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The crypto crash early this year hit hard, tanking the value of many coins. Bitcoin miners in particular had it rough with some of the biggest companies losing over $1B during the crash. The massive losses are continuing to be dealt with by crypto companies and lenders, and one has turned to selling off much of its mining hardware to offset the losses. You'll forgive me if I can't quite find the tears. Tom'sHardware spotted the financial reports for one such company based in the US, called Stronghold Digital Mining. The statement noted that the company had recently managed to sell 26,200 of its mining rigs, recouping $67.4M in debt by doing so. Given most hardware prices are back down to earthly levels, it's unlikely these second-hand machines were drawing outrageous prices. Especially given how worn out some of these rigs would likely be. Still, it seems a smart move financially for the company, which has managed to free up some cash for other investments during this time. Stronghold Digital Mining isn't out of the mining game, as the company still retains 16,000 mining machines. According to the report, it's planning to watch the market, potentially buying up new rigs at a better price if possible. For big mining companies like this, it will all depend on the cost of the hardware, efficiency of mining, and power prices. Tips and advice (Image credit: Future)How to buy a graphics card: tips on buying a graphics card in the barren silicon landscape that is 2021 This kind of changing strategy sounds a bit risky but Stronghold Digital Mining also owns 165MW of power generation thanks to its Scrubgrass and Panther Creek plants. They burn coal refuse, which is a waste product from coal mining. As for as sustainability goes, this can release a lot of toxins into the environment but when done right can be mitigated. Since getting rid of those mining rigs, Stronghold Digital Mining is currently selling off excess power generation. With another crypto crash it could be that the power itself is worth more than the machines were mining, or at least enough of a deficit to make the effort and waste involved worthless. Of course if crypto doesn't recover we could see these kinds of companies dissolve the mining portions of their businesses completely. Please? View the full article

If you're planning on downloading the latest Microsoft Security Update for Windows, it's a good idea to have your BitLocker key ready to go. According to The Register, users who download the update are having quite a few issues, including being completely locked out of their PCs on restart. The latest Windows security update for Secure Boot DBX released nearly two weeks ago on August 9 and since then has been giving users all sorts of problems. Not unlike the last security patch for Windows 11. Dubbed KB5012170, this update comes with fixes for exploits that could allow unauthorised code to run during the boot process, so it's important for security, especially when Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is used. Unfortunately, as mentioned the KB5012170 update has also been locking users out of their PCs. Once the update has been installed and the PC has performed a mandatory restart, some users are being prompted for their BitLocker key to get back into their computers. Of course, most people aren't going to have that on hand at the time, let alone necessarily even know what it is. Thankfully, Microsoft has a support page that can direct most users to find their BitLocker recovery key. However, there are still going to be plenty of users who won't be able to access the key for whatever reason, be it a work device, family gift, hand-me-down, or just having lost passwords. All of which can mean suddenly being locked out of devices for doing a security update. Window shopping (Image credit: Microsoft)Windows 11 review: What we think of the new OS How to install Windows 11: Safe and secure install What you need to know before upgrading: Things to note before downloading the latest OS Windows 11 TPM requirements: Microsoft's strict security policy One source told the register that 2% of the 400 PCs they look after had been locked out after the restart, and all of them so far have been running Windows 11. Finding the keys required logging into Azure, a solution certainly not available to everyone, and then having to match the right one to the right machine. It sounds like a pain worth holding off on the update to avoid. For now, Microsoft's support page for the KB5012170 update has acknowledged the issues, and is working on a resolution to be available in an upcoming release. We recommend avoiding the update until a fix is available, unless you're absolutely sure you have access to that BitLocker key, just in case. View the full article

Dominaria was Magic: The Gathering's first setting, and remained central to its early storylines—like the epic saga dealing with an invasion of mutant abominations of metal and flesh called Phyrexians, who were repulsed when Dominaria's various peoples came together as the Coalition and defeated Yawgmoth, the man-turned-god responsible for creating the Phyrexians. The upcoming Dominaria United set returns to the plane, finding it in need of heroes again. The Phyrexians are coming back, and their sleeper agents are already hidden among the factions of Dominaria. It's the beginning of a storyline that will continue over several future sets: The Brothers' War in November, and next year's Phyrexia: All Will Be One and March of the Machine. We previously had a look at Dominaria United's mechanics, including the return of Kicker (which lets you spend more mana to power-up spells) and Domain (which modifies effects based on how many different basic land types you control, ensuring multi-color decks pay off). New mechanics include Read Ahead, for skipping chapters in multi-stage Saga cards, and Enlist, which lets you boost the power of one creature by tapping another that isn't attacking (and isn't suffering from summoning sickness). Enlist is essentially an updated and simplified version of Banding, an old keyword that hasn't been used for years. It's appropriate that it returns in Dominaria United, which is all about bringing back old Magic, including cards from 1994 in some Collector's booster packs. Banding was interesting but needlessly complex (I remember being confused by how it worked in the videogame Shandalar), and Enlist seems like a much more straightforward application of it. Enlist appears on the Dominaria United card we've been given by Wizards of the Coast to share: Coalition Skyknight. A 2/2 white creature with Flying, its artwork depicts a lance-wielding human on the back of a falcon-like giant bird called an aesthir. It's reminiscent of the Kjeldoran Skyknight and Kjeldoran Skycaptain from the Ice Age expansion back in 1995—both of which had banding, would you look at that. (Image credit: Wizards of the Coast) Another card with Enlist we've seen from Dominaria United, the Guardian of New Benalia, is also a reference to old cards with Banding—Benalish Hero and Benalish Infantry. Other throwbacks in the set include Territorial Maro, a variation on the nature spirit Maro who first appeared in 1996's Mirage expansion, and some returning iconic planeswalkers, like the necromancer Liliana of the Veil and burly lion-man Ajani Goldmane. Not all of them remain the same, however. Though Liliana is a reprint that will bring her back into standard, Ajani returns in modified form as one of the Phyrexian sleeper agents, as seen in the teaser video. Dominaria United will arrive in Magic: The Gathering Arena on September 1, and physical cards will be available from September 9, with prerelease events beginning September 2. For more information, check out the Dominaria United webpage. Something a bit further off to look forward to is the Lord of the Rings crossover scheduled for 2023, which will be coming to Magic Arena as well as its paper incarnation. View the full article

Presumably feeling pretty good after the success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, Sega is planning adaptations of two more games from the 1990s: Space Channel 5 and Comix Zone. As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Sega is partnering with Picturestart for these projects, a media company launched by film producer Erik Feig, currently working on the Borderlands movie. Space Channel 5 was a psychedelic sci-fi rhythm game from 1999 about a reporter named Ulala who dealt with invading aliens and rival reporters via the medium of dance. (Though a console-exclusive, its sequel came to PC as did a recent VR game.) The movie, just called Channel 5, will apparently be about someone who works in a fast-food restaurant, then gets recruited by Ulala to save the future from aliens with viral dances. Hmmm. It's being written by Barry Battles, who directed a promotional short film for Far Cry 5 called Inside Eden's Gate, and Nir Paniry. Comix Zone was a 1995 action-platformer where you were an artist stuck in the panels of your own comic who could tear away parts of pages to make paper airplanes and throw them at enemies. Like Channel 5 it's being abbreviated for the movie incarnation, which will just be called Zone. The Hollywood Reporter summarizes it by saying it "follows a jaded comic book creator and a young, queer writer of color who, when sucked into the final issue of his popular series, must put aside their differences to stop a dangerous supervillain from sowing complete destruction." That one's being written by Mae Catt, who has written for animated series like The Legend of Vox Machina, Young Justice, and a couple of Transformers series. Sega game director Takumi Yoshinaga, who worked on the Space Channel 5 games, will be a producer on Channel 5, and Sega producer Kagasei Shimomura will be a producer on Zone. Toru Nakahara, who produced the Sonic movies, will also be a producer on both. Sega's got a new live-action Yakuza movie scheduled to come out this year as well, and one based on the Puyo Puyo puzzle games. And yet there's still no news of Jet Set Radio movie. View the full article

Not long after I start The Mystery of the Druids, my caustic detective character, Brent Halligan, steals money from a bum after mixing medical-grade ethanol into his flask. After the guilt abated, I put my little moral mishap behind me and, over the next few hours, realized I was playing a work of art: a rich point-and-click smorgasbord of glitches, gorgeous background art, '90s office appliances, and painfully obtuse puzzles, all covered in generous helpings of cheese. Later, I was forced to find a patch to fix a game-breaking bug during some simple dialogue. No problem. Nothing would deter me from seeing the tale of Halligan, a horrid little wretch in a trenchcoat, through to the bitter end. Back in 2001, The Mystery of the Druids was not received well by games press (with one reviewer complaining that the graphics were "straight out of 1996". Its unfairly besmirched image was partially rehabilitated in 2019 in this now-archived piece). It sits in a pantheon of forgotten, flawed adventures that were too janky to live, but too weird to die. The appeal of these games is kept alive today thanks to retro enthusiasts and low-poly lovers who remain enchanted by one of the most awkward periods in videogames, those that rode off the end of full-motion video technology and fleeting experiments in graphics that didn't end up sticking around. "It's less about nostalgia and more about the cycle on how they were truly created," says Vohyak, a content creator who runs the popular Low Poly Depression account on Twitter. "They don't feel like products and more like obscure love projects that built cult followings." Vohyak, who has a full-time day job in games (and prefers to keep his online persona separate), posts a mix of vaporwave-tinged tributes to cult games, mod videos, old game ads, memes, and trivia. He's drawn to games whose idiosyncrasies are a product of their time. For instance, Levitating Lowry, as Mystery of the Druids developer Martin Ganteföhr dubbed one of the game's most distinctive glitches, which basically came from the fact that each scene was a 2D rendering of a 3D scene. Running this ancient magic on modern computers resulted in Lowry—Halligan's skeezy coworker—floating above his seat. The low-poly, blockish aesthetic of old '90s games has stayed alive largely thanks to lo-res indie horror communities like Haunted PS1. But there's more to celebrate than just dated visuals. "The '90s were a really awkward and dark time for gaming and it seemed like everyone was experimenting and trying to do their own thing," Vohyak says. "A lot of people still don't know Resident Evil was more inspired by Night Trap than it was by Alone in The Dark and it's something I love introducing people to." Night Trap became a cult classic not just because it was one of the first FMV games, but because of how it bridged the gratuitousness of B-movie humor with the themes and writing of more adult-oriented adventures to come. (It's also just really bad.) Not content to celebrate old games and the unique time bubble in which they existed, a few modern-day devs are taking a page from obsolete adventures for their own work. Corpsepile, a hobbyist dev from Minneapolis, spends weekends working on a point-and-click horror adventure inspired by late '90s Sierra FMVs (its working title is Rust Valley). As a kid, his fascination with FMV games ramped up when his family spent a year living in Singapore. "The only gaming machine we had overseas for that year was my dad's laptop," he recalls, detailing his first experiences at Sim Lim Square, where my own dad took me as a kid to look at games. Sim Lim was the heart of CD-ROM piracy at the time, where you could pick up the latest software at a fraction of the price—until the government cracked down on vendors. "FMV/point and click adventures… were the most technologically, visually impressive games at that time," says Corpsepile, who goes by his online handle to keep his dev work separate from his offline life. "As far as some of my favorites of that genre, off the top of my head I'd say Myst, Riven, Escape From Horrorland, Shivers 1 and 2, and The Journeyman Project games." To Corpsepile, that fleeting period of pre-rendered scenes and awkwardly sprinkled-in FMV created a unique time capsule. "For myself personally the main draw is the nostalgia," he says. "The general vibe and time period… remind me of things like staying up late at a sleepover in a dark room getting scared with a friend, or having my dad and brother gathered around the laptop trying to help solve a puzzle." These games, once considered technical marvels, are, in a modern computing context, now associated with flaws and failures. Seen another way, their fascinating imperfections make them windows into the evolution of game technology. Both Vohyak and Corpsepile are fond of glitches because they're reminders of the people behind the game. For Corpsepile, the experimental nature of '90s games, particularly FMV games, went hand-in-hand with the awkward, cheesy dialogue and sense of humor. For Rust Valley, he plans to grab random friends with no acting experience and throw them into the crucible, and play around with recreating glitches and design choices that usually originated from old technical limitations. "Like a lot of games having a larger UI, so that they could compress the videos down to a smaller resolution," he says as an example, "or hard audio cuts in the audio files for memory-saving purposes. It's really fun for me to pick out those details and recreate them, because other people who remember those games always seem to notice them as well." (Image credit: Presto Studios) Of course, the '90s wasn't the end of these charming little adventure abominations—fragments of nascent 3D design and cringey bugs continue well into the 2000s like stubborn reminders of a decaying empire. The other day I spent a painful amount of time messing around in Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, a LucasArts experiment from 2003 that's a lot more fun than it has any right to be. Even later games like 2013's detective mystery Face Noir, which had a terribly written plot (and one of the most racist depictions of a Chinese man I've ever seen), had some of the most gorgeous background art and stupid glitches in a point-and-click since…well, Mystery of the Druids. I'm a firm believer that janky games are God's favorite children not just because they're glimpses at a time of remarkably experimental technical choices, but because playing them is an act for posterity. There's an entire generation of bug-riddled, beautifully obsolete worlds ripe for rediscovery—if you're willing to put in a bit of work to coax them along in the 21st century. For the curious, here are some suggestions on where to start. Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (1996) (Image credit: Sierra/Activision) The sequel to Phantasmagoria is by far the superior game (sorry, Adrienne loyalists) when it comes to vibes. It's got everything you want in a mid-90s Extremely Adult FMV—a relatably unhinged relationship with the modern office, hilariously unfunny depictions of mental health, the corniest jokes, a completely milquetoast white protagonist who doesn't deserve half the interesting things that happen to him, and an incredible final act filled with some of the finest computer art to ever come out of Sierra. Chronomaster (1995) (Image credit: DreamForge) Here's one that was actually a decent hit at the time it came out—a unique space adventure written by celebrated sci-fi/fantasy author Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold. There's a lovely clash here between the cartoony graphics and pseudo-3D models that comes off as simultaneously dated and delightful. Did I mention the protagonist Korda is voiced by a very understated Ron Perlman? My favorite moment is when I realized the magic sandals I'd traded from a merchant were, in fact, no-brand Birkenstocks. Zork Grand Inquisitor (1997) (Image credit: Activision) Some might swear by Zork Nemesis (boo), but Zork Grand Inquisitor is where it's at. Gameplay is simple (and the 360-degree camera, which was first implemented in Nemesis, is much better calibrated not to induce nausea), it's goofy, it's fun, and it was designed by Margaret Stohl, who arguably has one of the most incredible portfolios in the business. (She wrote Dune 2000, a couple of Command & Conquers, Destiny 2, and the Beautiful Creatures YA novel franchise). The mix of pre-rendered graphics and FMV, topped off with standout performances by its entire cast, make this the most charming Zork game in my book. The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime (1997) (Image credit: Presto Studios) Lots of folks have fond memories of the original Journeyman Project series (with good reason), but the Pegasus Prime remake is for masochists only. It's clunky, it's a huge pain in the 'donkey' to do even the smallest tasks, and all the in-game interfaces are amazing relics from a time when UIs actually had personality. Does the screen freeze for no reason? Yes. Did it deter me? No. Some of the solutions and small key items are hatefully un-obvious, but suffering is part of the experience. Harvester (1996) (Image credit: DigiFX) It's hard not to mention Harvester, which made a splash with depictions of gore and violence unprecedented in videogames—a deliberate part of writer Gilbert P. Austin's meta-commentary on violence in fiction. While a lot of Harvester retrospection descends into rose-colored hyperbole, revisiting it in a 2020s context is rather different. It's extremely heavy-handed, it can get really gross, and features a spread of hamfisted, offensive '90s humor that Austin wanted—with varying results—to wield in a time of pearl-clutching panic around videogames. If you're looking to see what all the fuss was about, then Harvester is an ideal historical artifact. It's also not for everyone. View the full article

Sometimes, a tremendous battle of gigantic monsters is exactly what you need. Godzilla incinerating Tokyo with his atomic breath, King Kong absconding with beautiful women, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man stomping on New York (I say he's an honorary kaiju, come at me). They've long been a source of inspiration for games large and small, so much so that there's even a kaiju-themed game jam hosted by Itch.io. One of the entries features the best name for a videogame in the history of videogames—a kaiju dating sim called Let's Smash. Another entry from the jam this February is coming to Steam some time in 2022. Kaiju Klash is a turn-based monster fighter where you build your own creature, enter them in tournaments, and battle for giant monster supremacy. Use a rocket punch from the robot arms coming out of your half-Kong, half-tentacle monster in Pokémon-esque battles, earn money to buy more monster parts, then head back into the cage. According to the Steam page it features "hundreds of unique monster part combinations" and a "Type system [that] allows you to strategize around your opponent's weaknesses." The art style is simple but fun, with cobra heads smooshed on robot chassis with tentacle arms and cyborg eyes. Different parts give you different abilities that cost certain amounts of action points—the more powerful, the more they cost. You might constrict a monster with your snake tail, or shoot your laser eyes at what appears to be a massive swarm of bees. As someone who loves tinkering with builds of battling robots (I'm looking at you, underappreciated '90s gem Robotrek), I could see myself spending a few hours with this one. Playing it on Steam Deck in the dentist's office comes to mind—where I'm definitely looking to unleash some atomic breath. View the full article

One of the founding members of DMA Design, the studio that created the Grand Theft Auto franchise, is the latest victim of Take-Two and Rockstar's itchy copyright trigger finger. Videos posted to YouTube by developer Mike Dailly from his early time at DMA Design were taken down on copyright strikes. Dailly was the first employee at DMA Design and later created the graphics engine for GTA, the bedrock for the series' now-famous style. I see Rockstar are going full 'frell'ers mode again, issuing copyright strikes to any GTA video they can find - including both my prototype videos. So now they're trying to block all release of anyone's work on a game - and any old development footage.August 21, 2022 See more Dailly first reported the event on Twitter, where he said that Rockstar were "issuing copyright strikes to any GTA video they can find - including both my prototype videos. So now they're trying to block all release of anyone's work on a game - and any old development footage." Dailly's Twitter was also affected, forcing the removal of a link to download a 25 year old GTA 2 design document. Two videos posted to developer Mike Dailly's YouTube channel were renders from two prototype graphics styles Dailly developed in the early 1990s. One was a rotating, isometric prototype, the other a top-down prototype, both of city streets and buildings. The third was footage from an old Beta copy of Grand Theft Auto. Contacted for comment, Dailly told PC Gamer that the listed reason for the takedown was posting development footage without permission. DMA Design was acquired by Rockstar in 1998 and renamed Rockstar North. It was responsible for the creation of Grand Theft Auto, establishing the energy of a now quite long-lived series. Dailly's time at DMA Design also produced Lemmings, which went on to be a widely-loved series. Dailly left Rockstar North shortly before the release of Grand Theft Auto 2 in 1999. The other DMA Design founders left around the same time, with official founder David Jones just after GTA2 released. The original Grand Theft Auto is not currently available for sale in any format, other than buying secondhand physical copies for older platforms. Dailly has since taken obvious steps to protect himself from Rockstar's legal department across his social media. "I've now removed all GTA dev stuff. Only direct examples of my own work are left - work that was never used in GTA, but "inspired" parts of its evolution," he said. Dailly seems understandably frustrated by the circumstances. "Developers should always be allowed to show their work, especially works that are 28 years old!" he said in a message. Dailly's point is well made: It's genuinely hard to imagine what legitimate business or copyright interest Take-Two could have here, while only those interested in history and preservation are harmed by the removal of the videos and design document for games Take-Two can't even be bothered to sell. Dailly's Youtube channel has less than 2,000 subscribers, and the videos themselves had a few hundred views. The GTA series is no stranger to controversy, but it feels like lately that's almost entirely down to the behavior of Take-Two's legal department or for how it treats its workers. PC Gamer has reached out to both Take-Two and Rockstar for comment, but did not receive a response by publication. View the full article

Okay so embedded above and on YouTube there's the trailer for PUBG: Battlegrounds' 19.1 patch, where they added a bunch of neat guns and equipment and their Assassin's Creed crossover. The new update takes players back to the map Haven, and infuses it with some neato new weapons that fill cool niches and an Assassin's Creed crossover that puts nefarious company Abstergo in the spotlight. However, I would like to draw attention to this feature of the new patch. The one where you can watch other peoples' teams pull off their sick dance moves, complete with getting tuned in to their music and having your character cheer them on. Yass kween, slayyyy (Image credit: Krafton) For all that Battle Royale news usually focuses on the sweaty frenzy surrounding competition, guns, and strategies, you have to remember that at their core these are social games you play with other people. They're supposed to be fun, and what's more core to the social multiplayer game than doing goofy things in the lobby or town before the round starts? I applaud this. Anyway, the sweaty gun minutia is pretty neat this patch too. First, gear: There's a Blue Chip Detector that, while it takes a primary weapon slot, scans for enemies within 100m of you and shows the nearest 12 of them on the map. There's also a folding shield, portable heavy cover that has a fat stack of HP for blocking hallways or when your caught in the open. The Deston map also adds the MP9, a fully-automatic 9mm submachine gun—the key is that it's 9mm, so even if it's not a beast like the P90 the ammo is absolutely everywhere. Deston's also getting the Pillar Security Car, a speedy beast with sirens and lights so you can flex very hard as you chase down other teams. There's also sweet gear in the trunk. The Assassin's Creed collaboration, which before today's Destiny x Fortnite leak I would have called the weirdest one so far this year, has a lot going on. It adds back the Haven map for the first time since 2020, and has AC antagonists Abstergo take over a big building. There are some leap of faith ledges on the rooftop, in case you like jumping off buildings, and a bunch of cosmetics to earn throughout the season. You can find out more in the full patch notes for PUBG 19.1, or on the PUBG: Battlegrounds website. You can play PUBG: Battlegrounds on Steam, where it's recently gone free to play and picked up a bunch of new players. I leave you with this image, also from patch 19.1, which is a bunch of new craftable gear to wear. (Image credit: Krafton) View the full article

Outrageously ambitious Half-Life 2 megamod Entropy: Zero 2 is out, letting you experience a campaign in the boots of the Combine bad guys. You're the Bad Cop, protagonist and alien overlord collaborator, and your job is to tail Gordon Freeman through Nova Prospekt prison before taking a journey to track down resistance fighter Dr. Judith Mossman in a snowy northern facility. If you're a Half-Life 2 player I'm sure you know how that goes. Either way, you'll play through a shockingly detailed campaign, fully voiced, fully choreographed, that takes something like 7-10 hours to beat. Frankly, it's on the quality of many games we considered big to mid-budget 20-some years ago. Oh, and there's Portal shenanigans afoot and an Aperture science facility involved. You get a turret buddy. Naturally, the Portal turret buddy is named Wilson, because everyone who watched Tom Hanks in Castaway has had that indelible concept scratched upon their brain. Entropy: Zero 2's most impressive aspect is definitely its overhauls and new additions to the tried-and-true Half-Life 2 combat formula. There are new enemies, weapons, and effects. There's a grenade that sends everything caught in it to Xen and spits out weird Xen monsters in exchange. You can command teams of Combine, deploy manhack drones, and generally act like a person who sold their entire species out for some alien overlord perks. Entropy: Zero 2 is a sequel, technically, to Breadman's solo mod Entropy: Zero, one of the best-received and better HL2 mods of all time. This one's on a whole other scale compared to that first one, with a bigger team and a much bigger scope. I mean they made it so you could drive those APCs from Half-Life 2. I love it. You can find Entropy: Zero 2 on Steam, and you can find Bad Cop origin story Entropy : Zero on Steam as well. View the full article

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(Image credit: Blizzard) Congratulations, sleuth. You've discovered the page where PC Gamer will be hosting the reveal of two new Hearthstone Battlegrounds heroes, plus some other secret stuff. But you've arrived at the party a little too early. For the exclusive look, be sure to check back on Tuesday August 23 at 11am PST / 2pm EST / 7pm BST. And remember: dress to impress. View the full article

Exploding out of the Destiny 2 datamining scene this weekend is an utterly unexpected crossover: Destiny 2 and Fortnite. Destiny 2 dataminer Ginsor has posted a screenshot to Twitter of what pretty credibly looks like Fortnite-inspired armor sets for Destiny 2. The skins look to be extremely Destiny-fied versions of Black Knight, Catalyst, and Omega skins. Fortnite Destiny confirmed pic.twitter.com/U3kZeFY6l8August 20, 2022 See more The leak comes alongside a renewed rumor that Destiny 2 may well come to the Epic Store. If so, that would give a real reason for why the crossover is happening. The idea that Destiny 2 would come to the Epic Store originated in a leak last year. Fortnite would be the second huge crossover in a year for the previously crossover-averse Destiny series. The previous was with Halo, a series that Bungie started. No matter how much copium some Destiny commenters say it'll take the community to process, this would definitely be a new thing for Destiny 2. Whether it's a regular occurrence remains to be seen—but so far crossovers have only happened for major events, and they've been pretty tasteful. For my money, this one's pretty tastefully done too. Thematically that made sense, and Destiny fans ate it up. Fortnite might be a bit more controversial, and if leak reactions on Destiny 2's subreddit are any indication it'll be pretty polarizing. Some players seem thrilled by the idea of the skins—which do look pretty cool—and hope for more, like Fortnite's default dance emote. "God, if I can default dance on my friends' ghosts as I'm rezzing them I don't think I'd ever equip another dance," said one reddit commenter. To be fair, the default dance wouldn't be the strangest Destiny emote by far. Destiny is perhaps the most famous series in gaming right now for leaks and datamines, at least from my end of the industry, and some of the time it's Bungie's own employees doing the leaks—like with that recent Poison subclass thing. Which is honestly pretty good, right? Seems like Bungie's people aren't terrified of their employer. Destiny 2 is currently rocking its way into Season 18, which kicks off this week on August 23rd. It features big reworks to the Arc powerset which are no-joke inspired by that one Jason Statham movie. There'll also be a new raid, which is actually an old raid reworked from the first Destiny. View the full article

I was 14 when Sephiroth kicked my 'donkey' in Kingdom Hearts 2. I had zero context for who he was or why he was built to be one of the hardest fights in the game. He was the only obstacle between me and my 100% completion, so I spent hours and hours dying to him for the one chance I could find an opening to take him out. Moments like that, especially at a young age, stick with you. The hardest games have a way of drilling into your brain; you remember the frustration and the eventual elation from the duel between you and the systems that feel designed to piss you off, or worse, designed so badly that it's practically an insult. These are the PC Gamer staff's picks for the hardest games they've played. The games that didn't budge, the games that probably still haunt each of them to this day. Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy (Image credit: Bennett Foddy) Finished? Never. Never ever. Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Not a particularly surprising answer, but when I think of difficult games, Getting Over It is top of mind. I find this one frustrating partially because I love so much about it. The man in the pot with a sledgehammer is so brilliantly weird and the periodic voiceovers about how difficult the game is are surreal. No game has ever pissed me off so passionately, and I think it's because few games make it easier to actually lose progress before your very eyes. Just when I think I've mastered a nasty slingshot 140 degrees up a cliff, the hammer decides to lose all friction and catapult back to the start of the entire game. Screw that. But also? Genius. Elden Ring Sean's crazed Discord missives days into fighting Malenia. (Image credit: Future / FromSoftware) Finished? Yes, eventually Sean Martin, Guides Writer: Malenia is the toughest boss FromSoftware has ever devised; worse than Ornstein and Smough, Orphan of Kos, Isshin, Midir, and even those gargoyles in Dark Souls 2, which is the closest I've come to rage-snapping a game disc. I got obsessed trying to find an answer to her Waterfowl Dance, the attack where she rushes you like a hummingbird made of knives. When I finally puzzled out that if I timed it right, I could run away, then dive back through it, I felt such triumph. Then I found Bloodhound's Step and realised I'd been doing things the hard way. Ghosts 'n Goblins (Image credit: Capcom) Finished? No. Not sure I ever made it past the floating platforms on level 2. Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I had the Commodore 64 version as a kid, and the fact I was so young when I played it probably didn't help. Ghosts n' Goblins did seem bastard-hard, though. One hit robbed you of your armor, leaving you in a pair of boxer shorts, and a second hit meant death. The jumping was tricky, with no midair after-touch to tweak your momentum, and sometimes you'd clip right through the moving platforms. That might have been a C64-specific bug, though the C64 version also had the best soundtrack. Spelunky and Spelunky 2 (Image credit: Mossmouth, Blitworks) Finished? Nope. Not even close. Chris Livingston, Features Producer: My muscle memory has amnesia, and that's never been more evident than in the Spelunky games. In the original I think I only got to Olmec a couple times, and despite watching other people defeat that giant evil head repeatedly, I still always wound up getting squished. But far more difficult for me was just getting that far. I'm lucky to make it to the Temple, provided I'm lucky enough to survive the Ice Caves, and that's only if I'm fortunate enough to survive the Jungle. Frankly, I still die in The Mines a lot. I love Spelunky, but every time I play it's like it's my first time. FTL: Faster Than Light (Image credit: Subset Games) Finished? Once—take that you bastard! Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: FTL is one of the best games I've ever played. I also got obsessed with it when it first came out. As with most games these days, FTL has subsequently been patched (and a popular mod is almost the true definitive edition) so it's slightly easier. But, oh god: before that, you would have a brilliant run, all the weapons and crew a captain could dream of, and then you'd run up against this totally OP final boss ship that just obliterated anything. The difficulty curve just became an impassable wall that was nothing to do with skill. Even now I'm getting angry thinking about it. 'frelling' love FTL: 'frell' that final ship. Disney's Aladdin (Image credit: Digital Eclipse) Finished? No. Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I'm always a little baffled when people talk about Dark Souls as if it's the most brutally, unusually difficult game of all time. It's hard, for sure, but when I was a kid in the '90s, every cutesy platformer I played hated me far more than From Software ever has. I recently went back to one of my favourites of the time, Aladdin, to rediscover that, yes, it is non-stop mean-spirited bullpucky from beginning to end. Excellent music, charming animation, truly evil game design. I never finished it as an 8-year-old and I don't think there's any more hope for me now I'm a tired 33-year-old. At least running it on modern machines is easy—you can grab it on Steam bundled with the also brilliant-but-brutal The Lion King. Jotun (Image credit: Thunder Lotus Games) Finished? No. Screw Odin and the horse he rode in on. Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Steam says I played Thunder Lotus's boss battler Jotun for 15.7 hours and I'm pretty sure at least four of those were spent on its last fight against the allfather himself. It's a bear of a fight. The old man chucks guided missiles at you in increasing numbers while every boss you've beaten prior drops in for a cheeky cameo. I don't know how many times I attempted that fight but eventually I decided that I'd as good as beat the game anyhow and the ringleader of the gods could shove it. Devil Daggers (Image credit: Sorath) Finished? No. How can you finish eternal damnation? Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: At the start of Devil Daggers, you materialise on a square platform surrounded by a black void. Immediately, enormous HR Giger-ey monsters start puking demonic skulls at you. If a skull touches you, you die. If anything else touches you, you die. If you fall off the platform, you die. All you've got are fast feet and a gun that shoots magic daggers. Your only goal is to stay alive for as long as you can. The current record is 20 minutes and 28.76 seconds. My personal record is 1 minute and 10 seconds. There's no known ending to Devil Daggers, just a single achievement called "Devil Dagger" which is unlocked by surviving for 500 seconds. Only 0.2% of Steam players have unlocked that achievement, plus some on GOG, which according to the in-game leaderboard comes to just 705 people. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (Image credit: Owlcat Games) Finished? Almost⁠—160 hours down, around 15 or so to go Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: We're still riding a new CRPG renaissance, and it rules, but nothing quite replicated that feeling of impenetrable, old-school, tabletopy trial-and-error difficulty until I tried Owlcat's second Pathfinder game. We've got all our AD&D favorites here: ability drain, level drain, timed quests, unclear quest consequences, crazy specific enemy resistances, and persistent crowd control effects. This game is harder than Baldur's Gate, and that game took me ten years to finally beat. The peak for me was a pair of time-sensitive quests in the game's first act that have potential ramifications all the way to the endgame. I undid eight hours of progress to speedrun the first act without resting (and redo a 45 minute setpiece battle) to fix one of the bad quest outcomes I got before I knew about the time limit, only to get back to where I was before and discover the second quest I carked. The kicker is I hear its predecessor, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, is even harder. Final Fantasy 14's savage raids (Image credit: Square Enix) Finished? Trying to successfully clear a whole four savage raids while keeping my mental wellbeing in check? No, I did not finish. Mollie Taylor, News Writer: I'm not a hardcore raider by any stretch of the imagination, but when Endwalker released I was determined to finally give savage raiding a whirl. Wowee, it sure was fun until it wasn't! I never got around to joining a static, so all of my parties were the equivalent of being shoved in a Las Vegas jail cell for a night. You search for a party to progress one mechanic and spend the next three hours constantly wiping to the mechanic before it. Learning new strategies, perfecting my rotation, and becoming better at my class was a lot of fun! But after struggling to pull together a competent party for this tier's second Savage raid, I'd had enough. I tried to continue with the third raid but sadly I was a defeated woman, a husk of my former self. Nothing is less fun than when the game you love starts feeling like a job. There's a new tier of raids on the horizon though, and I'm determined to beat them all this time round. Riven (Image credit: Cyan Worlds) Finished? Lol. Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Look, I'm an idiot. Is that what you want to hear? That I'm a big dum-dum too impatient to finish a quiet, reflective puzzle game that puts zero demands on my reflexes and only asks me to think? Well, it's true. I played a few hours of Riven 15 years ago and it kicked my 'donkey' so thoroughly I've been scared of Rand Miller ever since. If you never played Riven: it's the sequel to Myst, a challenging puzzle game that at least had the decency to segment all of its puzzles into small self-contained areas. After Myst, Cyan Worlds decided to flex its design chops by making one big interconnected world, so you could wander from one context-free puzzle piece to the next, absolutely clueless as to how they fit together. Unraveling Riven required being dilligent enough to take notes on everything you saw, patient enough to explore with no guidance, and smart enough to actually connect the dots and crack each puzzle. Turns out I was 0/3. Riven's probably a masterpiece, but pretty much all I got out of it was riding around in a bathysphere for a couple hours and then uninstalling it forever. The Witness (Image credit: Thekla, Inc.) Finished? No, and I don't care, and don't judge me. Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I don't have the right kind of mind for math and logic puzzles, which is fine because I don't like them either. (Yeah, maybe there's a connection.) Yet for some reason—nostalgia for Myst, perhaps—I decided to give The Witness a run. Colossal mistake. The opening bit was fine, and I actually felt kind of smart as I plowed through one colors-and-shapes brainteaser after another. But it didn't take long before my brain started to feel the strain, and the usual train of emotion quickly followed: I am angry, I am bored, I am leaving. The Witness is maybe not "hard" in the conventional videogame sense of dodging bullets and defeating bosses, but brain stuff is hard too, god dammit! I beat Elden Ring with a mouse and keyboard, don't you dare judge me. Halo 3 (Image credit: 343 Industries) Finished? I hope so. Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: It was tradition to play every Halo game on Legendary difficulty with my buddies. A lot of the details about that experience have faded away, but I know that Halo 3 was the hardest game for us. I do remember getting instantly killed by Jackals sporadically throughout its brutal encounters. It was like filling out a form online and pressing cancel instead of submit at the end; the surprise deaths came at the most infuriating times. And the boss fights were worse because the amount of enemies they threw at you reduced what could have been a strategy to pure RNG. I like to think we finished all of the levels, but I'm not even sure anymore. Would it matter? All I remember is pain. View the full article

Hello jterry20, 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. jterry20 joined on the 08/21/2022. View Member

Not so long ago, just having a steering wheel peripheral basically made you a racing game pro. And if that wheel had force feedback? Watch out, online racing game lobbies. Mario Andretti just showed up. 2022's standard for sim racing equipment is somewhat more evolved. In the last few years, sim racing esports have surged in popularity, and prominent young F1 stars now stream themselves playing in their rigs. If you're not sitting in a carbon fiber monocoque, holding a direct drive wheel worth more than most used cars, watching three 50-inch panels project the latest F1 game, do you even race? Notable setups include that of Australian YouTuber Boosted Media, whose enormous triple screen display and headcam make it genuinely difficult to tell that you're not watching a real race from inside a cockpit. The whole thing cost over $69,000 USD, and features three 65-inch 4K panels fitted into a custom framework and a sled on a hydraulic motion platform. Let's not even get into how you'd achieve a stable framerate at 12K. Archie Hamilton's Vesaro rig also features a motion platform and triple screen output. These setups are great to watch on YouTube—not to mention tremendous fun to drive—but they don't actually look much like the sim rigs we see in F1 drivers' homes when they stream themselves on Twitch. Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, and Max Verstappen, the new generation of talent in motorsport's most exclusive category, tend to use static sleds. The triple-screen setups are still there, and the wheel and pedal hardware's of the highest quality, but there's no bouncing around on hydraulic pistons. There's one thing all these setups have in common, though: They're all absolute overkill for the demands of most sim racers. (Image credit: Cool Performance) What happened? The obvious answer is that 2020 changed everything for sim racing, just like that year of unprecedented time indoors changed everything for just about everything. Gaming saw an explosion of activity that year, and that manufacturers of sim racing hardware sold out of their stock very quickly during the lockdowns. That was certainly the case for Cool Performance. The company's head of global operations, Connor Hughes, tells me it sold out of six months' worth of stock within the first month of the UK lockdown: "It was crazy." Cool Performance, and hardware design partner Pro Sim, make serious simulator setups. Founded by two former racers Hughes and Oliver Norris (brother of current McLaren driver Lando), the company's objective was to build rigs that might actually save racing drivers money in the long term. Rather than travel across Europe to their contracted team's HQ and log hours in the simulator there, why not have a custom simulator built in your own home, accessible day and night with no transport cost? It's a solution to a problem Norris saw firsthand as his brother Lando competed in Europe, according to Hughes. "When you're racing, you're done on Sunday, flying back Sunday night, then Wednesday you've got to be back at the track," he said. "That's why Lando was one of the first to have the sim, basically just to cut that time in between. When he was at home for, let's say, one day, he was able to train, go downstairs, eat lunch, come back up to go straight on the sim, rather than having to go across Europe for it." These aren't cheap setups. A basic "E-Sport Gaming Simulator" costs £14,250 (approximately $17,000 USD). Some of the pro simulators cost £24,445 or more. But given that a season of single-seater racing like Formula Renault costs more than £200,000 a year, excluding private testing and transport costs, if you're competing in that world already, you probably have some capital at your disposal. Plus, sim time at home even in a state of the art rig like Cool Performance's might be cheaper than flying out to get more track time outside of races. "In Formula 4 maybe you can't afford to go and drive 50 test days," says Hughes. "Realistically, you're going to be spending £5,000-£10,000 a day going testing, and it adds up very quickly. So a driver might make that investment in a simulator instead." Everything about Cool Performance is designed for racers who are competing in various motorsport categories and need the most realistic sim setup possible to aid their real-world performance. And yet, as Hughes tells me, half of the company's customers are "just wealthy individuals who want something like Carlos Sainz and Mick Schumacher train on at home, in their downtime." These are enthusiasts and gamers who aren't honing a skill to be applied to the track later. They're not competing in esports competitions. They're racing for its own sake, for the intrinsic enjoyment, and they don't need $60,000 custom sim rigs any more than a CS:GO player needs army issue body armor. They probably didn't make such a financial investment purely because they were in lockdown at the time, either. Like every other face of PC gaming, the culture of sim racing has become about indulging in one's pastime—creating and fine-tuning a space devoted to the activity—perhaps even more than actually participating in that activity. Streaming has placed newfound importance on the look of our gaming space, and that has particularly affected sim racing thanks to the blurring line between racing superstars and sim racing streamers. So many of the current F1 grid have streamed themselves casually playing the latest Codemasters F1 game or racing each other in ACC that the image of a steering wheel peripheral, and even a sim rig, has shifted from racing hobbyist equipment to aspirational gear—a status symbol like microphones, but a lot more expensive. As expensive as they are, sim rigs do arguably lower the barrier to entry for future racing athletes. The upper echelons of racing, particularly F1, have long faced criticism that the drivers who make it there are the ones with not just talent but vast amounts of financial backing to open doors, too. With such huge money needed to reach an F1 drive, can we be certain these are really the best drivers in the world? Sim racing offers a different route up through the ranks. Where the journey might once have begun with karting—which for many is prohibitively expensive even at junior level—young would-be drivers can now get huge amounts of virtual track time without having to travel around the country and explain to their teachers why they're only attending three days a week. It's hard to imagine sim racing becoming a total substitute for track time, and only being in a car can prepare you for the agonising neck strain the G-forces impose on you, but if young drivers whose families have slightly less to spend than Nikita Mazepin's can supplement their time on track with meaningful practice in a rig, maybe the barrier for entry lowers just slightly. (Image credit: Cool Performance) We ended up gluing two seats together, effectively. Me and you could have probably sat in that seat together. Accessibility is another interesting facet of the high-end racing rig scene. It's accessible to very few from a financial perspective, but all of Cool Performance's rigs are custom orders, so building a rig without pedals or with specific button layouts is well within the company's scope. "We build it all ourselves," says Hughes. "So yeah, anything can be done. We built a sim for Billy Monger, who lost his legs in F4. He's got one of our sims, adapted for him. We can do things like a hand throttle and brake on the steering wheel. We can provide custom seats." One such project was for a seven-foot NBA player, who struggled in traditional sleds due to their size. "We ended up gluing two seats together, effectively," Hughes said. "Me and you could have probably sat in that seat together. It was pretty cool to see." This gear isn't for everyone, clearly. Most of us don't need or can't afford custom-built rigs, and even a Playseat with an entry-level force feedback wheel is an extravagance rather than a necessity for setting fast lap times. But the sim rig is becoming an increasingly mainstream sight for racers, streamers, and gamers who have a passion for racing and a bank account balance with lots of digits. View the full article

I've got the answer to today's Wordle of the day just a short scroll down this page. And if you'd like to solve the August 21 (428) puzzle by yourself I can also provide all the clues and hints you need to sail through today's challenge with ease. Nothing makes me feel quite as lost as a good range of yellow boxes with nothing to anchor them to. Any of them could be the starting letter… or maybe none of them. Still, when that first green does pop up it feels all the sweeter, a happy little bit of certainty in a whole language's worth of possibility. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Sunday, August 21 Today's answer concerns the discarded, unusable, and used-up. Sometimes this can take the form of general household goods—like empty wrappers and broken boxes—to be placed in cans and taken away, and at other times this can be a by-product of large-scale manufacturing, all the offcuts and other bits they don't need and destined only for landfill. You'll need to find two vowels to complete today's Wordle. 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 428 answer? Let me help you out. The answer to the August 21 (428) Wordle is WASTE. 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 20: TREATAugust 19: SHRUGAugust 18: TWANGAugust 17: TWICEAugust 16: GRUELAugust 15: POKERAugust 14: KHAKIAugust 13: HUNKYAugust 12: LABELAugust 11: GLEAN 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

Sometimes a game asks a fundamental, philosophical question that humans have struggled with since the dawn of time. Like, "What is the best way to get to the top of this towering fountain of liquid feces, and why is it by swinging from a fat cherub on a chain?" Combining a surprisingly adroit 3D platformer with an absolute dump truck full of potty humor, Hell Pie puts you in the capable hooves of Nate, the Demon of Bad Taste. Called during a lull in his busy day by his stern but groovy boss, Satan, Nate finds himself in the unenviable position of being responsible for gathering the ingredients for the lord of darkness's birthday pie. Aiding you in this task is Nugget, your faithful cherub. He's faithful mostly because you carry him around on a chain, using him to smack your enemies and swing around the world as a kind of fleshy grappling hook. An absolute collector's paradise, the four massive levels are filled to the brim with stuff. There are cans of weird food that power up Nugget and unlock new traversal methods, horns to let Nate smash through walls or light his way, golden cats that unlock new areas in Hell, and of course the disgusting ingredients for the pie itself. All this is assuming you can get past the fountains of blood, feces, dick jokes, and used tampons that abound. Like the Binding of Isaac before it, Hell Pie is a technically strong game that can be… a little hard to recommend to your friends. That being said, once you let yourself get cozy in the tepid, definitely completely filled-with-urine swimming pool that is the Hell Pie aesthetic, it's fun. Swinging around is fun, smashing enemies with a cherub is fun, and the copy machine in the office of the demon of Bad Taste spits out a bunch of copies with dicks on them. Because of course it does. Hell Pie is available on Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store, may God have mercy on your immortal soul. View the full article

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but there have been a truly startling number of strategy and tactics RPGs released not just this year, but in recent years as well, with a lot more scheduled for the near future. Without even trying I was able to find well over a dozen of them fresh in the pot, ready to drink, or percolating for the near future. The sleeping subgenre, largely confined to consoles and mobile by a complacent or uncaring set of publishers, has exploded onto PC full force. Among those who love these games they're often called SRPGs, from the Japanese gaming culture phrase usually translated as "simulation" or "strategy" RPG. These were a mainstay of '90s and turn-of-the-millenium gaming. Classics like the Fire Emblem games, Tactics Ogre, Shining Force, and Final Fantasy Tactics are beloved, but they fell off by the mid-2000s. Even these games weren't always released widely, or were confined to the walled garden of Nintendo's consoles. Plus, recent big-budget RPGs from the likes of Square have focused on real-time combat and action mechanics, and so what's left for the turn-based enjoyers? They've got a lot of indies for that, and—well, it turns out that most of them like tactics games as much, or more, than turn-based traditional RPGs. The success of Fire Emblem: Awakening in 2012—and every Fire Emblem since—has finally well and truly translated into releases that come to PC. Starting a few years ago, as far as I can tell, a lot of indies just said "Well, 'frack', they never put these on PC, so I'll make my own!" Now development is so much simpler and the genre so much more popular that we're getting semi-retired industry pioneers—the creator of freaking Fire Emblem, for example—back in the SRPG-making game. Enough of that, though. Let's get to the games. Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga Release date: June 10, 2022 (Image credit: Freedom Games) OK, I'm partial to this one and I'm listing it first because it's a recent hit. With over 3,200 reviews on Steam, 96% of them positive, Symphony of War is a triumph of indie ingenuity. It's also a great pick if you're on Steam Deck. To avoid repeating myself, however, I'll quote my recent review: "There's a simple delight to JRPG character customization. Extend that to an entire squad of characters on a tactical grid? Now you've got your classic strategy JRPG, like Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. Extend it to an entire army of several dozen squads? That's the rework you get in Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga. Setting out a buffet of customization around your army and its generals is just enough to shake up a genre that was quickly becoming one-note—even if the otherwise generic story does it no favors." Triangle Strategy (Image credit: Nintendo) Release date: March 4, 2022 (Switch) One of the games that prompted this article, Triangle Strategy was a pretty well-received SRPG that clearly "got" the genre. It's published by Square, and comes from the same internal "Project" initiative and producer that brought us Octopath Traveler (which about a year after its Switch debut also brought its 2.5D aesthetic right onto PC, so fingers crossed Triangle Strategy follows suit). Triangle Strategy has a funky plot focusing on the conflict between the ideologies of Utility, Morality, and Liberty. It boasts multi-tiered maps and a tactical focus on traversing different height levels—characters can do things like drop ladders so that others can get higher. It also uses a series of limited upgrade resources, ensuring you pick certain characters and stick with them. The DioField Chronicle Release date: September 22, 2022 (Image credit: Square Enix) Another big one from Square, The DioField Chronicle is to be a real-time tactical strategy RPG, which is a whole new thing as far as I know. You command your characters on the battlefield in real-time, directing their attacks ala an RTS. When you queue up a power or ability, however, it slows into near-stillness as you line up vector attacks using targeting arrows and diagrams like in many modern mobas before snapping back into action as you unleash them. It has big-budget looks going for it as well. So far everything we've seen of The DioField Chronicle just looks… darn pretty. It's supposed to boast a "gritty and immersive story" to boot, but from what I can tell that pretty much means they swear or something. Tactics Ogre Reborn Release date: November 11, 2022 (Image credit: Square Enix) First leaked, now confirmed, Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a return of the beloved strategy RPG for the first time since 2010's Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. This remake promises to improve graphics, sound, and update the game design. Tactics Ogre is renowned for its elaborate, sprawling system of classes and characters to customize in them. It also has an overarching world map to navigate, which can spit out random encounters, and adds some real flavor and strategic flair to how you play the story. Tactics Ogre, alongside Final Fantasy Tactics, is often cited as many peoples' gateway game into the strategy RPG subgenre. Not for simplicity or easy learning, mind you, but because it's the kind of tactical gameplay that draws you ever-deeper. Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster Release date: ??? (Image credit: Square Enix) It's not confirmed… but it was part of that big Nvidia leak back in November 2021. The list of Square games on that list has turned out to be almost entirely true, including Tactics Ogre getting a remake (see above). Expect it. Square would be foolish not to bring back this cult classic of the genre—one that defined so much of the class and job system used in dozens of RPGs since—while the SRPG is experiencing a renaissance. Vestaria Saga 2 Release date: July 28, 2022 (Image credit: DANGEN Entertainment) A classic-style strategy RPG, Vestaria Saga is made by a team led by Shouzou Kaga, the man who game designed, and wrote, the first six Fire Emblem games from 1990 to 1999. The recently released Vestaria Saga 2: The Sacred Sword of Silvani follows on from Vestaria Saga 1: War of the Scions, released in 2019, and I'd consider it necessary playing for anyone who thinks they're an SRPG expert. It's cool to see how someone who laid the foundations of the genre thinks about it over 30 years later. Gameplay-wise, Vestaria Saga focuses on intricately designed maps with difficult strategic puzzles. Positioning and movement are the keys to success, figuring out when and where enemies will move, and how to take advantage of that. Vestaria Saga 2 has a host of improvements over its predecessor, so it's a shame that it's so reliant on the plot from Vestaria Saga 1. Vanaris Tactics Release date: August 4, 2022 (Image credit: Toge Productions) Now that the Square Enix Show part of the article is firmly over, let's talk Vanaris Tactics, a cute little strategy RPG from solo dev Matheus Reis that knows what it wants to do and doesn't overstay its welcome. I'd missed it, sadly, until one of our authors shot his nephew in the head (in game, of course). Vanaris Tactics is a bargain-priced 15-mission game with some optional fights along the way. There's less stress about long-term plans here, so you can play around a bit more with customizing your characters—which is nice, because different weapons and gear can very much change the combat role of any given unit and how you use its abilities. Far Away From Home Release date: August 18, 2022 (Image credit: Matthew Wong) A party-based tactics RPG, the unique Far From Home is a story-driven indie that combines low-key tactical combat with some nice environments and characterful, chunky sprites. It's got an interesting premise too, starring people from our world tossed into a fantasy one and sent on a quest to get home. The downside is its tactical element. Far Away From Home is pretty easy, and with a set party lineup there's not a ton of customization or variety of ways to build your characters. It is well-polished, however, and remarkably so for an indie effort from a solo developer. Check out the demo to see if you like what it offers. Spiritlink Tactics Release date: Coming soon (Image credit: flanne) Upcoming indie Spiritlink Tactics clearly takes a lot from Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, having you build a party of characters from a combination of classes and giving you a lot of freedom while you do it. You combine two classes for each character, so you might be a Warrior/Rogue, or a Warrior/Alchemist, each playing pretty differently. Its other clever innovation is a system of mana sharing, where characters can use each others' power to juice up. Combined with terrain, I think that has some potential to be mighty interesting when Spiritlink Tactics releases. You can play a demo of Spiritlink Tactics on Steam. Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner Release date: September, 2022 (Early Access) (Image credit: Black March Studios) Crimson Tactics has the blocky aesthetics of a game like Final Fantasy Tactics but uses what I can only call a modernized Nintendo DS game palette and models. The result is unique-looking, to say the least, and looks much better in motion than it does in screenshots. Mechanically, well, it's a lot like other strategy RPGs: customize from a few dozen classes, each with their own abilities, and toss in some unique story characters. The most unique aspect looks to be the mounted combat, with characters mounted on mundane horses as well as more exotic steeds like dragons and hydras. Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy Release date: Coming soon (Image credit: Akupara Games) A promising-looking tactical RPG from developer Curious Fate, Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy has a charming art style, unusual for the genre, clearly unafraid to step away from the combination of paintings and sprites that define so many other releases. Plus the main character has a dog, so that means it can't be all bad. Its tactical element seems to be a focus on broad customizability and unexpected genre twists. Levels will incorporate puzzles, or be large-scale warfare battles, which is a lot like the map twists you'd find in older SRPGs. Characters will be unique in and of themselves, it claims, but can also choose from 21 individual classes to combine. Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy has a demo you can play right there on Steam. Arcadian Atlas Release date: Summer, 2023 (Image credit: Serenity Forge) Arcadian Atlas is a pretty strategy RPG that looks to really focus on its characters and their story. It promises a journey in the life of "two lovers brought together by war and torn between the queen they’ve sworn fealty to and the charismatic illegitimate daughter who’s risen up to take back a throne denied her—civil war threatening to engulf the destitute and desperate as battle lines are drawn and swords unsheathed." Which is some straight-up Shakespearean 'frack' and I am here for it. It'll feature 12 unique classes, each with their own skill tree, and a variety of tactical map terrain. Oh, and a lot more (Image credit: Dandylion) That's just the immediately recent and upcoming games. In the past few years there have been a lot more you might have missed. Let's end with those: There's Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, a real love letter to Final Fantasy Tactics with a suitably epic story and playtime to match.Dark Deity, an attempt at the greatness of Game Boy Advance-era Fire Emblem games.The hidden gem Horizon's Gate, which is a unique strategy RPG in that it sets you loose in an open world and open-ended class system to find your own way..Or even the recent Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia, a revival of a cult classic SRPG.And I'd be criminally liable if I didn't mention Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children, the 2020 cult classic that blends a bit of Fire Emblem into your XCOM-tinged SRPG and then drowns you in over a thousand character-customizing masteries. 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THE PCG Q&AFind all previous editions of the PCG Q&A here. Some highlights: - What should boomer shooters be called? - How many save files do you keep per game? - What do we want from Fallout 5? The Warcraft grunt's "Stop poking me!" is a classic, but it's hard to go past some of the things units in Company of Heroes come out with if you click on them too much. The Age of Empires and Command & Conquer series had plenty of memorable quotes too, and it's worth trying to select enemy troops in Total War games just to hear them insult you. What's your favorite thing a unit in a strategy game says when you click on them? Here are our answers, plus some from our forum. Robin Valentine, Print Editor: Honestly, how can you beat the classic 'Zug zug'? Warcraft 3 is definitely still the gold standard when it comes to clicking on units. I remember being blown away when I discovered that, after enough prods, each unit would spout its own unique joke lines. Now that's world-building. Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I could name so many I love: Starcraft's "In the pipe" homage to Aliens, Warcraft 2's "ready to work" and that pig sound effect I swear to god I hear in every movie with pigs in it. But in the end, there can be only one. The bravado of Command & Conquer's commando knows no equal. There's no better throwaway line read in all of RTS history than "That was left-handed." He sounds like Guy Fieri casually flipping a burger with his off hand while holding a cigar in the other. It's even better when the commando follows up his next kill with a hearty chuckle and a "You got it." Sublime. Rich Stanton, News Editor: I was obsessed with Starcraft 2 for several years or, more specifically, I was obsessed with building giant marine armies as Terran and then shooting lots of Zerg and Protoss. God I love those grumpy little guys, and when you select them they say a range of things including, most often, "You want a piece of me, boy?" I also adore the insolence you get from them: "this better be good" or "you gonna give me orders?" Then the tragic moments where, with your eyes elsewhere on the map, an enemy swarm descends on a small detachment and your radio crackles with a tough guy's panicked yell of "we could use some help here" which, sadly, will never arrive. I'll always hold a candle for those brave Terran boys. Now let's build some more. Sean Martin, Guides Writer: Total War has some absolutely standout voicelines, from Scottish captains in Medieval 2 saying "I'll rip off yer head and spit down yer neck!" to Shogun 2's "shameful display!" But despite that, I think it's hard to beat the classic priest "Wololo" from Age of Empires; hearing it immediately transports me back to that game/time. (Image credit: US Navy/Microsoft) Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Warcraft's orcs are funny and all, but they'e just a rip-off of Warhammer's version. Both visually (the green skin and tusks), and vocally. Anyway, the best videogame version of them is probably the slugga boys from Dawn of War, who have three different barks where they just shout variations on WAAAAAGH! From our forum JarlBSoD: Work work. Dungeon Keeper: I thought Dungeon Keeper had some funny ones, but after looking into it I don't think your units actually say anything, it's just the mentor's voice that's funny. Brian Boru: Nice n crispy—Telsa trooper, Red Alert 1 Aftermath Why don't you drive?—Libya Demolition truck, Red Alert 2 Thank you for the new shoes—Worker, Generals Zero Hour Lutfij: Ka-boom! - Crazy Ivan, Red Alert 2 Frindis: "Go back to the main menu and try out the tutorial" - Company of Heroes (Image credit: Creative Assembly) ZedClampet: In Total War Warhammer 3, there are a lot of good ones, but my favorite is one of the Tzeentch generals who seems to have been voiced by Gilbert Gottfried. He's extremely enthusiastic. A lot of times when you click on him he just yells, "It's meeee!" which for some reason cheers me up. After you win the game, you get Be'lakor, the perpetually angry and gruff antagonist as a general. If you are in the Kislev area where it's snowy, he will say (with no small amount of disgust) "So many snowflakes." Reminds me of your typical Internet discussion and cracks me up. At least he doesn't call you a "beta" if you ask him to retreat. (Image credit: Interplay) Zloth: The fun quotes in Sacrifice come if you select a unit, then just sit there and think. They'll start taunting you into moving. An earthfling (which, as you might guess, throws rocks at enemies) will eventually say "Yeah, got mud on your face." then "You big disgrace!" then "I will ROCK you!" McStabStab: Starcraft Zealot: “My life for Aiur” is always the #1 in my book. 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, GTA is far from the only way to experience a life of crime. You could rob a bank in real life! Or, alternatively... As credos go, a thief's is pretty simple: What's yours is mine. Why, it's so fundamental to the job, games about them may even pinch it from each other. Before Garrett though, and certainly before... uh... The Yellow Guy, the art of thievery was a little more of an adventure. A not very well translated one, admittedly, but still. The time is the 1950s. The place, London. The goal, to master the art of theft. I hope it's fingerpainting. I was always best at fingerpainting. So there I was, pretending to be in the middle of an anecdote, when I found myself on the platforms at Victoria Station. Three pounds in my pocket, a perpetual cigarette between my lips. No friends, no contacts, and only at 82% health. Probably something to do with the cigarette. This of course will not be allowed to stand. By the end of the week, I fully intend to be the Moriarty to this city's Sherlock, the Lupin III to its Zenigata, the Hamburglar to its Mayor McCheese. All I need to accomplish this is everything. Conveniently, that's also what I intend to steal. But first things first. Despite being broke, I call a taxi. I'm expecting a typically dour taxi driver, which will make it easier when I either Grand Theft Auto or Daley Thompson's Decathlon my way out of paying at the end of the ride. Instead, I come face to face with the terrifying sight of Dan Stanford, the taxi company's boss. "May I congratulate you on being the 1000000th client of our Taxi & Transport Company!" he exclaims. With my free ticket, I head down to Holland Street to find a place to crash out, and start assembling my crew. Bed first. Crime later. The Ugley Dog Hotel appeals to me, because any establishment that casual about typos must be confident of itself. "I've booked a room in advance," I lie. "Under which name?" the fiendish receptionist replies, cutting right through my lie like some kind of super detective bastard man. I can't use my own, obviously—which is "Matt Stuvysant", incidentally—so I go to the second name on the list. "Mark Goldberg," I say, as confidently as I can. Nothing happens. "Oh," I add, and actually click the option. "Oh, Mr Goldberg, I'm awfully sorry I didn't recognize you at once!" says the receptionist. "We've got no room booked in advance under your name, but this is certainly due to a mistake in our administration!" "Yes, well, don't let it happen again," I order him, taking the keys to Room 8. "Home sweet home," my future self tells me, as I survey it. That makes me feel better, mostly because I can see that some time in the future, I'll be upgrading from a damp cigarette to a full on pipe. I wonder if he gets flash-forwards to his even more future self covered in Nicorette patches. I hope not, because that would be incredibly wussy thing, and a master thief like myself has no time for such childish nonsense. Anyway, the first thing I do in my hotel room is phone Mummy. "If someone listened to the rest of this conversation, he would surely believe that I'm quite a whimp for someone of my age," narrates my future self, who can't spell 'wimp', apparently. "However, it has to be said that my father never had enough time for me, and that therefore I had a very close relationship to my mother." What he doesn't mention though is that Mummy is connected. Where most mothers will advise wrapping up warm or wearing clean underwear, Mummy instead wastes no time setting up an underworld meeting with a man named Mr. Briggs, in what's technically called the Fat Man's Pub but looks disturbingly like the UK branch of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. Briggs is a fat man with a plan—probably involving an all-lard dinner. He also wants to arrange a really big score, which currently has just one minor problem holding it back. He's broke. How broke? He can't afford the tools, he can't afford the car, and his best plan for fixing this is to rob... a kiosk. Somehow, I don't see this guy going after the Crown Jewels any time soon. To conduct a burglary though, I need a couple of basic things—a getaway driver, who will be behind the wheel of some clunking piece of crap that he can provide, and some kind of tool to jemmy open a lock. Both, I'm told, can be found on Watling Street, along with the police station should I decide to go and turn myself in for kicks at some point. On a whim, I head over to meet the Competition: Inspector Gludo. He's very professional. And he doesn't even notice me steal his police identity card. Score! A second bar beckons, called—oddly—"Walrus & the yellow shades". It's a little funkier than Callahan's Transworld Saloon, so I figure that it probably has a better class of criminals. Like this lady, Elizabeth. Coughing, I switch effortlessly into my most charming voice. "What's your job?" I ask. "Housewife." she replies. "Have you ever had any trouble with the police?" "No. I've never committed any crime." Ah. "Would you like to help me break into a kiosk in Fulham?" I ask anyway. "I'll take 55 percent," she snaps. I think we have our getaway driver! Back at the hotel, it's time to plan a crime. Elizabeth will obviously be the Bonny to my Clyde, but unfortunately when I assign her to the car, she refuses on the grounds that she's sure I can find someone much more qualified. Her name turns out to be Justin White... Justine, presumably... who actually has the balls to follow a complete stranger into an illegal heist. Liz, you broke my heart. Planning is a little strange. It's done in time units, with adventure game commands that build up into a full operation. Walking to a door will take as long as it takes, obviously. Breaking through it with a jemmy is another 15 or so seconds, while other things take longer. This being a smash-and-grab, there's really nothing more to it than Justin waiting outside, me going in to grab the cash, and then us all leaving. You could have done that, Liz. This could have been you. This money could have been yours. But it is not, and it never will be, and that's on you, Liz. That's your fault. After the heist, the police go over the scene in great detail but don't pick up a vast number of clues, or The Clue!s as the case may be. This one can be officially declared a success, unless your name is Liz The Coward, obviously. And Liz? That's your new name. To celebrate, I head down to the pub to find more work, only to be stopped by a totally legitimate looking bloke who definitely isn't the Inspector. Telling him where to stick his pipe, and offering him a light with which to start smoking it, Not Inspector Gludo takes immediate umbrage. "Mon cher, don't be that aggressive. I've only got one toute petite question: Would you sell me your... how do you say... loot?" Well, why not? Ignoring that the loot is already cash, obviously. "Ha! You thief!" Gludo screams. "You are under arrest, in the name of Law! Everything you say from now on... may be used... and, um... everything else... may be, umm... used as well!" And from there, it's mostly downhill. To the station. Booking. A long jail sentence, with much time to reflect. Finally, a quieter, more honest life, as a monk who takes the old 'smoking habit' joke a little too literally. Yeah, right. As if. Though honestly, the idea that I'd fall for that trick is almost as insulting as the offers I'm given from local dealers. See, despite having stolen cash, The Clue doesn't see it as regular money, the kind which you might be able to just spend. As such, I need to take it to a fence. About £175 for £190 seems like a distinctly poor rate of exchange, even on the streets. At this point though, I feel free to be my own criminal... more or less. Mr. Briggs claims he has some big score planned, but that I'm not a bad enough criminal yet. Please! I raided an unoccupied kiosk. I'm basically Scarface, only better, because I have no scars. I'm... uh... Face, I guess. Most of the rest of The Clue is at least somewhat open, with seven places to rob in ascending order of complexity—an old peoples' home, an art gallery, the grave of Karl Marx. Yes, really. You break in at night to lift his bones. Not jump them, mind. That would be a very different game. Each one involves going to the site and Investigating, which means sitting outside and filling up an accuracy bar without being caught, then assembling a team, buying the equipment and getaway vehicle, and setting out a plan with pinpoint precision. The catch is that while you do get to see guard movements while conducting the plan, it's only when actually carrying it out that they're able to trigger alarms and call the police. This is officially known as "A Bad Thing". Possibly even "A Very Bad Thing." Of course, the more heists you do, the more heist-gear you can afford. In that first mission, it's just a jemmy. Later, more advanced breaking and entering gear is on offer, as are useful extra tools like chloroform. No rope arrows or Outsider powers though, more's the pity. But what's all this in aid of? What's Mr. Briggs' big mission? The Tower of London, of course. He really does want the Crown Jewels. Can't fault his ambition, I guess. But that's a lot of crimes away, and there's a little bit after it when it turns out that there's no honour amongst thieves. Not even Carmen Sandiego's crew, as they discovered after one too many karaoke performances of her theme song led to her deciding that her next theft would be 'their oxygen'. The Clue, itself an enhanced remake of an older game called They Stole A Million, would later get a 3D sequel called The Sting, which took the game into 3D but focused more on the heists in a world so foggy, it's like going treasure hunting in Silent Hill. Technically, that was always the meat of the game. The Clue though was far more fun for its adventure-game leanings, with the characters wandering around town, the weird conversations that sometimes popped up, and the sense that you weren't just ticking heists off a list. Though obviously, you totally were. The Clue gives up any pretence of being a hardcore criminal simulator round about the time it provides free boarding, taxis, and only objects to you standing around for literally days on end without food and water because you're being boring. Though it is enough of one to suggest that a modern remake could be seriously cool. As for my little crime spree? It ended in ignominious failure after a watchman caught me digging up Karl Marx's bones from his grave, mostly because I was fascinated to see who the hell was going to be able to fence them. It's not the kind of thing you can just take to eBay, and it's not as if London's hardcore gangsters are likely to care much whose moldy bones are over the fireplace. Sadly, when the whistle was blown, too much evidence... too much Clue... had been left behind to make a clean getaway. Needless to say, I totally blame Liz. I don't know what happened to the rest of the team, but monastery life didn't turn out too bad, all things considered. Especially when I saw some of the nice stuff in the glass cases. Jean Valjean had the right idea, if you ask me. His only real mistake was losing his balls afterwards and becoming a whimp. Yes, one with an h. That's how it's spelled these days, young whippersnappers. (sucks on pipe, reaches for Nicorette patches) Incorrectly. View the full article

Indie game developer Rob Hale, also known as Squid in a Box, died of cancer earlier this month. Hale's partner, CJ, revealed the news in an announcement on the Steam forums of Hale's next game, Waves 2. Per Hale's final wishes, CJ has made the developer's games Waves and Waves 2 free to download on Steam. "This was something Rob was considering anyway within the past two months as their health entered into more substantial difficulties," CJ stated, "I hope this can be seen as a parting gift to all those out there that haven’t yet played either of these games." Hale's first project, Waves, was released in 2011. It's a mellow twin-stick shooter with a distinctive trance-beat and chiptune soundtrack. Waves was a standout release in those earlier days of the Steam indie scene, and remains well-worth returning to more than ten years later. Hale's follow up, Waves 2: Notorious, will remain preserved mid-development due to the developer's untimely passing. "Over the years we were together they were always dreaming big and trying so hard to create the best game they could possibly make," CJ continues in their tribute, "Waves 2 will definitely remain incomplete. But that doesn’t take away from my awe and the pride I always had in Rob; to see someone so dedicated to their craft." Rob Hale leveraged their experience in modding and AAA game development to pursue their passion independently, and the developer was kind enough to speak with PC Gamer back in 2012, offering advice to anyone looking to start making games. In that interview, you can see the attitude of a person who loved what they did and wanted to share that passion with others. Making games was, as Rob quipped, "the reason I get up in the afternoon." Hale's body of work and the moving tribute left by their partner remain as a testament to that passion. View the full article

The movie industry pulse publication Deadline is reporting that an adaptation of Days Gone is in the works at Sony's PlayStation Productions studio, with a pretty unlikely name circling as lead Deacon St. John. Outlander star Sam Heughan, in fact, and honestly I can see the casting decision from a movie-making person's standpoint, but also I cannot see the brawny Scottish loverboy in the role of hard-drinking Pacific Northwestern biker antihero cruising through the zombie apocalypse. Which is what Days Gone is about. "An outlaw biker drifting through a Pacific Northwestern post-apocalypse is a killer premise, and Days Gone occasionally lives up to it," said Andy Kelly in his review, which took a middling 63. Not outstanding, but not terrible. Either way, it was an impressive work from Bend Studios, which had been consigned to PS Vita Uncharted spinoff hell since its Syphon Filter days. Despite that, Days Gone was a huge success for Sony's effort at putting PlayStation games on PC, and sold some 9M copies across all platforms. So what do we know? We know you liked the biker man and you liked it when he shot zombies even if it wasn't a great game in sum. What it did have was good atmosphere, which is what good movies need—maybe it'll shine brighter there. The alleged adaptation will be written by Sheldon Turner, who wrote comedy Up in the Air and worked on X-Men: First Class. The script will, supposedly, be "a love ballad to motorcycle movies." Easy Rider would have been a lot spicier with the end of the world in the background. On the other hand, maybe we get something really out of left field. Maybe we're talking more like The Motorcycle Diaries but with cannibal mutants. We'll keep you posted. View the full article

You might have missed this when it came out the other week, but Fashion Police Squad is a delightfully colorful little arena shooter from the indie devs at Mopeful Games. In it you're Sergeant Des, and with sewing machine gun in hand you're charged with uncovering a conspiracy of fashion crimes. It might look like a goofy joke, but it had so many positive reviews that I had to try it: and underneath the fashionable exterior I found a pretty dang good game that stays funny, to boot. If you, like me, wrote this one off on appearance alone then you're dead wrong. The heart of Fashion Police Squad is the need to switch between weapons. Your 2DYE4 is a shotgun that paints on bright colors and drains overly-colorful outfits with a beam to supercharge, while the Tailormade sewing machine is an assault rifle that's extra-effective against ill-fitting and baggy clothes. You match up weapon to enemy type on the fly, dealing with the most dangerous first and working your way down. Like the best Arena shooters the most dangerous areas are almost a puzzle of skill and speed where identifying threats and knowing how to solve them is key. Fashion Police Squad's neat movement mechanics line up with that. You do that with your belt. By grappling the belt to items in the world around you, like flagpoles, your officer can swing to rapidly move from place to place. This lets you deal with nasty foes and evade vicious attacks like exploding briefcases or speedy melee enemies. (Bros in neon on scooters.) There's something great about swinging past a nasty enemy as you blast them with your drip-flamethrower-thing. It also has glory kills of a sort, because a charged up special meter lets you raise the shining glove of style and fly across big spaces slapping some ever-loving fashion sense into fashion criminals. Does the joke stay funny? I haven't finished it, but the entertaining bright colors and energy of Fashion Police Squad (FPS) are in truth a welcome break from the muted tones used in most retro-style shooters. (Whatever we're calling these.) You can find Fashion Police Squad on Steam for $20, at 10% off until August 22nd. View the full article

The founder and CEO of Midjourney, David Holz, has some truly inspiring views around how AI image generation will transform the gaming industry. During the short time we spoke this week, I had to hold myself back from falling too deep into the AI rabbit hole. In the process, I discovered Holz's view on how this kind of tech will develop and how it's likely to benefit the gaming industry, as well as human creativity as a whole. Holz believes that one day in the near future, "you'll be able to buy a console with a giant AI chip and all the games will be dreams." It's a beautiful sentiment for sure, but it's the physics of current technology that's holding us back from exploring the full potential of AI in games. Right now these kinds of AI generators use excruciating amounts of graphical power, and it's just not practical for the kind of utopian visions Holz and I have dreamed of. He tells me that Midjourney's produces images using algorithms that "all run on the cloud, and they're running on very big GPUs—like $40,000 GPU servers … I think it's fair to say that it's the most compute-heavy consumer application that's ever existed." That's a lot of energy and a great deal of money to sink into anything, but Holz truly believes in the benefits of the technology Midjourney is pioneering. He tells me it's already being used as a way of self soothing after a traumatic event. "Some of them are actually using the AI in a purely therapeutic process. And it's hard to understand that, but you'll see weird images and you'll ask them 'why are you doing Maltese dogs in heaven?' And they'll say 'it's because my dogs just died.' And you're like 'oh my god, are you okay?'" (Image credit: Midjourney / tino t) Of course, there's always that looming fear around AI replacing humans, but Holz has a much more positive outlook. "We're not trying to build God, we're trying to amplify the imaginative powers of the human species," he says. He makes it clear it's not about designing tech to replace people, it's about the "proliferation of the visual means to express yourself. It just means that people will become more visual in our culture, and more appreciative of those kinds of things. And there'll be more opportunity around that than there was before." The barriers between consuming something and creating something fall away David Holz, Midjourney Founder I'm much in the same mind, and having come from a game art and design background I can certainly see its potential in idea generation for concept artists. "Before you see video games being generated on the fly, you're gonna see the technologies being used for every step of the asset generation pipeline, to increase the creativity of the content, the quality of the content, and the amount of the content," says Holz. "...you're gonna have game studios using AI to help bake out lots of assets, textures, terrain, layouts and characters. Even if it takes ten minutes to make a high quality character, that's still much faster than it would take during the normal production process. "AI image bots helping people get better at video game art." (Image credit: Midjourney) "One would hope that in ten years time there's no longer static content because everything is generated on the fly. So in theory, the barriers between consuming something and creating something fall away, and it becomes like liquid imagination flowing around the room. Screen queens (Image credit: Future)Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gaming "Everything between now and then is a combination of increasing the quality, being able to do things like 3D, making things faster, making things higher resolution, and having smaller and smaller chips doing more and more stuff." So it seems we just have to wait for the technology to catch up. And it is catching up, fast. There are, albeit less powerful, AI image generators that run on consumer hardware, and it's only a matter of time before these algorithms are even more efficient and involved, so we can get down to generating entire triple A games as we play. View the full article

Sometimes you just need a little help with today's Wordle. I can offer you all sorts of hints and clues for your daily puzzle if you'd just like a little nudge in the right direction, and below that you'll find the answer to the August 20 (427) Wordle ready and waiting if you need it. Ah, weekends. What could be better than summer sunshine, a fresh Wordle, and all the time in the world to solve it? It's on days like these I like to add a notepad and a pencil to my puzzling, just to make sure I clear today's Wordle in as slow and relaxing a way as possible. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Saturday, August 20 There are a few very different and equally common ways to use today's answer. One way is in a medical sense, to care for an injury or ailment. Another is to give (to yourself or another) an unexpected but always positive experience or item, anything from a day out to a chocolate bar. Lastly, it can refer to the way someone behaves towards another, good or bad. There's a consonant used twice today, so watch out for that. 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 427 answer? Weekends mean wins. The answer to the August 20 (427) Wordle is TREAT. 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 19: SHRUGAugust 18: TWANGAugust 17: TWICEAugust 16: GRUELAugust 15: POKERAugust 14: KHAKIAugust 13: HUNKYAugust 12: LABELAugust 11: GLEANAugust 10: CLING 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