lynx school branch of witchers, based on the pendant in the teaser image CD Projekt released several months ago.
The Witcher: Cat Power, coming 2026?
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The US is banning some major US chipmaking companies from building "advanced technology facilities'' in China, the Biden administration has announced.
The ban will apply to any company that receives funding as a part of the CHIPS and Science Act, which was approved by the US Congress in August, and will last for 10 years. This act aims to increase domestic manufacturing of semiconductors with an influx of $50B across companies that apply. More than half of those funds are headed to cutting-edge facilities for today's top chips, though a smaller amount will help to ease demand for older chips and into research.
Generally, it's about shifting what is currently a very Asia-focused manufacturing hub slightly more westward. Though banning any company from exploring options in China is certainly one other way of going about that.
One major company known to PC gamers everywhere and set to take a large sum of cash from the CHIPS Act is Intel. The company's CEO Pat Gelsinger was fiercely campaigning for the act and Intel is set to be one of the largest beneficiaries of it, considering the company's massive domestic and international chip manufacturing facilities. One of which is in Dalian, China, in fact, known as Fab 68.
Though only one of many fabs owned and operated by Intel globally, Fab 68 was very recently in line for a significant expansion—a move reportedly discouraged by the White House. Now it seems the White House may have found an even stronger way to keep Intel's investment out of China, with this recent proviso for receiving CHIPS Act funds effectively putting an end to that plan or anything like it.
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 restMemory manufacturer Micron may also have to side-line any further plans in China if it hopes to net a lump sum from the US government. It runs an assembly and test facility in Xi'an China, first opened in 2007. Though the US government has specified that any facility building older chips can be operated in the area to serve the local region.
Both Intel and Micron have announced plans to expand their US-based operations, however, and Intel is also building and expanding in the EU.
This ban won't necessarily affect companies such as Nvidia or AMD directly, as they rely on third parties to build their chips for them. However, neither has managed to dodge the eye of the US government entirely: both has been told to stop sending high-end datacentre GPUs to China and Russia.
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As part of the Aurora peripheral collection, the Logitech G705 was designed with inclusivity at its heart. The main draw is that it's smaller and lighter than a lot of gaming mice out there, along with the fact that it comes in a colour other than stark black. And while there's much to be said about peripherals finally being designed with us small-handed humans in mind, I feel a bit strange about paying $100 (£90) for what's essentially, half a mouse.
Alright, that's a bit dramatic, and that doesn't actually make it a bad mouse, but it does mean it's better suited to certain kinds of gamers. Let me break it down.
This mouse is incredibly small, almost comically so. Even for my little hands, there's a distinct lack of mouse here. It comes in at a 39mm height, with a width of 68mm and a length of 106mm. It's just a few millimeters smaller than Logitech's already tiny G5 gaming mouse, and genuinely one of the smallest mice I've ever seen.
My hand is roughly 170mm x 75mm and I'm dragging my wrist a lot; there's really not a great deal of mouse to grab hold of. And although it's a little small for my part claw, part palm grip, fingertip grippers, and those with smaller hands than my own might be more pleased with it.
With a gentle slope, beautifully rounded edges and curvature to rival the Buddha himself, this is a truly ethereal mouse.
Still, we're looking at a sleek little mouse with a gorgeous, cloudlike aesthetic. Ergonomically, the G705 feels like a soap bar in hand, with a gentle slope, beautifully rounded edges, and curvature to rival the Buddha himself, this is a truly ethereal mouse. I'm always happy to see a thumb rest. My main issue comes in the form of its slight lip underneath the thumb rest; although it adds to the rounded look, it does mean it rocks when you press down on it, which the sensor often picks up on as movement. Essentially, those who are heavy on the thumb may want to consider a different mouse.
Logitech G705 specLogitech professes a 40 hour battery life with lighting on, which I can fully attest to. I've only had to charge it once for the entire week and a half I've been using it, though I'm not gaming eight hours a day, just writing weird articles and gaming in the evenings. You get even longer if you turn the lighting off, though I prefer to leave it on—the RGB lighting may not be the most accurate, but it's still very pretty, even though it's limited to the back rim of the palm plate.
While there are some gaming mice out there with 240 hours of battery life like the Logitech G604 Lightspeed, that's always felt a little excessive to me. I don't think I've ever been away from a power socket for that long, and my laptop would have died after an hour anyway.
Of course, the size of the battery is limited by the shrunken shell, but it's also helped to reduce the weight down to 85g. That means it's easier for competitive gamers to sling around in FPS games, though as I'll get onto in a moment competitive gamers may not be as pleased with the sensor. It's certainly no 66g SteelSeries Aerox 3 Wireless at the top of our best light gaming mouse guide, and the it's still double the weight of the absolute lightest mice out there, but at least you don't have to put up with the awkward, easily soiled honeycomb hole pattern. I think that kind of aesthetic choice would have compromised the essence of the mouse, too, so I'm glad Logitech didn't pander to the trend.
While I'm still on the subject of halves, some may be disappointed that the Lightsync sensor has been used as opposed to the 25K Logitech Hero sensor. What it means is you're only getting a DPI of 8,200 so it's not as accurate as some of the top mice out there today with 16,000 DPI and above. On testing, there was a lot of variation in the polling rate consistency compared to mice with the Hero sensor. Overall, though, your average gamer shouldn't notice much difference.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Future)Logitech has missed a trick, though. One of the main draws of the Aurora collection is the modularity, and although the palm plate on the top does come off so you can access the dongle's cubby hole, it's not actually swappable. Sadly, the only accessory for the G705 is a brightly coloured mouse pad that comes in either white mist, pink dawn, or green flash, though it's an extra $30 (that's without wireless charging or any other fancy features). It does mean that the mouse loses out on a major selling point of the Aurora series.
I'm a bit sad that the cable that comes with the mouse is so rigid, considering it's such a tiny mouse, competing with a thick cable is a bit of a task. That being said, adding support for USB Type-C is great, and you have the option for wireless connectivity via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi dongle too. There's also no proprietary shape limiting you to the rigid cable so you can always swap it out for a decent one. Still, for the price I'd have liked something a bit more practical.
You can get the Logitech G705 for £84 in the UK already which is a little more reasonable than the MSRP. For the US folk, things are a little different, and $100 is a lot for what you're getting. Sure its darn portable, and the battery life is nifty, it even fits neatly into an ergonomic niche, but there's little here that's worth raving about.
It does look pretty darn adorable, though.
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Growing crops and cooking is an essential part of Disney Dreamlight Valley. Whether you're making meals you can consume to regain energy or sharing them with friends, you'll need to master a few key recipes quickly. Some recipes can be found in chests or in floor drops, and others you'll discover by experimenting with ingredients.
In this guide, I'll talk you through how to make some simple crudites, which you'll need to complete as part of the Missing Minnie questline.
How to make crudites
First things first: you'll need to have all of your Royal Tools if you want to plant and grow some crops—you can't just rely on the rain to water your plants for you!
To make crudites, you only need two things: a vegetable and some coal. Don't use lettuce as it makes a salad, and you don't win friends with salad. Your best bet is to use a carrot, so just pop it into a cooking pot to make crudites. Seems a bit counter-intuitive since crudites are raw veggies, I know, but it's how the world works in Dreamlight Valley.
If you're new to Dreamlight Valley, be sure to check out how to solve the cave puzzles, how the Star Path works and how to import your avatar.
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The Creative Outlier Pro buds are almost the perfect wireless gaming earbuds for me. They're cheaper than the JBL Quantums, lighter, last longer, and the ANC is stronger... and even now I'm writing that I'm questioning myself for picking the JBLs over them. But those objectively positive features of the Outlier Pro are just one part of the wireless bud puzzle, it's the more ephemeral, subjective experience of actually using them on a day-to-day basis that has them falling just short.
If I had just used them for a short time, picked them up for a quick game on the Steam Deck, or played some music while working, I'd have been more impressed. But having used them consistently for a longer period of time has only highlighted the friction points.
And it's the basic controls that have really rubbed me the wrong way. Touch controls are not my favourite things on headphones or earbuds; I don't care about the aesthetics of a protruding physical button as I know exactly where the controls are because I can feel them through my fingers. But touch controls on an unseeable device jammed in your ear can be a bit of a lottery.
Sadly, there are few buds with physical buttons out there now, but some still manage to do the touch interface well. The Creative Outlier Pro buds, however, do not.
Outlier Pro specsFor a start there's a very specific area to hit on the flat outward facing surface of the buds, and that's not always super easy to nail when you're not able to see them. Then you have to double tap for play and pause, which is just crazy as it's the single most common control you'll ever use.
Single tap, people. Just one input, it's simple.
And then there's volume control, which is split between left and right buds for up and down. Honestly, having to use both hands to go adjust the volume is a pain, and I'd rather just get the phone out of my pocket, or hit the physical buttons on the Steam Deck instead.
The actual experience of listening and gaming through the Outlier Pro earbuds is almost enough to completely offset those ergonomic issues.
One last bugbear probably says more about me than the Outlier Pro buds, but I constantly found myself trying to put the wrong bud in the wrong hole in the charging case.
These are the ergonomic frustrations that meant I struggled with the day-to-day use of the Creative earbuds. But, while they are definite annoyances, they're the sort of issue that you'll internalise over a relatively short period of time when you're actually using them. You'll learn, as I did, not to worry about adjusting volume; you'll learn to make a game of trying to insert the relevant bud in the correct slot of the case; and you'll learn to deal with the frustration of double-tapping.
Image 1 of 2(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 2(Image credit: Future)Because the actual audio, the actual experience of listening and gaming through the Outlier Pro earbuds is almost enough to completely offset those ergonomic issues.
The 10mm drivers are strong and deliver an excellent, detailed sound. And that active noise cancelling is the best I've experienced on any headset. The bass is well delivered, too, offering enough oomph so you know it's there without crashing into the mid or high tones and muddying the overall sound.
The standard, flat EQ allows for your gaming soundscape and musical experience to be clear, but is still punchy.
The battery life is outstanding as well. It can deliver double the ANC-on time that the JBL Quantum TWS is able to, and the charging case will go on for days. While I may have issues getting the buds in the right way around, the case is a stand-out part of the package. The slightly squashed metal cylinder feels good in the hand and isn't too big dropped into a pocket, or secreted in your Steam Deck carry case either.
My only technical problem with the Outlier Pro, when it comes to gaming, is that I've found no way to enable the specific Bluetooth low latency mode for gaming when connected to either the Steam Deck or a gaming laptop. On my phone, with the companion app, it's a simple switch in the settings screen, but it doesn't seem to be available outside of that.
Image 1 of 2(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 2(Image credit: Future)But, so long as the last time you used them via the app you did enable the low latency mode, it will remain on when you then plumb your buds straight into a laptop or Steam Deck. Maybe the Type-C dongle of the JBL Quantum TWS is a touch tighter on latency, but not enough so you'd really notice without listening to them side-by-side.
Gunshots and other game audio link up well enough that I'm not concerned about the fact I don't have either a wired connection or a dedicated app that I have to fudge into the Deck's Linux-based OS.
All of which makes the Creative Outlier Pro buds a great set for gaming, but with certain ergonomic caveats. I love them when I don't have to actually interact with them. When I can ignore them and concentrate on the music or the game I'm playing, they're excellent sounding buds. When I have to actually do anything with them they frustrate the hell out of me.
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I've been playing a lot of Valorant lately. I'm a very social person normally, spending many weekends and weekday evenings out with friends, and I stream story heavy games in the evening. And even with all these other activities, I've got Valorant on my mind, wishing just a little bit to be at home playing the game. Hell, I'm at work writing this article because I know I have to play that game tonight.
It was hard to get used to Valorant at first, as I'd never played a Counter-Strike game. Coming from Overwatch was almost a hindrance as learning to stop moving before taking a shot, alongside brutal recoil, and spray patterns was a pain in the 'donkey'. But I've thrown myself into Valorant in recent months and it finally got me into competitive play too. Previously I'd been mostly a "I play games for fun" sort but Valorant beat that right out of me. Unrated is boring and ranked is the only good version of Valorant. What's the point of playing if you're not earning that shiny, shiny RR?
Months ago I started my ranked adventure, and placed lower than anticipated in Bronze 2. With the mindset of proving Riot wrong, I quickly ranked up into Silver and if you've played Valorant you know Silver is hell. You have the best and the worst players you've experienced rolled into one massive melting point of talent and getting out of Silver is hard because you have no clue what sort of players you'll get if you're not in a five stack. You could have appeased the Riot gods and be gifted on a glistening platter a smurfing Immortal player, or on the other hand, someone who doesn't seem to know a single call, sound cue, or smoke placement. According to Esports Tales, as of when I'm writing this article, about 25% of Valorant players are in Silver. That's a lot of people filtering into the same games.
(Image credit: Riot)Good as gold
Eventually I clawed my way out of Silver and reached the heady heights of Gold, where the player base stabilises significantly. The ability to predict other players is easier because we've all watched pros play, we're all making an effort, and genuinely want to win. Gold isn't exactly great but it's a much more consistent game-to-game experience than Silver ever is. Roughly 20% of players are currently in Gold.
But now I'm at the top of Gold. Gold 3. And I am one game away from getting Platinum. And I'm nervous. For me, ranking up to Platinum feels like I'd have gotten pretty good at the game. That's not to say that I'm brilliant or anything, and many people can find their way easily into Plat without resistance. But just months ago the game was saying I was Bronze, and now, I've proved otherwise.
The games are a different standard up here already. I'm sometimes queuing with Ascendants and Diamonds because of the nature of five-stacking with some higher level accounts, and I'm holding my own against them. Yet Valorant is a completely different game now. The confidence you have to have, the room for error, and the way you hold your breath as you try and clutch a round is a new level of tense. I know I'm practically a Platinum player, I can and have outfragged Plats in the past, including just yesterday. But knowing I haven't been playing my best recently, and knowing that I just need one win, one small little win to feel like I'm a competitive Valorant player, is just so… well, I'm sure many of you know what I mean. I know you do because a guy begged us to win a game just last night.
(Image credit: Riot Games)If you're like me and are putting off a rank-up game, know you're not alone
We loaded into the map Fracture (already grim) and a random player took to his comms to say "please, please can we win this game, this is my rank-up game for Plat". Rather than playing one of my mains, I decided, for the sake of this complete stranger on the internet, to fill as Sage so we had healing and some way to slow enemies taking sites. I'd do my best for this player. And we won, just about. It was touch-and-go but we made it and I could hear the sigh of relief as this random guy clutched the last round and mumbled GG into his mic. He had done it, he'd earned a new pixelated badge in a game.
And now I want that badge. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't mean much: Platinum isn't even that good in the world of Valorant. Making it to Platinum 1 puts you in the top 28% of players which means there is still considerable room for improvement. And honestly, I've climbed ranks so consistently over the past months that I'll probably be in Platinum by the end of the week, even if I lose this one game.
But here I am, willing myself to be the best, most focused version of Imogen I can be for this game tonight. And if you're like me and are putting off a rank-up game, know you're not alone. We've all been a little nervous about it before, and will be again. Hopefully I get the opportunity to be this nervous once I'm on the way to Diamond.
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Temtem evolution is a vital part of the creature-collecting game. By upgrading your beloved Tem into their strongest possible form you can create a peak squad and win ever-harder battles. But with so many different Temtem and not all that much info in game about specific evolution requirements, the whole process is a bit of a mystery if you're just starting out.
There are a few surefire ways to evolve your Temtem, and luckily you don't have to go too far out of your way in order to achieve most of them. In this Temtem evolution guide, I'll explain the various methods, as well as the evolution requirements for the three starting Temtem you can get from Professor Konstantinos.
How to evolve your Temtem
There are two main ways to evolve Temtem in the game:
- Levelling: Every species of Temtem has a specific number of levels it needs to earn to evolve, so by using them in battles, they will naturally evolve over time. It's worth noting that you can cancel evolutions if you don't want your Temtem to change state at that moment, and they'll start earning an increased amount of XP. From then on you can evolve them whenever you choose.
- Minimonoliths: These special items immediately evolve a Temtem when used, but they are quite hard to come by. You can find one in The Highbelow and another in the Gardens of Aztlan areas. They are also a potential reward for throwing coins into the Wishing Well, completing the daily Postal Service quests, or the Koish of the Week fishing competition.
That said, there are some outlying Temtem with special evolutionary conditions. Anahir only evolves once you gain a total of 1,000 training values, Azuroc evolves after being traded, and Tuwai evolves differently depending on which place of power you take it to.
(Image credit: Crima Games)Starting Temtem evolutions
Similar to Pokémon, when you start the game you'll be prompted to head to Professor Konstantinos' lab, where he'll offer you a choice of three Temtem. Since all three of these evolve through levelling, here are their evolution requirements:
- Crystle: 30 levels to evolve into Sherald, then another 21 levels to become Tortenite
- Smazee: 29 levels to evolve into Baboong, then another 23 levels to become Seismunch
- Houchic: 29 levels to evolve into Tental, then 24 levels to become Nagaise
Sadly, there's no convenient way to see level up conditions for Temtem right at the start of the game, but if you keep levelling your favorites by using them in battle, they will inevitably evolve if they aren't any of the mentioned outliers. The Temtem wiki also has a great list of Temtem species where you can check the evolution requirements for each.
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As you progress through the story in Disney Dreamlight Valley, you'll come across a secret cave on the beach. There are a bunch of Atlantis-style puzzles to solve in this cave as you make your way down and you'll need to use all of your Royal Tools to crack them. In this guide, I'll help you find the materials you need and solve the cave riddles.
Disney Dreamlight Valley: How to solve the cave riddles
Gem puzzle
For the first part of the puzzle, you'll see that the three statues are glowing either red, blue or green. The instructions say that you need to find the gems that match to unlock the path. You need to find Peridot, Aquamarine and Garnet. These gems can be found by striking the black rocks found on walls, cliff edges etc with your pickaxe.
Sometimes you'll see a coloured gem sticking out from these rocks and other times the rock will be completely black, so keep smashing them with your pickaxe until you get what you need.
Crop puzzle
For the next section, you'll need to grow some crops. The clues are that one crop is underground, one is gold and brown and the other red and round. If thinking about the riddle is too much like hard work, worry not, as the crops you'll need to plant are:
- Carrots
- Wheat
- Tomatoes
You can get these from Goofy's store or from removing thorns, so once you've got them, plant and water them here. Do not harvest any of the plants until they have all finished growing and the barrier has lifted.
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Gameloft)Cooking puzzle
To complete the With Great Power quest, you'll need to cook using those crops you just grew. If you smash the big rock to the right of the stove, you'll get a gold chest that holds the recipe for Veggie Pasta, and some Star Coins.
To cook the Veggie Pasta, you'll also need coal, which you'll need to mine from the black rocks. Combine the ingredients and you'll make a tasty meal. You'll then be able to grab the Orb of Power from the pool using the fishing rod. Once you've done that, go ahead and pop it in the Orb statue outside the cave. Placing the Orb and others like it will help you progress the story and hopefully remove the pesky curse plaguing the valley.
If you're new to Dreamlight Valley, be sure to check out how the Star Path works and how to import your avatar.
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Jason Allen recently lit a fire under the art world. The Colorado-based artist used AI software to create art, submitted it to the State Fair fine arts competition, and took first prize. The event attracted widespread attention, with Allen's work being covered in outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post, and sparking a debate on social media that, needless to say, veered from the sophisticated to the unhinged.
"Yes, it has been a crazy week with everything that is happening," says Allen, the man in the middle of this intersection of culture and technology. "There has been a lot of love from the community but also a lot of hate, I have been receiving some hate mail."
The hate mail is the internet being the internet, but the more cogent anti-AI art argument is that it automates a large element of the creative process, and thus should not be directly compared to art produced through traditional methods. There is also the wider argument about these AI being trained on work done by humans, though I'm not going to wade into that particular ethical quagmire here.
There are also, however, a lot of assumptions being made about what these A.I. tools can do, and what Allen's creative process was. An important element to his win is that Allen credited the work to Midjourney as well as himself, being upfront about the process, and so this instantly struck me as another in the long line of stunts artists have pulled to get eyeballs on their work. It is a recurring feature in art history that half the battle for any artist is getting noticed, and complaining that Allen used software to help do that feels somewhat like railing against the 'factory' practices of many modern artists like Damien Hirst. Perception isn't everything, but it sometimes can be.
I asked Allen what he felt lay behind the backlash. "Part of the issue I believe is a portion of artists were in denial of the ability for A.I. to reach a power level that could emulate the same level of creative expression that a human could, let alone compete against them," writes the artist. "We have not seen A.I. do this on its own yet, however, I have demonstrated that the technology should be taken seriously by winning the Colorado State Fair fine art competition in the digital arts category. This technology exists, and it's creating pieces that prove it can do this now."
(Image credit: Jason Allen)Allen thinks that the capabilities of A.I. image generation software is causing "a sort of existential crisis right now" in the art community, referencing the disruptive technology of OpenAI as well as DALLE-2 and Midjourney (the software he used).
"Denial is the first step in the grieving process, perhaps (and I am deliberately saying PERHAPS) artists should go through the healing process to reach their acceptance of A.I.," writes Allen. "Because it is not going away and is only going to become more powerful. I think the backlash is par for the course for any major advancement in technology as it pertains to art. Such was the case with the camera, threatening portrait artists in the past, where the guy 'didn't have to do anything except press a button.' Of course, we know that is ridiculous now, but it takes time to accept new eras of art advances."
The method is of particular interest, because there's definitely a perception that this is an 'easy' way to create art, and you won't have to look far to find people who consider it cheating. I asked Allen if he could say how big the human element was in his work, and estimate how much time it took him to produce it.
"I made over 900 iterations of Space Opera Theatre and put in 80+ hours conservatively," says Allen. "I chose my top three, cleaned them up in photoshop, and upscaled them with Gigapixel A.I. I am a creative writer and an art director and I think my work is obviously reflected in the prompt that I created to make these pieces."
I mentioned both Duchamp and Jackson Pollock to Allen, because it felt to me like the contemporary resistance those artists' techniques faced almost came from the same place as the objections to using A.I. in the creative process. "In the end," says Allen. "Pollock was the one with his art in the museums and those 'more qualified' or 'talented' artists at the time [were not]…"
A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Agriculture told the New York Times that, as Allen disclosed the use of Midjourney in his submission, it fell within the competition's rules. They added that the judges didn't know what Midjourney was at the time, but Allen's work would have won regardless.
Allen believes awards shows will eventually end up creating an 'AI category', which does seem like a sane solution. Equally, he's ready to face up to those who criticise his work.
"The ethics isn’t in the technology," Allen told the New York Times following his win. "It’s in the people. This isn’t going to stop. Art is dead, dude. It’s over. AI won. Humans lost.”
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The Next World Forum is a new gaming and esports-focused conference debuting in Saudi Arabia, and it’s being hosted by the Saudi Esports Federation. At the Forum, speakers and delegates will converge to discuss and plan future opportunities in gaming and esports. Additionally, there will be several collaborations and other emerging opportunities at the forum that will promote rapid sector growth through investment and partnerships.
Some of the highlights and topics you can expect to see addressed during the Next World Forum include:
- An overview of the key tech development challenges that are affecting the dynamic gaming and esports landscape.
- Considerations about impact-driven gaming, the real-world impact of gaming and esports, and gaming for innovation.
- An overview of the rapidly-growing Saudi market, as well as opportunities for collaborators to be a part of it.
- Dialogue about new gaming and esports trends, including cloud gaming, distribution platform development, and the frequent desire for additional content.
- Solution-based discussions about important subjects such as government attitudes towards the sector, the development of gaming and esports talent, and the creation of necessary infrastructure.
- Talks focusing on a wide variety of exciting and important esports innovations, regulations, and legislation.
Attendees can expect to see speakers and experts representing the Saudi Esports Federation, the Esports Entertainment Group, MENA and GGTech, the Africa Esports Development Federation, and several other organizations. In total, there will be over 50 speakers and experts, over 1,000 delegates, and over 20 partners present at the conference. A full schedule of every discussion topic and event planned for the forum can be found here.
(Image credit: Saudi Esports Federation)In terms of the stakeholders that will be at the summit, guests can anticipate the following attendees: investors, gamers, developers, publishers, broadcasters, technology providers, brands, advertisers, team owners, federations, league organizers, and public sector representatives. There will also be multiple start-ups over the course of the conference as well.
The Next World Forum will run during September 7-8, 2022, and will be hosted at the Four Seasons Hotel at the Kingdom Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. You can register for an invitation to the event on the Next World Forum homepage. Additionally, you can learn more about the event from various Saudi Esports Federation social media pages and sites, including the organization’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
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In a move that's baffling streamers and viewers alike, Twitch is removing the ability to host other streams in early October.
The feature, originally introduced in 2014, allows streamers to direct viewers to another Twitch personality's livestream while they're offline. It's a neat way for streamers to highlight friends and other creators while they're not streaming themselves, providing a use for someone's main page when they're not around. But bizarrely, Twitch is now claiming that host mode "blocks" viewers from being able to interact with streamers in a post announcing the feature's departure on October 3, 2022.
"We made the decision to deprecate this feature because the experience it delivers to viewers doesn't match their expectations when they come to Twitch," the news read. "Viewers want to interact with a streamer when they're live and host mode blocks this from happening. Preventing viewers from interacting with the streamer they're watching also limits a streamer's growth potential because they're not able to build meaningful connections with those new viewers."
Twitch is removing hosting other channels and it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. So when I’m Offline i can’t even have my viewers enjoy watching my friends who are live?? Such an L pic.twitter.com/W6ewkdW7vVSeptember 6, 2022
See moreThe reasoning feels a little confusing when you consider that host mode only works when the streamer's main page is offline, as well as it being pretty easy to click on the hosted stream to begin talking and interacting with the streamer. I'm not the only one perturbed by it, with numerous streamers taking to Twitter to simply ask: why? CriticalBard called the decision "highly unnecessary," adding "I host when I'm currently not live so my unused channel clicks to someone that IS live for more engagement." Scottish streamer Limmy shared the sentiment, calling the removal "daft" and saying "it's the streamer not being live that prevents interacting with the streamer."
As some have pointed out, raids—where a streamer who is about to go offline can redirect their audience to someone else who is currently live—still exist, but the two felt like they served different purposes. Raids are a great way to give viewers something else to engage with after but also require active participation from the streamer raiding. Hosting was far more passive and was a great way to highlight smaller streamers.
Hosting will now change to "suggested channels," presumably an algorithm trying to push similar creators to the page you're on. It's a bummer that it takes the choice out of the streamer's hands, though perhaps that's the point: Twitch wants to recommend other streamers itself, rather than the host channel doing so. The backlash among streamers is very real, though, so we'll see if the streaming giant stays the course.
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Humankind, Amplitude's Civilization-alike that sees you guide your culture-shifting community from the Neolithic to the Contemporary Era, is getting its first major expansion this autumn.
Called Together We Rule, the add-on is hoping to get players to take their fingers off the nuclear button and set their minds to making peace, which feels like quite a pointed thing to focus on at the moment.. The expansion will introduce a host of new features aimed to emphasise the diplomatic and clandestine aspects of statecraft, with the aim of further beefing up the non-military aspects of Amplitude's 4X and encouraging players to "resolve conflicts differently".
The most significant piece of that expansion looks to be the "Congress of Humanity," which sounds like the World Congress from Civ, which itself is pretty much just the United Nations. At the Congress, you'll be able vote on legislation that has impacts across every empire on the map and bring your political weight to bear on other people's conflicts. A new embassy system will let you sign agreements with other factions or bend them to your will, and new "Agents" (I think that's "spies" to you and me) will let you screw around with other empires without sending in the tanks.
The expansion will also contain a smattering of new cultures and wonders, and be accompanied by a "major" free update to the game that will be received by everyone. That one promises to add new stealth mechanics and tinker with the UI a bit, among other bits and pieces. I don't know what "stealth mechanics" look like in a 4X game, but I'm imagining the Byzantine Empire tapping on a wall to distract guards. Hopefully that's what they mean.
We rather liked Humankind in our review of it, praising it for its "great ideas" that we couldn't wait to see "imitated and iterated'. There was some room to grow, though, and with any luck Together We Rule will go some way to filling it.
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The Witcher 4 has been officially confirmed, and although we're quite excited, we certainly aren't surprised. There have been no shortage of rumors about another Witcher game by CD Projekt Red, and the studio has commented on the possibility multiple times. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the greatest RPGs of all time, so an eventual sequel has always made sense. Now that we know it's definitely in the works, we’ve gathered everything we know for sure about the next Witcher game, along with some educated speculation about which characters could return and what kind of story it might tell.
CD Projekt Red's latest big RPG, Cyberpunk 2077 has been out now for some time and seems like it might be occupying the studio's attention for awhile yet. The rocky launch was plagued with bugs, leading CDPR to work through a 2021 roadmap for fixes. The company is also still working on DLCs for Cyberpunk.
That said, CD Prokect Red has said that it plans to work on two major games simultaneously, which we now know definitely includes a new Witcher game, and likely continued work on Cyberpunk 2077. Here's what we know about The Witcher 4 so far.
The Witcher 4 release date
(Image credit: CD Projekt RED)Is there a Witcher 4 release date?
There isn't a release date, or even release year, for The Witcher 4 yet. There probably won't be for quite some time, as the game is in the earliest phases of development. The new entry's production was only confirmed in March 2022, with an announcement that its development had entered pre-production following in May 2022.
What we do know is that after Cyberpunk 2077's launch, CDPR said it wouldn't be showing trailers and demos for future games until much closer to launch. We may wind up seeing teasers or other information about The Witcher 4, but once in-game videos start showing up we should be able to assume it's pretty near—unlike Cyberpunk 2077 whose first gameplay reveal was more than two years before its eventual release date.
Will The Witcher 4 be an Epic Games Store exclusive?
Nope, or at least CDPR says that it is "not planning on making the game exclusive to one storefront."
That seems like a really odd thing for the studio to clarify, but when it first announced The Witcher 4, CDPR also announced that the new Witcher game would be made with Unreal Engine 5 instead of the studio's propriety REDengine that it's used since The Witcher 2.
CD Projekt does also own the GOG storefront, so it would be very odd if The Witcher 4 weren't available there. If what you're really asking is whether or not it will be sold on Steam, that's a question that CDPR hasn't explicitly answered.
The Witcher 4 story and characters
A Witcher medallion with glowing red eyes is partially covered in snow. (Image credit: CD Projekt)Will there be a Lynx School of witchers in The Witcher 4?
More from the Witcher world(Image credit: CD PRojekt RED)The Witcher 4: What we know
The Witcher on Netflix: Cast & recaps
Witcher 3 mods: Good huntingSo far, the initial teaser image for the next Witcher game is the biggest hint we have to work with. It's a witcher medallion, like the pendant from the Wolf School of witchers that Geralt wears, but this one is of a lynx.
Initially, we were hesitant about Lynx School speculation. It hasn't appeared in any Witcher game, novel, or television production so far. The only lynx school lore out in the wild at the moment is unofficial, written by fans on the Witcher Fanon Wiki.
One small official reference to a Lynx is the item codes for the Cat School gear in The Witcher 3. To spawn in different Cat school weapons and armor pieces, you'll use item codes named "Lynx", like how the Ursine gear is referred to in item codes as "Bear".
After the teaser image was revealed, CDPR's community manager Marcin Momot responded to all the speculation with an emphatic nod, later confirming to PC Gamer by email that he wasn't just being cheeky. "I can confirm that the medallion is, in fact, shaped after a lynx," he said.
So, that certainly seems like Lynx School confirmed! We just don't yet know anything about the origins of this order of witchers, who its members are, or whether they're related to the Cat School.
Will Ciri be in The Witcher 4?
There's certainly a chance. Based on which Witcher 3 ending you chose, there are definite possibilities to continue Ciri's story. In what's considered the best ending for the game, Ciri and Geralt spend time together on the witcher path after Geralt gifts her a silver sword of her own.
In other Ciri story evidence, CD Projekt Red talked with PC Gamer back in 2019 about adapting her character from the books. As for parts of her story that didn't make it into The Witcher 3, they said "Maybe it’s something we’ll get to revisit in the future."
Since before the release of The Witcher 3, CDPR has been open about the fact that Geralt wouldn’t return as the protagonist of whatever comes next in the series. "With the third installment, we should wrap it up and conclude a lot of threads," CDPR's CEO Marcin Iwiński told Polygon in 2013. "We are not killing the world and walking away from it, but we will definitely want to make this game the finale in a big way."
In the same interview, executive producer John Mamais hinted that Geralt could return with a smaller role or as a cameo. "We might even include Geralt in later games potentially," Mamais said. "We just need to talk about it and figure out what we're going to do next." Geralt is a very flexible character. His long lifetime (he's over 90 in The Witcher 3) means that he could pop up in stories told long before or after the events of CDPR’s trilogy.
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)It probably won’t be called The Witcher 4
Whatever form the next big Witcher game takes, it probably won’t have a 4 on it. CDPR co-founder Marcin Iwinski has made it clear that the studio sees the first three games as a standalone trilogy. "The Witcher was designed as a trilogy and a trilogy cannot have a fourth part, can it?" he said in a 2017 investor call.
The clarification might sound trivial, but it’s more about setting the right expectations for what comes next. Not only will a theoretical next Witcher not star Geralt, but it might be different in more fundamental ways than we’re assuming. It could take place on a different continent, be in a very different time, or maybe not even be about a witcher. The game could step away from witchers themselves and explore sorceresses or vampires. It’s a rich world to draw inspiration from. I’m partial to the diverse, wandering lifestyle of Witchers, but I’m also open to something different.
The Witcher 4 development
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)The Witcher 4 has entered pre-production
In a first quarter summary video for 2022, CD Projekt chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz confirmed that development on The Witcher 4 has officially entered its pre-production phase.
"We have recently wrapped up the research phase, which means the project has now progressed to pre-production," Nielubowicz said. What constitutes research for a Witcher game? Presumably lots of looking at animals to decide which would make the coolest Witcher school mascot.
The Witcher 4 might be the start of a new trilogy
During a CD Projekt Red financial earnings call in September 2022, CEO Adam Kiciński indicated that the next Witcher sequel could be the first in a new trilogy of Witcher games. "We said that there will be a new saga. We have in mind more than one," Kiciński said. "The first saga was three games, so now we are thinking about more than one game."
Kiciński went on to describe the potential new series as "the second Witcher saga," leaving a pretty firm impression that CD Projekt is still in for the long haul on the Witcher. What the structure of that new saga will look like, and whether it'll be based on any earlier Witcher works or something more original, remains to be seen.The Witcher 4 is being made with Unreal Engine 5
Alongside confirmation of The Witcher 4's development, CDPR also explained that it had partnered with Epic Games to use its development engine for the next game.
"It is vital for CD Projekt Red to have the technical direction of our next game decided from the earliest possible phase as in the past, we spent a lot of resources and energy to evolve and adapt REDengine with every subsequent game release," CD Projekt Red CTO Paweł Zawodny said.
Later, game director Jason Slama explained that a major factor in the decision was Unreal 5's open-world capabilities. Instead of continuing to adapt REDengine for the purpose, CDPR will be leaning on what Unreal 5 can already do.
"Players can go in whatever direction they want, they can handle content in any order that they want, theoretically," Slama said. "To really encapsulate that, you need a really stable environment where you can be able to make changes with a high level of confidence that it's not going to break in 1,600 other places down the line."
CDPR acquired Molasses Flood to work on something
In October 2021 we got news of CD Projekt acquiring studio Molasses Flood (responsible for Flame in the Flood) to work "in close cooperation" with developer CD Projekt Red on an "ambitious project" based on one of CDPR's existing properties. CDPR also confirmed that Molasses Flood won't be working on Cyberpunk 2077, and since there are only two choices with CDPR, that leaves The Witcher.
CDPR has not actually confirmed what Molasses is working on, however, so we'll have to wait and see.
CD Projekt signed a new deal with Witcher creator Andrzej Sapkowski in 2019
CD Projekt famously got the rights to make Witcher games for a flat up-front fee, which novelist Andrzej Sapkowski wasn't thrilled about after the games became enormously popular. Since 2018 the two parties have been negotiating a new deal, and in December 2019 they finally reached it. The new agreement "solidifies and reinforces the company’s relationship with Mr. Andrzej Sapkowski—author of The Witcher saga."
The most interesting quote, however, is this one: "The agreement confers new rights upon the Company and reaffirms its existing title to 'The Witcher' intellectual property in developing video games, graphic novels, board games and merchandise."
That doesn't spell out that new videogames are on the way, but it's a sure sign that CD Projekt has a long-term interest in The Witcher.
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If it was all about the sound I would be tripping over myself to recommend you stick Audeze's Euclid earbuds into your soundholes. The sound is delicious. Because when you're trying to describe audio quality it's important to keep using different adjectives, and because whenever I stick some high-res audio files through the Euclid buds I always end up going 'Nom, nom, nom, nom.'
But how do you, in all good faith, recommend someone spend $1,300 on a set of earbuds? I'll wait for you to crank your jaw up off the deck… yes, the Audeze Euclid buds really do cost that much. And if you want to go down the wireless Bluetooth 5.0 route then you need a $130 adapter wrapped around your neck.
Which makes them suitable only for the most miniscule of audiophile niches, if I'm being honest. Generally, if you want that high-end audio experience you spend big on a pair of over-ear audiophile headphones, potentially open-backed ones that will only really do the full aural business when you're sat on your own in a quiet room blasting The War on Drugs or Rage Against the Machine directly at your own ear drums.
I've not heard much call for in-ear headphones with a genuine predilection for high-end audio.
Which is why, when I heard Audeze was taking its experience in planar magnetic (PM) drivers and distilling that down to an earbud, I had to give it a go. I love the soon-to-be-retired LCD-1 over-ear PM headphones, and the 18mm Euclid drivers somehow still manage to deliver much of the characteristically detailed audio of the technology.
Euclid specs(Image credit: Future)Drivers: 18mm planar magnetic
Frequency response: 10Hz – 50,000Hz
Weight: 0.53oz | 15g
Connection: Wired or Bluetooth 5.0 w/adapter
Battery life: 8 hours
Price: $1,300 (+$129 for the BT adapter)Unfortunately, perhaps due to their size, they lack some of the warmth you get from a well-worn set of larger planar magnetic drivers. My experience with over-ear PM headphones has been that you really need to drive them over an extended period of time to wear them in and get around the too-sharp detailed audio that you get fresh out of the box.
I'm a long time into my testing of the Euclid's and they've yet to hit that level and have remained a little spikey in the high tones to this day. Despite the flat EQ they offer you do still get good, detailed bass response, however, and the tonal separation is outstanding. You can hear the reverb and movement of Ludovico Einaudi's piano, and not just the actual notes, for example.
But while that may be great for mastering a track, it doesn't make for a particularly comfortable long-term music listening experience.
It is a different thing when it comes to gaming, however, as that detail and tonal separation really helps make a gameworld come to life. And can give you spatial cues that will help tell where the bad guys or the gunfire is coming from.
(Image credit: Future)The Euclids, even ignoring the pricey elephant in the room, have too many real-world sticking points.
In OlliOlli World on the Steam Deck the rattling of my board's wheels sits completely apart from the chilling jazz-hop soundtrack, and in Hitman 3 I can navigate around curious security guards from listening to their footfalls alone.
And, despite initial concerns the Bluetooth 5.0 implementation wouldn't have the speed of connection to live with the lag-free wireless audio you really need for twitch gaming, the Euclid Bluetooth adapter is lightning fast.
Which all makes them actually an excellent set of earbuds for gaming. But you don't need a set of buds at this price level to get a very close approximation of this audio quality from a particular game. The Creative Outlier Pro buds deliver an impressive aural experience for a fraction of the price, and the JBL Quantum TWS have the ease of use to make them both an easy Steam Deck accessory you barely have to think about.
The Euclid's on the other hand, even ignoring the pricey elephant in the room, have too many real-world sticking points to make them a reasonable recommendation.
The eight hour battery life of the Bluetooth adapter is an issue, though you could, of course, quickly switch to a wired connection when you run out of power. But, even if the power thing isn't an issue, you're still having to deal with the adapter cabling between the two buds which I found either weighed down too much if worn around the front of your neck, or tangled with any collars on my clothing, putting pressure on the buds' fitting if worn around the back.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Future)And I struggled with that fitting in general anyways. None of the other wireless buds I've tested were much of a struggle to comfortably sit in my, admittedly small, ears, but I found with the Euclids—even with three different silicone tips, and a pair of premium Comply foam tips—long term comfort was difficult to find.
I feel that is a personal issue, however, as colleagues with the same earbuds have had no such problem with the fit on their sets.
I'm always going to come back to the price, though. For the cost of a good gaming PC or gaming laptop, or even a pair of Steam Decks, the Audeze Euclid's excellent audio is not enough to overcome the practical issues they represent. Honestly, if I want to go wired, the $400 LCD-1 over-ears have my heart, and for a wireless earbud experience either the JBL or Creative buds get my vote.
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Doom is the quintessential speedrunning game and, ultimately, that comes down to some of id's early design principles: Doom's WAD format ('Where's all the data?') made it easy for players to mess around with the game, and you could argue that the contemporary modding era began here.
The players who coalesced around and obsessed about one man's quest to slaughter lots of demons have done almost anything you can think of with the game, and one infamous oddity is called Nuts.
Nuts is a map created in 2001 by the prolific Doom modder B.P.R.D. While much of this modder's output is genuinely great stuff like Equinox , Nuts would become a trilogy of 'joke' maps. This being Doom, the joke is thus: Nuts contains 10617 monsters across two rooms, and is pretty much unplayable as a result.
One of the biggest elements of the joke, and a very important one for context here, is that even if you wanted to kill all of these monsters, you couldn't. The level gives the player a plasma gun and BFG, along with a bunch of ammo, but there's nowhere near enough to kill everything, particularly as the second room is stacked with high-health cyberdemons.
The map is notorious enough that speedrunners worked out ways to speedrun it anyway. The two main styles are a race-to-the-finish where you don't kill anything, and simply have to avoid being boxed-in by the enemies, and one where you kill as many enemies as possible before ending. The record in the latter category was held by Hurricaine Jr. with 92% of enemies killed.
Enter Doom speedrunner ZeroMaster. ZeroMaster had a theory, and in their own words here is what came of it: "Pain. I started working on this 4 months ago…"
I'm going to explain the run, but ZeroMaster did this around a year ago, and I found out about it thanks to the excellent Youtube channel of Karl Jobst, a former speedrunner who now makes in-depth videos about cool things that various communities pull off. His video is below.
ZeroMaster's idea was simple, but also not. In Doom, certain enemies will fight each other. "The issue with maxing this level is that even with really good infighting and perfect ammo management you are left with roughly 800 cyberdemons at 4000 health each," writes ZeroMaster, "and nothing besides your fists, which deal 2-20 damage per hit, to kill them with."
The cyberdemons are simply too chunky for the other monsters to make any kind of a serious dent in. "So there is only one solution," writes ZeroMaster. "Gather up enough homing revenant rockets to tear through all the cyberdemons."
The revenant enemy type fires rockets straight at the player, but also has a 25% or 75% chance (depending on spawn conditions) to fire homing rockets that follow the player. Their damage is also calculated within a range of 10-80 that averages out to 45 damage per shot. "850 cyberdemon at 4000 health," writes ZeroMaster, "[...] that means we need to simply gather up at least 70000 rockets, great!"
Here comes the rub. To gather this many rockets the player character is going to have to keep the revenants alive in the middle of the room by killing the barons (which would otherwise kill the revenants), then begin circling around the revenants to attract an ever-increasing trail of homing rockets. ZeroMaster estimated it would take about five hours. But that's real-time, and thousands then tens of thousands of rockets with smoke trails… yeah, we're gonna need a bigger PC.
The game begins running slower as the number of rockets increase, until eventually the player character is moving the equivalent of 0.5 seconds in every real-world minute.
"So in real time it takes about 23 days to gather the rockets, which would be extremely boring to do," writes ZeroMaster. But because the upper area of Nuts is so large, the speedrunner took a segment where they circled the area as this tactic required, then took these inputs and repeated them on a 6-hour cycle. That makes this a tool-assisted speedrun, and said tool took 23 days to run through the programmed cycle. Yes: somewhere in the world, unobserved, a little doom slayer was running around revenants for 23 days.
After this, ZeroMaster re-took control. "Then of course the fun part begins, where you are moving 4 frames every 14 seconds to guide the rockets to the cyberdemons. There's a few places where I do some weird things like take damage for no reason, which is because of just horrible controls (I can't even move backwards) and doing it over again takes at least 30 minutes, so I left it like that. I would have tried to make it a bit better looking, but putting in effort to do that would have driven me mad, so it'll have to do. It took roughly 20 hours to do 10 minutes, needless to say that is just an awful experience."
Almost unbelievably, ZeroMaster ran this on a laptop. They note that you could probably do this without tools, "you just need an actual super computer optimized to play Doom and about 6 hours."
I said Doom is the quintessential speedrunning game; and in some ways this absolutely bonkers achievement is an emblematic speedrun. Part of the fun of speedrunning is that it grew out of the gaming culture of setting your own challenges. Once you'd beaten a game, especially in the old days, you had to work out how to still have fun with it.
I mean, maybe 'fun' is going a bit too far here, but the joy for the viewer is in how overreaching and frankly unnecessary this is. It's one thing to think that you could possibly kill 850 cyberdemons with revenant rockets, and in so doing achieve what the Doom community thought impossible: Nuts was never meant to be 'completed' like this. It's a whole other thing to work out how you could actually do it and then, tool-assisted or no, pull it off.
"What an absolute waste of my time this has been," writes ZeroMaster, "hopefully you'll enjoy this more than I did." Take a bow my friend, because we most certainly did.
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Is there an award for the most ridiculously priced PC component that I'm not aware of? MSI appears to be gunning for something with its new MEG X670E Godlike motherboard, which the company has seen fit to charge $1,300 for on its US store (via Videocardz).
The component company is charging more for this slab of circuitry to plug your components into than most other discrete components alone. Even some RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards cost less than MSI is asking for the X670E Godlike.
What makes a motherboard worthy of such an excessive price tag? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps it's for its overclocking potential, though we don't actually know how AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7000-series processors will take being pumped full of power. Or maybe it's the touchscreen IPS full-colour screen glued onto the I/O.
I should have seen this coming. MSI released a $2,099 motherboard for Intel's 12th Gen processors, though at least that had the decency to include a CPU cooler and a couple of sticks of DDR5 RAM. Availability for this board was a sticking point, too, as only loyal MSI customers could buy it.
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 restThe X670E Godlike doesn't appear quite so elusive, but I'd guess that MSI will still sell through its supply. Let's be honest, PC gamers will buy a motherboard as ludicrous as the X670E Godlike just to say that they did.
Asus is also vying for the most ridiculously priced PC component award with its Asus ROG Crosshair X670E. Or at least it looks that way from early retailer listings. They place that motherboard around the $1,499 mark, which would be as similarly indefensible as MSI's Godlike lot in value for money.
We don't have shipping processors to fit in any of these boards as of yet, but they're coming. AMD is shipping its new Ryzen 7000-series processors on September 27, led by the Ryzen 9 7950X—a CPU nearly half the price of any of these extreme motherboards.
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It's hard to untangle my feelings about Cyberpunk 2077 from the disaster of its launch. I'm lucky, I suppose, that I never tried to play it on last-gen consoles, but even on PC it was mired in issues and disappointments, from the plethora of game-breaking bugs to wonky systems like Night City's law enforcement.
To be clear, I ended up having a grand old time holidaying in Night City. It's a gargantuan RPG filled with compelling stories of crime and corruption, but that's not its legacy. Phantom Liberty, then, is a chance for CD Projekt Red to rewrite it—but it'll need to be something pretty special.
This week's reveal has at least left me cautiously optimistic. Questions about quality and polish won't be answered until release, but the setup has certainly piqued my interest, promising to explore the dystopia's political situation while bringing back both V and Johnny. An alleged datamine back in May suggested that Keanu wouldn't be coming back, so that was a welcome surprise.
Really, I'm just excited about having a better reason to return to Night City than new apartments and a cool jacket. Of course I can just jump back in whenever I want, but Night City isn't really a sandbox. It's not GTA Online, or Skyrim, where chaos reigns supreme. It's a stage, and it needs a script to give it life. I still love driving beneath its spires and gaudy holograms, or taking road trips out to the desert where you get the best views, but there are only so many screenshots I can be arsed taking. It's a city in want of some more stories.
But it's going to be under a lot of scrutiny. Mostly from players who just want it to be good, but also from those looking for another reason to tear into the studio. After The Witcher 3, CDPR became one of the most beloved developers around, but as soon as there was blood in the water that reputation couldn't protect it. The gulf between the pre-release promises and the final product means there are grudges now.
Historically, especially on PC, folks have a lot of patience for jank. Sometimes it's even appealing. Huge companies like Bethesda have been given a significant amount of leeway, and Skyrim's enduring popularity certainly wasn't down to polish. But Cyberpunk 2077 crossed an invisible line and was stuck with a bad reputation that's taken a lot of time to repair.
Since the troubled launch in December 2020 a great deal of work has been done to improve the base game, but players are hungry for something new. The Witcher 3's exceptional DLC set a high bar, and this is the first major opportunity for the studio to show what it's learned from its mistakes. There's also the context of Cyberpunk 2077's multiplayer mode, which was at one point scheduled for this year, being cancelled entirely following the launch. Issues that could have been overlooked in another game won't be getting a free pass here.
No doubt CD Projekt is feeling the pressure from shareholders, too. In July, the company's stock had dropped to a quarter of what it was before Cyberpunk 2077 launched. The hit to its reputation spooked people, but public perception was far from the only issue. The last-gen console versions were in such a dire state that Sony removed Cyberpunk 2077 from the PS Store, removing millions of potential customers from the pool. That didn't stop it from raking in the cash, of course, and development costs had already been recouped before launch, but sales still saw a dramatic decline, according to CD Projekt itself, after it came out.
The hype was potent enough that none of the issues were enough to topple the company and it remains one of Poland's heaviest hitters, but I doubt it can afford another stumble. Phantom Liberty is due out at some point in 2023, and hopefully this time it isn't pushed out the door before it's ready. It's going to be an uphill struggle, though, and while deciding not to release the expansion on last-gen consoles absolutely seems like the right call, it does mean it's already disappointing people again. Phantom Liberty is a chance for some measure of redemption for CDPR: but only the best will do.
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The best Minecraft skins right now
in Gaming News
Posted
There are tons of choices out there to choose from but the best Minecraft skins will make you stand out from everyone else on the server. Or just help you take some excellent screenshots with that new themed build you've worked on. Just like when you change Minecraft texture packs, an awesome new character skin is a fast way to spice up your Minecraft visual experience.
Minecraft update: What's new?
Minecraft skins: New looks
Minecraft mods: Beyond vanilla
Minecraft shaders: Spotlight
Minecraft seeds: Fresh new worlds
Minecraft texture packs: Pixelated
Minecraft servers: Online worlds
Minecraft commands: All cheats
Now that Minecraft 1.19 is here, there's never been a better time for a little fashion refresh. Why not find some fresh new duds to splashing around some Mangrove swamps and exploring Ancient Cities in the Deep Dark? Maybe something pleasant for all your new frog and allay friends to feast their eyes on, too.
Our list of the best Minecraft has customization options for every mood, and we've even laid out how to use a skin editor where you can take crack at putting your own skins together. Between these options, you can get started on securing that perfect character skin—or crafting a look of your own.
Cool Minecraft skins
Among Us
This Among Us Minecraft skin depicts one of the crew that you might encounter—or play as—during the casual multiplayer game. While you might not be hunting for the imposter in the blocky survival game, you can bring a little of the popular deduction game to your world. And hey, at least you'll be easy to spot if you're playing with friends.
Geralt of Rivia
With CD Projekt Red still busy with Cyberpunk 2077, it'll be a while before we see Geralt exploring a new fantastical land, but what about the world of Minecraft? There are plenty of blocky landscapes for you to explore with this Witcher Minecraft skin.
The Mandalorian
This Mandalorian skin captures Mando in his season one glory. No Pedro Pascal under this helmet though, and no baby Yoda included either. You'll be going on Mandoventures solo, or at least with whoever your friends are wearing.
Dream
If you want to prove that you too are not normal, you can dress up as Dream. There are tons of Minecraft Dream skins out there, but this one keeps the mystery alive with mask fully on.
Girl Minecraft skins
Frog girl
Frogs are in. They're in Minecraft and they're in everything else too. If you want to get gloriously green but still look cute, this Frog girl skin is the way to go. It doesn't turn you into an actual frog. No, see Kermit below for that. Just a cute girl wearing a frog hoodie.
Sylvanas Windrunner
She might not be an obvious choice when choosing a new skin, but Sylvanas Windrunner might be just what you need to bring some attitude to your blocky world. Plus she's undead, so that means she can't die… right? Just remember to keep her away from large trees.
Zombie girl
Movie monsters are a bit of a boys club, so this Minecraft skin is here to address the balance. She's Zombie Girl; a zombie that's a girl. What else do you need to know? There are loads of zombie-style skins available, but this one with her ragged skinny jeans and flower crown is a little bit more interesting than most.
Abigail
Stardew Valley is another pixelated game about farming and adventures, so it's no surprise at all to see some Stardew character skins make their way to Minecraft. If you're looking for another cute girl skin, Abigail is a great choice. Or maybe try on Leah instead. Both should feel right at home in the nearest village.
Anime Minecraft skins
Anya Forger
If all the other girl skins weren't quite cute enough for you, Anya Forger is the way to go. Everyone's honorary daughter has many Minecraft skins to her name since the anime released, but this is a personal favorite. This rendition is a little on the pastel side, but it has excellent hair bun placement, which makes it the most elegant of all.
Tanjiro
He might not be able to use water breathing, but you'll certainly have the distinctive style of a demon slayer when you use this Tanjiro skin. Make sure you have a suitable sword to match, and try not to break it... again.
Goku
If anyone can punch trees and rocks forever without stopping to craft a pickaxe it would be Goku. He may only be able to fly in creative mode, but this Saiyan still makes for a great persona. This one's a simple and straightforward. All the better to recognize that orange jumpsuit.
Saitama
Speaking of punching, Saitama from One Punch Man is another fun skin choice for Minecraft. No Saitama Minecraft skin is complete without a shiny bald head and iconic blank expression, if only we had his single punch skills in multiplayer servers.
Sailor Moon
How about Sailor Moon for another classic caped anime hero? Her pigtails may be a bit flatter than in the show but hey, that's Minecraft for you. The same creator has also made skins for Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars.
Evangelion Unit-01
With this Eva Unit-01 skin inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion, you too can get in the mech, Shinji. Best of all, there's no horrible dads or getting turned into orange goo required, and the only Rebuild you'll have to endure will be when a creeper does some foul business to your house.
Funny Minecraft skins
Bob Ross
Famous for his supremely chilled painting show, and the phrase 'happy little trees', Bob Ross is one of the most wholesome people to have ever existed. If you've never watched his shows, you should do so now. Well, after you've done some mining dressed as him.
Shrek
Angry swamp ogre turned internet meme, Shrek is a perfect skin for funny shenanigans. Drop your Shrek avatar into a swampy world, bang on some Smash Mouth, and you've got yourself a party.
Alex Raising Steve Above Her Head
Yes, it's a silly name, but it's fitting for a pretty silly skin. This one features a torso which has been edited to look like Alex's head, complete with an actual head which looks like a mini Steve. Therefore, it's Alex Raising Steve Above Her Head and no other name will fit. It's official name is 'skin funny minecraft', which seems amazingly unimaginative considering how creative this is.
Doge
The iconic pupper prince of the internet can now make his appearance in Minecraft. The details are what really make this a great Minecraft skin: Doge's arms have little claws on the end and he even has a curl in his tail. Wow. Much dog. Very good.
Kermit the Frog
This famous frog could have easily gone into the horror section, honestly. Kermit's dead eyes and gaping mouth are, frankly, more sinister than cute. I would rather face-off against an Enderman than this dude.
Videogame Minecraft skins
Venti
There are Minecraft skins for just about any Genshin character you could want, but Venti is still the best boy of the Hoyoverse. This skin gets him all right: jaunty cap, hair, coat, and all. If Venti isn't your vibe, maybe you need a little Klee instead.
Prisoner
While this Prisoner skin might not get you the same mileage as a solid DEX/INT build will, your foul Tarnished will at least have a much easier life in Minecraft than they will in Elden Ring. Until you bring them to the Nether, anyway.
Master Chief
We've all got Master Chief on the brain with Halo Infinite finally out. In between sessions, keep him close to your heart by squeezing into his iconic suit while you play Minecraft.
Solid Snake
With the unfortunate absence of official Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 on PC, here's your chance to play the best version of Solid Snake, a gruff, now-blocky spec ops soldier.
Gordon Freeman
Half-Life's silent protagonist, Gordon Freeman, suits Minecraft's avatar very well. He's a dude that gets down to business without a hint of a sigh, now if only there were headcrabs in Minecraft...
Solaire of Astora
Praise the sun. You can finally become the most grossly incandescent being in existence; it's time to become the one true Sun Bro. Not only will this give you the form of Solaire of Astora, but if you slowly descend into madness and get taken over by a parasite, then at least it'll be in keeping with the character.
Best sites for Minecraft skins
Best sites for Minecraft skins
Here are some great websites for even more cool Minecraft skins:
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