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Let's talk about a game that was pretty dang good and we didn't talk about enough because it came out in January and nobody pays attention to games that came out in January: Nobody Saves the World. Why? Because the wonderful dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash RPG where you turn into slugs and zombies and dragons is getting an expansion, Frozen Hearth, primed to release next month on September 13th. It'll add the ability to turn into a Mechanic or the internet's* favorite thing: A bee. Frozen Hearth will be $5, or bunlded with the base game for $28. I'm honestly delighted to play more of what was—to me—one of this year's best goofy action games. Transforming between Nobody's 18, or I guess 20 now, different forms was a blast—you can be a weird magician with rabbits in a hat, or a slug. Fun! Good! Jon Bailes gave it an 80 in the PC Gamer review. He called Nobody Saves the World "delightfully silly" and "playful," saying that it "puts the grin in grind." Elaborating, he said that it's not "harshly traditional, withholding tasty challenges until you've eaten your greens, with only the occasional stat boosts to demonstrate the nutritional benefits. Rather, it asks: what if the grind wasn't a means to an end or an imposition, but satisfyingly playful in itself? Then shows exactly how." Frozen Hearth will add a new area filled with strange trials called The Tempering, during which you'll unlock those new forms. The Bee seems like it can lay down damaging swarm auras and has a speedy melee sting, while the mechanic is an old man with a wrench and a full-on TF2 lookin turret. There'll also be mini-golf to play while transformed into a dragon. Everyone loves mini-golf, even dragons. Nobody Saves the World is emblematic of Guacamelee developer DrinkBox's signature chaotic-yet-considered style. "If it's a bit flabby and messy, though, Nobody Saves the World is far more often a delight," said Jon. I'd agree. It's a game that You can find Nobody Saves the World on Steam for $25, and I'd guess that Frozen Hearth expansion will pop up on or before its release date of September 16th, 2022. *just me and oprah, really. View the full article

Help build colonies on Mars by designing remote-controlled rovers and moving material from point A to point B. That's the concept for Mars First Logistics, an upcoming physics-based sandbox that'll have you delivering colonization cargo solo or cooperatively with a friend some time in 2023. We first got a look at it last year, when developer Ian MacLarty's Shape Shop started posting a bit of in-progress teasing of silly robots falling off cliffs. Now they've released a full gameplay trailer. The basic loop of Mars First Logistics will be to find a new job, get a rover that can move it, and then trek to the destination. Sometimes you won't have a rover that can tackle your new cargo, so you'll have to go into the editor and bash something together that can do the job. You do that with the parts you have unlocked, or by using credits you've previously earned to unlock whatever new parts you need to transport whatever weird length of pipe you've got going on. The cool twist here is that as you build you're actually changing the outpost, putting in new pieces of tech, and developing Mars. That should make a cool change of pace from other logistics games, like Snowrunner for example, where changes that actually alter the map and what's on it are fairly rare. As you help the colonists complete new buildings you unlock new parts and new missions, each of which will take you into ever-more-complex terrain and ever-more-unwieldy cargos. It also has shades of Kerbal Space Program, where you're encourages to both make very practical designs and push the building and physics engines to their wildest limits. I can tell because the game description mentions, among other things, rocket engines for your craft, so you can go full Evel Knieval on all those Martian canyons. The real appealing feature? You can bring a friend along. The ability to double up for weird jobs adds a certain... potential for chaos, let's say. You can find Mars First Logistics on Steam. View the full article

Welcome to the page guaranteed to supply everything your daily Wordle game needs. You'll find hints and tips for the August 28 (435) puzzle just below, and if you'd like to skip straight to the answer to today's Wordle you'll find that here too. Wordle's a great reminder of how strange and mysterious the English language is; every rule made to be broken, no combination of letters too strange to form a meaningful word. That sense of wonder doesn't always help me win, but it does help smooth the bumps along the way. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Sunday, August 28 This thin and light cloth is used in both fashion and medical settings, and in the latter, it makes a great covering for cuts of all shapes and sizes. There are three vowels to find today, and one of the consonants is an uncommon one. 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 435 answer? You deserve the win. The answer to the August 28 (435) Wordle is GAUZE. 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 27: RUDERAugust 26: IRONYAugust 25: CLOWNAugust 24: NEEDYAugust 23: WOVENAugust 22: MERITAugust 21: WASTEAugust 20: TREATAugust 19: SHRUGAugust 18: TWANG 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. View the full article

The Immortal Empires megacampaign for Total War: Warhammer 3 was long-awaited, thanks to the popularity of its predecessor, the Mortal Empires campaign for Total War: Warhammer 2, and to Warhammer 3's default Realm of Chaos campaign being a bit underwhelming on the second playthrough. Since Immortal Empires came out in beta, Warhammer 3's player count on Steam has shot up like a Doom Diver. Warhammer 3's peak concurrent player count on Steam was 166,754 when it launched on February 17. That quickly dropped, and for the last three months it's been hovering between 8,000 and 12,000 players. With the beta release of Immortal Empires on August 23 it zoomed back up, hitting 119,166 that day. It's remained high since then, and today reached 103,952, putting it at #11 on Steam's list of top games by current player count just behind Rust. It probably helps that there's a Steam sale on the series at the moment, with the first two Total Wars Warhammerses in a bundle for 75% off. (You need all three base games to play Immortal Empires.) Our own Fraser Brown got into the beta early and played a campaign, concluding that, "It should be too big, too unwieldy, and it's certainly very messy and hard to wrap your head around—there must be a limit to the number of unique faction mechanics the human brain can juggle—but it's all just brilliant." Sean Martin has been playing Immortal Empires as well, and managed to break the campaign with a Black Ark super fleet, though he certainly had fun doing it. With 278 factions and 86 playable legendary lords to choose from, I suspect it'll be a while before players get tired of Immortal Empires. It adds Realm of Chaos campaign villain Be'Lakor as a playable lord with his own faction, and gives dedicated factions to existing lords Grombrindal, Helman Ghorst, Volkmar the Grim, Sigvald the Magnificent, and Kholek Suneater. Sea lanes, which let you move armies between distant lands, are another addition, as are randomized endgame apocalypses that throw an extra challenge your way just as you're getting to the point where victory seems inevitable. If you feel up to it, you can even turn them all on at once in Ultimate Crisis Mode. View the full article

GOG.com is having a sale at the moment that is simply called The GOG Sale, with discounts on varied games like Noita (50% off), Invisible Inc. (75% off), A Plague Tale: Innocence (80% off), and, while we're on the subject of cyberpunk, Deus Ex GOTY Edition (86% off, making it a steal at 97 cents). GOG's also giving away Dex, a sidescroller in the vein of Flashback, for free. Dex was released in 2015 after being crowdfunded on Kickstarter, where developers Dreadlocks Ltd said, "The levels and gameplay are non-linear and feature alternative solutions to each problem and obstacle. In other words, the game injects the poison (a problem, an enemy, an obstacle) and offers various antidotes (skills, abilities, equipment). The rest is up to you. In our vision, this is what makes an RPG a true Role Playing Game – the freedom to choose how to do things." Dreadlocks Ltd also called it "reminiscent of Castlevania or Metroid titles with a smattering of the Deus Ex and Splinter Cell series." The setting is Harbor Prime, a city inspired by locations from Blade Runner and Neuromancer, where you can be an assassin, a gunfighter, or a hacker. The hacking system involves swapping to an avatar in cyberspace where you take on countermeasures and viruses to get access to devices you can overload, turrets you can deactivate, and data you can steal. Here are a few more bargains you can grab from GOG's sale while you're there. Disco Elysium - The Final Cut, 65% off.Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, 67% off.Crawl, 80% off.Don't Starve, 75% off.Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed, 50% off.Megaquarium, 60% off.Shadow Warrior 2 Deluxe, 90% off.Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition, 80% off. You've got until 6am PST, 11pm AEST, or 1am UTC on August 29 to claim a free copy of Dex on your GOG account. And here's all the other free games you can grab right now too. View the full article

During Gamescom, Gotham Knights was announced to be coming out four days early, and we also saw a villain trailer revealing Mr. Freeze, Clayface, and Harley Quinn would be among its bosses. Following that, IGN posted a seven-minute video showing a boss fight with Harley, in which Nightwing takes her on to free a bunch of people she's mind-controlled in a hospital. This version of Harley has makeup that reminds me of Heath Ledger's Joker, only with what looks like a spade drawn over her eyes. She's ditched the Jeanette Voerman pigtails, but is still rocking the traditional hammer and terrible quips, calling her opponent "Nightbutt." Meanwhile, Nightwing's halfway to a mullet, which you'd think would be a better target for her to make fun of. The last time we saw gameplay footage of Nightwing in action there was a lot of skating to get him into position for attacks to land, which seems reduced here. At the same time, it looks slow and not particularly dynamic. That could be down to how it's being played—rather than let Harley get hits in, this footage is more about showing off Nightwing's moves, which include wrist guns that fire what are presumably rubber bullets and an ice stun. (Maybe learned from Mr. Freeze?) He also dodges almost every attack, which are telegraphed by circles around the incoming weapons. While that makes the fight look trivially easy and kind of boring, checking the comments makes it obvious why they've done it this way. On YouTube the only thing that matters is proving you're Good At Games, and so the comments are all cheering on "the most skilled gamer". Personally, I'd rather see a video that made Gotham Knights' boss fights seem like a challenge rather than a cakewalk, but what do I know. It's impossible not to make comparisons with the Arkham games' much more fluid freeflow combat, with its counters as well as dodges and increasing speed as you built your combo. The cooldown specials of Gotham Knights, flashy as they may be—one of them has Nightwing breakdancing while his batons fly around on their own—don't really compare. The dodges that leave Nightwing facing away from Harley like a cool guy who doesn't look at explosions aren't helping. Still, maybe ramping up the difficulty so the enemies are faster and more aggressive will make it more exciting in play. The more tweakable, the better. The developers have said that damage numbers can be turned off, which is a nice option. I'd love it if you could replace them with SFX that said BIFF and POW. Gotham Knights will be out on October 21, and is coming to Steam and the Epic Games Store. View the full article

Through the magic of software emulation you can use a Steam Deck attached to a monitor to play Nintendo 3DS games, something I am now aware of thanks to tech video creator GameXData. In a tweet they posted, GameXData shows off a hilarious image combo using the Steam Deck's touch screen and Pokemon X/Y. A ton of people brought it up. So, I thought I'd confirm: Yes, you can play 3DS games dual screen with a Steam Deck as the bottom screen. pic.twitter.com/RQjMpSpcLqAugust 26, 2022 See more Through the power of linux, emulation, and the Steam Deck... we have reinvented the Wii U. It's a testament to the versatility of the Steam Deck as a piece of hardware that it can be used this way. The touch screen lets you actually emulate, and play, some of the 3DS' games as they were when first released—maybe grab a stylus that works well on the Steam Deck screen first, I guess. No joke, you can emulate the Wii U's style well on the Steam Deck and a monitor—which is great. (Which the same folks at GameXData pointed out as well.) That's super dope, because games designed similarly to Breath of the Wild make excellent use of that second screen as inventory and the like. Cemu supports this with a little checkbox that splits the gamepad to its own window. Speaking of Cemu, it went open source recently—which is a big deal for Wii U emulation. You can find GameXData on Twitter and on YouTube—thanks to them for bringing this vital piece of information to our (my) attention. In other Steam Deck news, Valve says that production has outperformed estimates, so your Steam Deck is probably on the way sooner if you've been waiting. Clearly that's pleasing to Valve, since it has confirmed that there will be more open and more capable generations of the Steam Deck. Oh and they've made a nice little booklet about the Steam Deck as it launches in Asia. (You can read it in English, though.) View the full article

THE PCG Q&AFind all previous editions of the PCG Q&A here. Some highlights: - What should boomer shooters be called? - What's your favorite thing a unit in a strategy game says when you click on them? - What do we want from Fallout 5? When a videogame opens with so many sliders you'd think it was a 1990s sci-fi series starring John Rhys-Davies, do you dive right in and start adjusting your character? Do you wallow in that thing for hours until you've created a face perfect enough to shame God? Or do you just say 'good enough' and get on with playing the actual game? How long do you spend in character creators? Here are our answers, plus some from our forum. Chris Livingston, Features Producer: At first I'm really into it! I check out all the hairstyles, followed by facial hair when available. Tattoos, scars, piercings, and so on, always fun to choose. I'll find the eyes I like, make sure the eyebrows look good, fiddle with the nose and lips. Then I'll notice there's options for, like, cheekbone width. And cheekbone depth. And cheekbone spread, size, weight, shading, sharpness, and 10 other cheekbone attributes and I just don't have that many opinions about how my character's cheekbones should look. Then I'll see options for stuff like ear rotation, eyebag density, neck occlusion, pore diameter, iris clouding, philtrum profundity, and by this point I'm like "Look, I'm sorry I ever came here, please just let me enter my character's name and leave and I promise I'll never come back." So, like, 5-10 minutes I guess. (Image credit: Gameloft) Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Like, total? Or just the first time? Because I'll probably spend about 30 minutes in a character creator initially. "I just want to play the game," I'll think, trying not to be extra, not to take my face so seriously, just be chill about it, even as I tweak every single slider just in case. At minute 31 I have to see my character's face in the harsh light of game day, outside the mood lighting of the creation screen, and oh god her eyes are too far apart and her hair is brighter than I realized and also I chose a really boring hairstyle and I know better. I know I want my character to stand out but I chose that half-pony because I was trying not to be so ridiculous but I should have gone for the extravagant updo. I've spent a lot of time in Dragon Age Inquisition's Black Emporium changing my face after the fact. And also a lot of cash at Red Dead Online's barbershop. And real money on character appearance consumables in MMOs. I dunno... two hours? Tim Clark, Brand Director: I once blew the first hour of a two-hour Dragon Age Inquisition demo fannying around trying to get the freckles on my character just right, so you can only imagine the amount of time I'm willing to spend once unconstrained. Pretty sure I had to restart Mass Effect multiple times to rectify fish-lip disasters that were only revealed once in-game. Can we do how much time do you spend on MMO character fashion next, because it's... a problem. (Image credit: EA) Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I'm at a point with character creators where I'm happier for the devs to just give me the choice of 10 preset faces. The modern trend towards endless precise sliders is a special kind of trap for my brain—I'm obsessive enough that I need to make my character look exactly perfect before I can start, but at the same time impatient and uncreative in a way that makes me terrible at getting good results out of that great a level of choice. I pretty quickly end up in this weird zone where nothing looks right my eyes, like the visual equivalent of when you say the same word too many times and it loses all meaning. It'll end up taking me hours to find something I'm happy with, and then inevitably the moment I step into the actual game, I'll realise my character looks terrible in the default lighting, or their clothes sit super weird on their body, or some other flaw I can't possibly live with. At this point it's perfectly normal for me to restart an RPG several times over trying to get a result I can live with. I practically had a nervous breakdown when Monster Hunter World asked me to design a cute cat friend too. (Image credit: Capcom) Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: At least 30 minutes. If a character creator has sliders and color palettes and more than just a few basic presets to flick through, I'd say I usually spend somewhere between 30 minutes and a full hour getting my character just how I want them. I definitely stress over cheekbones (they should be pointy, but not too pointy) and eye spacing and hmm do those brows make them look too angry or just tough? I don't think I've ever restarted a game once I created my character just to change something, but I definitely fret the details. At least until I hit the hour mark: that's about when I go into "'frell' it" mode and impatiently rush through the rest of the creation process. Robin, if you thought Monster Hunter World asking you to create a Palico was bad: Monster Hunter Rise asks you to make a cat and a dog and then you can recruit a labor force of like, a dozen furry friends. It's way too much. I still love my Monster Hunter World hunter, though. That's a good character creator. (Image credit: Capcom) Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I mentioned in my review of Saints Row that I spent a fair while in the character creator, and then after the tutorial I ended up switching to the first default. After reading the other answers I'm glad to know I'm not the only person who ends up unhappy with their custom face, though sometimes it's because I make up a character who doesn't fit the story rather than because from some angles my cheekbones could cut glass. In Dragon Age Origins I made a human rogue with a Michael Caine vibe, a middle-aged tough guy, then the prologue cast me as the younger son of a noble who looked the same age as me and kept calling me "Pup." Feh. (Image credit: EA) Lost Ark is probably the game where I've spent the most time in the character creator. I have a small army of alts themed on characters from other games. My paladin is Dragon Age's Alistair and my sorceress is Warcraft's Tyrande Whisperwind. I've made Geralt and Harley Quinn and Jeanette Voerman from Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Normally a character as distinct as Jeanette would be impossible to recreate thanks to her heterochromia, but Lost Ark lets you make characters with eyes of two different colors. The fangs were tougher to pull off, but the facial tattoo options include a kind of crescent moon that I mirrored to make two of, then angled and moved down to her lips. After all that effort she ended up wearing armor with a hood that completely changed her hairstyle. I don't know why I bother. Image 1 of 5 (Image credit: Amazon Games)Image 2 of 5 (Image credit: Amazon Games)Image 3 of 5 (Image credit: Amazon Games)Image 4 of 5 (Image credit: Amazon Games)Image 5 of 5 (Image credit: Amazon Games) From our forum Brian Boru: 15-20 minutes max in the few games where I've had character creation options. But there have never been 'tweaking' options, like size of eyebrows or mouth. I would spend much longer cumulatively in Photo Mode, making adjustments for each shot. Zloth: I normally don't spend a lot of time adjusting my characters' looks. Maybe 5 minutes. There are some exceptions when there are a LOT of options for the looks, though. City of Heroes/Villains is going to take a good half hour per costume slot. (Image credit: Bethesda) ZedClampet: My process is to glance at the default, male character. and decide if he is acceptable. If so, then I just skip it altogether. That's how it goes the majority of the time. Every now and then I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Default, so I might cycle through some faces and hairstyles, but it doesn't take but a minute. If it's one like in Fallout 4 where you can change even the smallest detail, I might fiddle with it a couple of minutes. But, see, none of these characters can compare to me IRL. I'm so hot the air around me gives off a faint sizzling sound. I look how bacon tastes. Colif: I normally play games where after an hour or so my character has a helmet on and I never see their faces again, so character creation is... not very long. Pifanjr: Let's just say I think I've definitely spend up to an hour just crafting my Skyrim character, which I then never saw again because I play the entire game in first person and he's covered head to toe in armour 100% of the time. Sarafan: I spend a lot of time in character creators, but not in the character look editors. Usually most time consuming is selecting the appropriate set of abilities and skills. This can take ridiculously long especially if there are some random variables. My personal record is 8 hours spent to create a whole party in the first Icewind Dale. It’s something fascinating in re-rolling dices of all those stats until you get a satisfying result. (Image credit: Tactical Adventures) mainer: Being an RPG fanatic, I love a deep, detailed character creation system, I will spend literally hours in character creation, depending upon the complexity and how many characters I'm creating. If I'm only creating one character, as in the Elder Scrolls games, it might only take me an hour or two, and I'm not overly fanatical about a "looks-type" creation (although appearance & body type can be important for a 3rd person view and/or a photo mode). But what really consumes my time are games where you create a party of 2-6 characters and your game experience & survival is going to depend upon the choices you make and there's no included "re-spec" option later in the game. Make your choices wisely and live or die by them. D&D games are a good example, where your choices of race, class, profession, alignment, stats, skills, and proficiencies will dictate your success or failure in the game world. Roll those dice, again & again & again, to get that perfect build you're looking for. I'm envious of Sarafan's 8 hours spent on his Icewind Dale party. Solasta Crown of the Magister is a more recent D&D game (party of 4) that I've spent hours in character creation, Rolling dice over & over, and spending points on skill, abilities, and feats. A very old-school and detailed system. JarlBSoD: Spore! Anyone remember Spore? The game where character creation was more fun and took more time than you spent on the rest of the game? View the full article

From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random games back into the light. This week, a trip to the English Riviera in a bit of multimedia horror that didn't even get to ride the CD-ROM wave and call itself a Torquay adventure... As an institution, the BBC has done many great things over the years. The iPlayer, for instance. Televising democracy. Cancelling Robin Hood. Combine one of its biggest successes with the power of CD-ROM, and you'd probably expect something quite impressive. And... well, that's actually true, provided you think of impressions as just depressions with better marketing. Car on loan from Rentaghost, apparently. Even by the standards of multimedia tie-ins, this one extracts enough piss to fill a small swimming pool. Which takes some doing. Just look at the likes of Stephen King's F13 and comedy enema Microshaft Winblows 98, and realise with raised eyes and a shocked look that this is almost infinitely worse. At least in both of those games, there was a hint—the slightest, tiniest suggestion—that someone involved might, possibly, have either cared or had a single creative synapse fire. Here, the kindest thing you can say is that at least exposure to the game probably won't, directly, cause flatulence. (Until you discover that it came out in 2000. Not 1995. 2000. I have never seen development credits fly past quite so fast, or been so surprised not to see the entire mess blamed on Alan Smithee.) Did any of these multimedia thingies succeed? Sure, a few—not least a couple of the Monty Python games, which benefited from the cast actually being involved. For this one, it's doubtful John Cleese was even aware of its existence. It's one of the silliest things the BBC could possibly have done, short of—pffft, I don't know. Creating a Doctor Who game where he runs around shooting Daleks! Uh... OK. Should have remembered. Okay, I know! Turning 'Allo 'Allo into a platformer... Hurm. A Transport Tycoon rip-off based on Oh, Doctor Beeching? Well, that's OK then. And at least other top shows were spared. I mean, can you imagine giving this kind of treatment to, say, Only Fools and Horses? I dread to think what it would have consisted of. A leopard-printed calculator maybe. A pub quiz minigame. A series of—it exists, doesn't it? Crap. But back to this specific argument against the license fee. "Look at you? I don't need to look at you, I can smell you from here." Really, this picture should say it all. Just admire it. Stare in wonder at the way John Cleese's head has been stuck onto someone else's body and never turns to face the camera. The crap 3D rendering, with what looks like a bench blocking the entrance to the dining table and the carpet actively trying to suck your eyes into a universe of infinite pain. Most notable though is that on this screen... well, guess how many bits of this screen are interactive. Does the plant hold any mysteries? What lies upstairs? Is there a secret hidden in the fact that the grandfather clock quite visibly has no hands, or that some sticky-fingered thief has stolen much of the set dressing? Nope. Exactly four things are clickable, and one of those is the Quit option—the biggest, and most enjoyable thing you can click. The office is "Videos", in which you can play short clips almost as efficiently as just waiting for the actual episode to be re-run somewhere. The Kitchen is Desktop Customiser, where you'll find lots of wallpaper, cursors, icons and other accoutrements to make your copy of Windows look crap—but also by far the best part of the experience even if for some crazy reason you don't want the default Windows beep to be replaced by Sybil Fawlty saying "Mrs. Richards" for no reason. Hours of fun! But we're not interested in that, are we? No, what matters is the Games section. This was 2000; the year that brought us Deus Ex and the Millenium Bug. Diner Dash was yet to be a glimmer in the Flash world's eye, but still, would demonstrate that things like running a restaurant could be entertaining. Fawlty Towers at least has some promise there, right? Juggling plates to keep guests happy as everything comes crashing down, Basil constantly being driven into psychotic fury at having to race from the reception to the dining room to the kitchen, dealing with familiar problems like a rat running around or distracting a Health Inspector while Polly and Manuel clean the kitchen. I'm not saying it would be a great game, but at least it could be a game. There are certainly worse licenses to build on. Yes. This might actually be more promising than expected. "This is why Basil's blood pressure is so high that every papercut risks shooting him into orbit," Fawlty Towers could claim, whipping up endless situations where you can sympathise with the man while still laughing at the continuous crisis that is his tortured existence. It's the kind of thing that would never exactly get into the PC Gamer Top 100, but which could at least be fun—and a brave attempt to actually replicate the spirit of the show in an interactive medium and reward the devoted fans whose love for these characters and willingness to take a risk led to it being worth creating in the first place. I wonder if they did any of that. Ouch, right in the soul! ... It's one thing to scrape the bottom of the barrel, but does the barrel really have to be this shallow? Oh my goodness. Yes, the first game really is driving Basil—or to be more exact, a clearly empty car—around a map that these days would warrant Google Images getting its name in the credits. You run over guests to pick them up, and drive them back to Fawlty Towers using the most advanced driving engine since the Tomy Turbo. Bounce off walls, spin round the empty streets, it's all good. There are three rounds, each adding more guests to gather, and in the interests of generosity I'll say that it's a refreshing change to play a game that a corpse has a decent shot at winning. Your reward consists entirely out-of-context sound clips, including the laugh track, usually brutally cut off. New material? Hahaha. Polly, be a dear and bring my suicide pills, would you? The extra-deadly today, I think. Game 2 manages to be even worse. It's called "Got A Room, Mate?" (yes, really) and is strictly for the kind of people who'd have gone on Mastermind with Fawlty Towers as their specialist subject had exposure to this not turned them into a dribbling sack of whimpers. The idea is to assign rooms to guests, based on clues from Basil. Logic puzzle then? No! In practice, those clues turn out to be things like "So it's one Scotch, and you each need a screwdriver," and "Mrs Peignoir. Ah, quite charming." which provides exactly no assistance. Luckily, there are two things on your side—a time limit long enough to just work it out by trial and error, and not having any conceivable reason to care. After all, just look at the board. If they couldn't be bothered to recreate the actual hotel layout as seen in the TV show, it seems a bit rich to expect anyone else to waste valuable brain cells putting everyone where they should be. Shudder. Still, I'm almost positive that the third game will redeem everything! At least you can legitimately return the game and claim it's Fawlty. The Manager's Fawlty is the game that clearly saw the most time and attention, which is a bit unfortunate really. The premise is that Basil wants to go into his office and eat some toast. Yes, really. But despite this, up to four players can suffer through it at once, and only one of them gets to be Basil, so... I'm not quite sure how that works. The other players get to personify Sybil, Polly, and Manuel, obviously, and despite this only being a four-player game, also the Major and a random guest in a nightcap. It's a fiendish game of skill and tactics, and by that I mean 'rolling a single die and then having to physically move your own counter to the target square.' You'd think there wouldn't be too much that could go wrong with this simple premise, but if Fawlty Towers is about anything, it's making a mountain out of a molehill and then blowing it up with a million tons of C4. For starters, the board is littered with annoying sound clips from the show, none funny out of their actual context. Fail to roll the exact number at the end for instance, and Basil barks out "It's against the law. The law of England. Nothing to do with me." Trying to get on with the game until it's finished though just pops up the scolding error "Wait for the sound to finish before rolling the dice." Nggggh. Some of the choices are also slightly weird. For instance, in the bottom left is a trap square of Basil's hand accidentally landing on a lady guest's buxom bosum, yet it's the square with his head that triggers being kicked back a few squares instead of actually mirroring the mammary-grab. To make things worse more interesting, a number of squares also offer a Chance card, or a "Sybil's Wig Card", because... I don't know. Also, the picture is clearly not of Sybil's wig. Sometimes, these are mercifully brief: "Sybil thinks Basil has forgotten their anniversary... again! Go back 3 spaces." Other times though, the unlucky player is forced into mini-game hell. There appear to be three of these, though there may be another one hidden somewhere, like a smallpox virus in an unopened copy of Daikatana. Here's the first one, setting the tone for the rest: I suppose Basil DOES tend to go to pieces... Enough said, right? As with all the games, the further you get through the board, the harder the puzzle becomes—mostly because you're increasingly surrounded by other players who would rather beat you to death with a frozen swordfish than watch you solve a sliding block puzzle, or if you're playing alone, you're increasingly likely to realise the hollow void that is your life and willingly fall onto it heart-first. If you do really well, you get to solve a bonus picture after the first one. Hurrah. Next! More like rat-a-(spit)-ptoooie. Shooting galleries don't come much lazier than this. As the Major, can you shoot Manuel's beloved Siberian hamster Basil multiple times with a shotgun without hitting one of the Fawlty Towers staff? Of course you can, because you have to have basic motor skills just to launch the game. The highlight here is that the hamster doesn't even pop out of the scenery in any kind of realistic fashion—it's just squares floating over the board in a way that would honestly embarrass a tutorial project in a book called Learn Macromedia Director in 12 Minutes. On the plus side, the third game pulls things back all the way, and is a genuinely satisfying— Surprise! It's secretly crap! No, obviously not. The final game is called (yes, really) "Moose-La", because the smell of desperation is about ready to drown out all the oxygen in the room. Three poorly compressed, green-tinted JPEGs of a moose head jerk from side to side, and it's your job to throw hoops over their ears because... uh... um... yes. It's almost impossible to control the throw, being completely 2D, with the one sop to being an actual game being that you're not allowed to climb over the Reception desk. Alas, this is immediately undercut by the immediate, in-your-face fact that this clearly isn't the Fawlty Towers reception desk, that the moose head is on the wrong wall, and that there should be a door to the office somewhere. And also that you're wasting valuable seconds of the one life you will ever have throwing hoops over a fake moose's antlers in a way that produces a greater sense of dread than the entirety of The Stanley Parable. Your reward for all of this is a single picture, and the chance to be disowned by family and friends alike by asking the question "Shall we play again?" If you don't want that spoiled for you, look away now. Hurrah! You have completed a great game and proved the justice of our culture! Despite all of this though, Fawlty Towers does have its fans. In one Amazon review, a developer (I hope and pray) writes: "An amazing product and an essential part of any Fawlty Towers Collection. any fan with a pc should have this game.. It has all the classic scene`s all the ones we all know and love, making this the best christmas present a fawlty fan could possible ask for (hint, hint!!)" Another, back in space era 2002, declared "Overall I would give it 70%", making it the best RPG since Dragon Age 2. But not a better interactive Fawlty Towers experience than simply hitting pause the next time you rewatch an episode and pretending you did something to affect the story when it resumes. Or indeed, stubbing your toe and yelling "ARSE!" ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: DIDN'T MENTION THE WAR View the full article

The missing in action System Shock 3 is still entirely in the hands of Tencent. That's according to Nightdive Studios CEO Stephen Kick, who in an an interview with VGC said that the rights to make System Shock 3, originally licensed to OtherSide Entertainment, had been sold on to and remain with Tencent. "They then subsequently sold their rights to Tencent," Kick explained. "So Tencent currently has the rights to the third game, and we have the rights to do the remake of the first game and potentially a remake of the second game. That’s pretty much where it stands right now." Tencent hasn't said anything since the rights acquisition. It was unclear if OtherSide was working alongside Tencent for a bit, but we learned this year that System Shock creator Warren Spector's OtherSide entertainment hasn't worked on System Shock 3 since 2019. "So Tencent currently has the rights to the third game, and we have the rights to do the remake of the first game and potentially a remake of the second game. That’s pretty much where it stands right now," said Kick. "I think they technically could do 4 and 5 as well, but they’d have to do 3 first. So, we’ll see." Nightdive, meanwhile, is still cracking along on its remake of System Shock. They dropped a new trailer this week, and a build is playable at Gamescom. Kick also said at Gamescom that System Shock creators Warren Spector and Paul Neurath have been providing feedback on Nightdive's game builds throughout development. View the full article

Bethesda veteran and indie developer Nate Purkeypile recently released an updated 2022 trailer for his experimental fantasy hunting sim, The Axis Unseen. The latest trailer, as well as Purkeypile's dev logs on YouTube, paint an exciting picture of a sort of stealth-shooter that embraces some classic immersive sim inspirations. Purkeypile is developing The Axis Unseen on Unreal Engine 5, and while the tech's gotten plenty of attention for the high-fidelity graphics it can support, this is the first time I've been really wowed by the art direction on a UE5 project. Purkeypile's stark metal album environments really benefit from the "UE5 look" of the lighting, that kind of dreamy effect like a too-bright early afternoon. The striking, as-of-yet unexplained ruins of his scenes really grab my attention as well. In particular, the shot of a triangular sculpture with reptilian hands grasping at a humanoid figure at the top of a staircase to nowhere reminds me of the work of French comic artist Moebius. These environments are just weird, and I want to explore them. That enticing fantasy world promises to support some unique gameplay as well. I almost read Axis Unseen's bowhunting gameplay as a riff on the fan-favorite stealth archer build from Skyrim, a game Purkeypile worked on as a world artist. Your character moves slowly and can't take too many hits from the game's otherworldly fauna (think the Ancestor Spirit from Elden Ring). Arrows seem to be in short supply as well, so sneaking about is the order of the day. The game's quarry can detect you via sight, sound, and even smell, with the range of that last one dependent on wind direction. Similar to Looking Glass Studios' seminal stealth series, Thief, different surfaces transmit sound to greater or lesser degrees, affecting how fast you can traverse them without alerting foes. Dirt is quieter than stone, but you leave tracks for enemies to follow there while stone poses no such risk (unless you're tracking mud!) Turnabout's fair play though, and players will be tasked with keeping abreast of this world's creatures visually and via audio cues, and enemies leave tracks that you can follow in turn. No detective vision or MGSV marking of enemies here, The Axis Unseen fully embraces its low-tech ranger fantasy. Unfortunately, VR technology is still a long way off from the sort of olfactory simulation you'd need to smell your opponents, so that's an unfair advantage this game's magical harts, ent/leshen-type guys, and other horrors will have over you. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Just Purkey Games)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: Just Purkey Games)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Just Purkey Games)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Just Purkey Games)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Just Purkey Games)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Just Purkey Games) There's a lot of other little touches I enjoy as well. The menu seems to take the form of an in-game book whose pages you flip through, and you have to pull your quiver off your back to see how many arrows you have, similar to the magazine checking of Wolfire Games' Receiver series. I usually prefer a chunky, overdesigned, retro UI over a modern, minimalist, abstracted one, but I really appreciate Axis Unseen's commitment to über-minimalism. The Axis Unseen has me stoked for its unique take on stealth and fantasy exploration, but we're still a ways off from release. Purkeypile is a little over a year into the game's development, and recently showed off a development roadmap for the project on Twitter. For now, you can follow Purkeypile's progress on his YouTube, and Twitter accounts, as well as wishlist the game on Steam or the Epic Store. View the full article

Square Enix may have completed the sale of its western development studios like Crystal Dynamics and the former Eidos to Embracer Group, but there's clearly some unsold inventory lurking in their digital and physical warehouses. Liquidation sale it is: Games like Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel's Avengers, and huge collections from the Tomb Raider, Thief, Deus Ex, and Hitman series are on bargain-bin sale—90% off. In addition to Steam codes there are sales on copies of these games ranging from the PS3 era all the way up to current-generation PS5 and Xbox consoles. I'll provide some direct links to save you the nightmare of navigating Square Enix's online store, which has the distinction of being one of the worst store interfaces I've ever used. The marquee sale for many is on Marvel's Avengers at $2 and Guardians of the Galaxy at $6, the former out of some morbid curiosity I assume and the latter out of how Guardians of the Galaxy is actually a decent game. (Especially now that they've worked out the nastiest of the bugs.) Those games have proven so popular you can now waitlist to get them at those prices. Dunno how that's going to work, but worth a shot if you're interested. You can also grab every modern Tomb Raider game for $20 instead of $201, or get them individually, I don't judge. You can get similar deals for the entire Deus Ex series at $3, or the Thief series at $4.50, which are to be clear are both the entire series of older classics and newer remakes. As a special treat, folks in the EU can get a sweet deal on the modern Hitman games, like Hitman 3 for €7. Those using the US store will have to be content with the superb Hitman Go for less than $1. For me, however, the deal of choice is the Legacy of Kain series, all of which are 90% off and all of which I've not played in 20 years and am going to enjoy again posthaste. The Soul Reaver games are basically the predecessors to DarkSiders and I have some very fond memories. View the full article

Alongside its big preview at Gamescom, Hogwarts Legacy's Steam page has been updated to include its suggested system requirements. While our peers at GamesRadar are right to wonder how this thing will ever run on Nintendo Switch, its PC requirements strike me as pretty reasonable for a big budget, open world RPG. Hogwarts Legacy minimum requirements (1080p, 60fps, low settings) OS: Windows 10API: DirectX 12Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600Memory: 8 GB RAMGraphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD RX Vega 56Storage: 85 GB available space (SSD preferred)Upscale Performance Setting Hogwarts Legacy recommended requirements (1080p, 60fps, high settings) OS: Windows 10API: DirectX 12Processor: Intel Core i7-8700 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600Memory: 16 GB RAMGraphics: Nvidia GeForce 1080 Ti or AMD RX 5700 XTStorage: 85 GB available space (SSD preferred)Upscale Quality Setting I initially had a bit of sticker shock at the GTX 1070 as a minimum graphics choice, the same as Elden Ring's suggested minimum, but that's not really fair. The 1070's over six years old now, quite long in the tooth for a mid-high tier card. The fact that it will apparently push 1080p resolution and 60fps performance in a 2023 AAA release is actually pretty stunning. "Minimum" performance has come a long way since the horrendous, Games For Windows Live, 720p/30fps-locked Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition port. Thrifty gamers out there might be able to squeeze more resolution/frame rate-compromised experiences out of Legacy with even older hardware. The game's performance seems like it'll be helped along by image reconstruction tech—the "Upscale Quality/Performance Setting" mentioned in the requirements. It seems to be Avalanche's own solution or AMD's FSR, as Nvidia DLSS would not work with the older GTX and Radeon cards in these specs. I'm a bit puzzled by the proverbial half-step up for the game's recommended settings⁠—1080p, 60fps with High settings on a similarly withered i7-8700/GTX 1080 Ti combo. This space might have been better used to suggest hardware for higher resolutions, but this is a decent enough start and a strictly theoretical conversation for the time being. We'll have to wait until February 10 to see how Hogwarts Legacy actually performs. View the full article

I'm here to offer you a hand-crafted clue for today's Wordle, all the advice you need if you've never played before but would love to join in. If you'd like the answer to the August 27 (434) Wordle delivered directly to your eyeballs all you need to do is scroll past the hint section on this page. "Ah, of course it's that word" is a thought that doesn't always come to me in time. I don't mind though—that's part of the fun in my opinion; knowing I can think of five valid words but there are only two guesses left. All I can do is go for the one I like the sound of most and hope for the best. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Saturday, August 27 Think of someone who's impolite, loudmouthed, and doesn't care if you bring their bad behaviour up. Now take that four-letter word and imagine what you'd call someone who was even worse than that. They'd be what, than the other person? One of today's consonants is used twice. 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 434 answer? Let's save your win streak. The answer to the August 27 (434) Wordle is RUDER. 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 26: IRONYAugust 25: CLOWNAugust 24: NEEDYAugust 23: WOVENAugust 22: MERITAugust 21: WASTEAugust 20: TREATAugust 19: SHRUGAugust 18: TWANGAugust 17: TWICE 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. View the full article

PC Gamer's Phil Savage and Mollie Taylor have been at Gamescom in Cologne this week, and so far they've published previews of The Callisto Protocol, Homeworld 3, and Jagged Alliance 3. They've seen many more games than that—I saw some fearsome-looking schedules before they left—so we'll have to wait for them to regain consciousness to find out what they're most excited about. The rest of us have been watching from home: Gamescom continues through this weekend, but its biggest reveals and announcements happened closer to the start of the week, particularly during Tuesday's livestream, which was once again hosted by the host with the most videogame shows that he hosts, Geoff Keighley. You can watch all of Opening Night Live here if you missed it. It's about two hours long, and FYI, the big reveal at the end is just the release date for Dead Island 2. It's not really a moment you need to witness in context, but there were some exciting games at the show. There were other shows, too, including another edition of our publisher's Future Games Show. After watching all of the week's activity, here are the six games we're most curious about. (And here's the rest of our Gamescom 2022 coverage.) A new RTS from the C&C Remastered studio Wes Fenlon, Real Time Strategist: RTS renaissance. RTS renaissance!! A couple years ago EA partnered up with Petroglyph Games, a small studio founded by many of the former Westwood developers who made Command & Conquer, to work on a very good remastered collection of the original C&C and Red Alert. Off the back of that success Petroglyph announced a World War I RTS called The Great War: Western Front. I have to say it's a bit brown for my taste, but I like the sound of Petroglyph dipping its toe into larger-scale strategy in a way it never did with C&C. This quote from the Steam page sounds a lot like Total War: "As Theatre Commander, experience enthralling turn-based grand-strategy as you direct the deployment of forces, perform research and carefully consider how you disseminate your resources across the Western Front in a war won by inches. Alongside this, take up the mantle of Field Commander in dynamic real-time battles as you direct units to defeat your opponent, build trenches and perform direct assaults by sending your infantry over the top." Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles looks so cool Chris Livingston, Settlement Builder-Upper: Sometimes a trailer comes along that instantly jabs a finger onto the endorphin release button in my brain. Airships? Settlements? Tall castles built on craggy cliffs? Yes to all of those. I never played aerial combat game The Falconeer, but the follow-up, Bulwark, looks fantastic. Build fortresses and cities across the tops of snowcapped mountains of an ocean planet, recruit commanders that unlock new building options, and defend against attacks from airborne enemies. My body is ready. Pinnochio, but it's Bloodborne Tyler Colp, But He's Bloodborne: I routinely forget that Lies of P exists and that it’s a soulslike game loosely (real loosely) based on Pinocchio. The trailer plays into how absurd the premise is without breaking the fourth wall and I respect that: A strangely attractive Pinocchio carves through freaky enemies and then meets his father, Geppetto, in a dark 19th century France. It’s all so unabashedly Bloodborne that I think I have to play it at this point. Lauren Morton, But She's Bloodborne: I guess I should admit that I have not forgotten that Lies of P exists and have been unironically looking forward to it since it was announced. So uh, I guess the only surprise to me was that no one dragged me away from putting "Pinocchiosouls" in a headline. New Tales from the Borderlands, old Telltale staff Jody Macgregor, New And Old Weekend/AU Editor: A sequel to Tales from the Borderlands was announced in April, though with a footnote of caution: this one's being made in-house by Gearbox. The original was great because of how outside regular Borderlands it was, with completely different gameplay and a cast of civilians to highlight the absurdity of the looter-shooter's setting as seen from ground level. Having the people responsible for writing Borderlands 3 trying to handle that style of comedy seemed like a potential red flag. (Though to be fair both the Borderlands 3 DLC and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands were improvements in the writing department). However, the Gamescom trailer for New Tales from the Borderlands was accompanied by a statement from Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford explaining that its creation involved "a group of original Telltale story tellers, writers and developers who worked on the original game." Gearbox director of production James Lopez also told IGN that the studio "partnered with key alumni from the original Tales game" to write it. So maybe it's safe to get our hopes up after all. New Tales from the Borderlands will be out on October 21. This offbeat indie detective game slays Chris Livingston, Murder Investigator: In just the short demo for indie detective game The Case of the Golden Idol I was completely ensnared. Gaze at oddball pixel art tableaus of murder scenes and click on clues to investigate. To solve a murder you'll need to discover the names of everyone involved and determine the nature of the crime, dragging and dropping the words you collect into a scroll, so it's part Return of the Obra Dinn and part Mad Libs. The full game will feature a dozen murders to investigate and, intruigingly, all of these murders are somehow linked. The demo is excellent and I can't wait to keep investigating when the full game is released—though that date is still a mystery. Finally, a game where I can be a professional orator Tyler Wilde, Executive Orator: We got our introduction to Where Winds Meet during Opening Night Live. It's an open world action RPG set at the end of China's Ten Kingdoms period—after which there aren't ten kingdoms anymore, so there's a lot happening. You've got to be skeptical when a game promises things like authenticity and freedom, but with all the cinematic trailers we saw at Gamescom, it was nice to see some genuine footage of a videogame being played. The city scene particularly impressed me—look at all those NPCs standing around in their cool period clothes—and I want to know more about the non-combat jobs we can apparently get up to in Where Winds Meet. Orator and ferryman are my top choices: Imagine ferrying NPCs around on a boat while orating at them, for hours. Now that's what I call Modern Videogames. The publisher of Where Winds Meet is putting me in touch with its developer, a studio based in Hangzhou, China, so I should have more to say about this PC-only RPG soon. View the full article

On the night of August 24, Christopher "Xcells" Hill, a former Gears of War and Fortnite pro, was shot and killed at a home in Boones Hill, Virginia. That's according to the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, which shared details of its investigation Thursday. As reported by WDBJ7, the incident occurred after a homeowner was approached by a man he didn't know, later identified as Hill, "resulting in the homeowner shooting and killing Hill." A spokesperson for the Franklin County Sheriff's Department told WDBJ7 that no charges are currently pending. Hill played Gears of War professionally for teams like Eunited, NRG, Hazard Esports, Enigma6, and Echo Fox before retiring in 2017. He also played Fortnite professionally in 2018 and 2019, but more recently, he'd been streaming on Twitch for 23,000 followers. He last streamed just two days before his killing. Esports caster and talent manager Blaze remembered Hill on Twitter, calling him "one of the best players to ever touch Gears." This one hurt, Chris was good man. Casting over him and knowing him was a pleasure. One of the best players to ever touch Gears. Rest in Peace bro @Xcells_ https://t.co/VayPYorzz8August 25, 2022 See more Former Gears pro and 10-time champion Nicholas "Icy" Cope shared his condolences, along with many other friends and fellow esports players. "I’m heartbroken. Love you bud and I’m sorry this world was so hard on you. 'frell' MAN. RIP" Hill was 26 years old. Thanks, Dot Esports View the full article

Just over a month after the release of its debut season, the Netflix Resident Evil series starring Ella Balinska, Tamara Smart, and Lance Reddick has been cancelled. News of the cancellation comes from Deadline, which said that the series did not perform particularly well. It debuted in second place on Netflix's top 10 with 72.7 million hours viewed (which sounds like an awful lot to me), but it didn't see a meaningful rise in week two, drawing 73.3 million hours viewed for a third-place finish, a sign that it was not getting a word-of-mouth bump. In week three, it fell out of the top ten entirely. The Resident Evil series also performed poorly with critics and viewers. It's got a 55% critical rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and just a 27% average audience score. It's an unfortunate conclusion to a series that—okay, I can't say it had promise, strictly speaking, but it did have Lance Reddick as the iconic villain Albert Wesker, and that's a pretty strong start in my book. The final trailer had a certain "generic zombie flick" vibe to it (although that giant spider was pretty awful) but that's not necessarily a bad thing if Netflix was looking to move meaningfully beyond the boundaries of the existing Resident Evil fanbase. I guess that's not happening now. This was actually Netflix's second Resident Evil series, following Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. It sucked too, but hasn't been formally cancelled yet. View the full article

Former 38 Studios chief Curt Schilling, whose studio accepted $75 million in loans from the state of Rhode Island in 2010 and then laid off all its employees and declared bankruptcy two years later, has criticized the US student loan forgiveness plan, saying on Twitter that "unaccountable uneducated children [are] being covered by hard working debt paying Americans." Schilling, who earned tens of millions of dollars as a young man thanks to his ability to throw a ball real good, was a fan of MMOs during his MLB playing days (particularly EverQuest—in fact, he reviewed a couple of EverQuest expansions for PC Gamer magazine, way back when). My body my choice? Your loan my responsibility? This isn’t loan forgiveness, it’s a generation of lazy unaccountable uneducated children being covered by hard working debt paying Americans.August 25, 2022 See more He thus decided to try his hand at making videogames when he was finished with baseball, and with virtually limitless fame and fortune at his fingertips, he launched Green Monster Games, later renamed to 38 Studios—the former a reference to the gigantic left field wall at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, and the latter his jersey number. 38 Studios was founded in Massachusetts in 2006, but relocated to Providence, Rhode Island, a few years later, lured by a $75 million loan guarantee offered by the state's Economic Development Corporation. It was a lot of money, but not nearly enough to cover the studio's profligate burn rate. After defaulting on a loan payment and failing to make payroll, the studio declared bankruptcy in May 2012 and laid off its entire staff, many of whom had relocated at significant expense to work at the studio, with a mass email. Litigation quickly followed: Rhode Island sued pretty much all involved and was eventually able to recover $61 million, although legal fees ate up $11 million of that; Rhode Island taxpayers were left to chew on a $39 million bill, plus another $12.5 million to cover the final 38 Studios bond payment. Rhode Island's EDC also faced trouble as a result of the collapse. It was charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission with defrauding investors through the bond offering, because it failed to tell them that the amount being loaned to the studio would not be enough to actually complete the game project. Only $50 million of the $75 million bond would go to the studio, while the rest was kept to cover various related expenses. The state eventually agreed to pay $50,000 to settle the suit. It really was a wall-to-wall 'frack' show. I don't think the SEC charge doesn't really make Schilling look any better, but it's his go-to response to accusations of hypocrisy. Electing idiots and frauds like you is how that happens. Check the SEC filings idiot. See who they convicted of fraud. Hint: it wasn’t me.August 25, 2022 See more The collapse of Schilling's 38 Studios not only left the state of Rhode Island stuck with a multi-million-dollar bill, it also threw the company's staff into chaos. Some who took advantage of the 38 Studios relocation program discovered that the company had not sold their old homes as expected, and that they were now on the hook for a second mortgage. Schilling himself claimed that he was "tapped out" financially after investing $50 million of his own money into the studio, although he eventually agreed to pay back $2.5 million to settle his part of the Rhode Island lawsuit. 38 Studios sent out final paychecks to its employees in 2021, just shy of a decade after the studio went under, but the checks covered only a small percentage of what the employees were actually owed. The 38 Studios debacle isn't Schilling's only failed post-MLB venture. In 2016, he was fired as an analyst on ESPN for transphobic comments he posted on Facebook, which followed a suspension for sharing a meme that compared Muslims to Nazis. Anyway, Curt Schilling thinks that people who don't pay off their loans are lazy freeloaders. They aren’t going to go after the banks. They will just cut checks to the freeloaders. They have no legal power to force banks to forgive debt. Watch the corruption too.August 25, 2022 See more View the full article

When High On Life took the stage at this year's Gamescom Opening Night Live show, I was reminded that not enough shooters try to make us laugh. They're so serious, and not even just the competitive multiplayer ones! Whether it's over-the-top demon murder or "grounded" tactical military murder, rarely do you see a game that plays with the inherent absurdity of dropping bodies by the dozens. Justin Roiland and the folks at Squanch Games are making a rare comedy FPS that is unmistakably the work of the Rick and Morty creator: your guns are aliens who talk incessantly about their neurotic worries and violent fantasies, often breaking the fourth wall to bluntly deliver a punchline. I think that's a great idea for a game, but I get why it'd make some people cringe. A lot of folks got a bit exhausted with Rick Sanchez's whole shtick around season 3 of Rick and Morty (the Pickle Rick season), and after the whole Szechuan Sauce incident showed how annoying the show's fanbase could be, it became fashionable to dislike Rick and Morty. I still like the show, but it has lost some of its charm, and Roiland's whole thing hasn't changed much in High On Life, though we've yet to see a character who fills the narcissistic nihilist role of Rick Sanchez. High On Life is similar enough to Rick and Morty that I noticed an immediate negative reaction to the Gamescom trailer on my social feed. Some said it was "painful" to watch. I do think that trailer was too much. Three minutes of the Morty pistol negging the boss you're fighting was draining, even if he got some funny jabs in like "come on admit it, we're hurting you!" I wasn't won over until I watched this 25-minute gameplay demo shared by IGN a few days later. The longer video shows an abridged version of an early mission. It sounds like the meat of the game is hunting down bounty targets and finding new gun-alien companions along the way. Doom-like arena fights and platforming challenges are broken up by choice-driven dialogue moments in which, for some reason, the Morty pistol does all the talking (maybe he's translating into alien speak?). This was the first time that I could really appreciate how nice High On Life looks. The alien designs are delightfully funky and gross—shooting the Morty pistol's secondary grenade out of his "trick hole" makes the whole gun briefly flop around like a wet noodle. Not to mention that every line coming out of your gun's mouth is believably animated and lip-synced. A budget game this is not. Much like Rick and Morty, not every High On Life gag landed for me, but the ones that did are still making me smile a day later. I had a good laugh at the kid who dares you to shoot them. The Morty gun flat-out refuses to shoot when you pull the trigger at first, but eventually gives in: "Wow, I didn't think we'd be allowed to kill them. Normally killing kids in games isn't allowed. Are you happy now? A kid is dead. There goes our E for Everyone rating." Even as it pokes fun at the unkillable children of videogames, High On Life holds back in a way that's comforting rather than going for full shock humor, and even pulls back later to soften the tone: The self–described "kid" sounds more like an adult doing a kid voice, and if you talk to his mom a bit later, she confirms he was actually 30 (which is still an adolescent for their species, but "not as bad as killing a 5-year-old"). (Image credit: Squanch Games) A few other smaller lines got me pretty good, too. When you suddenly shoot one of the two alien bug guards telling you to beat it, the other one reacts in shock with, "Hey, you just killed Jason!" As I'm mowing down virtual baddies in videogames, I do sometimes think about the implications that these are people with names, careers, and loving families. I appreciate High On Life hitting this note in an absurdist, dark comedy way instead of, say, Last of Us 2's heavy-handed NPCs that are almost too realistic. And then there is, of course, the knife that is only interested in cutting things and eating their buttholes. Knifey probably opens his piehole one too many times throughout the mission, but I still chuckled at one of his introductory lines antagonizing the bug guards in the room. "I'm gonna carve out your 'donkey' cavity. Gonna make it three times as big. Your 'frack''s just gonna drop right out of there." If this demo turns out to be all of High On Life—get bounty, talk to aliens, shoot other aliens, and fight a boss—I think I'll be satisfied. The shooting looks pretty slick and there's just enough Doom 2016 going on with Knifey's glory kill executions and grapple hook mode that I'm convinced Squanch cares about making a good shooter on top of all the jokes. And unlike so many Gamescom games shown off this week, High On Life is out this year. It's coming to consoles and PC on December 13. View the full article

As reported by our friends at GamesRadar, prolific Souls series dataminer Zullie the Witch has released a new video touching on a slightly controversial aspect of Elden Ring's much-discussed difficulty: enemies' propensity for reacting to certain actions (like self-healing) almost as fast as you can perform them, sometimes referred to by fans as "input reading." Has this ever happened to you? You've whittled down the Godskin Guy's health to within bare millimeters of victory, as he has done to you. Thankfully, you've got an ace in the hole: the healing Flask of Crimson Tears. One little chug and you'll have some breathing room in these final moments of the battle. But as soon as you pull the flask from your belt the Godskin Guy is already charging up his little blackflame hadouken. Already committed to the drinking animation, you can only watch as that fireball smacks you in the face before your health can fully restore. You die, everything is ruined, your marriage is in shambles, Rome has fallen, game over. But how does this happen? "Input reading" almost implies the AI is tracking your keystrokes, but Zullie's findings show that enemy AI is keyed to watch for the in-game animation of your moves. It's less that the Godskin Guy instantaneously reacts to you pressing "X," and more that he instantaneously reacts to player usage of certain items⁠—a key distinction when there are more obscure healing methods that the Godskin Guys will not punish. Enemy AI will use a similar function to detect and dodge projectile spells. Zullie demonstrates this last point by showing a boss dodging even when she aims her spells away from it. In her video, Zullie she empathizes with some players feeling that this is still "unfair or artificial" difficulty, but you know what? I don't! I think it's awesome. FromSoftware's games have adapted to how people play them over time. Gamers hid behind their shields too much in Dark Souls, so Bloodborne removed shields and prioritized dodging. Noticing some players spamming their dodge and ignoring parries and positioning, FromSoft switched to a parry-dominant combat system in Sekiro, nerfing the invincibility frames of that game's dodge move. Elden Ring has notoriously tripped players up with its tricky dodge timing on attacks: bosses like Margit or the Crucible Knights follow interminably long wind-ups with quick attack delivery, punishing early, sloppy dodging. I see the heal punishes as an extension of this design. In previous FromSoft games (and with many enemies in Elden Ring) it's a simple enough matter to create some space between you and an enemy and heal up. Punishing that behavior keeps you on your toes and introduces difficulty in a clever, lateral fashion, one you can consciously adjust to. It's possible to time your heals to avoid a Godskin Guy's punish, but then it's also possible to practice not getting hit so many times. So I'm glad the Godskin Guys will cheekily interrupt my healing with their obnoxious little flame blasts. They will come up and slap my drink out of my hand every time I go for a sip, and I will say "thank you" when they do it. I will improvise, adapt, and overcome, developing as a person and as an enlightened gamer. View the full article

I love fishing in games, though most of my experience is with games that have fishing as a side activity (like Sea of Thieves, New World, and Core Keeper) rather than as the main event. But more dedicated fishing simulation enthusiasts have a big new open world to look forward to at the end of the month. Call of the Wild: The Angler is hoping to hook you on August 31, and today developer Expansive Worlds (makers of The Hunter: Call of the Wild) chummed the water with a new gameplay trailer you can watch above. And it looks pretty impressive, even to my less-than-expert eyes. The trailer begins with some of the gear, including rods and reels, lines and lures, and different types of clothing you'll be able to dress yourself up in. The open world looks both lovely and huge, packed with mountains, lakes, and rivers, and you can travel on foot or by ordering up a jeep or boat to go exploring. And while you can go it alone in solo mode, you can also join up with friends or strangers online to do some co-op fishing. Up to 12 players in one session are supported. The simulation can get a bit complex depending on which fish you're hoping to hook. Elements like the time of day and even the temperature of the water can dictate which fish you're able to land. You can adjust your float depth, line tension, and make other fiddly little changes based on the kind of fish you're hunting. An in-game guide will help, but I suspect having a notepad handy to keep track of which fish likes what might be helpful, too. And there's also the matter of choosing the correct bait, the right lure, and the proper technique. There are also all sorts of colorfully-named fishing styles mentioned in the trailer, like pumping, jigging, and twitching. I have looked up those terms, and jigging is when you move the lure up and down to attract the fish (though there are many different types of jigging, including cast-and-return jigging, speed jigging, vertical jigging, and my favorite: meat jigging). Pumping is pulling the rod back, then leaning it forward while quickly reeling (Think Quint trying to reel in the shark in Jaws). And twitching, as far as I can tell, is like jigging, making the lure move like it's alive. But, like I said, I'm not an expert here. (Image credit: Expansive Worlds) It all looks pretty cool, though if I had one wish it'd be that the fisherpeople, when holding their catches up proudly, had some sort of expression on their face. Maybe a smile? A smirk? A satisfied little grin? You just caught a big fish and it probably took a lot of pumping and jigging to accomplish that. It's okay to show a bit of happiness! Call of the Wild: The Angler is out on August 31 on Steam, Epic, and the Microsoft Store. While you're waiting, you can tackle the official site here. (Image credit: Expansive Worlds) View the full article

On Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed on a podcast that Meta's next VR headset will launch in October. However, as we've reported, this new headset will likely cater to the businessman instead of the gamer. Zuckerberg spoke with comedian Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast for nearly three hours about Meta, virtual martial arts, and other topics. The show opened with Rogan describing his experience with a new VR headset, prompting Zuckerberg to reveal that Meta's new headset will release this October. Here's hoping it's received better than this ridiculous metaverse selfie Zuckerberg took. "For me, this is all about helping people connect," Zuckerberg said. The chief executive at Meta brought up features focused on "social presence," such as the headset's ability to track facial expressions and the ability to simulate eye contact with users. "There’s more nonverbal communication when people are with each other than verbal communication," Zuckerberg said. This seems to refer to Project Cambria, a hybrid AR/VR device fitted with internal sensors aimed at professionals. It is one of four headsets Meta plans to launch by 2024. Initially, Cambria was set to release last year, was pushed back into the fall and costs $800. But considering that Meta recently raised the price on the Quest 2 VR headset by $100, the pricing could be up in the air for now. Your next machine (Image credit: Future)Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines from the pros Best gaming laptop: Perfect notebooks for mobile gaming Project Cambria has outward-facing cameras that allow "full color-passthrough" to display virtual overlays on real-world surroundings with the idea of replacing the typical workstation with virtual facsimiles. Meta employees have referred to the headset as a "laptop for the face." Despite not getting too into Quest VR headsets on the podcast, Zuckerberg did briefly mention that the next iteration of the VR gaming headset is going to be a "big step above the Oculus 2." We expect to hear more about the new headsets at Meta's upcoming Connect Conference, which will take place sometime in the coming weeks. View the full article

No matter how many expansions I own, Sims 4 CC is always where I turn to add exactly the new outfit or kitchen cabinets that my Sims need. As a life sim, the options are pretty literally endless for possible styles and décor, and fans are constantly making their own custom content sets to fill in the gaps between official game packs. Get more out of Sims 4 (Image credit: EA)Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks Sims 4 mods: Play your way Sims 4 expansions: Worth it? Sims CC has a lengthy history, and now that The Sims 4 has been out for the majority of a decade, there are hundreds of creators and thousands of creations to add to your own game. There's more great CC out there than I could ever showcase, but for now I can help you get started with some of my favorite content sets for stylish décor, city street fashion, retro hair choices, and more. After weeks of hunting, it's the very best Sims 4 CC I've found. Once you find a few creators you like, you'll know where to start your hunt for your next big CC spree. Installing Sims 4 CC is incredibly easy, which we go over below. Just don't get so carried away on your CC shopping haul that you forget to actually turn on your game and enjoy playing with it all. Not that any of us have ever made that mistake. We've picked some favorites for this list, but every one of the CC creators represented here is extremely prolific. If you like the look of a set, we've included links to creators' archives of downloads so you can find even more excellent custom content to install. Many CC creators offer downloads through their blogs or Patreon pages. We've highlighted free to download CC here, but be aware that some creators offer first access to their CC to monthly Patrons. Best new Sims 4 CC You'll find some all-time favorites down below, but if you're in the mood for something new here are some hot new Sims 4 CC packs from great creators as of autumn 2022: MCM House Part 4 - A kitchen and bath set by Pierisim with lovely minimalist wood cabinets and low-profile appliances.Oh My Goth - A moody set of gothic office furniture and decor by Syboubou, including tons of wall hangings.Twenty Hair Set - This is actually three hairstyles, another solid set of short hairdos by JohnnySims.Y2K style - A colorful clothing pack by Belaloallure harkening back to the days of low-rise miniskirts and spaghetti straps. Sims 4 CC Hair & Makeup (Image credit: Maxis, with CC by PralineSims, Greenllamas, JohnnySims, Nucrests, and pose by Ratboysims.) Sheabutter's braid collection AHarris00Britney's hairs Ebonix's hairs JohnnySims' Men's Season Nightcrawler's hairs PralineSims' skins & makeup Simstrouble's retro hairs Sims 4 CC Clothes (Image credit: Maxis, with CC by Greenllamas, Aanhamdan93, Belaoallure, Seoulsoul, Jius-Sims, PralineSims, and pose by Ratboysims) Nucrests' casual collections Jius-Sims' shoes DarkNighTt's streetwear Seoulsoul's designer fashion Greenllamas' Gossip set Happylifesims' 1920s styles Belaoallure's street fashion AanHamdan93's hijabs Sims 4 CC furniture & objects (Image credit: Maxis, with CC by MadameRia) Pierisim's Winter Garden Max20's Child Dream Kit Harrie's Brownstone collection ZWHSims' super streamer kit Simverses' medieval stuff MadameRia's kitchen basics How to install The Sims 4 CC (Image credit: Electronic Arts, Maxis) Where is the Sims 4 CC folder? Here's what you'll need to do to install and play with your Sims 4 CC: Download CC and unzip compressed folders if applicable.Drag your .package files or an unzipped folder with .package files inside into the Sims 4 "Mods" folder.The Sims 4 mods folder is located at: Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods.Start The Sims 4 and open your Options menu. Check "Enable Custom Content and Mods" under Game Options > Other.Restart your game and check the "Mods" popup that appears at startup to be sure the CC you installed is listed. Remember, The Sims 4 disables Mods and CC every time it updates, so you'll need to re-enable them in the game menu and restart your game after every game update. Best sites for Sims 4 CC If you're looking to dig for even more custom content beyond the creators and packs we've collected here, you could spend weeks and months scouring the internet for more. Sims 4 CC is genuinely endless, but there are some tried-and-true aggregator blogs and sites we recommend you surf: Maxis Match CC World - Reblogs tons of MMCC all tagged to help you find what you want.The Sims Resource - Surfing TSR can be really daunting, but starting with featured artists can help you find quality CC quicker. What are Maxis Match CC and Alpha CC? Many Simmers refer to CC as "Alpha CC" and "Maxis Match." Alpha CC is intended to look more realistic, often adding special skin textures, eyes, and realistic clothing or furniture. Maxis Match CC is pretty much what it sounds like: custom content by fans that's designed to match the stylized look of The Sims 4's original content created by Maxis. View the full article

Warframe developer Digital Extremes is getting into the anime game with its first-ever animated short film: An introduction to Styanax, the game's 50th warframe, which will be free for all players for a limited time. Styanax is a "mighty and herculean" warframe inspired by ancient Greek warriors, a heritage that's easily seen in the warframe's design and abilities: Primary Weapon: Afentis - Styanax’s speargun matches his might. Throw Afentis to pin an enemy and nearby enemies will also be stunned. Throw Afentis onto the ground to create a field that buffs allies. When allies bolstered by Afentis kill an enemy, they maintain the buff for a short time after they leave the field. Lanex Syandana - A syandana for the intrepid. [Syandana, for the record, is basically Warframe's term for back bling.] Axios Javelin - Call upon the Axios Javelin. Any enemy Styanax strikes with his javelin is pushed back. When the javelin propels an enemy into a wall, the area suffers a burst of damage.Tharros Strike - Summon Tharros, the shield of Styanax. Swing Tharros to repel enemies and reduce their shields and armor. Styanax regenerates health for every enemy struck.Rally Point - Draw enemy attention to Styanax. His resolve uplifts nearby allies, regenerating their energy and shields. Shield regeneration increases with the number of enemies near Styanax.Final Stand - Exude might and valor. Rise into the air and throw a barrage of Axios Javelins. The javelins deal damage to nearby enemies wherever they land. Direct hits to enemies deal even greater damage. (A spot of trivia: Astyanax was the young son of Hector, who was thrown from the walls of Troy to his death after the Greeks sacked the city. The Greeks had some probably-warranted concerns about the whole "vengeance" thing, you see. Not exactly a picture of an imposing hoplite charging Persian lines, but it is a pretty cool name so I think we can let the details slide.) Styanax will be free for all Warframe players for a limited time (duration currently unspecified) following the launch of Warframe's Veilbreaker update, which Digital Extremes showcased in today's devstream. Veilbreaker will also bring back Kahl-175, the fan-favorite Grineer, as a playable character in a new quest set after the events of The New War update, along with a bunch of new weekly missions that will enable players to increase Kahl's rank and earn new customization items. (Image credit: Digital Extremes) Warframe's Veilbreaker update is set to go live in September. A date hasn't been announced at this point, but you can find out more at warframe.com. View the full article

If you've wanted to try your hand at Sifu but felt put off by its notorious difficulty, the big summer content update might be just what you've been waiting for. Set to go live next week, it will include swanky outfits, a new scoring system, and gameplay modifiers that will make Sifu even harder—or, if you prefer, a whole lot easier. How much easier? Think Superman throwing hands with your high school bully and you'll have the right idea. Modifiers can be used to enable options including infinite health, weaker enemies, unbreakable weapons, full skill unlocks, and even bullet time, if you really want to lay a brutal beatdown on the bad guys. Conversely, you can turn the experience even more painful for yourself, rather than your foes: Make the enemies tougher, make weapons unusable, and give yourself just one health point if you really want to prove your stuff. Speaking of which, there's a new scoring system that will track your punches, kicks, sweeps, and finishers, and deliver a ranking for each level based on "smoothness, efficiency, and variety." There's no mention of online leaderboards, which seems like an odd thing to omit when adding a highly-detailed scoring system, but it's not clear whether leaderboards are absent or just not mentioned in the announcement. I've reached out to ask and will update if someone tells me. As for the new outfits, there will be two added in the update: The Master Hand, a trench coat and stylish hat, will be available to all players, while the Enforcer tactical armor, available in the Wuguan, will be limited to owners of the Sifu deluxe edition. Sifu's summer update is set to go live on August 31. Sifu itself is currently on sale for $30—25% off the regular price—until September 6 on the Epic Games Store. View the full article