[Rumbleverse is the fresh take on battle royale I needed]

Every time I load into a battle royale I feel a little bit anxious. There's the uncertainty of the early game, and then later the feeling of being surrounded as the walls close in—I always end up just a little stressed out. Not so with Rumbleverse, the new battle royale brawler on the Epic Games Store. I launch into every match eager to duke it out with a bunch of wildly dressed knuckleheads. When a match starts well I land on top of a skyscraper, immediately break open a crate to grab a special move, and chokeslam KO someone from 100 stories up.

Now, I know: Another battle royale? Hear me out though—Rumbleverse takes the best elements of playing wrestling games with your friends and drops them from the top rope straight into a match of Fortnite.

Rumbleverse stays pretty true to battle royale basics. 40 players fly in, ever closing circle, last man standing, yada yada. But instead of dropping in with nothing and scrambling for gear, you can start scrapping right away with a surprisingly technical fighting moveset pulled straight from pro wrestling. This takes the worst part of your typical battle royale—running around for 60 seconds, finding nothing, and getting fragged by someone who already has a shotgun—and removes it entirely. You get straight into the action, and everyone’s on even footing. 

You do find shiny stuff to make you stronger, though. After a giant cannon blasts you onto the huge map, you can run around and break crates for a variety of goodies. Powders boost your max health and stamina, consumable items restore them, weapons like broken planks of wood and folding chairs are applied directly to face.

The most fun things to find are the special moves. From Ryu Hayabusa’s Izuna drop to the hilariously named Rekt Shot (here’s looking at you, Tidus), these moves give you upgrades over your usual drop kicks, suplexes and Irish Whips.

Combat pulls from fighting games but with a rock paper scissors approach:  Blocks beat strikes, strikes beat throws, and throws beat blocks. Special moves take priority in a clash with regular ones, and a power move like a running dropkick can trump even some specials. It all adds up to a satisfying stew, unsurprising given Iron Galaxy's pedigree with Killer Instinct. I found myself having technical chess matches with crafty opponents: I would dodge cancel out of a combo to bait him into a throw attempt, have him counter with a whip to smash me into a wall, only to have someone third party both of us by dropping an atomic elbow off the nearby highway overpass.

This is still wrestling, even if it feels like a fighting game one-on-one.

It’s chaotic fun, and every system in the game funnels you toward action. Players who turtle up and avoid engagements might collect the maximum 10 powders and two special moves, but they won’t be getting any combat experience. Every point of damage you give or receive adds to an XP bar that results in some pretty excellent perks—increased strike damage from explosions, reduced stamina costs, a meditation mode that lets you heal up by standing still. In the final circle (which often has as many as 10 players), if you don’t have any of those buffs you’ll be at a severe disadvantage.

The ever-present battle royale circle is a little different, too. It encompasses a smaller portion of the map than you might think, and being outside it doesn’t do any damage. Instead, in true wrestling style, the announcer starts giving you a ten count, after which if you’re still out of bounds, you’re eliminated. This leads to some super fun cat-and-mouse moments baiting people out of the ring and eliminates the annoying bleed damage so many battle royales made standard.

The Meditative perk is great for a botanical moment of Zen  (Image credit: Iron Galaxy)

For people who really love customization there’s an in-game shop with the sort of microtransactions you'd expect—luchador masks, wrestling singlets, giant chicken heads. They’re on the spendy side and the shop is fairly spartan so far, but I expect this will be improved over time. 

My main beef with Rumbleverse is its lack of a decent tutorial. You have to wait in a queue to load into the training map with other players, which is annoying, and the information is spread all over the map. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of it though, and once I started spinning piledriving people I didn't want to stop.

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[Rocksmith+, Ubisoft's learn-to-play-guitar game, finally rocks out next week]

Remember Rocksmith? Released for consoles in 2011 and PC a year later, it was a lot like Guitar Hero except it used a real guitar, which you'd connect to your PC via a Real Tone USB cable. DLC development for the 2014 edition was finally halted in 2020, but Ubisoft resurrected it a year later as Rocksmith+, and announced today that it's just one week away from release.

Rocksmith+ is very similar to the original game, but different in some significant ways. It's exclusive to PC this time around, and while you can still connect your guitar (you need a guitar, by the way) to your system with the Real Tone cable, you can also skip that part and use the Rocksmith+ Connect mobile app, which tracks your playing by turning your phone into a mic. 

The biggest change, though, is that it's subscription-based rather than a standalone purchase, costing $15 per month, $40 for three months, or $100 for a year. That's not cheap, but it includes access to a library of over 5,000 songs across multiple genres. That's a real improvement over the original, which required that songs be purchased as DLC at some pretty steep prices: Individual tracks, such as (to pick a completely random example) the Spinal Tap classic Sex Farm, sell for $3 each.

We've also got some system requirements, which are pretty manageable as these things go.

Minimum:

• Processor: Intel Core i5 2400 / AMD FX 4320 or equivalent
• Memory: 6 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560Ti / GTX 650 / GTX 750 / GTX 950 / GTX 1050 or AMD Radeon HD 7850 / R9 270 / R9 370 / RX 460

Recommended:

• Processor: Intel Core i5-4690K / AMD FX-8350 or equivalent
• Memory: The RAM spec is actually missing from the store page, but let's call it 16GB just to be sure we're covered
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 / GTX 750ti / GTX 960 / GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon R9 280X / R9 380 / RX 470

In either case, you'll also need Windows 10 64-bit and a guitar—electric, acoustic, or bass will all work just fine.

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The game was originally slated to arrive in 2021, but Ubisoft postponed the launch in September of that year following a closed beta test so it could add more songs to the library (only 500 were available in the beta), improve audio inputs, and tweak the progression and user interface. We'll find out how just how improved it all is in a week: Rocksmith+ is set to go live on September 6 on the Ubisoft Store.

And just think: With dedication and practice, one day this could be you.

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[One of the best city builders around is getting a hefty update]

 I recently took a look at the exciting future promised by the next wave of city builders, but I've also been spending time with current city building games like Farthest Frontier and Cities: Skylines. And I just found the perfect excuse to go back to another of the best city builders out there, Foundation, which has been in early access on Steam since 2019. Foundation is preparing for a big update, version 1.9, and I got the chance to try it out before it arrives.

If you've never played Foundation, one of the most appealing things about it is that it's a completely gridless city builder. Typically, I'm all about grids: there's something immensely satisfying about laying out roads precisely and carefully snapping buildings into place and winding up with an orderly, well-optimized town.

But ultimately I've come to prefer Foundation's approach, which doesn't involve drawing roads. Instead, as in the also excellent Ostriv, citizens create paths simply by walking the same routes over and over, eventually wearing down the grass to create their own desire paths and roads. You zone areas for residences but the citizens build their own homes however they want within those borders. The end result definitely isn't as orderly as most city builders but it feels pleasingly organic, the way a real village might develop over time: managed, but not micromanaged. It's a pleasing way to see a city slowly evolve and grow.

Update 1.9 retains that organic feel, but it also changes a lot in terms of how progression through the various tiers works. Unlocking new buildings is now based on prosperity. Your village's prosperity score is determined by several factors: you level of wealth (itself determined by calculating factors like taxes, trade, and upkeep), how many map tiles you've purchased, the number of trade routes you have, your population and their status (commoners, serfs, etc), your city's splendor (which can be increased by certain building features) and beautification (decoration). Only upon reaching prosperity milestones do certain buildings become available—for instance, you need to reach a prosperity score of 20 before things like fishing, farming, and baking become available, and then it costs a bit of gold to unlock each.

I struggled a bit at first with this new progression system. Due to spending a lot of gold to unlock new map tiles early on, I wound up broke, and with my city costing just as much as it was earning found myself stuck at a prosperity score of 19. After a second try, I realized that if I didn't try to gobble up map tiles too quickly, it was easier to become more prosperous in the early game. Expanding was a bit slower than I remember the last time I played Foundation, and I had to be really cautious about overspending, but my new city is becoming prosperous more quickly in the second tier, and I'm more than halfway to the next set of unlocks.

(Image credit: Polymorph Games)

Law and order

One of the more interesting parts of the 1.9 update is a system called edicts, a new set of laws you can apply to your town once it has grown and become prosperous. The interesting thing about edicts is that they come with both a benefit and a drawback. For instance, tools are a consumable resource needed to build most buildings, and in the early game there's no way to produce them yourself so you have to rely on buying them from traders. If you find yourself struggling to buy or produce tools, or just want to burn through them less quickly, you can enact an edict that means you're refunded 50% of the tools following a building's construction. The downside is that the construction itself will take longer to complete, as if your builders are being more careful not to ruin their hammers and saws while they work. It's an interesting compromise to consider.

If you find your city flush with food and don't need the extra money from traders, you may want to enact an edict that doubles your mineral production but cuts your food production rate in half. Another edict can take your serf's requirement for comfort (luxury goods and whatnot) in exchange for giving them a nice tax break. If people are unhappy, in other words, maybe you can pay them off.

Cozy up to the kingdom and a privilege might get you more visits from royal vendors.

Privileges, another new system, work similarly, though without the drawbacks. If you have a high splendor score with the clergy, you can remove the maintenance fees for their monasteries, or add a new form of taxation, the tithe, which you collect a share of. Cozy up to the kingdom and a privilege might get you more visits from royal vendors. I've only just unlocked my first edict, and haven't gotten to privileges yet, so I can't say what long-term effects these will have on the game. But they do seem like a nice way to tweak the rules of your cities, to give yourself more options to mull over, and make you feel more like a proper medieval mayor making political (or even moral) decisions than just a town manager deciding where the new cheesemaking building should go.

(Image credit: Polymorph Games)

Finally, there are victory conditions you can set for your city in the update, sort of a main quest you can decide for yourself. It might be something simple, like attracting 100 citizens to your village or reaching a prosperity score of 1,000. Or it could be quite hard, like building a booming city while never once generating revenue from trade. These victory conditions are completely optional, but they sound like a good way for players who have mastered the city building systems of Foundation to introduce some extra challenges.

There's no announced date for Foundation's 1.9 update yet, though it will be preceded by a preview phase currently planned for mid-September, during which players will get a chance to try it before it's fully released.

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[Our highest-reviewed game of 2022 so far is immediately on Game Pass]

Half Mermaid, the three-person studio led by FMV maestro Sam Barlow, released its latest game today. It's called Immortality, and like Barlow's past games, it's a live action video adventure in which players steer the storytelling by watching mysterious scenes out of order. We gave it a glowing 95% in our review, calling it Barlow's "best, most thought-provoking game yet." That's literally all I want to know about a story-heavy game before giving it a shot myself.

It's times like these that I'm happy to still be a Game Pass subscriber. Immortality is available to play immediately if you're a member. Barlow's games are a perfect match for the Game Pass library—short, sweet, single-serving narratives that I'll almost certainly never play a second time. At least, that's how it's gone so far with 2015's Her Story (90%) and 2019's Telling Lies (87%), both of which are also on Game Pass at the moment.

Immortality is PC Gamer's highest-scoring game of 2022 so far, but it's not the only Game Pass game in the 90% and up club. There's also:

• Alien: Isolation (90%)
• Dishonored 2 (93%)
• Doom Eternal (94%)
• Hades (90%)
• Her Story (90%)
• Hitman 3 (90%)
• Norco (94%)

Interestingly, Immortality is also set to launch on Netflix. In case you forgot as quickly as I did, Netflix has a games library accessible from its mobile app. It's kind of like a mini, mobile-only Game Pass included with a Netflix sub, and Immortality will be on the list whenever it goes live on that platform. Netflix games aren't easy to find (I couldn't get them to appear on my phone despite following a guide), but you can apparently bypass the middleman by searching "Netflix games" in your respective app store. Once you download a game, it should appear on your home screen as its own app.

If you're looking to buy instead of lease, Immortality is also available on Steam at a discounted launch price of  $18.

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[Assassin's Creed Mirage will be revealed in September, according to a new leak]

It's been almost two years since the release of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the most recent addition to the series, which means we're definitely due for another—and it looks like we might get our first look at what's next at the upcoming Ubisoft Forward event in September.

The latest Ubisoft leak comes from YouTuber j0nathan (via Rebs Gaming), who claimed in a recent video that the proper title of the new game will be Assassin's Creed Mirage. It will be set in Baghdad between 860 and 870 CE, will be a return to the gameplay style of the original Assassin's Creed, and is expected out in the spring of 2023.

YouTuber j0nathan https://t.co/IgrqJfAV7u revealed this information on the new Assassins Creed game-Should be called Assassins Creed Mirage-Released in Spring 2023-The game will take place in Baghdad between the years 870-860-Return to basics, no leveling system pic.twitter.com/soCko92M6UAugust 30, 2022

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The leak is in reference to the Assassin's Creed spinoff codenamed Rift, whose existence came to light earlier this year. It was originally envisioned as an expansion for Valhalla, but Ubisoft decided to spin it off into a standalone game in order to bolster its Assassin's Creed lineup. The Bloomberg report that revealed Rift said that it will feature the character Basim Ibn Ishaq, and will be smaller than recent releases in the series, with a heightened focus on stealth gameplay.

That all matches up with j0nathan's video, and Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier—who wrote the February report on Rift—said on Twitter that parts of the report, including the title of the new game, setting, "return to basics" gameplay, and release target, are accurate. But he added that other elements, including that there will be multiple cities to explore, are not correct, and also expressed doubt that an Assassin's Creed remake will be released as part of the Mirage season pass. 

The timeline cited in the video fits as well: In its Q1 2022-23 report, Ubisoft delayed a "smaller unannounced premium game" from its planned release this year to 2023-24.

To clarify, all of this is separate from Assassin's Creed Infinity, the existence of which Ubisoft confirmed in July. No details on that game have been revealed yet, but it's reportedly going to be a live-service game with multiple historic settings. We may not have heard much in the way of Assassin's Creed news over the past couple of years, but that doesn't mean that things aren't happening.

We should find out what's going on soon enough. Ubisoft has been keeping things quiet over the past year, but we have high hopes for the upcoming Ubisoft Forward 2022, a full-scale showcase that's set to take place on September 10.

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[Leaked images finally show us Logitech's new handheld gaming console]

A few weeks back Logitech G announced that it was teaming up with Tencent to work on a game streaming handheld called (wait for it) the Logitech G Gaming Handheld. Thanks to leaked images, we now know what the handheld and its UI will look like. 

The three images that found their way to Evan Blass' Twitter account were quickly DMCA'ed by Logitech G . The speed at which Logitech G responded gives me a feeling these photos are the real deal.

They show a cute white handheld with black and key lime green accents. It looks smaller and more ergonomically friendly than the Steam Deck—it reminds me a bit of the WiiU gamepad. It's tough to gauge how big the thing is, but it looks slightly smaller than the Steam Deck.

One of the leaked screenshots includes the UI (or at least a work-in-progress version), with icons for some of the apps available from the Google Play Store such as Steam Remote Play, Nvidia GeForce Now, Google Chrome, Youtube, and Xbox (twice, for some reason). Logitech G has already said that the device will support multiple cloud gaming services. At least now we have an idea of which ones.

Logitech G has yet to reveal what operating system G Gaming will run, but seeing the Google Play Store pretty prominently in one of the images tells us it's most likely an Android device. An Android gaming handheld is a bit of a departure from all the recent Steam Deck rivals we've seen that run off a version of Linux or Windows. 

Android phones and tablets already make pretty decent game streaming devices, so it'll be interesting to see if people will hop on board. Once we learn its CPU and GPU specs, we'll be able to tell if Logitech's handset will be a decent emulation device, or limited to streaming games. What kind of display it has, how long the battery lasts, and pricing remain big questions. 

The Logitech G Gaming Handheld launches later this year. Thanks, 9to5google.

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(Image credit: Evan Blass)

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[Paradox Interactive's 'ultimate society simulator' arrives in October]

It took more than a decade for Paradox Interactive to announce a follow-up to its epic 19th century grand strategy game Victoria 2, but it won't take much more than a year to get from there to release: Paradox dropped a new Victoria 3 trailer today showing off some gameplay and—this is the important bit—revealing that it will launch on Steam on October 25.

This is a big deal for Paradox fans, for whom Victoria 3 was a bit like Half-Life 3: A much-demanded sequel that seemed like it would never actually happen. As with so many things online, the long wait took on a life of its own as a meme, which Paradox leaned into with a meme contest shortly after Victoria 3 was launched. 

(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

That's not the only big bit of society simulator news to arrive today. We've also got our first gameplay preview and, while Victoria 3 is still a couple months away from full release, calling our initial impressions "promising" seems like a vast undersell.

"Victoria 3 is a breathtakingly ambitious simulation unlike anything that's come before," our previewer wrote. "There are some places where it becomes cumbersome due to the complexity of all the moving parts, particularly when it comes to the economy. But I could hardly drag myself away to do anything else for the 10 days I got to play it."

And honestly, are you even really playing a Paradox sim if the complexity doesn't get cumbersome now and then?

Victoria 3 is available for pre-purchase now on Steam for $50/£42/€50, or a little bit more for the Grand Edition, which includes various bits of additional content including the first expansion. Preordering either edition will also get you a copy of the remastered Victoria 2 soundtrack, which as preorder bonuses go is actually pretty cool.

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[This Doom 2 mod is crammed so full of effects it challenges modern PCs]

In a just world, I could just tell you that Doom: The False Angel stars a character called "Victoria Noire," and that'd be the end of it. Everyone would rush to download it, sending it skyrocketing to the top of the mod charts off the back of its ridiculously cool protagonist name.

But we live in this world, not a just one. So instead I will tell you that Doom: The False Angel is a mod for Doom 2 whose mission is to bring the mobility and breakneck pace of Doom: Eternal and the garish cool of Devil May Cry to the sprite-filled halls of Doom 2. And it looks like something I'd have drawn up in the back of a school notebook when I was 13.

Victoria Noire is a human whose abilities have been enhanced to superheroic levels by a technology that has lent her "pseudo-angelic" powers. Where once she was nothing but a tool used for evil ends by, um, someone (probably a megacorporation, if I had to guess), she's now gone rogue and decided to wield her dual pistols for good instead of evil. In gameplay terms, that pretty much means you do a lot of parkour while shooting masses of Doom enemies with a vast library of cyberpunk guns, and a few swords.

The way the protagonist effortlessly swaps between katanas and enormous guns reminds me a bit of EYE: Divine Cybermancy. The False Angel is over the top in every way possible: every shot from every gun is wreathed in its own personal light show, enemies paint the walls red when they explode, and movement happens at mach speeds as you bunnyhop, rocketjump, and otherwise do everything you can to keep your inertia going.

It looks great, and maybe even too great for some. Some of the comments on the mod's page are from people frustrated that their relatively modern PCs seem unable to run a Doom 2 mod, but that's the price we pay for such a buffet of ludicrous effects. Regardless, it's a free mod for an ancient game, so if you're as enamoured by it as I am, you can find it over on its page at ModDB.

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[Where to find Rukkhashava Mushrooms in Genshin Impact]

Explore Sumeru these Genshin Impact 3.0 guides

(Image credit: miHoYo)

Genshin Impact 3.0: What you need to know
Genshin Impact Sumeru: How to get there
Genshin Impact Dendroculus: Where to find them
Genshin Impact End of the Line: Get the fish-bow

Rukkhashava Mushrooms are a new Sumeru regional speciality in Genshin Impact 3.0, and besides being a bit of a mouthful to say, these fluorescent fungi are a vital material in levelling up the four-star Dendro character, Collei. Since you can get Collei for free, the only barrier to using her is whether you've actually got the materials for her ascension.

As with the Nilotpala Lotus that Tighnari requires, Rukkhashava Mushrooms can only be found in very specific areas of Sumeru, so you'll have to trek a bit out of your way in order to farm them. Here, I'll explain the best places to find Rukkhashava Mushrooms, as well as providing a few tips to help with the speedy harvesting of this Genshin regional speciality.

Genshin Impact Rukkhashava Mushrooms: Where to farm 

There are lots of Rukkhashava Mushrooms in Mawtiyima Forest (Image credit: miHoYo interactive map)

You can get Rukkhashava Mushrooms all over Sumeru, but in particular in the Mawtiyima Forest; unsurprising when you consider it's a forest of giant mushrooms. You can also gather them in the Apam Woods and on Devantaka Mountain. You'll frequently find them growing on tree trunks or on the ground, just like real mushrooms. Every specific location is displayed on the official Genshin Impact interactive map, if you're looking to farm each area.

In order to ascend Collei fully, you're going to need 168 of these mushrooms. Since there are only 74 in the world, this means you'll have to do a bit more than two complete farms, or three partial ones. Remember that it takes two real world days for regional specialities to respawn, so be sure to factor that into your farming. If you happen to have Tighnari, make certain to add him to your party, as his Encyclopedic Knowledge passive displays Sumeru-unique resources on your minimap, which is handy for locating each one.

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[Bungie's Joe Blackburn talks Lightfall, Strand and the huge systemic changes coming to Destiny 2]

Lightfall is set on Neptune, with the guardians protecting the city of Neomuna from Emperor Calus and his Cabal loyalists.   (Image credit: Bungie)

Last week's Destiny 2 showcase dropped a deluge of information about the next major expansion: Lightfall. Set to land on February 28, it sees the guardians journeying to Neptune and the previously undiscovered gleaming city of Neomuna. There they'll meet new allies called Cloud Striders, learn how to wield Strand (a second "Darkness" subclass), and face off against Emperor Calus, whose Shadow Legion has been augmented by The Witness and now includes monstrous "Tormentors". 

Even for committed Destiny 2 enjoyers, it was a lot. And that was before you got into the systemic changes, like the addition of a much-requested in-game LFG to help find fireteams for any activity, the even more requested loadout manager, and improvements to the frequently-maligned new player onboarding experience. With so many threads to pull on, I wanted to speak to game director Joe Blackburn immediately. He was joined by assistant general manager Dan McAuliffe, and we started off with Strand.

Warlock's unleash a burst of Strand in their super, but will also be able to summon Strand creatures. (Image credit: Bungie)

Grappling with Strand 

Destiny 2's original "Light" subclasses have relatively obvious themes in fire, electricity and, um, the infinite nothingness that haunts us all. In 2020, Bungie added the first "Darkness" subclass in the icy form of Stasis, but Strand feels like the most esoteric subclass offering so far. The pitch is that you're reaching into the weave of the universe itself to pull on the threads of life and death. In gameplay terms, that translates to Hunter Threadrunners wielding a rope dart, Warlock Architects summoning creatures spun from Strand, and Titans seemingly getting the short straw with another melee-heavy kit in the form of oversized claws.

With most of the other options gone, Strand has been designated green as its signature colour. I ask Blackburn whether the design space for new subclasses is now starting to feel restricted. He rejects the idea, arguing that if anything the combat team has an overabundance of ideas for new subclasses. For Strand, he says the desire was to create something that felt very blockbuster: "It started to get really crystallised when we saw rope darts and whips and weird things being grafted onto people's arms."

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Joe Blackburn

Game Director, Destiny 2

Joe Blackburn cut his teeth on the raid team at Bungie, where his work included Last Wish. Her served as creative lead on Season of Opulence, before leaving for a one-year stint at Riot. In 2020 he returned to Bungie in the role of Destiny 2 game director. Not pictured: Joe's excellent moustache.

In Lightfall, all the classes have a Spider-Man-style grappling hook with Strand equipped. As a destination, the cybertropolis of Neomuna is all about verticality, so the hook enables you to traverse the skyline at high speed. It's also intended as a combat tool, which makes me wonder how practical it is to zip around like a Cirque Du Soleil performer mid-firefight, especially in endgame content such as Grandmaster Nightfalls. 

"I think you will absolutely be seeing people use grapple in high-level PVE," says Blackburn. He also notes how handy Strand is when you need to dunk an object in an area teeming with enemies, especially if a teammate makes you invisible with a smoke bomb first.

Unlike Spider-Man, your webs don't need to attach to anything—the green string will grip on to thin air. Space magic!  (Image credit: Bungie)

Destiny 2 players are notorious for finding ways to go out of bounds, either to cheese encounters or access secret content. Surely the addition of such a powerful movement tool will lead to an explosion in shenanigans?

Our ceiling for out-of-bounds shenanigans is already really high.

—Joe Blackburn

"I'm always nervous when we introduce new things," says McAuliffe. "But it's nervous excitement. We want to push the boundaries of freedom and choice." He also thinks the hook has the potential to revitalise old content, because players will be able to traverse the spaces differently. On the potential for breaking the game, he's relatively relaxed. "Our test team is incredible. We will locate and fix the most egregious issues. You know there will be industrious players looking for ways to grapple over mountains, but I think that is absolutely worth the trade-off for the cool moments of feeling like a superhero when you grapple in, revive a teammate, and get the heck out of dodge." 

Blackburn adds that the decision to greenlight the grappling hook was made as soon as they saw it, because it was too cool not to reject. "I don't think it's necessarily going to drastically increase the ceiling for out-of-bounds shenanigans," he says laughing, "because our ceiling is already really high." What it probably will do is make it easier for lower skilled players to visit mysterious hidden areas like the Galaxy Pools without having to learn arcane sword movement glitches.

This is a Cloud Strider called Nimbus, a Lightfall NPC. Cloud Striders have evolved to be preternaturally tall, and once accepting the calling will only live for 10 more years. (Image credit: Bungie)

Why get cyberpunked now? 

Watching the showcase, I have to say I was a little surprised at how hard Destiny 2 is leaning into the neon-drenched look. Aside from light dalliances with the cyber aesthetic during Season of the Splicer and locations like the Arcology on Titan, the Destiny series has largely stuck to its signature style of collapsed civilization overrun by nature.

We're finding something that has never been touched

—Dan McAuliffe

I'm worried going full cyberpunk might make Neomuna seem a bit obvious. McAuliffe doesn't think so. He says one of the main reasons for the radical change of direction was the desire to create separation from The Witch Queen, which was all earth tones, flat ground, and caves. "Rather than give [players] another terrarian sort of environment, we asked what would be a really strong change of pace. Go up. Go modern. Go fabricated instead of grown." 

The key idea was verticality, which led to traversal and actually entering these futuristic spaces. Neomuna is also notable for being inhabited, rather than abandoned. This is a world under invasion by Calus and his troops, with its own defence force in the form of the Cloud Striders. Contrary to what I'd assumed from the various leaks, the Cloud Striders are not aliens, but human colonists who fled the original Collapse on Earth and have since evolved in secret. They're powerful but they aren't Light wielders, and they won't be the ones to teach us the secrets of Strand. "We're finding something that has never been touched," confirms McAuliffe.

The Tormentor is a creation of The Witness, the Big Bad of the current Destiny 2 saga who the guardians are only now beginning to take on. (Image credit: Bungie)

The biggest threat on Neomuna's streets comes from Tormentors, huge denizens of the pyramid ships. It's exciting that, with the current era of Destiny 2 drawing to a close, we're finally facing off against actual forces of The Witness. 

"That's clearly what we're doing here with the Tormenters," says Joe. "We're showing what these disciples and followers of the pyramid look like. Some of the most ancient, most converted ones."

In a group activity the callout is going to be: ''frell', 'frell', 'frell', Tormentor!

—Dan McAuliffe

In terms of design, Tormentors share much DNA with Rhulk, the raid boss from Vow of the Disciple. "Rhulk was a big lift for the team," says Blackburn, "because it was the first one. We needed people to come away saying: 'Whoah, these things are tough'. They could take on anything we've fought before. We want to keep that bar really high." He says Tormentors will be even more dangerous than Hive Guardians, so when one appears it's going to be a big deal. 

McAuliffe agrees: "It's a thing that demands all of your attention in a solo activity, and in a group activity the callout is going to be: ''frell', 'frell', 'frell', Tormentor!"

An end to sunsetting 

Snuck in towards the end of last week's showcase was a piece of bookkeeping that gave relief to the whole fanbase. Bungie will no longer be 'sunsetting' entire expansions. In 2020, due to the game's ever bloating file size, and the impossibility of testing and balancing every new piece of content against all the old stuff, the studio took a tough decision to begin removing some expansions, including their accompanying planetary destinations. Predictably, it was about as popular as taking away paid content ever is. So what changed? McAuliffe: "As we close the Light and Darkness saga, which runs from Shadowkeep to the Final Shape, we want to make sure that the whole sequence is fully playable from start to finish. That's critically important to us."

We're looking at systems that can make you feel like you don't need to keep everything.

—Joe Blackburn

The reversal on sunsetting has been enabled by upgrades to the game engine and infrastructure. Seasonal content will continue to expire as normal, but bigger content drops like last year's 30th Anniversary DLC will stick around in perpetuity. "It's not a case of we just fixed one flaw in the engine and now never need to sunset anything ever again," cautions McAuliffe. "We're always going to be making hard trade-offs between ongoing interoperable systems and awesome content and the ever-growing file size." I ask him specifically whether some of the older planets might still be on the chopping block. "Everyone can breathe easy about Nessus," says McAullife. "At least for now."

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/UVH9LLyJtepbniH4SKyxuH.jpg

Dan McAuliffe

Assistant General Manager

Dan McAuliffe has been at Bungie for more than four years now, having previously spent time at Wizards of the Coast and Amazon Game Studios. Knicks fan, for his sins. 

A related perennial problem is that of item storage. Bungie gave players an additional 100 slots to store gear in The Witch Queen, and sure enough we rapidly filled those up and began complaining again. I ask Blackburn what the long term answer is, because it's not like they're going to stop making new guns every three months. "This is still on our list of big, hard Destiny problems that we want to look at," he says. "We're looking at systems that can make you feel like you don't need to keep everything, because the world doesn't end if you get rid of a gun.

"It's a really interesting problem, and I think unique to Destiny because so many other MMOs just say you can't use this gear anymore. Whereas we're on the opposite side saying: 'What if you could use everything?' And players are like 'great, we love using everything!' But your house only has so much closet space."

The Quicksilver Storm seems to be a Cloud Strider weapon, but players can snag one know (but only if they're willing to pre-order.) (Image credit: Bungie)

Part of the problem is that Destiny isn't like other MMOs. A sword in World Of Warcraft is basically just a stat stick, but Destiny's guns look and feel amazing, so players get emotionally attached to them. Blackburn thinks that finding new ways for players to be able to reclaim weapons and perk combinations they've acquired in the past could be part of the solution, but that becomes another data storage issue.

Hoarding is compounded by the way that the combat meta in Destiny changes so often, with whole archetypes of weapons phasing in and out of relevance according to balance changes and seasonal mod options. As a result, the community clings to several versions of every notable weapon variant in case they suddenly become relevant.

Weapons in Destiny are incredibly flavourful, which combined with Bungie's slick FPS chops, results in players getting very attached to their favourites. (Image credit: Bungie)

"Crafting has the potential to be a solution here," says Blackburn, "but the risk is that one false move and suddenly the whole game is unlocked at your fingertips at all times." I ask him whether it might help if crafted weapons let you create an extra row of perks once you got to a certain level, negating the need to keep multiple versions of the same gun for separate purposes (eg, a PvE and a PvP Austringer). 

Blackburn doesn't promise anything, but he does like the fact that having a crafting pattern unlocked means you can adapt to the meta as it shifts, alleviating some pressure on players' vaults. However, he also admits: "The thing that we haven't solved is the player that wants to swap quickly between two different perk options."

Playlist activity and subclass refresh thoughts 

Towards the end of our talk, I turn to one of the topics that bother my clanmates most: The lack of updates to the Vanguard Strikes, Crucible and Gambit playlists. For a long time these were core to the Destiny 2 experience, with players grinding out rewards and XP over endless matches and missions. These days, with some of the content in terms of maps and missions lost to sunsetting, and other stuff five years old and showing it, over-familiarity can make these playlists very frustrating to feel forced to engage with. 

"We have a team that's looking at a bunch of these problems and I'm really even happy with the work that we've seen this year with us doing things, like adding Battlegrounds, to those playlists," says Blackburn. "We're going to be doing a bunch of work specifically in the Vanguard [playlist] around Lightfall. We're going back to some Strikes to update them." McAuliffe adds that he doesn't think every Strike needs to be replaced, but says the team wants to go into the older ones and give them the same kind of attention that new content gets. 

I have to imagine that Bungie's to-do list for Destiny 2 is voluminous at all times. The studio is essentially engaged in an eternal process of rebuilding the airliner as it flies it. Over the past three seasons the heaviest lift has been the rework of all three original Light subclasses in order to move them onto the modular system that Stasis uses. The result has seen an explosion in power level as new synergies and combos were created. In some cases, whole new abilities were added, while old favourites got revamped. Many perks were rolled into each other, while others were removed entirely, and for the most part the response has been positive. Certainly, our guardians have never felt so strong. 

Arc is the latest subclass to get completely revamped in Destiny 2. (Fetching pirate tricorn model's own.) (Image credit: Bungie)

We make such unique player fantasies that we're not going to hit everybody with every single one.

—Dan McAuliffe

Inevitably, with such a large playerbase, there has also been criticism. The rework to Void Hunters and Solar Warlocks seemed to miss the mark, although in both cases experimentation has led to powerful builds. I ask if it's disappointing when groupthink sets in after only a few hours of play. "No," says McAuliffe. 

"If everyone universally hated all of the 3.0 updates I would be disappointed, because of all the work that goes into them" he says. "I think, much like most of social media, if you want to find a particular echo chamber you can find it, but what we're seeing from the community is diversity of thought. We make such unique player fantasies that we're not going to hit everybody with every single one, and I think that's okay. So I don't worry so much about the calcification of negative sentiment from certain folks." 

One of my favourite parts of these reworks has been the use of new "verbs" to denote specific effects that are shared between the perks and abilities of each subclass. Void got stuff like "Volatile" and "Weaken", Solar got "Scorch" and "Ignite", and Arc just added "Jolt" and "Amplified". My only complaint is that some of these are more visually legible than others, particularly when you're being shot at by many aliens. For example, it's easy to see that a target is Volatile, because it's surrounded by a swirl of purple particles. However, I found the solar stuff harder to parse. I can tell that a target has been Scorched because it will be burning, but it's tricky to see how much more Scorch I need to apply before it Ignites like a mini Krakatoa. 

"It's something we always think about," says Blackburn. "With the older subclasses, some are easier to identify and some are hard. We have so much stuff that catches on fire! So this is a thing where, after all the subclass 3.0 work, the team is having to go back and make these elements, these buffs and debuffs, more consistent. In the future, because they've gone through this pain, they can say, 'Okay, we've got a new damage type, what's really important? What are the things we need for the visual identity?' With the newer subclasses, like Stasis and Strand, it's pretty easy to tell if something is frozen with Stasis."

Exotic armor pieces can supercharge the right build. The Warlock helmet Fallen Sunstar is crazy when used in conjunction with a build that leans into Ionic Traces. (Image credit: Bungie)

One piece of feedback I've seen regarding the recent Arc 3.0 rework is that a couple of the subclasses crutch too hard on specific exotic armor in order to make them viable. I mention Geomag Stabilizers on Stormcaller Warlock and Cuirass of the Falling Star for Striker Titans.

It takes some time and some thought for people to break out of the idea that the only way to play Destiny is to smash the boss as hard as possible.

—Joe Blackburn.

"I think there's a balancing point with a bunch of those," says Blackburn. "There was a long time where people that used Celestial Nighthawk were like: 'This is the way you play this class, if you aren't using that why are you even using Golden Gun?' We've gotten to a place, in recent years, where we have exotics that are like a 30% boost and you can choose to run it or not to run it. It takes some time and some thought for people to break out of the idea that the only way to play Destiny is to smash the boss as hard as possible."

It's a good point and reminds of the fact that the weapon perk discourse revolves around what does the most damage to bosses in a short window of time, rather than what's useful over the entire course of an activity. Blackburn uses the example of exotic primary weapons, which were given a whopping 40% damage buff across the board, and now make power ammo drop more often, as an example of how hard it can be to change mindsets. (Hint: exotic primaries are really good.) 

McAuliffe says the situation should improve once Lightfall lands. "I think that when our loadout manager comes online, it will help with some of that. Right now, I'm less likely to experiment as a player and I'll trend towards the thing that everyone says is good. Whereas if I can switch really quickly, I'm more likely to experiment and find something that works better for me." 

He's right, and for an inveterate addict like me, the loadout manager is even more exciting than the addition of Tormentors. But before Lightfall arrives I still have the current Season of Plunder to yo ho my way through, and another dungeon to best before the year ends. At one point in our chat Blackburn mentions the next 10 years of Destiny, and for almost any other game that would sound absurd. But if anything, the series is only speeding up. Heading out towards the true MMO-FPS hybrid that us holdouts have been dreaming of for all these years. 

Yoinking your way out of trouble promises to be a key use of Strand's grappling hook. (Image credit: Bungie)

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[This is the biggest working keyboard ever built]

Youtube channel RKade is all about "gaming like you've never seen it" and I have to admit that I have never before seen two people build a 16-foot long keyboard from scratch. The build seems to be taking a tilt at the (currently vacant) Guinness World Records spot for 'biggest keyboard' though, as the RKade pair would find out, Guinness World Records are a load of rubbish.

The breezy video takes you through a sped up version of the labour-intensive process by which the channel's hosts first build the keys—constructed from cardboard before being painted and having lettering decals applied. They've designed an unusually large layout, 3d printed a tonne of custom component parts for the mounting, and installed 'springs' to make the keys pop back up.

It's a build that is equal parts technical ingenuity and good old-fashioned getting your hands dirty. There are a few hiccups along the way, though the largest is when the wood they've used to construct the frame begins warping, necessitating a complete teardown and re-making the keyboard frame with particle board.

The whole ginormous structure works through a standard keyboard circuit board, which sits under the edifice with each key activating a lever switch that is wired-up to it. The moment one of these giant keys is pressed and an 'a' appears on-screen is kinda magic.

Needless to say, RKade used their creation to play a typing game: the twist being that the host with the lowest score had to then type out 'Never Gonna Give You Up' as punishment. It's actually quite nice to see a rickroll used in a somewhat creative way for once. As you'd guess, it's much easier to type out the whole thing with clever use of keyboard shortcuts. When the keys are several feet apart though, time to get some exercise.

Oh and: the pair didn't get the Guinness World Record. Apparently because it's not based on an existing keyboard. But who cares, this thing justifies its own existence.

Perfect peripherals

(Image credit: Colorwave)

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This isn't the first and will certainly not be the last attempt to build a giant keyboard. Razer brought a giant one to CES 2018, which was around ten times bigger than the standard size, but next to this it looks itsy-bitsy small.

Stiffer competition in every sense comes from Russian artist Anatoly Vyatkin’s beautiful concrete 'Keyboard Monument,' installed in the city of Yekaterinburg in 2005. This is the largest keyboard in the world, at 50 feet wide and 13 feet high, though unlike RKade's build this is a non-functional tribute.

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[How to get Collei for free in Genshin Impact]

Explore Sumeru these Genshin Impact 3.0 guides

(Image credit: miHoYo)

Genshin Impact 3.0: What you need to know
Genshin Impact Sumeru: How to get there
Genshin Impact Dendroculus: Where to find them
Genshin Impact End of the Line: Get the fish-bow

Collei is one of the first Dendro characters to arrive in Genshin Impact, and even though Tighnari is the featured five-star, this ranger-in-training is likely to be most players' first taste of the plant-based element. Collei really shines in a support role, helping to create powerful Dendro reactions with her Floral Ring boomerang skill and AoE Dendro burst.

Since Sumeru is filled with puzzles that require you to use Dendro, it's extremely useful to have a character of that element, and it's nice to be able to try out the new reactions and see how they interact with your party—that's probably why miHoYo has made Collei available for free. If you want to grab the four-star ranger for yourself before trekking into the rainforests of Sumeru, here's what you need to do.

How to get Collei for free 

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The Graven Innocence event lets you recruit Collei for free (Image credit: miHoYo)

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Collei is a decent Dendro support character (Image credit: miHoYo)

Before you wish on any banners for Collei in Genshin Impact 3.0, you'll want to take a look at the new Graven Innocence event. You can find this in the event menu, and it requires you to head to Port Ormos in the south and talk to some wood carvers who are down on their luck. Follow the questline up until the point you meet Collei and reunite the father and his son, and you'll get Collei as a character for free.

Unlike previous events where you'd have to earn a shedload of currency to recruit a free character, all you need to do this time is finish that tutorial quest. Even if you've already got Collei, or still plan to wish on the banner, it's well worth it, since you can use this to unlock her first constellation instead. However, be aware that you've only got until the end of Genshin Impact 3.0—around October 5—to complete the event quest and claim her.

While miHoYo advises that you finish the initial Sumeru story quest before you do the event, you don't have to. It is worth getting to the point where you say goodbye to Collei and leave Gandharva Ville though, as otherwise the quests will clash and you'll be unable to proceed. You can skip the prerequisite quest in the event menu, but it'll still be available to continue when you're done grabbing Collei.

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[Creating utopias and dystopias by gaslight in Victoria 3]

The year is 1881 and I've turned the islands of Hawaii into an anarchist paradise that long ago disposed of the king. Our industries are modest, but they are all owned by the workers, giving us one of the highest standards of living in the world. For the most part, we did this without firing a shot.

Victoria 3 is, even more than its 2011 predecessor, a grand strategy game about shaping a society. Covering the years from 1836 to 1936 on a highly detailed world map, it models every single individual person alive at the time. That might sound absurd, but it's not an exaggeration. They're broadly organized by culture, religion, and profession into groups called "pops" that all get their own 3D portraits, but when you see that there are 4,361 Anglo-Canadian Protestant Machinists in Saskatchewan, that's not an abstracted figure. The Clausewitz engine is keeping track of all of those people, from their birth rate to literacy level to political preferences.

If characters are the core of Crusader Kings 3, pops are the core of Victoria 3. Not only do you need them to plow your fields, fight your wars, and work in your textile mills, they exert their influence on the political balance of your nation. At least, the educated ones do. And as the 1800s roll on, more and more of the lower and middle classes will become socially aware and politically active. You can certainly try to slow that down by passing draconian censorship laws and making schools only available to the wealthy but, as a certain Romanov learned in real life, you hold back the tide of history at your own peril.

Working with or against the popular will to build your ideal society is one major half of the central gameplay. Early on, most countries are controlled by powerful landowners who exert the lion's share of the influence by simply having the most money. There are multiple sources of political clout, but even in a pure democracy, cold hard cash will always be one factor—lobbyists cut deals and bribes change hands regardless of how the ballots fall.

There is a lot you can do to nudge things in a more egalitarian direction, perhaps starting with extending the vote to all landowners, then to the heads of households, then to all adult men, and eventually to women. Moving people out of the fields and into the factories changes the equation, too. This will slowly erode the power of the old aristocracy. But they will fight these laws every step of the way to preserve their interests, and may even start a civil war if you try to pass too many reforms too quickly. And their every economic loss is often a gain for the rising capitalist tycoons.

Conflict of interest

(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

Trying to go straight from an absolute monarchy to a parliamentary republic in 1836 is a recipe for disaster.

In this way, the main antagonists you have to struggle with are often within your own borders. Of the five or six campaigns I played, in only one did I get majorly involved in foreign wars. And it's perfectly possible to avoid international entanglements and still have an exciting run full of drama, conflict, and intrigue. I have often tried to play Paradox's other games without going to war, but Victoria 3 seems specifically built for it. When you try to pass a law, like establishing public schools, everyone who doesn't like the change will try to stall it. And if they're fed up enough, perhaps because you also recently made them start paying for a national health system and established a minimum wage, they might attempt to violently overthrow the government.

The strength of such a revolt is based on how much power the opposition still holds, so there's a delicate dance of sneaking through moderate reforms that will gradually weaken the old guard before you push for anything more drastic. Trying to go straight from an absolute monarchy to a parliamentary republic in 1836 is a recipe for disaster. But if instead you start by abolishing levies, setting up a standing army, and allowing propertied men to elect representatives who at least nominally serve at the pleasure of the king, their base of power can die a death by a thousand cuts, eventually rendering their protests mostly toothless.

Certain types of pops are more likely to support certain interest groups, such as aristocrats mostly throwing in their lot with the landowners, and each interest group has a set of traits that determine which policies they support and oppose. A paternalistic interest group, for instance, scoffs at the idea of women being equal to men and prefers a strong guiding hand on the tiller of government. These preferences can also be influenced by characters, as well. Every interest group has a leader with an ideology of their own. The trade unions may start out relatively moderate but, as new ideas spread within your borders, they may come to be led by a socialist or a feminist leader pushing for more radical changes. It's certainly possible to try and keep a very conservative monarchy until the endgame, but it becomes increasingly harder to do as more people become literate and distant universities spread ideas like egalitarianism and anarchism.

Workshops of the world

(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

As the lower classes become more literate, and especially if they hear about this new craze called socialism, the minimum standard of living they expect to maintain will continue to rise.

The other reason it's a hindrance to stay rooted in the past is that you'll fall behind in the second major arena of Victoria 3: the Industrial Revolution. As your campaign opens, most people in the world are illiterate peasant farmers working in subsistence agriculture, barely producing enough to provide for themselves. It's a state of affairs that pleases and benefits the aristocracy, but leaves little room to grow your economy with the many wondrous inventions that will come about in the next 100 years—from the cotton gin to railroads to radios.

Taking advantage of these modern marvels will require you to build schools and universities, teaching your peasants how to become machinists and engineers, as well as building coal mines, steel mills, and shipyards. There are dozens of basic, luxury, and industrial goods that all have dynamic prices based on supply and demand within your country's market, which may include multiple sovereign states via a customs union. Producing or importing more of any given resource lowers the price, which will also improve the standard of living for all of your pops as they can afford more on the same salary. More supply also makes your domestic industries producing those goods less profitable though, which may lead to the workers in certain factories becoming poorer or being laid off, so it's always a balancing act.

At the beginning, only the very wealthy will expect to have nice things like wine and luxury furniture. But as the lower classes become more literate, and especially if they hear about this new craze called socialism, the minimum standard of living they expect to maintain will continue to rise. A factory laborer in 1920 might be significantly richer than his great-great-grandfather who was a farmhand in 1840, but he won't be content with his lot in life as he's read enough to understand how the system is rigged in favor of the rich, which may lead him to become a radical and demand reforms like a minimum wage or workplace safety regulations. The industrialists who own the factories will, of course, oppose this. It's a very direct, no-nonsense way of modeling the causes of class conflict, and one that ultimately works better and feels more authentic than Victoria 2's abstract "consciousness" system.

Drums of war

(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

That isn't to say you can't play this as a conquest-heavy map-painting game. It's just not the default. And war plays out much differently than in other grand strategy games, as you don't actually move units around manually. Rather, you assign generals—characters with their own traits, quirks, and tendencies—to fronts, and give them an order to attack, defend, or stand by. The war will then play out mostly on auto-pilot, with most of your ability to influence things driven by keeping your arms industries churning, inventing new methods of warfare like aerial reconnaissance and early tanks, and reforming your army to better meet your needs. It's definitely not the strongest plank of Victoria 3, but it does the job.

Victoria 3 is a breathtakingly ambitious simulation unlike anything that's come before. There are some places where it becomes cumbersome due to the complexity of all the moving parts, particularly when it comes to the economy. But I could hardly drag myself away to do anything else for the 10 days I got to play it, and look forward to many more revolutions to come when it releases October 26.

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[Explore square planets in this space survival sim that’s like an automated Minecraft]

Is it time to start calling blocky games Minecraft-likes? I can't say I've seen too many in the past that have successfully channelled Mojang's charming survival adventure, but Outerverse is a pretty impressive take built on Minecraft's blocky shoulders. As well as that, it draws some inspiration from boss elements of Valheim, as well as the world automation of Factorio and Satisfactory.

If that sounds like an odd combination of elements, it makes much more sense in the hands. Developed by Tbjbu2, Outerverse is kind of like Minecraft in space. Rather than that flat world that goes forever, you spawn on a cubic world which you can explore, build on, mine through, farm on, before creating a little spaceship to find a new planet to explore in your galaxy. I played a little to see just how it performed and was pretty impressed with its potential and how quickly it gets you going on your automation adventure. 

You're encouraged to mine, build machines, and eventually improve your character and your repertoire to the point that you can find and take down six different bosses scattered about the universe. These Titans are Valheim in style, as they're all pretty different in body and abilities, and you have to find their counters, like fire, lasers or rockets to make sure you're prepared for the fight. 

(Image credit: Freedom Games)

The machines play a big role, taking over much of the busywork you'd traditionally associate with the survival genre. They'll do everything out-of-the-box but can also be programmed by the player (when starting a world you have the option to play 'manually'). This will disable the machines, automation, logic and wires so you can make everything tick over and behave in exactly the way you want. 

From the little chunk I played, I'd describe Outerverse as generous. From the automation focus of the game, making it easier to find mines and get machines doing your bidding, to the huge amount of light a torch throws out, the game wants the player to thrive more than survive. I'm not sure how it scales, but it was a relief when I built the first 'machine', a cave finder, and it did a lot of the mining for me. A line extended from the seven block structure all the way down into the earth, even through a lake in the way the line's path to an open space underground. Outerverse cuts the cruft and wants you to get to the good stuff as soon as possible.

(Image credit: Freedom Games)

Though I've described it as a cocktail of Minecraft, Factorio, and Valheim, it's a lighter version of each. The explanation of the automation feels a little overwhelming, though there are handy little pictures like LEGO guides explaining how things are built. And the visuals aren't quite as charming or expressive as Minecraft's. Sand is pink, as is iron ore, as were all the animals and some of the enemies I met. But as a very small take on quite a large genre, Outerverse does a pretty excellent job at taking the bits and pieces of each game it likes and moulding them into something I've not seen before. 

Outerverse is brand new and so it's worth keeping an eye on future updates as even the little I played was pretty darn fun. And oh, in case you were worried about the name sounding blockchain or NFT-y, Outerverse was already unfortunately caught up in a controversy leading publisher Freedom Games to deny its involvement in any crypto schemes. A scammer used the game as a front for unlucky users to buy tokens. Whoever this was claimed that you could use said tokens in Outerverse but Freedom games quickly made it clear that the website and accounts had nothing to do with the real project.   

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[Welcome Hamartia]

Hello Hamartia,

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.

Hamartia joined on the 08/30/2022.

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[The best gaming mouse in 2022]

The best gaming mouse makes for a powerful pointer. Whether you smashing out a fast-paced FPS or prepping in a precise strategy game, you need a mouse that matches your pace, and provides the accuracy you need. The best mice will give your the edge and a wireless mouse should always be charged for action.

In the great debate over using a controller for PC gaming vs. a keyboard and mouse, the latter takes the crown in a lot of situations. Your preferred genre will be a big factor, but generally the kind of speed and accuracy a mouse delivers can't be matched by a controller. Even if controllers are your thing, though, it's always good to have a great gaming mouse as a backup for when stick drift sets in.

A gaming mouse will ace build quality, features, and ergonomics, but some will be more specialised. The best mouse for MOBA players will have a good deal more buttons, and be heavier than the best lightweight mouse that a CS:GO player might use, for example. Today, wireless options are much more prominent and just as accurate as their wired counterparts; we've collated those into the best wireless mouse guide for your convenience. Whether you prefer them wired or wireless, light or heavy, or laden with programmable buttons, there's a mouse out there for you. 

The best gaming mouse doesn't need to cost hundreds of dollars either. We've found some great budget options. We've tested dozens of gaming mice over the years, and boiled them down to those that are worth your time. If you're looking to round off your setup, the best gaming keyboards will pair nicely with the mice below. Otherwise, you'll be performing a bit lopsidedly.

Best gaming mouse

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(Image credit: Razer)

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(Image credit: Razer)

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(Image credit: Razer)

1. Razer DeathAdder V2

The best gaming mouse for the majority of PC gamers

DPI: 20,000 | Sensor: Optical | Interface: USB | Buttons: 6 | Ergonomic: Right-handed | Weight: 82g (2.9oz) | Battery life: N/A

One of the best sensors available

Ideal shape for palm or claw grips 

Supports a variety of hand sizes 

Buttons on the flimsy side

The Razer Deathadder V2 improves on everything we love about the Deathadder Elite, itself one of the best gaming mice, and one that has been around since 2016 in various forms.

The most obvious improvement is the Focus+ Optical Sensor, the same one used in the excellent Razer Viper Ultimate Wireless. I’ll go into it in a second, but I was more impressed by the more subtle changes Razer has made for the V2. The first is the scroll wheel. Razer has a ridiculous name for the new design, "Instinctive Scroll Wheel Tactility," but the results are perfect. It’s exactly the right tightness. It spins smoothly, but you can still feel every notch of the turn, so you won’t accidentally scroll too many times.

The fact Razer is using a new wire, with an equally ridiculous name, "Speedflex Cable," also sounds insignificant, but turns out to be a big deal. I’ve used a version of the Deathadder (the Expert) for years, and my one complaint is that the stiffer wire can sometimes pull the mouse to one side, depending on how it sits on my desk. The V2’s wire is the most flexible I’ve tried on a gaming mouse, and ultimately that means it’s less likely to impact your mouse movement, even if you get lazy about wire management, like me. 

Razer reckons they’ll last 70 million clicks.

The left and right mouse buttons are more durable than the Elite, too. They’re optical, rather than mechanical (they use an infrared light beam to register clicks), which means they should deliver fewer misclicks, lower latency, and have a longer life. Razer reckons they’ll last 70 million clicks, rather than the 50 million for the Deathadder Elite. While I can’t possibly tell how accurate that number is, they certainly felt as responsive as I could ever need, and I never misclicked. In games of Fortnite and Escape from Tarkov, my shots felt instant, and I never had to worry about firing accidentally.

And then we come to the sensor, Razer’s 'party trick' (the Deathadder Elite’s stats are in parentheses for comparison). It goes up to 20,000 DPI/CPI (16,000), tracks up to 650 inches per second (450), and has a resolution accuracy of 99.6 percent (99.4 percent). Those increased numbers may or may not mean much to you, because they’ll make very little difference in day-to-day performance. How often do you need to go above 16,000 DPI/CPI? Not often.

However, carrying on a trend in recent Razer mice, the left and right mouse buttons are a bit flimsy. They feel fine, even sturdy, when you’re clicking them straight on, but the slightest amount of sideways pressure makes them waggle off-center. It makes me think they couldn’t take much of a beating, such as if you threw the V2 into a bag before running out the door. It’s a relatively minor gripe, but I noticed the same thing with the Viper Ultimate Wireless, and I hope Razer can sort it soon. It detracts from the overall solid build.

Read our full Razer DeathAdder V2 review.

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2. Logitech G203 Lightsync

The best cheap gaming mouse

DPI: 8,000 | Sensor: Optical | Interface: USB | Buttons: 5 | Ergonomic: Right-handed | Weight: 85g (3.0oz) | Battery life: N/A

An affordable bargain

Great shape for those who like smaller mice

Three-zone RGB lighting

Feature-light

Less DPI granularity

If you find the Logitech G203 Lightsync familiar, you're not the only one. This mouse may be tipped as a fairly recent arrival, but it is almost functionally identical to the G203 Prodigy that preceded it.

The G203 Lightsync sits within a hotly-contended category of budget-conscious gaming mice. Most of all it faces stern competition from Razer, whose lineup at this price, or thereabouts, now includes the Deathadder Essential, Basilisk Essential, and Viper Mini. However, the G203 Lightsync has enough about it to stand its own. Its no-nonsense design packs the bare essentials, and it builds upon that slight flair for the aesthetic that you won't find quite so pronounced anywhere else.

The G203 Lightsync is a wired mouse—it's Lightspeed that you're looking for if you're after a wireless rodent. Instead, Lightsync denotes this mouse's compatibility with the Logitech G app and RGB lighting system, which is able to unify RGB lighting effects across compatible Logitech products. What's somewhat confusing is that non-Lightsync products are also able to integrate with said app to varying degrees.

The three titular lighting zones all lie within the thin strip that spans the rear palm rest, with the logo above taking the same color as the middle RGB lighting zone. While it might've been nice to have independent control of the logo itself, the option does allow for gorgeous tri-color gradient effects sweeping from one side of the mouse to the other.

Pair this with the G203 Lightsync's slightly tweaked white and grey option (as opposed to the white and black option previously available with the Prodigy) and you're onto something quite stunning for $40. That's right, the only other difference to note with the G203 Lightsync over its predecessor is the introduction of a grey scroll wheel reservation, as opposed to the bog-standard black adopted previously.

The G203 offers a DPI range of 200-8,000.

I've gone for the white colorway for the test unit for this review, and while I can't tell you what it will look like in five years' time, I can tell you that it looks quite stunning out of the box.

Expect the same near-ambidextrous design with the G203 Lightsync as Logitech's Lightspeed then, complete with two buttons under whereabouts the pad of your right-hand thumb would sit. These aren't removable or swappable to the opposite side, which certainly comes as a surprising flaw in the Logitech G203's otherwise one-size-fits-all design. Nevertheless, it's a simple design, and one which Logitech aptly calls "tried and true".

The unnamed "gaming-grade" sensor within the G203 offers a DPI range of 200-8,000, which should prove more than enough for all but the most colossal of 4K monitors—at which point you might want to turn to something with a little more grandeur than the G203. The sensor is more than suitable for decent and consistent gaming and turns up a clean sheet in mouse sensor tests.

Perhaps Logitech's unwillingness to reinvent the budget-conscious gaming mouse with every iteration of the G203 begets a quiet confidence in what it's bringing to the more affordable segment of its sprawling mouse lineup. The changes introduced with the G203 Lightsync, however few, may make for a materially slim review, but we're also not jumping at the chance to shift it out from our best gaming mouse roundup just yet.

Read our full Logitech G203 Lightsync review.

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3. Razer Naga Pro

The best MMO mouse

DPI: 20,000 | Sensor: Razer Focus+ optical sensor | Interface: Wireless, USB, Bluetooth | Buttons: 3 swappable side plates with up to 19+1 programmable buttons | Ergonomic: Right-handed | Weight: 117g (4.1oz) | Battery life: 150hrs

Customizable thumb grip with three different button arrays

Razer mouse charging Dock Chroma Compatible

Chunky and heavy

The Razer Naga Trinity has been on our best gaming mouse list as the top recommendation for MMO/ MOBA games for years now, but there's a new kid in town—the Razer Naga Pro. The Naga Pro drops the cable for Razer HyperSpeed Wireless and Bluetooth connectivity. It also picks up optical mouse switches and the over-the-top 20,000 DPI sensor.

The overall design of Naga Pro stays close to the Trinity but has gained a bit of weight to accommodate the new tech. The Naga Pro is 7mm wider and heavier than the Trinity at 117g, but thanks to the 100% PTFE feet, it glides smoothly across most surfaces. The bigger mouse also takes some getting used to; requiring my long hands to adopt a full palm grip. But the contoured mouse buttons and a rest for my ring finger make it easier to hold onto. Textured rubber grips for the thumb and pinky also help.  

I'm a fan of Razer's optical-mechanical switches, which use light to register clicks instead of mechanics, and that makes them really fast. The switches are durable too, with a lifespan of 70 million clicks, but of course, the Naga Pro has plenty of other buttons too. The three swappable plates have 2, 6, and 12 buttons which you can remap to your heart's content.

Remapping buttons in Razer Synapse is child's play.

Remapping buttons in Razer Synapse is child's play—a simple point-and-click affair. You can do anything from simple keyboard shortcut bindings to complex game macros as well as adjust DPI stages, polling rates, lift-offs, power management, and of course, Razer Chroma lighting.

Obviously, none of this matters if you have a laggy experience. Thankfully, the HyperSpeed Wireless doesn't disappoint. I used vsynctester.com to quickly measure lag and I was very impressed. The test records how quickly the cursor responds to your mouse movements. In wired mode, I recorded 6ms while the the Naga Pro's wireless connection managed 6.1ms—a 0.1ms difference. The Bluetooth was slower by 4-6ms but only a keen eye would notice it in daily use.

The Naga Pro's optical sensor has also been updated to the Razer Focus+ 20,000 DPI sensor with 650 IPS tracking. This is far beyond anything most people will ever need—I max out at 8,000 DPI.

Now, with all this technical wizardry, battery life is a legitimate concern but Razer's claim of a 150-hour battery life proves true. I've been using this review unit for the past week—averaging 14 hours daily and I still have about 35% battery left. That involved a ton of gaming, work, and swapping back and forth between wireless and Bluetooth.

Quite frankly, lack of a dock aside, I find nothing to really complain about the Naga Pro. The discerning, cable-phobic multi-genre master will love the speed, accuracy, and versatility of this new Razer Naga Pro.

Read our full Razer Naga Pro review.

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4. SteelSeries Prime Wireless Pro

A great mouse for the competitive gamer

DPI: 18,000 | Sensor: TrueMove Pro | Interface: Quantum Wireless 2.0 + USB Type-C | Buttons: 6 | Ergonomic: Right-handed | Weight: 80g (2.82oz) | Battery life: 100hrs quick charge

Excellent feel

Rock-solid wireless 

Great battery life with quick charge

Dull aesthetics

CPI switch is on the bottom

Non-standard USB Type-C charging cable

It's fascinating how much the new Steelseries Prime Wireless gaming mouse reminds me of the Razer Viper Ultimate. It's a no-frills, high-performance machine designed to meld with your palm and make you the FPS god you always dreamed of being.

The Prime Wireless immediately felt like it was designed just for my particular hand. Steelseries says they worked with several esports pros to develop the right shape and weight that feels like an extension of your arm. For once, the product lives up to the hype. 

The Prime Wireless is designed for right-handers particularly claw and fingertip grippers. The whole mouse seems to gently slope towards the right so that it cradles in your palm for a comfortable grip. The body is made from a micro-textured ABS plastic which has a matte finish that feels simultaneously slick and yet grippy. At 80g, it's slightly heavier than the Viper Ultimate, but it's hardly what you'd call heavy. 

The thumb well curves inwards while the mouse buttons rise higher towards your index finger and taper off under your middle finger. This subtle slope makes the buttons feel somehow easier to click. The thumb buttons are positioned slightly above where your thumb rests so there's barely any travel to reach them. I do wish they were slightly more forward so I don't have to crook my thumb so much in order to press the rear button but I can live with it.

The mouse glides effortlessly thanks to its lightweight and large PTFE skates.

The Prime Wireless has a built-in rechargeable battery that's rated for 100 hours per charge. That's over a week of average use. However, I should point out that those numbers are only achievable when the mouse is running in High-efficiency mode which tones down some settings like the RGB to save power. For gaming, you'll want to keep it in performance mode which will chew through the battery in significantly less time—around 40 hours in testing. Thankfully, charging the Prime Wireless is a breeze, thanks to a handy quick charge feature. 

When it comes to gaming, the Prime Wireless is just a joy to use. The mouse glides effortlessly thanks to its lightweight and large PTFE skates, especially since there's no annoying wire to hold you back. The TrueMove Air 18,000 CPI optical sensor combined with a 1,000Hz polling rate makes 1-1 tracking precise and snappy. Annoyingly, switching CPI sensitivity requires lifting the mouse to access the button underneath which isn't ideal in the heat of battle. 

Up top, the main clickers use proprietary Prestige OM magnetic switches which use a combination of magnets and lasers to actuate at 'quantum speeds' and are satisfying and responsive. The buttons feel solid without any wobble or sideways travel at all and are built to last longer than most—over 100 million clicks.

Bringing all this together is the Quantum 2.0 Wireless which is delivered via a slim USB Type-C dongle. Don't worry if you haven't got any Type-C ports on your machine, Steelseries bundles a Type-A adapter in the box. Quantum Wireless uses a unique dual channel system so that the mouse maintains a connection even if one channel has disruption. The Prime showed no perceptible latency at all except when using the hyper-efficiency mode.

I never expected to like the Steelseries Prime Wireless but it's just so damn comfortable to use for work and gaming. Input lag is no issue and honestly, wireless these days are virtually indistinguishable from their wired counterparts. The battery life is great and that quick charge is something every wireless peripheral should have. At $139, the Prime Wireless is on the pricier side, but it's a quality mouse that will serve you well.

Read our full SteelSeries Prime Wireless review.

Best gaming keyboard | Best CPU for gaming | Best graphics cards
Best VR headset | Best wireless gaming mouse | Best wireless gaming keyboard 

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5. Razer Basilisk V3

The best gaming mouse for RGB aficionados

DPI: 26,000 | Sensor: Razer Focus+ Optical | Interface: USB | Buttons: 11 | Ergonomic: Right-handed | Weight: 101g (3.6oz) | Battery life: N/A

Ergonomic design

Still the best sensor

4-way HyperScroll wheel

New RGB lighting

Smart-Reel is overly aggressive

Razer Software is getting bloated

The new Razer Basilisk V3 is, as the name suggests, the third iteration of the iconic wired rodent. It looks and feels practically identical to the V2, which admittedly isn't a bad thing at all. Designed for right-handers, the $70 Basilisk V3 retains the same flared and textured thumb rest, iconic thumb paddle, and split mouse button design of the V2.

It's extremely comfortable to hold on to for hours on end and reminds me why the Basilisk Ultimate was my own favorite mouse for the longest time.

You won't miss the most obvious design change—a blinding, 9-zone Razer Chroma lighting strip on the base. This new strip makes the V3 look like an otherworldly visitor ship on your desk. In addition to the scroll wheel and hump logo, lighting is customizable to your heart's content, via the Razer Chroma studio. Should you really want to engage with Razer's software.

Razer is touting the new HyperScroll Tilt Wheel on the V3 as one of its most stand-out features, and for good reason. It brings two modes of use; Tactile for clicky, measured scrolls, and Free Spin which removes any resistance to scrolling. Smart Reel is an automatic mode that switches between the two modes. Spin the wheel faster and the mouse releases the wheel into Free Spin which is wonderful for long web pages and documents.

You get an audible click when the mouse switches modes like a gear shift. Sadly, Smart Reel is far too enthusiastic and would kick in way too often—much to my irritation. Thankfully, you can manually switch modes by pressing the button just behind the scroll wheel. I work a lot in design programs and, while the free spin makes moving around large canvases faster, it quickly becomes a problem when zooming in and out for details.

The Basilisk V3 is certainly smooth, precise, and responsive.

This is also exacerbated by the V3's scroll acceleration which increases the scroll speed the faster you spin the wheel. Your mileage will vary but it's one of those things that's likely to be an acquired taste. As cool as this new scroll wheel is, I failed to find any practical use for it in games, though some of you clever folk will undoubtedly create some smart hacks.

Thankfully the few real improvements aren't centered around the scroll wheel. Razer has also updated the Focus+ optical sensor, raising it from an already absurd 20,000 DPI to 26,000 DPI. But it has maintained the 650 IPS.

I don't know anyone who actually games at such high DPI, but the Basilisk V3 is certainly smooth, precise, and responsive and the extra granularity the high DPI allows helps its smooth tracking.

The main mouse buttons get second-gen Razer Optical mechanical switches and have crispy clicks, are fast, and just as responsive as the sensor itself. I love the gentle button grooves and the subtle texture so that your fingers don't slip. I also noticed the buttons are less wobbly than previous Basilisks, but we'll have to see how they hold up after several thousand clicks.

The Razer Basilisk V3 is a solid iteration on an already great mouse, improving on elements without detracting from others. Those improvements are welcome, too, and I honestly can't get over how good the added Chroma lighting looks. The HyperScroll Tilt Wheel is fun, though ultimately not as useful in gaming as it is in productivity work.

Overall I love this new Basilisk, and it certainly leaves me excited for a wireless Basilisk V3 Ultimate. Now that's going to be some mouse.

Read our full Razer Basilisk V3 review.

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6. SteelSeries Sensei 310

The best ambidextrous gaming mouse

DPI: 12,000 | Sensor: Optical | Interface: USB | Buttons: 8 | Ergonomic: Ambidextrous | Weight: 92g (3.2oz) | Battery life: N/A

Very light at 92 grams

Great shape with improved grips and materials

Non-braided cable

Software isn't the easiest to use

The updated version of this Steelseries mainstay, the Sensei 310, subtly reinvented a classic mouse. It needed it. Almost everything has seen an improvement except the Sensei's ambidextrous shape, and that's precisely how it should be. While this mouse is a couple years old now, it's still a great go-to for fast-paced gaming. It's often found pretty cheap due to its age, too.

Thanks to a new plastic shell, the Sensei is grippier and can shrug off a sweaty palm. Steelseries uses its custom version of one of the best gaming sensors around, which it calls TrueMove3, ensuring the Sensei 310 won't suffer any tracking issues. It's capable of 12,000 DPI, and 350 IPS. That's a bit less than some newer mice on this list, but still plenty of performance for most gamers.

The Sensei 310 fits in your hand just like the old Sensei and is an excellent shape for either left- or right-handed gamers looking for a midsized ambidextrous mouse. That means it has a pair of identical thumb buttons on the left and the right, a common issue for ambidextrous mice—it can be far too easy to accidentally click the wrong side's buttons as you grip with your pinky. In my hours of testing the Sensei 310, that hasn't happened once. 

The size and shape of the thumb buttons have also been tweaked, making it easy to rock your thumb upwards to press them but keeping them out of the way of accidental pinky clicks. 

Anyone looking for a small, light, or ambidextrous mouse: this should be your first stop.

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7. Logitech G Pro X Superlight

The best wireless & lightweight gaming mouse

DPI: 25,600 | Sensor: Optical HERO 25K | Interface: Wireless and USB | Buttons: 5 | Ergonomic: Right-handed | Weight: 63g (>1.41oz) | Battery life: 70hrs

Weighs just 63 grams

Glides as if it were floating on air

Comfortable

Accurate, high CPI sensor

Right-handed only

No DPI switch

Cut the cord...

(Image credit: Steelseries)

Best wireless gaming mouse: ideal cable-free rodents
Best wireless gaming keyboard: no wires, no worries
Best wireless gaming headset: top untethered audio

The Logitech G Pro X Superlight takes the popular Logitech G Pro Wireless and shaves off 17 grams. You'd hardly tell it by looking at the Pro X Superlight, though. It looks near-identical to the G Pro Wireless with the exact same hallmarks of the popular and simplistic gaming mouse. 

The outer shell is fairly pronounced near the palm, which adds that little extra support compared to sleeker mouse models, and there's the slightest touch of contouring on the primary mouse buttons and beneath where your thumb and pinky sit. All in all, it's a fairly restrained design by modern mouse standards.

The Logitech Superlight has seen some major changes in order to meet its stringent weight requirements, however. It has to in order to compete with its lightweight wireless competitors. Even many of the best wired lightweight mice for that matter.

There are no removable thumb buttons, those which had become a bit of a signature feature of the G Pro Wireless. Instead in their place are two permanently affixed thumb buttons on the left-hand side. That's a shame for a couple of reasons. First, it's a little less customization on offer, although I'll admit that most users will end up opting for the exact same loadout even with the option. Second, the Superlight's omission of removable switches means it's now only suitable for right-handed users.

The standard battery life is a solid 70 hours.

The RGB lighting is gone for the most part too. There's a single LED dot that changes color depending on the CPI level set within the Logitech G Software but that's your lot. It's not a significant departure from what came before it considering the G Pro Wireless only features three dots for DPI level indicators and a light-up Logitech G logo, hardly a light show, but certainly a feature that has helped sell heaps of other gaming mice to date.

For the lack of excessive features, however, the standard battery life is a solid 70 hours. That's actually 10 hours more than the G Pro Wireless even with RGB disabled, so battery life has actually improved between the two units. In practice, you'll probably have the Superlight connected by cable at least once a week to ensure it's juiced up.

There are other little touches to the Logitech Superlight that are appreciated, too. The underside of the mouse has seen a slight material change to what looks more of a lightweight finish than with the G Pro Wireless, although it's been slightly improved upon with a greater PTFE footprint. With a half-decent mouse mat, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the two, but the Superlight certainly glides effortlessly across the mat.

Inside you'll find the applauded Hero 25K sensor that's common across Logitech's latest. What's more to say about this one: It's great, responsive, offers an outrageous remit of CPI speeds, and in my testing across MouseTester sees nary a single inconsistent result or errant data point at even the highest CPI setting. Impressive as ever. 

That 17-gram saving compared to the G Pro Wireless will see you spend a little more on the lightweight model and will also cost you a handy DPI switch, interchangeable thumb switches, and RGB lighting in moderation. But hey, that might be worth it if you're the competitive type.

Read our full Logitech G Pro X Superlight review.

Gaming mouse FAQ

Why should I choose a gaming mouse over the average optical mouse?

For one thing, gaming mouse sensors are designed to be more responsive and accurate. With adjustable (or no) smoothing and acceleration, your aim will stay true. Gaming mice are more accessible because of their programmable buttons and versatility over a traditional mouse.

Is a wireless mouse good for gaming?

Historically the answer was always: no. The wireless connection, though convenient, was used to add extra latency to the connection compared with a wired cable, which meant input lag in games was 'a a thing'. For reference, that is also seen as a 'very bad thing' in competitive online games.

But modern wireless interfaces, primarily the 2.4GHz radio connections, have zero perceptible difference in latency compared to a standard wired connection. Blind tests have been done with pro gamers using wired and wireless mice, and if the most sensitive players around can't tell the difference, we're confident you won't be able to either.

Bluetooth connections, however, can still introduce unwelcome input lag into a gaming situation, so that's best avoided. In modern wireless gaming mice, however, Bluetooth is only used as a low-power backup option.

What should I look out for in a gaming mouse?

When deciding on a mouse, your priority should be finding one that's comfortable for your hand. There are numerous sizes, shapes, and weights to consider. You might have the coolest-looking mouse with the most practical array of buttons, but if it's not comfortable for you, you won't be able to settle in with it. There are plenty of ambidextrous gaming mice and gaming mice for lefties in the list, too—if the goofy stance is more your style.

In the last few years, most gaming mice have also adopted very high DPI sensors (or, more accurately: CPI), so even a budget mouse will likely perform well. Most of these sensors can handle extremely high DPI counts at up to 20,000 DPI when realistically, you'll play on a much lower sensitivity—generally under 2,000 DPI. The consensus is not to worry about that number too much. Instead, concentrate on finding a mouse with the ideal shape and weight, and obviously, one that'll match your stylish set-up.

Pro gamers generally recommend lighter, more straightforward mice with few buttons to get in the way. Lighter mice won't fatigue your wrist and can easily glide across the mouse pad at high speeds. Anything below 100 grams is often ideal for competitive mice. But something has to be said about how powerful you feel at the helm of a nice heavy mouse. 

How do we test gaming mice?

We've used enough gaming mice to have a good feel for build quality, button placement, and shape. Our opinions on those aspects of mouse design are naturally subjective, but they're also well-informed. The tricky part of testing gaming mice is analyzing the other part of the equation: tracking performance, jitter, angle snapping, acceleration, and perfect control speed, and determining how each of those issues affects the experience of using a mouse.

For that, applications such as Mouse Tester come in handy. We used this software to see if we could spot any glaring issues with the mice we used. In every gaming mouse we tested, though, angle snapping and acceleration were disabled in the mouse drivers by default (though a mouse can still exhibit acceleration from issues with the sensor itself) and never encountered any glaring performance issues.

Gaming mouse jargon buster

Grip refers to how you hold the mouse. The most common grips are palm, claw, and fingertip. Here's a good example of how each grip works.

CPI stands for counts per inch, or how many times the mouse sensor will read its tracking surface, aka your mousepad, for every inch it’s moved. This is commonly referred to as DPI, but CPI is a more accurate term. The lower the CPI, the further you have to move the mouse to move the cursor on the screen.

Jitter refers to an inaccuracy in a mouse sensor reading the surface it’s tracking. Jitter often occurs at higher mouse movement speeds or higher CPIs. Jitter can make your cursor jump erratically, and even slight jitter could wreck a shot in an FPS or make you misclick on a unit in an RTS.

Angle snapping, also called prediction, takes data from a mouse sensor and modifies the output to create smoother movements. For example, if you try to draw a horizontal line with your mouse, it won’t be perfect—you’ll make some subtle curves in the line, especially at higher sensitivities. Angle snapping smooths out those curves and gives you a straight line instead. This is generally bad because it means your cursor movements won’t match your hand’s movements 1:1, and angle snapping will not be useful in most games. Thankfully, almost all gaming mice have angle snapping disabled by default.

Acceleration is probably the most reviled, most scrutinized issue with gaming mouse sensors. When a mouse sensor exhibits acceleration, your cursor will move faster the faster you move the mouse; this is often considered bad because moving the mouse slowly six inches across a mousepad will move the cursor differently than moving the mouse rapidly same distance. This introduces variability that can be hard to predict.

Perfect control speed, or malfunction rate, refers to the speed at which the mouse can be moved while still tracking accurately. Most gaming mice will track extremely accurately when moved at slow speeds, but low CPI players will often move their mice large distances across the mousepads at very high speeds. At high speeds, especially at high CPIs, not all mouse sensors can retain their tracking accuracy. The point at which the sensors stop tracking accurately will differ between CPI levels.

IPS measures inches per second and the effective maximum tracking speed of any given sensor is rated too. Not to be confused with the gaming monitor panel type by the same name, the higher the IPS of any given mouse, the better it can keep up with high-speed movement and maintain accuracy.

Lift-off distance is still a popular metric in mouse enthusiast circles, though it does not affect most gamers. LOD refers to the height a mouse has to be raised before the sensor stops tracking its surface. Some gamers prefer a mouse with a very low lift-off distance because they play at very low sensitivity and often have to lift their mouse off the pad to reset it in a position where they can continue swiping. With a low LOD, the cursor will not be moved erratically when the mouse is lifted.

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[John Carpenter quit Red Dead because he 'couldn't get on the damn horse']

John Carpenter is a genius. The man is responsible for directing The Thing, They Live, Escape From New York, and Assault On Precinct 13. Also, ah, Ghosts Of Mars, but they can't all be winners.

The point being that his taste is—almost—irreproachable. But in an interview with The New Yorker, the master of horror revealed that he couldn't bring himself to make it all the way through Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2, which currently sits pretty at #5 on our list of the top 100 PC games. The reason? He "couldn't get on the damn horse".

Carpenter says he's pretty good at games, but "with that one I was terrible". "The controls weren't intuitive, at least for me," he says, explaining his equestrian troubles. He's not alone: several writers here at PCG took Red Dead to task recently for handling "like absolute dogshit". It seems Carpenter would agree, although his language had to be more in line with The New Yorker's style guide.

Carpenter has a long history of gaming hot takes: a couple of years back he was singing the praises of Assassin's Creed Valhalla as a "return to excellence in the franchise", and in the same New Yorker interview where he decries Red Dead's controls, he talks about how much he's loving Fallout 76 and Horizon: Forbidden West. There's no accounting for taste.

Carpenter's far from the only celeb with a passion for pixels, although he might be the one you'd least expect. Such luminaries as Robert Pattinson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and (of course) Henry Cavill can also be found tinkering with their builds and working on their KDR. No word how many of them smashed a controller in frustration at ploughing their horse into a tree in Red Dead, though.

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[Kermit in Spider-Man is anything but a muppet]

The modding scene for Marvel's Spider-Man: Remastered has so far focused overwhelmingly on the wall-crawler himself, with character mods coming thick-and fast. It's not always producing the most aesthetically pleasing results: Saul Goodman's character model perched atop a skyscraper doesn't look cool so much as like something from a J-horror flick.

But all the modders can pack up and go home, because no-one's going to top the latest addition of Kermit the Frog, by one TangoTed. The beloved everyman muppet character fits into this world freakishly well, and unlike many of the more human-focused mods it doesn't feel weird to see his limbs and body arc in that acrobatic Spider-Man fashion. That's not to say he isn't still terrifying of course:

pic.twitter.com/A0SDKstxUUAugust 27, 2022

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The skin can be downloaded here and, as you can see, looks... absolutely fantastic in action. In both combat and when swinging around the city, Kermit fits over the Spider-Man movesets like a glove. Which when you think about it, Kermit kind of is.

I am gaming pic.twitter.com/sdt5TELMaEAugust 27, 2022

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Best Mod Ever. https://t.co/Xzry8cDoMl pic.twitter.com/LceWA95SbuAugust 28, 2022

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Kermit takes the cake for me, but there are plenty of other leftfield mods replacing Spidey with everything from Ozzy Osbourne to Uncle Ben's gravestone (?!?), as well as a whole bunch adding variant suits and other superheroes.

The one character mod that must find its way into every game is, of course, CJ from GTA: San Andreas and here he is. And there is one more perennial favourite: I'll leave you with this Thomas the Tank Engine mod,  guaranteed to make anyone lose their lunch at a glance.

(Image credit: Insomniac Games)

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[Best gaming laptops in 2022]

The best gaming laptop doesn't skimp on performance or portability, and still comes in at a reasonable price. Whether it's a sleek, ultra thin gaming notebook or a full-on desktop replacement, gaming laptops are so much more versatile than a desktop gaming PC. 

As the battle between AMD and Intel rages on the CPU front, anyone shopping for a new gaming laptop will have many great options. AMD's Ryzen 6000-series processors have been giving Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake chips a run for its money. The same can be said about AMD's new mobile GPUs slowly closing the gap to Nvidia's RTX 30-series offerings. And soon, a new generation of components is likely to grace our portable machines. 

The newest gaming laptops have improved portability, while still sporting all the fancy features of high-end gaming PCs. We're talking multicore CPUs, high-end GPUs, and speedy NVMe SSDs. You can even find heaps of RAM and super-high refresh screens under the hood. Gaming laptops with mechanical keyboards even exist, in case you can't live without that sweet clackity clack, like the Asus ROG Strix Scar 15.

Thankfully, gaming laptops mostly sidestepped chip shortages and are generally available for purchase. However, it looks does mean manufacturers have focused on providing more high-end configs though they are some exceptions like Dell, who offer some pretty impressive sub-$1000 gaming laptops.  

Of the hundreds of gaming laptops we've tested over the years, the ones that make this list always offer the best of three things; best balance of performance, portability, and price. Whether you're a student, professional, or just a gamer, there should be a laptop that's right for you here, and we'll continue to update this guide with the latest models as they're pushed out.

Best gaming laptops

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1. Razer Blade 15

The best gaming laptop

CPU: Up to Core i9 12900H | GPU: Up to Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti | RAM: Up to 32GB DDR5 | Screen: 1080p @ 360Hz, 1440p @ 240Hz, or 4K @ 144Hz | Storage: Up to 1TB SSD | Battery: 80Wh | Dimensions: 9.25 x 13.98 x 0.78 inches | Weight: 4.63lbs

Unparalleled build quality

Wide range of CPU/GPU options

Looks as good as it performs

Great battery life

Trackpad can be awkward

Razer premium price

Our favorite config:

Razer Blade 15 | Intel Core i7 12800H | Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti
You can, of course, go for the big boi—the RTX 3080 Ti—but in this slimline chassis, the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti will deliver fantastic frame rates, even at the 1440p resolution of the 240Hz screen. You also get a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD and 16GB of dual-channel DDR5 RAM at a blistering 4,800MHz.View Deal

The latest spin of the Razer Blade 15 once again improves on one of the best gaming laptops ever made. It has the same gorgeous CNC-milled aluminum chassis as its predecessor, only this time it can house one of Nvidia's latest RTX 30-series GPUs and an Intel 12th Gen Core i9 CPU.

We've played with the Razer Blade 15 Advanced with a 10th Gen Intel chip and RTX 3080 (95W) GPU inside it. And we fell in love all over again. We've also since then tried out the larger Razer Blade 17 with an RTX 3080 Ti humming away inside it, alongside one of those tasty 12th Gen chips and still stand bewildered by what will fit inside such a compact and neat chassis.

The Razer Blade 15 is the overall best gaming laptop on the market right now.

That said, you will get some throttling because of that slimline design, and even on the larger Blade 17 the battery life can be a little slim, but you're still getting outstanding performance from a beautiful machine.

The Blade 15 isn't the lightest gaming laptop you can buy, but five pounds is still way better than plenty of traditional gaming laptops, while also offering similar performance and specs. That heft helps make it feel solid too. It also means the Blade 15 travels well in your backpack. An excellent choice for the gamer on the go... or if you don't have the real estate for a full-blown gaming desktop and monitor.

Keyboard snobs will be happy to see a larger shift and half-height arrow keys. The Blade 15 Advanced offers per-key RGB lighting over the Base Model's zonal lighting. Typing feels great, and I've always liked the feel of the Blade's keycaps. The trackpad can be frustrating at times, but you're going to want to use a mouse with this gorgeous machine anyway, so it's not the end of the world. 

One of the best things about the Blade 15 is the number of configurations Razer offers. From the RTX 3060 Base Edition to the RTX 3080 Ti Advanced with a 144Hz 4K panel, there's something for almost everyone. It's one of the most beautiful gaming laptops around and still one of the most powerful.

Whatever config you pick, we think the Razer Blade 15 is the overall best gaming laptop on the market right now, though you will be paying a premium for the now-classic design.

Read our full Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition (2020) review.

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2. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022)

The best all-round gaming laptop

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS | GPU: Up to AMD Radeon RX 6800S | RAM: Up to 32GB DDR5-4800 | Screen: 14-inch IPS 1600p @ 120Hz | Storage: 1TB SSD NVMe PCIe 4.0 | Battery: 76Wh | Dimensions: 12.28 x 8.94 x 0.73 inches | Weight: 3.79lbs

AMD's latest CPU and GPU

Fantastic gaming performance

Sturdy and stylish chassis

16:10, 2560 x 1440, 120Hz IPS panel

Not as affordable as I'd expect from G14

Disappointing gaming battery life

Our favorite config:

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (GA402RJ) | AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS | AMD RX 6700S
This is the less powerful version of the G14 than the one we reviewed, but all the better off for it. The CPU remains the same powerful octa-core AMD number, but the GPU and RAM have come down to a more modest spec, which makes the impressive G14 an affordable yet still powerful gaming machine.View Deal

The new version of the Zephyrus G14 for 2022 impresses us once again with its well-balanced spec and excellent gaming performance. Seriously, this thing shreds through frames up to its 120Hz refresh rate, and it's great for much more than gaming, too.

We checked out the version with AMD's RX 6800S under the hood, though there is an option for an RX 6700S, for a chunk less cash. Arguably, that cheaper option sounds a bit better to us, as the high-end one can get a little pricey and close in on the expensive but excellent Razer Blade 14. It's not helped much by its 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM in that regard, though we do love having all that speedy memory raring to go for whatever you can throw at it.

At its heart is the AMD Ryzen 6900HS. That's one of the top chips from AMD's Ryzen 6000-series, but not its best and brightest—though you're really fighting over boost clocks and not much else when it comes to the tippy top of the red team's mobile processors anyways. It delivers eight cores and 16 threads of the Zen 3+ architecture, capable of boosting to 4.9GHz (which it actually does on occasion), so that's more than acceptable by me.

I'm heartily impressed with the G14's gaming performance overall.

That GPU and CPU combo makes quick work of our benchmarking suite, however, and I have to say I'm heartily impressed with the G14's gaming performance overall. That's even without turning to the more aggressive Turbo preset—I tested everything with the standard Performance mode. It's able to top the framerate of RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 mobile chips pretty much across the board, and while it does slip below the RTX 3080 Ti in the Razer Blade 17, that's a much larger laptop with a much larger price tag.

One of my favorite things about the G14 is in the name—it's a 14-inch laptop. The blend of screen real estate and compact size is a great in-between of bulkier 15- and 17-inch designs, and not quite as compromised as a 13-inch model can feel. But the big thing with the 2022 model is that the 14-inch size has been fitted out with a larger 16:10 aspect ratio than previous models' 16:9 panels. 

When it's running smoothly, the G14's high refresh and high-resolution panel also looks fantastic. Being such a bright and colorful IPS display on this model, you really get to soak in every detail.

One of the downsides with this machine is the battery life, which really isn't the best while gaming—less than an hour while actually playing. You'll get more when playing videos or doing something boring like working, but we do expect a bit more from a modern laptop. It's not a deal-breaker, but definitely something you'll want to bear in mind.

The G14 has lost that quality of being surprisingly cheap for what you get, too, even if you do get stellar performance out of it.

Perhaps one reason for that is the inclusion of 32GB of DDR5 RAM—16GB of that is soldered to the board, and the other 16GB attached via removable SO-DIMM from the underside of the laptop. That's not cheap memory. DDR5 prices have hardly settled down since the memory standard was introduced last year, and 32GB is a bounty of high-performance memory by comparison to most gaming PCs today.

Overall, though, the G14 experience is a pretty easy and straightforward one. I didn't run into any major issues with it over the couple of weeks I've had it, and for the few negatives I have with the design, Asus has offset them with heaps of positives. The cheaper models may be a better bet than the one we reviewed, however. The same chassis and great design but with a slightly more amicable price tag.

Read our full Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2022 (GA402RK) review. 

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3. Razer Blade 14

The most desirable compact gaming laptop

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX | GPU: Up to Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti | RAM: 16GB DDR5-4800 | Screen: 14-inch 1080p @ 144Hz or 1440p @ 165Hz | Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD | Battery: 61.6Wh | Dimensions: 0.66 x 8.66 x 12.59 inches | Weight: 3.92lb

Looks great

Outstanding build quality

Excellent all-round performance

Ultra-portable ultrabook style

Only way to bag a Razer Ryzen

Pricey for 1080p gaming

Higher-spec GPUs will sacrifice performance

Our favorite config:

Razer Blade 14 | AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX | Nvidia RTX 3060
As far as we're concerned, this is the ultimate configuration of the diminutive Blade 14. It's the most affordable, but it also matches the RTX 3060 GPU with a 1080p, 144Hz screen to deliver excellent gaming performance. The brand new 8-core, 16-thread AMD CPU then gives it workstation processing power too.View Deal

I am mighty tempted to push the Razer Blade 14 further up the list, simply because the 14-inch form factor has absolutely won me over. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 in the No. 2 slot reintroduced the criminally under-used laptop design, but Razer has perfected it. Feeling noticeably smaller than the 15-inch Blade and closer to the ultrabook Stealth 13, the Blade 14 mixes a matte black MacBook Pro-style with genuine PC gaming pedigree.

The Razer style is classic, and it feels great to hold, too. And with the outstanding AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX finally finding its way into a Blade notebook, you're getting genuine processing power you can sling into a messenger bag. And you're now able to get your hands on the Blade 14 with the brand new Ryzen 9 6900HX chip at its heart, though in practice that has changed very little apart from offering some decent integrated graphics.

But add in some extra Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics power—now all the way up to an RTX 3080 Ti, but wear earplugs—and you've got a great mix of form and function that makes it the most desirable laptop I've maybe ever tested. 

My only issue is that the RTX 3080 Ti would be too limited by the diminutive 14-inch chassis and run a little loud. So I would then recommend the lower-spec GPU options, though if you're spending $1,800 on a notebook, that feels like too high for 1080p gaming. But you're not buying the Blade 14 specifically for outright performance and anything else; this is about having all the power you need in a form factor that works for practical mobility.

The PC is all about choice, and Razer has finally given us the choice to use an AMD CPU in its machines.

The PC is all about choice, and Razer has finally given us the choice to use an AMD CPU in its machines, although it would be great if we had the option elsewhere in its range of laptops. It's notable that we've heard nothing about a potential Blade 14 using an AMD discrete Radeon GPU alongside that Ryzen CPU. Ah well.

Forgetting the politics a second, the Razer Blade 14 itself is excellent, and is one of the most desirable gaming laptops I've had in my hands this year. Maybe ever. The criminally underused 14-inch form factor also deserves to become one of the biggest sellers in Razer's extensive lineup of laptops. And if this notebook becomes the success it ought to be, then the company may end up having to make some difficult choices about what CPUs it offers, and where.

The choice you have to make, though, is which graphics card to go with. Sure, the RTX 3080 Ti is quicker, but it leaves a lot more gaming performance on the workshop floor. That's why the cheaper RTX 3060, with its full-blooded frame rates, gets my vote every day.

Read our full Razer Blade 14 review.

Best Razer laptop for gaming | Best Acer laptop for gaming | Best MSI laptop for gaming| Best gaming keyboard | Best gaming mouse | Best gaming chair

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4. Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (16" AMD)

The best high-refresh QHD gaming laptop

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H | GPU: Up to Nvidia RTX 3070 | RAM: Up to 32GB DDR4 | Screen: 16-inch 165Hz 2560 x 1600 | Storage: Up to 2 TB M.2 SSD | Battery: 86Wh | Dimensions: 14.01 x 10.4 x 1.1 inches | Weight: 5.4lbs

Excellent 165Hz QHD screen 

Great keyboard

Decent value for money 

Poor mic and speakers 

720p webcam 

Our favorite config:

Lenovo Legion Pro 5 | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H | Nvidia RTX 3070
You can pick up the RTX 3060 model for less, but it's the RTX 3070 model with a 2TB SSD that makes for a better pairing with the high-refresh QHD panel. Throw in the eight-core Ryzen 7 5800H, and you have everything you need to handle all manner of tasks and enjoy serious high-end gaming. View Deal

The Legion Pro 5 proves that AMD is absolutely a serious competitor in the gaming laptop space. Pairing the mobile Ryzen 7 5800H with the RTX 3070 results in a laptop that not only handles modern games with ease, but that can turn its hand at more serious escapades too. 

The QHD 16:10 165Hz screen is a genuine highlight here and one that makes gaming and just using Windows a joy. It's an IPS panel with a peak brightness of 500nits too, so you're not going to be left wanting whether you're gaming or watching movies. 

The Legion Pro 5 really is a beast when it comes to gaming too, with that high-powered RTX 3070 (with a peak delivery of 140W it's faster than some 3080s) being a great match for that vibrant screen. You're going to be able to run the vast majority of games at the native 2560 x 1600 resolution at the max settings and not miss a beat. The fact that you can draw on DLSS and enjoy some ray tracing extras for the money all helps to make this an incredibly attractive package.

This is a lovely laptop to actually type on too. Folks have always gushed about how good Lenovo keyboards are; I always ignored them because I don't trust people that are too into keyboards. But, I will admit, I think I get it. The rounded bottom keycaps have a nice feel to them. Add that with the large 4.7 x 3-inch touchpad, and you've got yourself a lovely work laptop that plays games well. I wish other laptop makers would take advantage of the added space of 17-inch gaming laptops and use it to make our lives easier. 

The Lenovo Legion Pro 5 made me realize that Legion laptops deserve a spot at the top.

If anything knocks the Legion 5 Pro, it would have to be its rather underwhelming speakers and microphone combo. Anything with a hint of bass tends to suffer, which is a shame. The microphone was another surprising disappointment. My voice, I was told, sounded distant and quiet during work calls, which paired with a mediocre 720p webcam doesn't make for the best experience. I will commend the Legion for fitting a webcam on a screen with such a small top bezel though—A for effort. 

The Lenovo Legion Pro 5 made me realize that Legion laptops deserve a spot at the top, being one of the more impressive AMD-powered laptops we've gotten our hands on recently. From the bright, colorful screen to the great feeling full-sized keyboard, The Legion Pro 5 has everything you want in a gaming laptop for a lot less than the competition manages. 

Read our full Lenovo Legion 5 Pro review.

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5. MSI GS66 Stealth

The most stylish gaming laptop

CPU: Up to Core i9 12900H | GPU: Up to Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti | RAM: Up to 32GB DDR5-4800 | Screen: 15.6-inch 1080p 240Hz or 300Hz | Storage: Up to 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD | Battery: 99.9Wh | Dimensions: 9.76 x 14.1 x 0.77 inches | Weight: 4.63lbs

Sleek and powerful

Long battery life

1440p options on the way

Gets loud

Slim chassis compromises fps

Our favorite config:

MSI GS66 Stealth | Intel Core i7 | Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti | 1TB SSD | 16GB RAM
One of our biggest issues with the GS66 was that it was trying to pack too much into its slight chassis. With this RTX 3060 version, however, you get all the style, a still powerful 1080p GPU, and a far more affordable gaming laptop into the bargain.View Deal

The MSI GS66 is one hell of a machine: It's sleek, slick, and powerful. But it's not Nvidia Ampere's power without compromise, however. MSI has had to be a little parsimonious about its power demands to pack something as performant as an RTX 3080 into an 18mm thin chassis. 

The top GPU is the 95W version, which means it only just outperforms a fully unleashed RTX 3070, the sort you'll find in the Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC. But it is still an astonishingly powerful slice of mobile graphics silicon.

It can get a little loud, but thankfully, you have the benefits of all the Nvidia Max-Q 3.0 features at your disposal. This includes Whisper Mode 2.0, which will bring gaming down to barely audible levels, for when you want to be stealthy.

The GS66 also comes with an outstanding 240Hz 1440p panel, which perfectly matches the powerful GPU when it comes to games. Sure, you'll have to make some compromises compared to an RTX 3080 you might find in a hulking workstation, but the MSI GS66 Stealth is a genuinely slimline gaming laptop.

It's seriously thin.

It's a shame laptop manufacturers are seemingly just content to use old chassis and cooling designs for their new Nvidia-based gaming laptops. Things are getting ever more thermally constrained when it comes to performance because new hardware is being dropped into old designs. This is the compromise with the GS66, and you have to be absolutely invested in having a low-profile gaming laptop to make it worth paying the price. And remember, that price is paid both in frame rates and in dollar bills.

Nvidia's new suite of Max Q goodies help, although it's a shame they are likely to be overlooked as manufacturers fail to offer consistent messaging about them and users aren't necessarily going to go digging into exactly how they all work. But they do work, and this latest tranche of gaming laptops will absolutely be the best we've ever seen. Unfortunately, it might just be tougher than ever to figure out exactly which machine is right for you.

There's a lot to love about the latest MSI GS66. This implicitly means there is also a lot that will frustrate. The overall machine is rather lovely—it's seriously thin, especially for a gaming laptop, and comes with some seriously tasty internal specs too, but there are places where it feels like it might have benefitted from a little extra design time.

Read our full MSI GS66 Stealth review.

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6. Acer Predator Helios 300

A quality, affordable 240Hz gaming laptop

CPU: Up to Intel Core i7 12th Gen | GPU: Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 | RAM: Up to 32GB DDR5-4800 | Screen: 15.6-inch IPS 1080p @ 240Hz | Storage: 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD | Battery: 58Wh | Dimensions: 10.01 x 14.23 x 0.9 inches | Weight: 5.51lbs

Great performance for the price

Decent battery life

Room for 2x SSDs, 1x HDD

Average CPU performance

Our favorite config:

Acer Predator Helios 300 | Intel Core i7 11800H | Nvidia RTX 3060
The Helios 300 makes the most sense as a focused budget gaming laptop, and this Intel 11th Gen take on the brand nails that brief. The RTX 3060 affords plenty of gaming prowess and makes for a great pairing for the 144Hz 1080p screen. Throw in a healthy 16GB of RAM and a speedy 512GB SSD and you have a great budget gaming machine. View Deal

We loved Acer's Predator Helios 300 during the GTX 10-series era, and the current generation Helios still manages to punch above its weight class compared to other $1,500 laptops. It may not be the best gaming laptop, but it's one of the best value machines around. 

The newest version of the Helios packs an RTX 3060 GPU and a sleeker form factor without raising the price significantly. It also has a 144Hz screen and smaller bezels, putting it more in line with sleek thin-and-lights than its more bulky brethren of the previous generation. 

The only real drawback is the diminutive SSD, although the laptop has slots for two SSDs and an HDD, which makes upgrading your storage as easy as getting a screwdriver. You often need to get handy with the upgrades at this end of the price spectrum, and the Helios 300 is no different in that respect.

If you're desperate for just that little bit of extra gaming performance and hang the sense of it—or the sound and fury of it—the Turbo button is Acer's one-touch GPU overclocking feature. The Predator laptops have this simple feature designed to eke out as much extra gaming performance as possible. 

In theory, it's a neat feature but much as we saw with the Predator Triton earlier this year, you really only get about a 1-3% increase in performance. It also makes your system run very hot and distractingly loud. Honestly, I really don't think it's worth it unless you're truly militant about maximizing your frames per second. Or have a really good noise-canceling gaming headset.

But for its $1,500 sticker price, the 15-inch Predator Helios 300 provides high-end 1080p gaming performance at a mid-range price. Even without the dubious utility of the Turbo button. The design changes are small but smart—like the power cord in the back instead of the side, having room for three storage drives, and the price/performance ratio is great. And that all makes the Acer Predator Helios 300 a strong contender for one of the best gaming laptops around. 

Read our full Acer Predator Helios 300 review.

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7. Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 (2022)

The best big-screen gaming laptop

CPU: Up to Intel Core i9 12900H | GPU: Up to Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti | RAM: Up to 32GB DDR5-4800 | Screen: 17.3-inch 1080p @ 360Hz or 1440p @ 240Hz | Storage: Up to 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD | Battery: 90Wh | Dimensions: 11.1 x 15.55 x 0.92 inches | Weight: 6.39lbs

Flashy but not obnoxious

Optomechanical keyboard

Quiet cooling

Incredible screen refresh rate

Fantastic battery

17-inch screen makes it large

Our favorite config:

Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 | Intel Core i9 12900H | Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti
You don't get much more high-performance than this beast of a laptop. With Intel's speedy P-Cores making short work of whatever you throw at them, and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti forming an incredibly potent core, hooked up to a 360Hz 1080p display, this is portable gaming nirvana. Yes, it's expensive, but this is the pinnacle of high-end gaming. View Deal

There's absolutely no question you can buy a much more sensible gaming laptop than this, but there is something about the excesses of the ROG Strix Scar 17 that make it incredibly appealing. It feels like everything about it has been turned up to 11, from the overclocked CPU—which is as beastly as it gets—to the gorgeously speedy 360Hz screen on the top model. Asus has pushed that little bit harder than most to top our gaming laptop benchmarks.

And top the benchmarks of the best gaming laptops it does, thanks in the main to the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti that can be found beating away at its heart. This is the 150W version of Nvidia's new Ampere GPU, which means it's capable of hitting the kind of figures thinner machines can only dream of. You can draw on Nvidia's excellent DLSS, where implemented, to help hit ridiculous frame rates, too. And if that's not enough, you can also grab this machine kitted out with an RTX 3080 Ti too.

The 17-inch chassis means the components have a bit more room to breathe compared to the competition too, and coupled with the excellent cooling system, you're looking at a cool and quiet slice of gaming perfection. This extra space has allowed Asus to squeeze an optomechanical keyboard onto the Scar 17, which is a delight for gaming and more serious pursuits.

Importantly, all this power comes at a cost not only to the temperatures but also to the battery life. Sure, you're not as likely to play games with the thing unplugged, but if you ever have to, an hour is all you get. 

I'm not enamored with the touchpad either, while we're nit-picking. I keep trying to click the space beneath it, and my poor, callous fingers keep forgetting where the edges are. This particular model doesn't come with a camera either, which is a glaring omission for the price, and there's a distinct lack of USB Type-A ports for the unnecessary arsenal of peripherals I'm packing. There are a couple of USB Type-C ports around the back to make up for it, though, and I'm happy there's a full-sized keyboard.

For a machine with a 17-inch chassis, it doesn't weigh the world and doesn't need two power adapters to work to its full potential either.

Such gripes are easy to overlook when Asus has managed to pack such an immense config in here. The frankly unnecessary 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM and that 2TB SSD are awesome, but a bit over the top for most mortals. 

For a machine with a 17-inch chassis, it doesn't weigh the world and doesn't need two power adapters to work to its full potential either. For that, it doesn't feel as much like a hulking desktop replacement as we've seen. And that's okay. Particularly when you crown a portable machine like this off with a 1440p, 240Hz IPS panel with 3ms response time, which also does a smashing job of reducing glare.

While you could get a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with its RTX 3070 for half the price, spending $2,999 on this Strix Scar config will put you ahead of the competition with very little effort. And sure, it's not as stylish or as apt with ray tracing as the Blade 17, but there's a good $1,000 price difference there. And for something that can outpace the laptops of yesteryear in almost every running, I'd pay that price for sure.

Read our full Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 G733 review.

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8. Alienware m17 R5 AMD (2022)

The best big-screen gaming laptop

CPU: Up to AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX | GPU: Up to AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT | RAM: Up to 64GB DDR5-4800 | Screen: 17.3-inch 1080p @ 240Hz, 360Hz, 480Hz or 4K @ 120Hz | Storage: Up to 4TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD | Battery: 97Wh | Dimensions: 11.7 x 15.64 x 0.89 inches | Weight: 7.3lbs

Great 4K display

Excellent 1080p gaming performance

Neat AMD exclusive features

Lots of spec options

Underwhelming CPU performance

Really bad battery life. Like, really bad

AMD really struggles with ray tracing in games

Our favorite config:

Alienware m17 R5 AMD | AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX | AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT | 1080p | 240Hz |
The config I suggest is a little less overkill than what was reviewed. Instead of the 4K display, a speedier 1080p 240Hz display is a better fit in order to maximize frames on some of your favorite games and save a couple of bucks. View Deal

One thing I love about Alienware is the company's unrelenting confidence in its new products. Whether that's boasting about a desktop being a "Benchmark Bruiser" or releasing one of the slickest OLED gaming monitors to date. So, when I get offered the chance to check out the new Alienware m17 R5 it has dubbed "the most powerful 17-inch AMD Advantage gaming laptop," how can I pass that up?

Powering the Alienware m17 R5 is an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX and Radeon RX 6850M XT combo that, on paper, seems like a slam dunk for Team Red. It's also the first gaming laptop we've tested with an RX 6850M XT, and so I was stoked to see how it stacked up against laptops with an RTX 3070 Ti and even RTX 3080 Ti mobile GPUs. 

The surprisingly bright 500cd/m² 4K display got a lot of use for streaming video. I appreciate seeing the detailed stress lines on Guenther Steiner's face in the last season of F1: Drive to Survive in 4K on Netflix. Games look pretty good, though this display is better served for professionals and creatives. So if you don't fall into that category, you may be better off sticking with the 1080p display at 240Hz to save money and add time to your much-needed battery life. 

This laptop also takes advantage of AMD's suite of game-boosting technologies, such as SmartAccess Graphics, which automatically switches your output from the Ryzen APU and Radeon GPU, along with Smartshift Max,  which automatically shifts around your power depending on what app or game you're using. The good thing about these features is that they just work without you messing with them. All nice features, especially if you are bouncing between gaming and, let's say, video editing and trying to eke out extra horsepower.

On the GPU side, the Alienware m17 R5 AMD Advantage model excelled at nearly all our gaming benchmarks at 1080p on mostly maxed-out settings.

On the GPU side, the Alienware m17 R5 AMD Advantage model excelled at nearly all our gaming benchmarks at 1080p on mostly maxed-out settings. It hit triple-digit framerates in nearly all the games I played, with a Hitman 3 average of just over 200 fps.

If you value frame rate over resolution, the m17 R5 easily delivers over 100 fps frames on most games at 1080p. Even Cyberpunk was hitting around 128 fps (with FSR turned on). The high 120Hz refresh rate on the display means you'll run into little to no screen tearing. Because of the drastically higher frame rates, I played more games at 1080p than 4K. If you're playing a shooter like Apex Legends or Fortnite, that's the way to go, which makes the 4K display a bit redundant much of the time.

The Alienware m17 R5 might not be the most powerful gaming laptop ever, but it isn't through lack of trying. Even with the CPU performance lagging behind some of its rivals, the m17 R5 makes up the deficit with impressive gaming results. The 4K display is great for anyone watching movies or working, but you could save a few hundred dollars by scaling down some of the more expensive components and score yourself a really solid 1080p gaming laptop. 

Read our full Alienware m17 R5 AMD review.

Best gaming laptop FAQ

What's the most important gaming laptop component?

When it comes to gaming, the obvious answer is the graphics card, but that's where things have gotten a little more complicated recently. With GPU performance now so dependent on cooling, you have to pay attention to what wattage a graphics card is limited to and what chassis it's squeezed into.

As we said at the top, an RTX 3080 confined in an 18mm chassis will perform markedly slower than one in a far chunkier case with room for higher performance cooling.

Should I worry about what the CPU in a gaming laptop is?

That really depends on what you want to do with your laptop. An 8-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen chip will allow you to do a whole load of productivity on the road, but honestly, it will have little benefit in gaming. That's one of the reasons Intel has launched its Tiger Lake H35 chips; they're quad-core, 8-thread CPUs, but they're clocked high to deliver high-end gaming performance when paired with something like the RTX 3070.

What screen size is best for a gaming laptop?

This will arguably have the most immediate impact on your choice of the build. Picking the size of your screen basically dictates the size of your laptop. A 13-inch machine will be a thin-and-light ultrabook, while a 17-inch panel almost guarantees workstation stuff. At 15-inches, you're looking at the most common size of the gaming laptop screen.

Are high refresh rate panels worth it for laptops?

We love high refresh rate screens here, and while you cannot guarantee your RTX 3060 will deliver 300 fps in the latest games, you'll still see a benefit in general look and feel running a 300Hz display. 

Should I get a 4K screen in my laptop?

Nah. 4K gaming laptops are overkill; they're fine for video editing if you're dealing with 4K content, but it's not the optimal choice for games. The standard 1080p resolution means that the generally slower mobile GPUs are all but guaranteed high frame rates, while companies are slowly drip-feeding 1440p panels into their laptop ranges. 

A 1440p screen offers the perfect compromise between high resolution and decent gaming performance. At the same time, a 4K notebook will overstress your GPU and tax your eyeballs as you squint at your 15-inch display.

Where are the laptops with AMD graphics cards?

Your guess is as good as ours. A few gaming laptop SKUs offered the RX 5000-series cards, but they were thin on the ground. But AMD has promised RX 6000, Big Navi mobile GPUs will be on their way to gaming laptops in the first half of this year, but so far we haven't seen them in the labs. 

View the full article

[How to get Touch of Malice in Destiny 2]

Strike it big in the Season of Plunder

(Image credit: Bungie)

Destiny 2 map fragments: How to get treasure maps
Destiny 2 Delicate Tomb: Grab the new season exotic
Destiny 2 Cryptic Quatrains: Solve the riddles
Destiny 2 Fortnite Armor: Get it for free

Touch of Malice is the newest Destiny 2 exotic in the Season of Plunder, added alongside the returning King's Fall raid that's free to all players. This life-stealing scout rifle is from the original game's Taken King expansion, and it has a pretty thematic ability. When you get down to the last shot in its magazine, Touch of Malice drains health for increased damage, before regenerating that fired shot. Rapidly defeating three targets will also grant health.

As you'd imagine, with the healing grenades, rifts, and wells that also exist in Destiny now, this is a really strong weapon. Destiny 2's Touch of Malice also has a new secondary skill: rapidly dealing precision damage charges a Taken blight that you can fire to blind enemies. Since a big part of arc 3.0 is about blinding and defeating blinded enemies, this should have a lot of utility. That said, here's what you need to do for a chance to get Touch of Malice.

Destiny 2 Touch of Malice: How to get the exotic scout rifle 

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Touch of Malice is a powerful scout rifle (Image credit: Bungie)

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You can find the King's Fall raid in the Legends destination (Image credit: Bungie)

You can only get Touch of Malice through the King's Fall raid, but the good news is that the raid is free to all players. Just like most other raid exotic weapons, this scout rifle only drops from the final encounter with Oryx, and even then, the chance that you'll actually get it is relatively slim.

You also only get one opportunity per character, per week, for Touch of Malice to drop, similar to Heartshadow in Duality. Sadly, unlike Duality, there isn't a way to boost your drop chances by completing triumphs and challenges in the activity. You'll just have to run the raid many times, and hope that you get lucky. Getting the Touch of Malice catalyst is far more elaborate, however, as you can see in this video from SneakyBeaver: 

The catalyst means that rapid precision hits increase reload speed and stability, which is pretty good when you're trying to get those three rapid kills for the regen. 

View the full article

[The best gaming chairs in 2022]

The best gaming chairs will give you somewhere to rest easy as you do whatever it is you do at your gaming desk. A good gaming chair should be sturdy, ergonomic, and customizable to your needs—otherwise you're going to end up uncomfortable and likely quite irritated. Below, we've chosen the best gaming chairs that don't compromise on comfort or style, and that passed the rigorous testing we did (with our butts).

In finding the best gaming chair for you, keep your spine in mind. Your body is a delicate fleshy meatbag that needs to be looked after properly. Consider chairs that provide the best back support for your frame. You might even think about consulting a doctor to see if you need extra-special lumbar support, neck pillows, or—I kid you not—built-in back massagers. A good chair might set you back a bit, but it'll be a great investment in terms of its ergonomic benefits.

When you first start your search, you'll notice gaming chairs come in some intense designs: racing car seats, thrones covered in satanic runes, even gaming chairs that show off your preference in super heroes. If you're looking for something a little more reserved, we've also added some low-key yet stylish office chairs to the list. The Herman Miller X Logitech G Embody, is the envy of all Silicon Valley, and offers the support you want out of a gaming chair, without all the gamery aesthetics. 

We've tested dozens of gaming chairs from today's most reliable companies and every single chair in this guide has passed under our collective butts. And while you could always go the cheap gaming chair route, a chair from this guide is worth saving up for—treat your posterior to something special on a daily basis.

Best gaming chairs

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1. Secretlab Titan Evo 2022

The best gaming chair made even better

Seat type: Racing back, levelled seat base | Recline: 165 degrees | Weight capacity: Up to 180kg (397lbs, XL size only) | Weight: 37.5kg (83lbs) | Warranty: 3-year

Magnetic cushion and covers

Very comfortable

Everything we want in a gaming chair feature-wise

Pricier than older Secretlab chairs

3-year warranty isn't a match for some ergo chairs

The Secretlab Titan is the benchmark by which we judge all other gaming chairs. To earn that role it ticked all the boxes you could ask of gaming furniture: it's comfy, supportive, and importantly looks great too. None of that has changed with the new Secretlab Titan Evo 2022, either, though it does pack a few great new features to keep ahead of the pack.

Rather than tread old ground, let's get right into the new stuff. Secretlab is posing the new Titan Evo 2022 to a wider audience this time, with three new available sizes of the Titan Evo 2022 available. These are small, regular, and extra large. The benefit of this being you'll no longer need to look to a different model of chair to find the right fit—the Titan Evo 2022 should cover most bases.

On a similar note, Secretlab has added a minor curve to the seat base that it says is to keep you in a healthy sitting posture. It's kind of hard to say whether such a gentle curvature is really doing much to keep me locked securely in place throughout the day, though the seat is plenty comfortable all the same with plenty of foam padding.

User-friendly ergonomics make the Titan Evo 2022 a great fit for long nights gaming or eight hours tapping away for work, and that comes down to its superb built-in back support. It's highly adjustable, which means you can nail down a great fit with ease. There's also something to be said for the 4D armrests, comfortable seat rest, and magnetic head cushion.

You read that right, a magnetic head cushion. A simple solution to fiddly straps, the Titan Evo 2022 does away with all that with a couple of powerful magnets.

You can actually tweak the Titan Evo's lumbar support while you're still sat on it.

A big part of the Titan Evo's high level of comfort is the adjustable lumbar support, and it's a pretty neat system it offers. It works by extending and retracting an internal support both in and out and up and down, through the use of the two dials on the side. So not only are you not relying on an awkward pillow to prop up your back, you can actually tweak the Titan Evo's lumbar support while you're still sat on it. This makes it exceptionally easy to get just right.

The chair is also upholstered immaculately. While there's still something to be said for the SoftWeave Plus fabric we've rated best for durability and comfort all these years, I have to say I'm quite taken with the look of the leatherette, and especially the bright red stitching.

I'll have to get back to you on actual durability when I've had longer with the chair, perhaps when the Titan Evo 2024 comes out I can tell you if it truly stands the test of time. Still, I can note how surprisingly airy and cool the leatherette fabric feels over the course of a day, and it certainly looks absolutely stunning.

As an amalgamation of both Titan and Omega gaming chairs, the Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 feels the better of both in every regard. What each chair has done so well, the Titan Evo 2022 manages to equal or better. It is slightly pricier than its predecessors at $449 ($499 for the XL model), but I feel that the upgrades it delivers are genuinely worth the higher price tag.

Read our full Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 review.

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2. Secretlab Omega

The more affordable Secretlab chair

Seat type: Racing seat | Recline: 165 degrees | Weight capacity: 109kg (240lbs) | Weight: 30kg (66lbs) | Warranty: 3-year

Velour memory foam pillows

Versatile tilt mechanism 

Lacking height adjustment on head pillow

I know the Secretlab Omega is not a mattress, but bear with me. When it comes to mattresses, most people are willing to spend a little bit more for a quality product. That's because they know they'll be spending a sizeable portion of the 24-hour day laying in it. If the recent influx of gaming chair manufacturers is any indication, gamers have that same mentality when it comes to outfitting their PC setup with a chair.

The Secretlab Omega is one of the most finely constructed chairs we've tested. Although it has largely been replaced by the Titan Evo 2022 above, the higher price tag of that chair might see the Omega remain a popular option for those looking to save a little cash.

From the casters to the base, the lift mechanism, armrests, and seat back, Secretlab has used some of the best materials available. The Omega was upgraded with Secretlab's 2020 series of improvements, which includes premium metal in the armrest mechanism, making it silky smooth to adjust and even more durable, and adding the company's ridiculously durable PU Leather 2.0. 

So comfortable that we could smoothly fully recline the chair and take a nap.

The chair features a high-quality, cold-cured foam to provide support. It feels a little firm at first but gets more comfortable after extended use. The Omega stands out from the crowd with its velour memory foam lumbar and head pillows. These are so comfortable that we could smoothly fully recline the chair and take a nap if we wanted to. Though that's not a great look in the office... If you're looking to treat your body with a chair that will genuinely last, the Secretlab Omega is worth every penny.

You may not allocate as much of your rig budget as you would to a nice graphics card, but the best chairs for gaming can easily outlive your components and last a decade or more.

The Omega is an extremely tough and sturdy piece of foam built to last. We've spent several months in the Secretlab Omega now, and the seat cushion feels just like it did when it was new. The one drawback with this is that the seat sacrifices some of its softness to support heavy usage over the years.

Secretlab's not-so-secret formula for success involves cutting out the third party. The company sells directly to customers rather than dealing with retailers and distributors. This allows it to pass its savings on and offer a premium product at a very reasonable price. It also removes at least one extra shipping trip from the equation, reducing the likelihood of damaged goods.

Read our full Secretlab Omega review.

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3. Logitech G x Herman Miller Embody

The best ergonomic gaming chair

Seat type: Task chair | Material: Multi-layer fabric | Seat height: 17–22 inch | Weight capacity: 136kg (300lbs) | Weight: 23kg (51lbs) | Warranty: 12-year

Stimulates blood and oxygen flow

Unrivaled back support

12-year/24hr use warranty

Jaw-droppingly expensive compared to most

No headrest to speak of

Perhaps you've heard of the Herman Miller Embody. It occupied a top position in our best office chair roundup for a long time, but that has come to an end. Not for lack of comfort or acclaim, simply because the famed chair manufacturer has partnered up with Logitech to create something tailor-made to our gaming rumps.

For the most part, the Herman Miller x Logitech G Embody actually isn't a complete departure from the Embody of old. A tried, tested, and widely recognized design, the gaming Embody comes in a new black and blue colorway, with plain black also available if you're going for a more sober/edgelord look. There's also a small Logitech G brand toggle on the rear, that doesn't serve any purpose that I know of and a Logitech G logo across the upper band of the backrest. 

I'm not sure the Logitech collab is bringing a lot to the party, but the branding is notably light touch next to the racing style gaming chairs that we're used to as PC gamers, and it feels classy as a result.

It's not so much the changes that make the Embody stand out as one of the best gaming chairs going. It's what's been kept the same. The tried and tested Embody design is simply one of the best chairs for office work or gaming. It's incredibly comfortable over prolonged use, supports an active and healthy posture, and is easily fitted to your frame.

The chair was fully assembled so there was no fussing with screws or throwaway tools.

Yet I wasn't sure what to expect of the Embody before it arrived. I certainly hadn't envisioned such a massive box turning up on my doorstep. First impressions, then, entirely focused on how I was going to get said box up two flights of narrow steps leading up to my apartment.

That massive box hides what is perhaps one of the Herman Miller's best features. After deciding that I had to cut the chair out of the box with a knife in my hallway, I discovered the chair was fully assembled so there was no fussing with screws or throwaway tools, which is something of a pet peeve of mine. (I'm amassing third-rate Allen keys from cheap flatpack furniture and I can't help but feel there's got to be a better way.)

The most immediately noticeable trait of this chair: You can sit in it all day and not feel a moment of discomfort beneath your tush. You may shift around your top half into all sorts of absolutely not ergonomic positions during the day but your bottom half tends to stay stuck in place at a desk, so it's important to get that just right. Thankfully, the Embody does.

The warranty, too, is a standout feature. At 12 years, including labor, and rated for 24-hour use over that time, it's a chair that is guaranteed to last you over a decade, if not longer. So while the initial price tag may seem steep, and that it is, the reality is you're certain to get your money's worth in the long run. And your back will be thankful for it, too.

Read our full Herman Miller Logitech G Embody review.

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4. NeueChair

The best office chair for gaming

Seat type: Task chair | Recline: 85–130 degrees | Weight capacity: 108kg (240lbs) | Weight: 29kg (64lbs) | Warranty: 12-year

Ridiculously sturdy and well made

Comfortable and supportive

Highly adjustable

Uninspiring design doesn't scream high-end

If you're the sort of person who prioritizes functionality over flash, the NeueChair is an excellent option. This isn't to say it's not stylish—quite the opposite; the NeueChair comes in a sleek, muted obsidian or flashy chrome/silver, both with bold, sweet curved supports on the back and an attractive black mesh. 

But, more importantly, the NeueChair is built to last, with a heavy, sturdy industrial construction. Even the chair's weight in the packaging indicates a solid piece of carefully constructed industrial art: it's heavy and substantial.

Assembling it is a breeze, as it comes in two discrete pieces and is simply a matter of inserting the casters and then pushing the two parts together. Almost every aspect of the seat is adjustable, from the armrests to the lumbar support system that lets you change the height depth of the backrest. 

It's one of the best office chairs I've ever had the pleasure to sit in, and if you can afford the admittedly steep price tag, well worth the investment.

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5. AndaSeat Kaiser 3 XL

The best gaming chair for a larger frame

Seat type: Racing seat | Recline: 90–165 degrees | Weight capacity: 180kg (397lbs) | Weight: 34kg (75lbs) | Warranty: 6-year

Adjustable lumbar support

4D armrests

Large seat size

Placement of the lumbar support knobs isn't ideal

The Kaiser 3 XL is a fantastic chair for anyone looking for a little more wiggle room than your usual gaming seat. The Kaiser 3 comes in two sizes: large and extra large. The large accommodate gamers 4’11 to 6’2’’ (150-190cm) and the extra large is for gamers 5’11” to 6’9” (181-210cm). The one I have the pleasure of experiencing is an extra large. 

The width of the extra large is for medium to XXXL, so whether you have a gluteus maximus or a gluteus minimus this chair will fit. 

The Kaiser 3 is really into giving options. This chair is available in two types of materials, premium PVC leather and linen fabric. The premium leather comes in seven different colors, including orange, pink and blue. The linen fabric comes in two colors; carbon black and ash gray. The chair I've been testing is the premium PVC leather elegant black which resembles the Jungle 2. The Jungle 2 is seen with orange accents. 

All of these things are cool, right? It’s great that the Kaiser 3 reclines to 165 degrees, it has two levers, one controls the tilt, the other controls the height of the chair raising it about three inches. These things are all great for comfort.

The armrests are magnetic and are made of a PU foam that makes them easy to lean on.

What I really want to get into is the Kaiser 3's really cool features that add to maximum comfort like the 4D armrests. Much like the Secretlab Titan Evo chair we love, the armrests are magnetic and are made of a PU foam that makes them easy to lean on. There are three buttons on the armrest, the one placed on the outside of the armrest controls the height of it. The button on the inside of the chair near the tip of the armrest allows it to go forward and backward and pivot left to right. The last one located underneath the armrest moves it left to right. 

I love a 4D armrest, especially when the chair reclines backward and tilts forward because it allows me to adjust the armrest for the position I’m sitting in. Nothing makes me more nervous than dangling elbows. It's like leaving your foot hanging off the bed at night. 

You just know something is going to grab it. 

Continuing with the magnetic theme is the neck pillow, another stellar feature. This one is a game changer, I can’t even lie. I am amazed at this magnetic neck pillow. That means no straps, no struggling to clip it through the backrest. BAM! Slap that baby on the chair like you’re in a Flex Tape commercial and it stays. Beyond it being a really cool feature, its helpful if you are shorter than the 5’11” that’s recommended for this chair because it’s easily adjustable further up or down on the chair. 

It being magnetic doesn’t take away from its comfort, either. The neck pillow is made with memory foam and has cooling technology to maintain comfort. 

Notice anything missing? Maybe a lumbar support pillow. That’s the cool thing! There is no lumbar support pillow, but there is lumbar support—it’s built into the chair. And controlled by two knobs placed on the left and right sides of the chair.

As far as accessibility goes, they’re not placed in the best positions. But the knob on the left controls the lumbar support moving up and down. Which is, again, a great function depending on your height. The knob on the right side of the chair determines the firmness of the lumbar support and how much it protrudes out of the chair. When I turn the knob toward me I get more lumbar support. The lumbar support recedes into the chair when I turn it away from me. Neat.

Seriously, I can sit in this all day. Plus there’s a feature being released in June, a magnetic tray table panel that snaps into the armrest. A portable desk sounds dope, well a lot more dope than a gaming high chair, which it also looks like.

Read our full Andaseat Kaiser 3 XL review.

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6. Noblechairs Hero

The best gaming chair for back support

Seat type: Racing seat | Recline: 90–135 degrees | Weight capacity: 150kg (330lbs) | Weight: 28kg (62lbs) | Warranty: 2-year

Great for lumbar support

Ideal for larger frames

Has a firm seat and back-rest

A bit firm for comfort

Armrests could be comfier

When buying a gaming chair, it's easy to forget your health. After all, most are advertised as luxurious, cushioned thrones that soothe your every ache as you smash the crap out of your foes in Apex Legends. But that isn't true, and for some, it's important to pick a chair that takes back support seriously. 

With some of the team having used it daily for almost a year, we can thoroughly recommend the Noblechairs Hero in uPVC leather. While not the most exciting of chairs, or the sportiest, it certainly does a good job of taking care of your back.

The Hero is easy to assemble, except for the bit where you attach the back to the seat, so make sure you have a buddy for that. It's firm and supportive, and extremely sturdy. As a word of warning: it is substantial, so if you prefer a softer chair that isn't as good for your lumbar, this maybe isn't for you.

The sheer presence of the Hero gaming chair is staggering.

Honestly, the sheer presence of the Hero gaming chair is staggering. The seat's cold-cure pressed foam means it’s firm yet comfortable. You don’t sink right into it, which helps with posture, and it will soften over time, but it certainly complements the aesthetic (hard look = brutal). But that base support means it’s still good for long gaming sessions—or working from home in your heathen temple. Either way, what it lacks in softness, it makes up for in support.

I love the pivoting armrests, so you can jimmy them out of the way when you want to use a gamepad, and they’re fully height and width adjustable too, which is great for us little people. Also having such a wide armrest is great, but I find myself leaning on the corner a lot, not making full use of them, and at the same time tiring my elbow out. I’d personally prefer padded armrests, but at least they don’t get sticky or slippery when you’re attempting to flex on your favorite horror FPS franchise.

The chair is height adjustable (as should all chairs be), and the backrest has a ‘rake mechanism’ so you can adjust the angle with its handbrake lookin’ contraption, and a completely independent ‘lock tilt’ mechanism so you can rock freely, or lock yourself almost horizontally for a good nap if all that hardcore gaming has tired you out. It also doesn’t spring forward and crushes you when unlocked, which is always nice.

Read our full Noblechairs Hero Doom Edition review.

Best gaming keyboard | Best VR headset | Best mechanical keyboard| Best wireless gaming mouse | Best wireless gaming keyboard 

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7. Corsair T3 Rush

A simple gaming chair with style

Seat type: Racing seat | Recline: 90–170 degrees | Weight capacity: 120kg (265lbs) | Weight: 23kg (50lbs) | Warranty: 2-years

Breathable soft fabric

4D armrests

Memory Foam Lumbar Pillow

180-degree recline

Not for the tall or large-framed

Corsair's latest addition to its lineup of premium gaming chairs, the T3 Rush, has gotten a much-needed facelift. The T3 Rush is an insanely comfy chair thanks to its memory foam lumbar pillow but, more importantly, uses a breathable soft fabric in place of faux leather. This is because it retains less heat, keeping you fresh and comfy instead of sweating in your squeaky pleather. 

I don't have the heart to try it, but my main concern about a fabric gaming chair is how easy it cleans stains compared to leather and faux leather? So, it's something to consider if you're a notorious eater of foods and a spiller of liquids at your desk. 

Appearance-wise, the Rush leans more towards office-chic than a professional gamer. It comes in gray or black and avoids outrageous design choices that might look a little embarrassing on a work call. It's a chair that looks more expensive ($300) than it is. If you were looking for a little more personality, DX Racer and Secret Labs have many designs and colors if you're tired of black or gray. 

The Rush also reclines to a ridiculous 180 degrees if you want to lie back and take a comfy cat nap before taking on another marathon streaming session of Apex Legends or CS: GO. 

The only major downside of the T3 Rush is for smaller-framed users. If you require a smaller seat, the T3 will be an uncomfortably tight fit. So, if you're over 6 ft tall or larger than 200lbs, you'll need to look elsewhere unless you're buying this for a kid. However, the lack of any fun colors might turn them off. 

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8. DXRacer Craft Series

Tons of bright and colourful options and designs

Seat type: Racing seat | Recline: 135 degrees | Weight capacity: 113kg (250lbs) | Weight: 25.4kg (56lbs) | Warranty: 2-year (accessories), lifetime (frame)

Very comfortable

Bold, attractive design

No creaks or groans

Lack of magnetic headrest

A little pricey

Weak warranty length

Cut the cord...

(Image credit: Steelseries)

Best wireless gaming mouse: ideal cable-free rodents
Best wireless gaming keyboard: no wires, no worries
Best wireless gaming headset: top untethered audio

The DXRacer Craft Series will appeal to those gamers that want their gaming setup to be more than a drab collection of black objects. There are heaps of colors and designs to choose from, including many with surprising artistic flair and grown-up tastes. The best bit, though, is that you don't have to settle for a sub-par chair to get the looks nailed down: the DXRacer Craft Series is well-made and comfy, too.

The design of the DXRacer Craft Series resembles a lot of our favorite gaming chairs. It has 4D armrests, lumbar support, a removable head cushion, and two paddles to adjust the height and whether or not it can recline. Everything works smoothly; nothing hitches or creaks. The lumbar support in particular is a nice addition that my previous chair didn't have.

Everything works smoothly; nothing hitches or creaks.

You can adjust the chair as much as you want and it doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart, which is a boon for something you'll probably own for years. That said, all of the functions are largely the kinds of things you'll adjust once and leave that way, but it's nice to have the options if you say, play an instrument that requires more room for your arms.

The chair itself is covered in PU leather or polyurethane leather. Nothing about the material feels uncomfortable, especially with the foam padding inside, but it's hard to accurately tell whether or not it'll peel or crack with extended use given my limited testing window. Other gaming chairs made with the same material tend to do this, so it's a real concern if you want your chair to look nice many years after you've purchased it. Typically, you want something that'll last longer like mesh fabric.

The whole package doesn't cost much more than Secretlab's Titan Evo 2022 series which comes with many more color options, including branded looks like the League of Legends Jinx design. The Secretlab is a better chair, but the DXRacer Craft Series isn't so much worse that it's not worth investing in one if you find any of the designs pleasing.

That said, this chair is a bit pricier than we'd like for the features on offer. It doesn't offer the feature set of the Secretlab Titan Evo, and it's not quite as clean-cut, but if you want something with a bit more out-there flair, this is absolutely an option that won't let you down.

Read our full DXRacer Craft Series review.

The best gaming chairs FAQ

Are gaming chairs actually bad?

Between recent articles about the effects of sitting down on your body and our experimentation with standing desks, you might think PC Gamer has fallen out of love with the humble chair.

That could not be further from the truth.

As gamers and office workers, we spend a significant chunk of each day sitting on our money makers in front of screens. Given that most of us don't plan to change that anytime soon, it only makes sense to do so in a great chair. So that's what I set out to find.

We wanted to find chairs that maximized comfort, support, and value. We spoke with Melissa Afterman, MS CPE, a Senior Principal Ergonomist with VSI Risk Management & Ergonomics, Inc., who specializes in workstation setups. 

"Absolutely, chairs are still okay," she told me. "Yes, we know that sitting too long is bad for you. The reality is that standing too long is just as bad for you, so the answer is movement. Taking breaks, getting up at least every hour and moving, or changing your position from standing to sitting every hour so that you're not standing too long either."

"If you're typing and working at the computer, you really want more upright support so that you can maintain neutral spine posture and let the chair hold you up," she said. "But when you switch to a gaming mode, you may want to recline a little bit to relax your lower back while still having good support in that position. So a locking backrest and/or some tension control is important."

Another feature to look for, though it tends to be found on more expensive models, is a seat pan slider. This enables you to slide the positioning of your butt forwards or backward relative to the backrest. 

Are gaming chairs really worth it?

The best gaming chairs will complete your PC setup, not just from an aesthetic point of view, but because you will likely be spending hours sat in front of your machine, they will give you the support needed to keep your spine healthy too.

Is a gaming chair better than an office chair?

Nope! You can find good or bad examples of both, and believe us there are plenty. That said, some office chairs are great for gaming and vice versa, and there are 'office chairs', like the Herman Miller Embody, that blend the line between both.

Really it's about finding what's right for you, and a lot of the time that's a gaming chair because, let's be honest, you like the look of it. That's a perfectly good reason to make that decision, just make sure you're not sacrificing comfort and ergonomics for style and flair.

A cheap office chair can be a great pick if you want to save cash and be comfy.

Are gaming chairs good for your posture?

The best gaming chairs look out for you and your back. When it comes to chair design, lumbar support is vital. The first thing you should look for in a new gaming chair is whether it has any built-in support to help your body maintain an ideal posture. Some even come with lumbar support pillows that work to some extent. Multi-adjustable arm-rests, upholstery, and general style are also important; note these features aren't cheap.

That said, a gaming chair can't do everything. The best gaming chairs encourage good posture, but the other half of the equation is on you to stick to it.

Does every gaming chair fit every body type?

Different chair models accommodate different heights and weights, so make sure to check your fit. Look at the width and depth of the seat, too. Some chairs claim that you should sit cross-legged, but that depends on your size and legs' length.

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[Snoop Dogg and Eminem performed as their Ape NFTs, and it's somehow even worse than you'd think]

The world got a little bit worse on Sunday as Snoop Dogg and Eminem performed their new single, From The D 2 The LBC, in the guise of their own Bored Ape NFTs.

The performance took place at MTV's Video Music Awards, and saw the rappers changed—by the transformative powers of Snoop's comically large joint—from flesh-and-blood humans into animated versions of their own Bored Apes: #9055 (Eminem) and #6723 (Snoop). 

That's a half-million dollar transformation at least. Eminem picked up his ape for a dispiriting $460,000 back in January. Snoop, ever a man of wisdom, acquired his as part of a bundle, so we can't say how much he paid for his ape specifically.

The problem with the performance, aside from the gnawing sensation at the back of your mind that art is dead, is that it looked awful. The animated portions of the video took place within the Otherside metaverse platform, created by Bored Ape Yacht Club maker Yuga Labs, which rendered Snoop and Eminem's apes with a kind of dead-eyed, passionless aspect that you normally wouldn't expect to see on the faces of two of the wealthiest and most famous rappers in the world. Then again, it's good enough for Zuckerberg.

Snoop and Slim's adventures see them base-jumping off towering monoliths, addressing thronged masses of robots, and piloting a kind of space-bathysphere, rapping about the myriad cool properties of weed all the while. But they're completely deadpan throughout, like this is their 30th year in a dead-end job and they've long since progressed past caring about any part of it whatsoever. 

My favourite part features the two men, ape-ified, standing atop an obelisk while Eminem raps about how good his songs are. Throughout the whole section Snoop is just kind of waving his arms non-committedly, wearing a thousand-yard stare like he's remembering a lost boyhood love. This is honestly the best part of the entire video.

With so much money and celebrity clout sloshing around these projects, you might think someone might eventually make something cool just by accident, but every time this stuff bleeds over into the real world it gets laughed right back out of it. Whether it's Zuckerberg, Snoop and Slim Shady, or any number of smaller projects with enormous promises, they're either baffling glimpses into the delusions of the ultra-rich or else destructive calamities. We should at least be thankful that Snoop and Eminem's VMA performance was tragicomic rather than simply tragic.

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[Immortality review]

Need to know

What is it? An immersive interactive movie where you are the editor and the film might be haunted.

Expect to pay: $19.99/Free on PC Game Pass

Developer: Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid

Publisher: Half Mermaid

Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U, Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx 2.10 GHz, 12 GB RAM

Multiplayer? No

Link: Steam

Where does art come from? What makes creating a film different from writing a letter or inventing the toaster? Does it come from within us, or is it, sort of, all around us, y'know? This is the realm of cultural philosophy that Immortality (rather more eloquently) delves into as you unravel its FMV-led mysteries. 

Immortality is presented less as a game and more as a collector’s edition Blu-Ray box set of forgotten (and fictional) French model and actor Marissa Marcel’s filmography. Players begin with a question posed in the “Short History of Marissa Marcel,” helpfully written by Immortality director Sam Barlow: What happened to the actor? Why has she been absent for 20 years? Why were none of her movies released? Where is she now? 

Luckily, the answers may lie in the “large cache of film” Barlow and his crew serendipitously found back in 2020. “After carefully collating and scanning the footage,” Barlow writes, “we have created this piece of computer software in an attempt to preserve this work and share it so that Marissa may live again in the hearts of audiences.”

Hide and Seek

“The image is never a simple reality,” wrote philosopher Jacques Rancière. Likewise, the images in Immortality are rarely ever just what they seem. They hide things, distort their meanings, and play with the player’s expectations.

Part of how Immortality hides things is through restraint. Unlike previous Barlow-helmed games, players do not have immediate or comprehensive access to the entirety of the available footage. Instead, they start with a single interview from a 60s-era late night talk show, and are expected to organically branch out from there. This is where the game’s first major mechanic comes in: the “match cut.”

Match cuts are a commonly-used editing technique to build visual clarity for moviegoers. In Immortality, the technique is used to find similarly-composed images across different movies and other media. By pausing the scene, players can examine small aspects of it and, like a point-and-click adventure game, click on whatever they are interested in. This will teleport them to another scene with the same actor or a similar object in it. As players teleport around, they add the scenes they find to their library, and gradually, the true (or 'true') story emerges. The match cut here acts like its cinematographic counterpart by creating narrative, instead of visual, continuity for the player.

The game itself is structured like a Moviola editing machine, and combined with the match cut mechanic, the player is able to put together their own “supercut” based almost entirely on vibes. While I imagine most players will use it for its specified purpose, there’s a lot of room for goofing off here. Want a montage of bowls of fruit? Go for it, why not. Some wall art catch your eye? Here are some more. It’s very satisfying to go down these rabbit holes on your way to solving the mystery at the heart of the game, and the sense that you are actively participating in this created world is bolstered by the presence of excellent background music by Nanita Desai that intensifies as you jump from scene to scene.

As a note, while there are full mouse and keyboard controls built in, the devs do recommend use of a controller, which we discovered added haptic feedback when we used one in our playthrough. Additionally, players will want to scrub back and forth through scenes, as hints and insights can sometimes be found running the footage backwards.

(Image credit: Half Mermaid)

Cut, Print It

With his previous games, Barlow has worked with established actors to create moments of intense drama and intrigue across hours of footage. What sets Immortality apart is that the fictional trilogy of movies at its core (Ambrosio, Minsky and Two of Everything, all shot over a span of 30 years in the story) are essentially real movies, around an hour each, with different writers, actors and production crews for each of them, all shot in the style of the time period they’re purported to be from.

But these movies are not the sole space players get to move around in. A lot of the behind-the-scenes footage features Marissa, director John Durick (played by Hans Christopher) and an assortment of other actors and crew running through rehearsals, scouting locations, hanging out with famous time-period figures like Andy Warhol, and spending intimate time together. In these moments we see tension, we see catharsis, we see regular people trying to make art while ignoring what that attempt at creation is doing to them.

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And we see the ugly side of the film industry, as well. If this game is a critique of anything, it is a critique of auteur theory, of the way the industry chews up and spits out talented people, and above all, it is a slam against the industry’s rampant and violent misogyny, past and present. While discussing this further would constitute a spoiler, do be aware that there is a list of content warnings in the menu, and it includes sexual assault and abusive relationships among them.

Immortality is a remarkable game. It picks freely from several eras of cinema to deliver a genuine exploration of what it means, and what it costs, to make great, meaningful art. The game’s actors are giving the performances of their lives, both as the 'real people' they’re playing and in their various in-game movie roles. The aesthetics of each movie are so true-to-life that it’s easy to suspend disbelief and accept the fiction that these are movies from 1968, 1970 and 1999. While initially daunted by Immortality’s sweeping, sometimes-cosmic scope, I found that instead of being inscrutable it was eager to show new facets of the mystery. It wanted to be played.

Immortality may draw comparisons to films by Alfred Hitchcock or David Lynch, or even past Barlow-penned titles like Telling Lies and Her Story. That is maybe unavoidable. But as a game, it goes much further beyond anything it might be compared to. Immortality is Sam Barlow’s best, most thought-provoking game so far, and a barnstorming debut for Half Mermaid.

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[Free keys here for the first dynamic, open-world player-created MMO]

Fractured Online is a dynamic and open-world sandbox MMO, where players choose where they want to go among three different but interconnected worlds. It skips the long grind in favour of a unique knowledge and talent system, which allows players to discover and learn new skills, master them quickly, and get into the action. You don't beat the bosses in this because you're high-level with sick equipment (though that helps). You can do it through pure skill. 

The promise is an open world where your adventure is yours to choose: explore the vast fantasy worlds as a solo player, prioritising PvE and the occasional bit of co-operation, or go full-blooded into dynamic PvP battles. If fighting's not your thing then Fractured Online has plenty of room for traders, crafters, enchanters, and even town planners. Don't like the city you're in? Why not establish a new one, and see if others will come along for the ride.

As a city governor, you’ll be able to guide its development into a social, trading, or military hub. There are no set paths in Fractured Online. If you choose to found a city, for example, you can use that power and base to make war on others… or try to make deals with them and co-exist, and perhaps eventually even join together. Limitless conquest is always an option, but everyone needs a base.

Fractured Online's world is created by players: both in terms of what they build within it, and the alliances and conflicts that form around them. Nothing will ever be static and, if it is, players can change that. Every time you visit somewhere in one of Fractured Online's three worlds, it will not be the same place you saw yesterday.

Every item beyond the basics in Fractured Online is crafted by players: the fun part being that this can be unbalanced. This is a game that wants you to exploit it, using an uneven amount of resources to make ridiculous profit margins, and then put that back into your real goal of the most kickass place around.

While Fractured Online's PvE side gives plenty enough for most, there will be some jonesing for the high-end PvP action. Asteroids host highly competitive end-game PVP events where you'll be up against the best of the rest for scarce resources and influence for you and your guild, with leaderboards showing who's got game.

(Image credit: Glyph)

As well as this, group play and guilds are a large part of the game. Seasons offer a competitive environment with quests, rewards, and those all-important leaderboards for the bragging rights. Simply being a member of a guild makes your in-game actions count towards the Season's results, and at the end of each the most successful guilds will be showered in rewards before a new season starts with new leaderboards, new challenges, and new opportunities!

Fractured Online has an open weekend over 2nd-5th September. It launches on 15 September on Steam. PC Gamer has a bunch of keys to give away, and here's how to claim one:

How to get a key for Fractured Online

Users need to create a Glyph account here. 

After creating the account head to fracturedonline.com, click on 'Redeem a key' in the menu bar, log into the account and enter the following key:

FRACPCGAMER2022

The key is redeemable from 2nd September 4pm CEST to 5th September 4pm CEST and will grant access to the Fractured Online beta for 72 hours after redemption.

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[Today's Wordle 437 answer and hint: Tuesday, August 30]

Let me help you solve today's Wordle. Whether you're after a quick clue for the August 30 (437) puzzle, a few general tips, or you'd like today's answer in bolded capital letters, you'll find all of that and plenty more just below.

I often worry the answer's going to be one of those words. I'm sure you know the sort by now: something you wouldn't dare type out because it contains an odd letter you're reluctant to waste a guess on—an X or something like that—or it repeats an uncommon consonant. It doesn't happen often, but it happens often enough to trip me up. 

Wordle hint

Today's Wordle: A hint for Tuesday, August 30

"Unpleasant beginnings" is perhaps the best way to sum up today's answer. The word you're looking for is most often used when something bad's on the horizon: a cold winter, a serious illness, things like that. There are two vowels in today's solution. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:

• A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. 
• A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
• The solution may contain repeat letters.

There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank.

Wordle answer

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

What is the Wordle 437 answer?

Let me help you over the finish line. The answer to the August 30 (437) Wordle is ONSET. 

Previous answers

Wordle archive: Which words have been used

The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.

Here are some recent Wordle solutions:

• August 29: CHIEF
• August 28: GAUZE
• August 27: RUDER
• August 26: IRONY
• August 25: CLOWN
• August 24: NEEDY
• August 23: WOVEN
• August 22: MERIT
• August 21: WASTE
• August 20: TREAT

Learn more about Wordle 

Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.

You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot.

You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.

After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 

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