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Like Security Booth: Director's Cut's indie horror contemporary, The Mortuary Assistant, it isn't just the job simulator its laconic title might imply. There's an undercurrent of horror and intrigue to the seemingly mundane premise that really makes it sing. The first person horror game launched in expanded form on Steam on August 19. The non-Director's Cut version has been available for free on itch.io, and is part of the Haunted PS1 expanded universe. In Security Booth, you play the part of a security guard at the Nova Nexus labs in 1996, letting in or turning away cars based on whether or not their license plates line up with an employee roster. Not all is as it seems on the graveyard shift at Nova Nexus, however, and things start getting weird. That free game makes for a nice demo for the full $5 version that launched August 19. The Director's Cut includes more choices and outcomes, fleshing out the conspiracy story and seemingly untethering you from the titular security booth for some good old fashioned first person exploration of your nefarious employer's spooky corporate headquarters. The free version already has a fantastic atmosphere with some good scares, and I love the concept of being a powerless bystander in what feels like a particularly good X-Files monster of the week episode. It's also great to see more in-depth games come out of Haunted PS1 quickies⁠—Security Booth's fellow Haunted PS1 alum Dread Delusion has become one of my most anticipated games, and stay tuned for a deeper impressions piece on Security Booth: Director's Cut. View the full article

Dolphin Barn's gladiator management sim Domina lost any appeal it may have had when, starting last May, its developer began inserting screeds against "soft" men and LGBTQ people into the game's patch notes and forum discussions. The game's official account has been banned on both Twitter and Bandcamp, with the individual having previously equated support for trans youth with pedophilia on the former platform. Now the developer says he's been temporarily banned from posting on his own game's Steam forums, although he can still publish Domina patch notes, the latest of which accuses Valve and Steam Support of being "cowards." Meanwhile, Domina's "Mostly Negative" recent reviews are full of references to the developer's views, the game's forums are a battleground, and Dolphin Barn's recent banning shows Steam's typically laissez-faire moderation turning its attention to the game. Dolphin Barn posted a screenshot via his personal Twitter account showing a message explaining the ban: "This is the second time that one of your posts violates our Discussion Rules and Guidelines, specifically insulting or flaming another user. We're also noticing a trend with abusive messages sent when banning players from your hub." Following a request that the user adhere to community guidelines, the message touches on the developer's actions against negative steam reviews, and a potential avenue for Valve/Steam to escalate: "We also want to make it clear that you should not reverse Steam moderator decisions or enable rule violations in your hub. Future disregard for our rules and guidelines could jeopardize our business relationship." At the time of writing, Valve has not confirmed the details of its communication with Dolphin Barn. A quick perusal of the game's recent reviews touches on one of the developer's sticking points with Steam moderation: that it's being impacted by "fraudulent reviewers" and that his efforts at flagging those reviews are being impeded by moderators from Steam. Most of those reviews cite the developer's well-publicized anti-trans screeds, though some seem to be criticizing the game for classes and features available in Domina's beta branch being made paid DLC in the live version⁠—a potential wrinkle to the review moderation question. (Image credit: Valve, Dolphin Barn) The comments on several negative reviews, meanwhile, include fans of the game spewing vile invective about trans people. Again, whatever merits Domina may or may not have had as a gladiator management sim, that doesn't seem to be anyone's concern at this juncture. Valve's stance on storefront moderation has been that it won't police content unless it's illegal or "straight-up trolling." That stance has been somewhat unique in the tech sphere, as companies like Twitter and Facebook adopted more heavy-handed moderation policies in the face of online harassment and disinformation. Previously, Valve removed school shooting FPS Active Shooter on the grounds of trolling and customer abuse. Domina perhaps presents a different challenge for delisting based on that precedent, as the game itself is less at issue⁠—though the developer's usage of patch notes as a vehicle for invective perhaps presents more of a grey area. This is a fascinating edge case of a strange individual pressing at the boundaries of a largely permissive system and only receiving grassroots pushback until now. We've reached out to Valve for comment and will update if we hear back, and time will tell if the company takes further action or if Domina's developer will continue reaping diminishing returns from a years-old indie game and the outrage cycles surrounding his psychosexual patch notes luridly ruminating on gay and trans peoples' genitalia and sex lives. The game's latest update communicates a certain defeatist tone: "At this point, it is doubtful that Domina will receive future updates on Steam," though Dolphin Barn's activity this past year and change doesn't leave me inclined to believe we've heard the last of him. In a contrast to the moderation quagmire surrounding Domina, Nexus mods' removal of a homophobic Spider-Man mod with the simple message "We don't want to and won't argue this with you" offers a refreshing contrast, with institutional moderation refusing to give a bad-faith actor the benefit of the doubt. View the full article

SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik recently unearthed evidence of a "year in review" feature similar to those offered by Spotify or Nintendo in the Steam API. Djundik provided a screenshot of the evidence, as well as a brief description of the feature, supposedly set to arrive with the end-of-year Winter Sale. The screenshot provided by Djundik includes playtime across various platforms like Linux, Mac, Windows, and the Deck, as well as peripheral information like controller and VR playtime. The total playtime for a whole year seems like an especially sobering metric⁠—I spend a lot of time on Steam, it's gonna be like being reminded of how much of your life is spent sleeping or on the toilet. The API already works. pic.twitter.com/5i4qTxDdaRAugust 17, 2022 See more Steam already keeps detailed logs of users' playtime on the service⁠—something we at PC Gamer have already developed an unhealthy obsession with. Still, there's something special about end of year wrap-ups that can put your consumption habits into perspective, perhaps to your horror. It felt like an indictment from on high when Nintendo told me that my most-played Switch game of 2021 was Beamdog's Baldur's Gate port to the system. 125 hours of twin stick real time with pause tactical RPG action like some kind of sicko⁠—what was I thinking? Similarly, listening to the great Doom (2016) or Furi soundtracks when you work out might make "Video Game Music" one of your top Spotify genres⁠—not something I feel great sharing with my former high school classmates on Instagram. All jokes aside, I find offerings like this to be a rare fun consequence of the constant digital surveillance we submit to on a daily basis. Instead of getting used as another advertising metric, this data can give us a fun and perhaps worthwhile look at how we engage with our digital media of choice. There's gonna be some Destiny 2 players on the PC Gamer team looking at gnarly triple-digit numbers come December, though. View the full article

Gorgeously animated action-adventure journey Kena: Bridge of Spirits will come to Steam next month, and will get a pretty hefty Anniversary update to boot. The 2021 action game was released on the Epic Games store, but comes to Steam on September 27th. This was detailed in a new trailer, posted to YouTube. The anniversary update will include a New Game+ mode with new combat encounters, challenges, and unique enemies. It'll also have skill-based Spirit Guide Trials like wave defense modes, obstacle courses, and the ability to re-fight bosses. There'll also be a system called charmstones, doodads that can be equipped to give advantages and disadvantages in combat, allowing a more customizable playstyle. Kena: Bridge of Spirits is the gorgeously animated story of a young woman who serve as a spirit guide, helping to free spirits trapped in a forgotten village so they can pass on to the next life. She's helped along by her adorable-and-potent spirit companions, the Rot. Luke Kemp admired the visuals and said it was "a pleasant cruise through familiar action platforming waters" in our review, but noted that Kena's linearity and simple combat held it back. User reviews of Kena are more positive, and as of this publishing it holds a 4.7/5 on Epic Games and an 8.1/10 on Metacritic. The Anniversary update has cosmetic upgrades, to boot. Outfits for Kena to wear, unlocked by the Spirit Guide Trials, as well as silly hats for the cute little Rot. There's an upgraded photo mode to go along with all of that. You can find Kena: Bridge of Spirits on Epic Games and, starting September 27th, on Steam. https://www.pcgamer.com/kena-bridge-of-spirits-review/ View the full article

Hello ojikuta1859, 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. ojikuta1859 joined on the 08/20/2022. View Member

Reviewing the video game Ikki in the mid-1980s, Jun Miura coined a new word: kusoge, literally meaning crap game—or in modern translation: "'frack' game." Kusoge became a rallying cry of gamers ever since, used in Japan as a widespread label for the games they loved to hate. The games so bad, so janky, that they somehow became good. In the 40 years since, bad games have become an art form. Ikki was bad, let me be clear. You were in charge of leading a one or two man peasant rebellion against your abusive samurai overlords against ninjas. It was a bullet hell where you couldn't see where you were going, were painfully slow, couldn't aim your weapon, and where powerups sometimes made you worse. Despite Jun Miura's scathing criticism, Ikki went on to do well enough on Nintendo consoles and at arcades that it's remembered now quite fondly by Japanese audiences. Ikki went on to be translated and released internationally as either Boomerang or Farmer's Rebellion, depending on region. Now original Ikki publisher Sunsoft is bringing back Ikki in a revised release called Ikki Unite, set to release on Steam before the end of 2022. Sunsoft hopes Ikki Unite will be closer to the original design vision of Ikki, primarily by expanding its previous two cooperative players to 16, letting you stage a proper peasant uprising. So get ready to fight monkeys and locusts and ninjas with clubs, sickles, and bamboo spears. "It's a game that can be enjoyed by a large group or a small number of people," says Sunsoft. For my money, it does have an element of currently-quite-popular games like Vampire Survivors to it. There are other games that Sunsoft is bringing forward in the next few years. That includes Gimmick! in 2022, which is an adorable if famously difficult platformer, and an update of metroidvania Uforia The SAGA to release in early 2023. They'll both come to Steam. You can find Ikki Unite on Steam, where it's recruiting beta testers. Image 1 of 4 (Image credit: Sunsoft)Image 2 of 4 (Image credit: Sunsoft)Image 3 of 4 (Image credit: Sunsoft)Image 4 of 4 (Image credit: Sunsoft) View the full article

After two years in early access and six years in development, Ooblets is doing a casual cha-cha into full release on September 1st, 2022. The whimsically casual and cute Ooblets is a combination of creature-collecting, farming, and life sim with a funky story and a lot of weirdo characters to meet. The quirky adventure comes by way of indie developer/publisher duo, Glumberland. Ooblets 1.0 will be released on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Epic (PC) on September 1st!Switch physical copy preorders: https://t.co/PDANEPvcupChat/FAQ: https://t.co/5tY8bfLEaG Website: https://t.co/b49GXIAEjhAugust 18, 2022 See more We watched the development of Ooblets with absolute fascination as it unveiled more and more cute critters. Some were drawn in by its farming gameplay, others by its dance battles, yet more by its whimsical abuse of the English language. Even in early access les Ooblettes, as I believe they are called in the French, are what we would consider one of the best Pokemon-like creature collecting games on PC. "If you want a Pokémon game that's also a farming and life sim, then Ooblets is for you," says Rachel Watts in our Early Access preview. "Building a team of different ooblets who all have different abilities will appeal to Pokémon players, and each and every oob is as cute as a button. If you get worn out by all the dance battles, the life-sim elements of the game are also a treat. You can build a farming empire, make friends with the locals, and decorate your home with funky furniture, all things I have sunk many many hours into," she said of the Early Access release. The full release promises to include new locations, quests, and the conclusion to the main Ooblets storyline. I found the cute-yet-goofy characters the most appealing part of Ooblets, so if you're like me and have been waiting to dive in since the Early Access release then 1.0 will probably be your starting line. You can find the full release of Ooblets on the Epic Store in September. It'll also come to consoles like Switch and Xbox. Ooblets has a page on Steam too, but that platform doesn't seem to be included in the September launch. Expect it there at a later date. You can also find out more about Ooblets on its official website. Either way, Ooblets is for the cutey witches. There are other games for the creepy witches. (A witch, warlock, or other practitioner can be both or either, depending on the day of the week.) View the full article

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a screen packed with enemies, feeling overwhelmed and outgunned, and thought to yourself "boy, I sure wish a friendly horde of skeletons, zombies, and pumpkinhead guys was fighting on my behalf so I could focus on picking up milkbones instead of shooting?" If so, Boneraiser Minions would like a word. With a pixel art aesthetic that reminds me of title cards from old LucasArts adventure games and a bouncy retro soundtrack, this game puts you in the stinky robe of a necromancer put upon by waves and waves of annoying do-gooders. Your boney minions do all the fighting while you run around trying not to die, pick up bones that let you summon more friendos, and cast spells. Boneraiser lets you know right off the bat that it's not taking itself too seriously. After a short title sequence that warns you to beware King Gigald's poundings, you head into the only map – a simple rectangular graveyard with a single skeleton minion. As you fight off hordes of villagers, knights, and various other fantasy creatures (why did they give the beggars BOMBS? Augh!), you collect bones - every 100 of which allow you to boneraise another minion or upgrade an existing one.. Sword skeletons, bombers, witches, and ghosts fill out your army until you eventually get overrun. Thou art dead. However, all is not lost. In a system that feels like Hades in the best possible way, you use resources collected during your runs to level up your necromancer, boost your spells and minions, and add additional goodie-two-shoes to the map. As the game progresses, it requires more and more kills to get to 100 bones, so extra good guys equals more chances to grow your slavering horde. At two dollars on Steam, it's hard not to get your money's worth. The runs are fast and satisfying, there's a ton of fun undead to summon, and with four classes there's a lot of replayability for its relatively small size. I wish there was a little more to do with your resources as it's relatively easy to cap out, but as an Early Access game (released August 5th) perhaps we'll see that fleshed out soon. See what I did there? Because ghouls. And zombies? Never mind, I'll see myself out. Image 1 of 5 (Image credit: Anthony Case)Image 2 of 5 (Image credit: Anthony Case)Image 3 of 5 (Image credit: Anthony Case)Image 4 of 5 (Image credit: Anthony Case)Image 5 of 5 (Image credit: Anthony Case) View the full article

Hello Macaire, 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. Macaire joined on the 08/19/2022. View Member

Earlier this summer, Microsoft and Samsung teamed up to bring the Xbox Cloud Gaming to Samsung's 2022 lineup of Smart TVs via the Xbox App. This partnership means you could stream a boatload of Xbox Game Pass games sans the need for an Xbox console, PC, or even a streaming device. The only requirements are a Bluetooth controller, an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership, and a solid internet connection. Now that the Xbox App has been out for nearly a month on new Samsung TVs, I decided it would be a good idea to call in one of these fancy displays in to see how well Xbox Cloud Gaming performed on real-world internet. Samsung sent over one of its new Neo QLED 4K Smart TVs to let me see Xbox Cloud Streaming in action. Yeah, sending over a high-end 4K TV to test out a service that only streams in 1080p is a bit excessive. But am I complaining? Nope. The Xbox App interface is nearly identical to the console, and PC versions and all navigated with a Bluetooth controller. The only difference in the UI is that it displays cloud-only games, so some titles will be missing from the typical Game Pass offering. It still has a healthy amount of 1st party Xbox and 3rd party games. As cool as it all sounds, there are some limits. For starters, as I mentioned, it streams out games at steady 1080p/60fps. Samsung's TVs do some upscaling, but it's a bit of a let down that you can't stream Xbox games in 1440p or 4K like you can with your Xbox consoles. If you want to stream out games in 4K, you can opt for Google Stadia Pro ($10 monthly) or an RTX 3080 membership to GeForce Now ($20 monthly), whose apps are both available through the Samsung Gaming Hub as well. Though those services work with separate game libraries, so your mileage may vary depending on what you own. As far as latency is concerned, as long as you have a wired ethernet connection to your network, it is shocking how little input lag there is. Maybe I'm still traumatized from the early betas of GeForce Now or the current state of PlayStation Now; who knows? I am impressed at how well most of the tested games perform. In competitive shooters like Halo Infinite or Fortnite, I am pleasantly surprised to see that I can jump into matches and hold my own against players on PCs and consoles most of the time. Though precision weapons like snipers and pistols can feel a bit off in the heat of combat, especially in Halo, where even being delayed by a few milliseconds could cost you against better players. Despite that, the service shines in games that don't require millisecond-dependent gameplay, like strategy and adventures. I've been able to complete a couple of runs of Slay the Spire and Hades, and they've run as well as they do on console. I also played a bit of As Dusk Falls, and it's been nice to sit back and make terrible life choices as a change of pace. It is shocking how little input lag there is. Jorge Jimenez, lag hater MLB The Show 22, which is my current yearly obsession, runs surprisingly well. I've only experienced one or two instances where the performance dipped, which caused a swing and a miss during an at-bat. Other than that, Xbox Cloud Gaming works as advertised. I can't reiterate enough just how easy and seamless it is to get into a game, even though admittedly, the Xbox App could use better curation to organize its titles. For example, there are no horror or sports categories, which seems odd. Everything is just lumped into very generic categories. Aside from that, you just click on the title, and it boots up in seconds. It's streaming, so there's no download or updating to worry about. Xbox Cloud Streaming won't give you a 1:1 reproduction from the PC or even console experience in terms of fidelity, but I applaud it for trying. Since I have been playing on a larger screen, the artifacting was more prominent, especially in darker areas. It looks pretty bad in motion in games like Inside, which is nothing but blacks and dark grays. When playing Slay the Spire and Hades, I noticed a dip in visual quality whenever the connection was wonky, where it looked like the video was buffering for a couple of seconds. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez) Then again, the further you sit from the screen, the less noticeable it is. Since the TV I received is a massive 55 inches, and I'm sitting less than 10 feet away from it, it's easy for me to spot the imperfections, whereas someone sitting on a couch 15 feet away in their living room might be more forgiving. Just for the hell of it, I've tried a few matches of Fortnite strictly on wireless to see if there is much difference in latency. I had a few instances where my connection got screwy, and my video and audio quality took a dip before latency got affected. From there, I could notice a significantly slower response from button press to screen action. Even with my pretty good internet connection (891Mbps download speed), being wireless was too unreliable for serious competitive play. As someone who isn't the biggest game streaming advocate, I'm still pretty surprised at how well it works. Navigating the Samsung Gaming Hub and booting up Xbox games is criminally easy. The games themselves look pretty good and, more importantly, play like they are supposed to, so long as you're on a wired connection. At the end of the day, the quality of your experience with Xbox Cloud Gaming will always be determined by your internet connection. However, I can start to see the appeal of a world where you just sit down and play video games on your TV without worrying about upgrading consoles or tracking down an impossible-to-get GPU. Now that Microsoft is testing out 5-person family sharing for Game Pass Ultimate, this would eliminate the need to buy multiple consoles for a household, which is a pretty smart play from Microsoft. If Microsoft can find a way to stream games out in 1440p or 4K without sacrificing latency, then this service would be an absolute slam dunk. I'll admit there's something to device-less game streaming, where $15 a month and a Bluetooth controller is all you need to hop online and play games with friends. As a diehard PC gamer, I'll never not need a beefy gaming rig to make me happy, but if services like this mean more people get to play more games without spending a ton of money on hardware, I'm all for it. View the full article

The best part of any Bethesda RPG is getting to "be who you want," as Todd Howard likes to put it, and who I want to be is a sneaky jerk worming my way into a space faction to steal the best clothes. Yeah, sure, looting guns and customizing a spaceship will be cool, but my number one priority in any RPG is being dressed to impress nobody less than myself. Starfield may still be on the horizon after it got delayed into 2023, but I'm pretty positive I already know whose threads I'm nicking. If you too care more about wearing a unique coat than the stats on the thing, you already know it's the space pirates of the Crimson Fleet. Spare me from the Starfleet-looking sleekness of the United Colonies, the sci-fi academia of Constellation, and the space western duster jackets of the Freestar Collective. They've all got a recognizable visual identity, as Bethesda's factions always do, but it's going to be a pirate's life for me. As soon as that fella with the long eyelashes in Starfield's June gameplay reveal said "No one quits. The only way out is death," I knew immediately that I'd be picking death. Specifically the death of whoever his boss is, because I know the space pirates are going to have the shiniest, edgiest outfits complete with excessive straps and buckles that don't appear to actually have a function. You know, the good stuff. It looks like my new friend is wearing a terrestrial outfit, not a space suit, which I think includes a rather excessive red scarf. Dibs on that. And dibs on that metallic skull helmet full of lights and wires that this other pirate is wearing. This whole command center of theirs is an edgy space teen dream with its constant red glow. (Image credit: Bethesda) Not for nothing either. I will (and did) prioritize my outfit over survival even in less graphically-minded games like Project Zomboid, but Bethesda's work on Creation Engine 2 means that the fits are a real sight for sore spacer eyes. Even if I'm not dying to wear the gear from other factions, the gameplay reveal was a real feast of reflective fabrics. The Constellation welcome committee features a woman with a jacket whose zipper and tufted shoulder designs catch light differently. Another member's suit shows off how the coated atmosphere-proof fabric contrastes with the matte patches on his shoulders and the grain of his metallic collar. And, hell, did you spot the scratches on his helmet visor? (Image credit: Bethesda) I guess this one goes out to Bethesda's materials artists for making me invested in a space game when I'd normally skip it for something pure fantasy. Realism isn't the end all be all of artistic design in games, but since we're getting more realism in Starfield, I'll happily take the giant leap forward in outfit integrity. I'm also curious whether the many modular parts of Starfield's ship building system will tie to factions at all. The bulky ship that pirate reinforcements land during combat in the gameplay reveal isn't really my style, but I did spot some shiny gold thrusters on back that are. (Image credit: Bethesda) For the sake of not making a choice entirely based on aesthetics, let's look at weapons real quickly too. Like choice in fashion, Bethesda's factions typically have a favorite class of gear too. From the gameplay reveal, the pirates seem to favor laser weapons over ballistics. I'm more of a melee lady myself, though maybe I can adapt in space. Plus, I'd be willing to bet my credits that getting in good with the bad folks will eventually earn me a unique laser gun with some ridiculous ability like extra damage only against friendly wildlife. There was a pretty slick black and gold laser rifle called the Equinox that the player looted from a Crimson Raider base during the gameplay reveal. Yeah, I could rock that. While we wait to see more official gameplay from Starfield, my fellow PCG writers are hoping for weird as hell NPCs and cities more like Morrowind. I'm just keeping an eye on the gear my new best frenemies are wearing. I will find out which one of them has the coolest helmet. And I will wear it. (Image credit: Bethesda) (Image credit: Bethesda) View the full article

Back during its 10th anniversary blitz, Riot announced a whole pile of new games. Among those was Project L, the working title for a League of Legends fighting game. This is what Riot's been working towards since it bought Radiant Entertainment, a developer run by EVO co-founder Tom Cannon, back in 2016. It's been rumored for awhile that Riot was making a fighting game. A drip-feed of info about the 2d fighter has continued since its reveal, giving us some insight into its roster and setup. Here's everything we know. What is Project L's release date? The short answer is: not anytime soon, according to the designer of Project L (and co-founder of EVO), Tom Cannon. During Project L's reveal on Riot's anniversary livestream, Cannon also said: "Making fighting games is really, really tough. These are intricate games to make. And while we're a good ways towards making something that we think is really cool, we still have a long way to go. We're going to go dark for a while after this, so please don't expect anything soon." They further updated this with new info in November 2021, describing that Project L would not release in 2022. Project L will be free-to-play The Runeterra 2D fighter will be joining the legion of free-to-play service games, according to a dev diary video from Riot. We don't have any specifics for the game's monetization scheme, but dev Tom Cannon said the decision to follow a free-to-play model was motivated by wanting to "remove as many barriers as possible from you enjoying Project L. We want you to be able to play, no matter where you live, what your skill level is, or how much money you have to spend on a game." What's Project L gameplay details do we have? A surprise look into Project L from November of 2021 gave us insight into the type of fighting game Project L is going to be. Specifically, it will be an "assist fighter", where players create a team of two fighters, with one acting as the primary fighter, and the other able to be called in for assist attacks. Designers Tom & Tony Cannon also described their hopes for the complexity as being one where a new player can easily jump in and learn a new character's basic moves, but still be woefully outclassed by masters of that character. (Image credit: Riot Games) Which characters will be in Project L? Riot hasn't officially announced a roster, but between the different snippets of footage they showed, we've seen that the League of Legends cast is out in force. Ahri, Katarina, Jinx, and Darius all put in appearances in. In the latest update, we've seen that Ekko will also be showing up. There's some serious diversity there, since we're looking at a fox-mage, an assassin with throwing knives, a bruising fighter with a giant axe, a minigun-and-rocket-launcher wielder, and a time rewinding inventor. The August 2022 dev diary video revealed the Illaoi will be part of the Project L roster. An accompanying blog post from Riot has a lot more details about the design process of translating Illaoi into a fighting game context, but it's clear she'll be a powerhouse brawler, utilizing her heavy golden idol as well as her phantom sea-tentacles. With nearly 160 champions to pick from in League of Legends, the character pool options are deep. But with so many types of champions, it'll be interesting to see which ones make it into Project L. Most humanoid champions are probably a safe bet, but I wouldn't be surprised if champs like Cho'Gath, Rumble, or Aurelion Sol are left out. How could they possible work in a fighting game? Well, there's always the Goro route. What other details do we have about Project L? The look has been refined since the earliest previews, but matches most 2.5D fighters. From the short bits of gameplay we got to see with a UI, a lot of the usual fighting game elements are present. Health bars, EX/super gauges, a round timer, round win counters, and combo counters are all there. However, given the game is in such an early state, it's possible there are changes ahead. One thing to keep in mind is that Riot bought Tom Cannon's company, Radiant Entertainment, presumably because Cannon was working on a game called Rising Thunder. Rising Thunder was unlike a lot of other fighting games in that it was specifically built to be more approachable for newer players who didn't want to memorize long, complicated combos. One of Rising Thunder's coolest ideas was that an entire combo could be triggered by a simple button press. There was still a wealth of strategy in knowing invincibility frames, timings, and spacing, but you could easily play with just a keyboard instead of a fight stick. Given that much of Riot's design philosophy has been making more approachable versions of complicated games, like MOBAs and autochess, it's reasonable to assume Project L will build off of Rising Thunder's foundation. But will Teemo be in Project L? Never underestimate the power of the scout's code. (Image credit: Riot Games) View the full article

Oh, no. It finally happened. I've reached the point in my life where I agree more with the stern dad in a videogame than I do with the rebellious teen. I can take comfort, at least, in the fact that the dad I'm agreeing with in this game is voiced by none other than Doug Cockle, voice of Geralt of Rivia—and here he's playing a guy named Gerald who's visiting the Riviera. Cute. The game is Arcade Paradise, a first-person management sim set in the 1990s when video arcades were still popular hangouts. In Arcade Paradise I'm a teenager—Gerald's kid, Ashley—put in charge of the grubby little laundromat my dad owns, following his instructions and enduring his lectures over the phone while he's out of town. Every morning I take the bus to King Wash and then go about a series of repetitive tasks, like picking up trash, prying gum off chairs, cleaning the tiny bathroom, and doing loads of laundry for customers who drop off their laundry baskets. But this isn't just a coin-op laundromat. There's a back room, small and cluttered, with a handful of arcade game cabinets. And as a teen slogging through a boring, repetitive job at the family business, Ashley's dreams quickly outgrow the humble drudgery of a wash-and-fold existence. Why not take the earnings from clearing dirty socks and undies and invest them in arcade games? I'm already getting paid in quarters. How about buying some more machines that run on spare change? The idea of running an arcade fits my character perfectly: Ashley already turns the grind of picking up trash and unclogging toilets into a game anyway. Just about everything you do in Arcade Paradise has been gamified: a power meter and target appear whenever I chuck a bag of trash into a dumpster, pulling chewing gum off seats and countertops works like a timed boss fight, and even unclogging a toilet requires finding the sweet spot (like when picking a lock) and then power-plunging. Doing a load of laundry rewards me with a ranking depending on how timely I got the clothes into the washer, then the dryer, then back into the basket for the customer to collect. And the better I score in these tasks, the more I get paid. (Image credit: Nosebleed Interactive) When I've collected enough money and emptied all the coin hoppers, I sit down at the boxy old CRT in the tiny office and order new arcade games for the back room. All the cabinets in Arcade Paradise are playable, from electronic air hockey to a cute Dig-Dug clone. My favorite game currently is a mix of Pac-Man and GTA, where you drive a bright yellow sports car through a maze of city streets, gobbling up cash and grabbing powerups that let me turn into a tank to defeat the police cars chasing me. Each arcade game has achievements you can unlock, with each achievement making the games more popular and thus better earners. It's the first time the term 'play-to-earn' actually makes sense. But as my arcade grows, my dreaded little secret is… I think I like the laundromat more than the arcade? Apologies to the rebellious teenager I'm playing in Arcade Paradise, but when Daddy Gerald tells me to invest my earnings into better washers and dryers for the laundromat, I think it's actually a great idea. A laundromat is a sound business: people will always have clothes that need washing. But an arcade is doomed to fail. Here in the '90s, the arcade game industry is about to be sunk by home console ports like an iceberg taking down the Titanic. Plus, I really like being in the laundromat. Maybe it's some weird twisted nostalgia for laundromats I didn't even know I had, involving the clutter of discarded newspapers and takeaway coffee cups, and the bored customers sitting around watching their clothes spin in those huge metal dryers. For whatever reason, I don't mind doing all the stuff Ashley probably hates. But in Arcade Paradise, I can't spend my quarters on new washers and dryers (unless that comes later—I've only played for a few hours). I can only buy stuff for the arcade. Luckily there seem to be tons of games for sale, as well as other attractions like jukeboxes and pool tables I can install to diversify. So far I'm finding Arcade Paradise oddly compelling—the other night I stayed up so late playing my eyes were bleary just from doing laundry, cleaning, and playing the arcade games between spin cycles. I earned enough to convert a larger adjoining back room into a proper arcade, and I plan to keep working until I can afford enough game cabinets to fill it. Looking at the blueprints of the building, there are a couple more rooms I'll be able to expand to once I've done enough laundry. Won't Poppa Gerald be surprised when he gets home? But honestly, I do genuinely agree with Dad's lectures. I should be spending my money to upgrade the laundromat and not the arcade. The '90s will race by. The arcade doesn't have long left to live, but people will always have dirty underpants and stained shirts. It pains me to say this, but listen to your Dad, Ashley. He knows what he's talking about. View the full article

Apex Legends kicked off its fourteenth season, Hunted, this month. The latest content update adds a bunch of stuff to the game, including another playable character, tweaks to the OG Kings Canyon map, and a level cap increase. While this should be—and likely is—an exciting time for players of Respawn Entertainment’s… Read more... View the full article

No matter how good the raid tier, you're usually sick of the sight of it by the time the next raid rolls around. So when Blizzard announced that there wouldn't be a new raid in Season 4, and would instead reintroduce previous Shadowlands raids, I was understandably dubious. When plans for the final stretch of Shadowlands were initially revealed, Blizzard was quick to point out that it would be an "experimental season". As it turns out though, fated raids fit in with exactly how the end of an expansion should feel. There are usually at least three raids over the course of an expansion, and each has a limited shelf-life. Castle Nathria, for example, was the first raid to arrive in Shadowlands and when the second raid arrived seven months later, there was little reason to venture back in there. The gear from the new raid was far superior, and if you've spent the past half a year killing those same bosses week after week, then there's really no desire to return. The same has been true for pretty much every raid in World of Warcraft's recent history, stretching back to at least Warlords of Draenor—and probably before that, too. Of course, I'm not saying that people never return to raids to farm transmog, mounts, achievements or whatever, but older raids from current expansions never usually get a look in once the next raid tier has arrived. Season 4 has changed that. Each week, we get one of the three Shadowlands raids on a rotation. To mix things up a bit, "affixes" are applied to each boss, giving us an extra mechanic to deal with so that boss encounters don't feel exactly the same each time. Even with those changes in place, I wasn't sure how ready I was to step back into Castle Nathria, or the more recent Sanctum of Domination. The last thing I was expecting was the huge wave of nostalgia that hit me—something I never thought I'd feel for anything related to Shadowlands. Suddenly, I was remembering that one guild mate that never managed to time the portals right on Xy'Mox (and still can't), and another that somehow always died on the same trash pack. I'd also somehow forgotten the existence of several bosses until we reached them, though I did remember the pain of trying not to use Fel Rush when chained to another player on Sludgefist—albeit right after killing both of us. (Image credit: Blizzard) While the encounters themselves have been scaled to our current power level, they haven't felt particularly challenging, and honestly, that's absolutely fine. We all know the bosses inside-out by now and I don't think this would've worked quite so well if the affixes had added too much difficulty to the fights. Instead, it feels like it fits perfectly with the end of an expansion and the power level of our characters. The final stretch has always traditionally been a difficult time to find players to fill your raid team due to people taking breaks before the next expansion hits. This new approach not only makes it easier for anyone returning—they won't be thrown in in the middle of raid progress—but also for those still playing. You're not racing to grab an Ahead of the Curve or Cutting Edge achievement so the pressure just isn't there. There's almost a "social raid" feel when you can blast bosses and have a laugh but still get decent gear upgrades while doing it. All the catch-up mechanics are in place, too, and they make levelling and gearing alts that much easier. And as much as I love raiding, Dragonflight is close enough now that these last few months of Shadowlands should be a time to chill and prepare for the upcoming expansion, not progress through new raid content. That said, we're only on week three of Season 4 and Dragonflight is still several months away. This isn't something I'd like to see replacing entire raid tiers in the future, but for those final few months before a new expansion launches—a pre-pre-patch, if you will—I think Blizzard could be on to something. View the full article

Best of Minecraft (Image credit: Mojang)Minecraft update: What's new? Minecraft skins: New looks Minecraft mods: Beyond vanilla Minecraft shaders: Spotlight Minecraft seeds: Fresh new worlds Minecraft texture packs: Pixelated Minecraft servers: Online worlds Minecraft commands: All cheats Looking for Minecraft commands and cheats to make your time in your favourite world a little easier? Commands are a great way to cut down on a lot of work, whether you want to copy a building, change the game mode, or switch the time of day. If you're busy working on a masterpiece in creative mode, or you want to bend the rules in a survival game, these lines of text are invaluable. There are a huge number of cheats and console commands to choose from, so this guide sticks with the ones you really need to know—there are also a few playful commands to troll your friends! So if you want an advantage in the blocky sandbox, these Minecraft cheats should help you out. How to use Minecraft cheats How to use Minecraft cheats If you're wondering how to enter the Minecraft console commands listed below, all you need to do is hit the forward-slash key (/) and that’ll bring up a small window. Input the code and hit enter and your command will activate. How to get information about commands /help [command name] Need More Cheat Sheets? (Image credit: Rockstar Games)Fallout 4 cheats: Nuclear codes Minecraft commands: Unblocked RDR2 cheats: Most wanted GTA 5 cheats: Phone it in The Sims 4 cheats: Life hacks Ark cheats: Expedited evolution Offers additional information about any console command. If you’re trying a command and it isn’t working as it should, type the above command before the name of the command that isn’t working and you’ll be treated to more details about how it works. Example: /help kill Shorthand Minecraft commands Below are the shorthand codes to save you from typing in different player names. These are worth memorising so you don’t have to type in names like “Sniper_Kitty_Bruv_91” every time some jobber joins your game. @p – the player nearest to you@r – a random player@a – all players@e – all entities in the world.@s - yourself Minecraft cheat commands Give item /give [amount] Drops an item into the player’s inventory. Perfect for if you want to start a run with a full set of diamond gear. Just keep in mind the amount section only works for stackable items. You can’t give yourself 100 diamond swords in one go, as cool as that’d be. For a full list of item IDs, head here. Example: /give PCGamer diamond_sword 1 Teleport player /tp [target player] Teleports the targeted player to a designated location. And yes, you can indeed teleport a friend into the sky and laugh as their body flails back down to earth. Example: /tp PCGamer 100 0 10 Clone blocks /clone Clones a selection of blocks to another location. Very helpful if you’re building a city space and want to duplicate multiple buildings to different areas. “ ” is your start point. “ ” is the end point. And “ ” is where you want the cloned blocks to spawn. Example: /clone 100 234 -10 200 100 0 300 200 100 Change difficulty /difficulty Changes the in-game difficulty. Replace the latter section of the code with one of the following: peaceful easy normalhard Example: /difficulty peaceful Apply status effect /effect [seconds] [amplifier] [hideParticles] Adds a status effect to the targeted player. “[seconds]”, “[amplifier]”, and “[hideParticles]” are all optional conditions, so feel free to ignore them unless you want to change the length, how strong the effect is, or whether the effect shows as particles or not. If you want to remove an effect from a player, type “/effect clear”. Example: /effect PCGamer water_breathing 30 Apply enchantment /enchant [level] Adds an enchantment to the item the player is holding. So that’s smite, bane of the arthropods, sharpness—any enchantment you’d pull from a book or enchant table. Here's a list of Enchantment IDs. Example: /enchant PCGamer minecraft:smite 1 Add experience points /xp [player] Gives the targeted player an amount of experience points. If you just want to add levels instead, which is easier for enchanting, try “/xp L [player]”. Example: /xp 100L PCGamer Change gamemode /gamemode Changes the gamemode for everyone in the session. Add a player’s name to the end of the code to alter the mode for different players. Replace "" with one of the following options: Survival Creative Adventure Spectator Example: /gamemode Survival Keep inventory on death /gamerule keepInventory true Changes the game rules so should you die, you keep all the items in your inventory. Replace “true” with “false” to turn it off again. Kill command /kill Kills everything, including the player. But should you want to kill another player, use “/kill ”. And to kill a certain type of mob, “/kill @e[type=mobType]”. Play sound /playsound Plays a specific sound file. Great for if you want to use a command block to play a sound when someone opens a door. Who doesn’t love a good doorbell? Take a look at all the sound file names here. Example: /playsound minecraft:entity.elder_guardian.ambient voice @a Check world seed /seed Displays the seed for their current world should you wish to replay the seed again from scratch or pass it along to a mate. Set world spawn /setworldspawn Changes the world spawn to wherever the player is standing. If you don’t want to do that, you can also set it to a predetermined location with “/setworldspawn ” Example: /setworldspawn 100 80 0 Pause time /gamerule doDaylightCycle false This completely turns the daylight cycle off so it’ll always be the current time of day. To reenable the cycle, replace “false” with “true.” Change time /time set Sets the in-game time. Add one of the following numbers onto the end to change the time of day to something else: 0 - Dawn1000 – Morning6000 – Midday12000 – Dusk18000 - Nightist Example: /time set 1000 Spawn a mob /summon [x] [y] [z] Summons a mob to a specific location. Remove the “[x] [y] [z]” section at the end to have the mob spawn right on top of you. Just remember if you’re spawning the Wither you’ll need to leg it as fast as possible. Example: /summon creeper -100 40 -128 Change weather /weather Changes the in-game weather to a different type. I.e. “/weather thunder” would start a thunderstorm. This one’s a must if you’re going after charged creepers. Nobody's got time to sit around waiting for it to thunder. Example: /weather clear View the full article

Dishonored developer Arkane Studios has released a new deep-dive video detailing its upcoming cooperative shooter Redfall, and watching it is first time I've felt like I have a proper grasp on what exactly Arkane is building. As part of this year's QuakeCon event, Arkane's studio director Harvey Smith got together with key developers on the Redfall team, including creative director Ricardo Bare and Art Director Karen Segars, to discuss various features of the game such as the open world, playable characters, weapons and character skills. One of the key details revealed in the video is the structure of the game's open world. Unlike previous Arkane games (with the possible exception of Prey), the town of Redfall is a truly contiguous and freely explorable space. It's also substantially larger than previous Arkane settings. "I think the Talos [space station] in Prey was five football fields, and the size of Redfall is kinda 'hold my beer'." Segars says. "We definitely challenged the whole team with making something this big." Smith adds more details. "It's an open-world, but it's not an open world based on the scale of vehicles. It's an open world based on foot. It's a familiar setting, New England. It's spooky. [You can] traverse the place, go into mom 'n' pop grocery stores, apartments, get on the roof of buildings. And we try to put in as many environmental storytelling scenes around as we possibly can, and so it just feels very lived in." The video also elaborates upon how character progression will work. There are four different characters in the game, each with their own sets of skills and abilities. However, it wasn't clear how deeply these different abilities ran, or the extent to which players could interact with them. The video reveals that each character has their own skill tree, and pursuing specific elements of that tree can favour dramatically different play-styles with each character. "We've come up with a suite of really cool abilities and powers for players to choose from, just like we did in Prey and Dishonored" Bare says. He then highlights Jacob Boyer, a stealth focussed character with invisibility powers and a raven companion. "My Jacob might not be the same as your Jacob because I may choose to really drill down into the raven skill-tree and max that out." One last point worth discussing is the weapons. The game features a wide array of firearms, ranging from standard FPS guns like assault rifles and shotguns, to more ad-hoc weapons like flare pistols. But the most interesting weapon Arkane highlights is the stake gun, a "found ammo" weapon which you can fill with "broken-off pool cues" and "snapped-off mop handles". It also have various colourful bayonet attachements, such as a harpoon, a broken guitar neck, and even a garden gnome. You can watch the full video above. I'd say it's well worth doing so, because I have a much better idea of what the game will be like now, and also just how ambitious the project is. In short, it appears Arkane is trying to create an open-world shooter that's bigger than Prey, with four Dishonored 2-style characters to play as, that caters to both singleplayer and up-to four-player coop. "Ultimately we hope that players will play single-player if that's what they want, and it'll feel like an Arkane game, but it's more expansive," Smith says. View the full article

It's nice to know that we still live in a world where a random indie horror game can blow up the Steam charts due to screaming, petrified YouTubers. The Mortuary Assistant, developed solo by the Connecticut-based Brian Clarke, sends me back to a kinder, simpler realm—the heat of 2012, when PewDiePie was mostly making videos that featured various Amnesia mods. To date, The Mortuary Assistant has gathered over 1,000 reviews on Steam, and is responsible for over four million views for guys like Jacksepticeye, all on the back of a graphic style that would've looked outdated on the Xbox 360. What a time to be alive. Reject modernity, embrace uncanny, plasticky character models. As you could probably tell by the name, The Mortuary Assistant puts you in control of an eccentric young woman named Rebecca who—for some baffling reason—has decided to embalm corpses for a living. You are summoned to the crematorium in the dead of night, are confronted with some exposition by your shady boss about the mechanics of demonic possession, and then go about the business of preparing the mortal remnants of the recently deceased. The Mortuary Assistant is pockmarked with whiplash-inducing scares, but I think the game shines the most with its genuinely uncompromising presentation of what morticians do on a day-to-day basis. If a dead body is all it takes for you to lose your wits, then The Mortuary Assistant will have you coiled and jumpy from the opening credits. Pumping a body full of formaldehyde (also known as: fun). (Image credit: DarkStone Digital) Because, in this videogame, Rebecca is asked to wire jaws shut and preserve the pupils of decomposing eyeballs. You will need to drain all of the fetid blood out of these corpses using a pump and a cocktail of formaldehyde, and ram a metal gauge up into their guts in order to inject their innards with preservatives before wheeling them back into cold storage. It is wondrously, euphorically disgusting, and it makes you consider how no matter what you accomplish in life, we all eventually end up on a gurney with a variety of metal instruments desecrating our body. The Mortuary Assistant lavishes over that profanation; you feel a twinge of macabre joy with every nauseating, postmortem ritual. Of course, Rebecca will need to accomplish all of those duties while the infernal spirits rotting the heart of this accursed funeral home rise up against us. That is the thing with The Mortuary Assistant—there is a good chance the corpse you're working on might spring back to life and knock you on your heels. The horror here is all pulpy jumpscare stuff. Lights flicker on and off, dark shadows cross through the periphery, a shadowy figure lurks at the window—double-take, and they might disappear. Mechanically, this is more or less a walking simulator with some haunted scenery, but at least Clarke knows how to mix in the classics. Is that a Ring-like wraith standing behind you in the bathroom mirror? You bet it is! Long after the frights fade into the distance, I'm still going to feel the urge to beautify a few corpses. From what I can tell, The Mortuary Assistant has multiple different endings, built around some puzzles you can piece together during the moments where you're not embalming, or getting your underpants set on fire by a demon. One of the first things you'll discover in the main game is a wooden, Ouija-ish panel studded with glyphs that surely the player can decipher in order to uncover some Great Eldritch Terror. (Already, I've identified a mysterious locked cellar outside, that surely plays into some sort of obscure True Ending route.) I greatly anticipate the Five Nights At Freddy's-esque lore videos that will surely propagate into my YouTube algorithm as The Mortuary Assistant continues to carve up the discourse. But even if you're not the type to sweat over audio logs and practice some amateur cryptology, you'll still have plenty of fun defiling cadavers and getting spooked by the spirits. Wiring a jaw shut (even more fun). (Image credit: DarkStone Digital) Honestly, my main takeaway from The Mortuary Assistant is that the grim art of embalming could easily be redeployed in an endless supply of future indie games. We're living through a boom period of developers morphing mundane physical labor into eccentric tails of splendor (Strange Horticulture, the forthcoming Haunted Chocolatier, and so on), and I would gladly don my undertaker in a realm where I was not constantly harried by the restless phantoms of the astral plane. Perhaps through a gauzy pixel-art veneer? Don't tempt me with a good time. I'm telling you, Brian Clarke is onto something here. Long after the frights fade into the distance, I'm still going to feel the urge to beautify a few corpses. Call me crazy if you want, but just wait until you play The Mortuary Assistant for yourself. You'll see. You'll all see. View the full article

It's been a while since I've stuck my nose into anything related to Game of Thrones. I think I just lost interest, which is what happens when you spend years invested in a bunch of books and then more years invested in a TV show, and then you get an abrupt and disappointing end to it all. But just because something ends badly doesn't mean you can't—eventually, after a long enough grace period—dive back in and enjoy all the stuff you liked before it came grinding to an unsatisfying halt. And so when I saw a full conversion mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord called Realm of Thrones, which turns the world of Calradia into Westeros and Essos and populates it with characters and locations from Game of Thrones, I decided to give it a try and see if I could still enjoy the characters and fiction I spent so much time with years ago. (Image credit: Taleworlds / Carolina Warlord) Winter is coming The mod has been in the works for a while, and like Bannerlord itself, it's now in an Early Access state: not finished, but plenty to play with. Along with the map of Westeros and a considerable part of Essos, there are hundreds of NPCs from Game of Thrones, the major cities and families from the books and show, dozens of towns and villages, and yes, even packs of white walkers patrolling north of the Wall. That's where I start playing, at Castle Black with a new character named Skip Happyfish (the last name comes from his banner, which is a smiling fish, and his first name comes from what I do to dialogue in sprawling RPGs). And then I quickly get to work, doing what I always do in the various Game of Thrones mods I've played over the years: I look for famous people and try to marry them. That's sort of the problem with a world full of fantasy celebrities like Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Ned Stark, Jon Snow, and plenty more besides. I put the medieval warfare and quests of Bannerlord on hold and turn the game into my own version of Pokémon. I can't catch most of the famous characters of Game of Thrones, but I do want to meet them all and invite as many as I can to join Clan Happyfish. I have no time for anyone else: no B-list characters, like the Karstarks or Freys, and definitely no randomly generated characters that aren't from the books or the show at all. I immediately begin scouring the mod for the most famous people I can find. It doesn't take long. Right there in Castle Black I run into Sandor Clegane. He's not as huge as I expected, but I invite him to join my small clan, which is currently so small it consists only of me. I don't find anyone else of note in the castle, apart from a guy named Charles Foulbreath (unsurprisingly, he was not in the books) and Commander Jeor Mormont, who is far too important to go running around in the snow with me. But I at least take the time to introduce myself. Speaking of snow, I don't see the eternally sulking Jon Snow anywhere so I take the Hound and leave. We are immediately attacked by looters, the weakest and yet most common enemies in Bannerlord. There's only about a dozen of them, and I figure Clegane can take on at least ten at once while I kill the other two. Wrong on both counts! Sandor goes down almost immediately despite the looters basically just having rocks as weapons. I join him a moment later face-down in the snow, and we're dragged around in chains for a while before I manage to escape. (Image credit: Taleworlds / Carolina Warlord) Happy landings I head down to Winterfell where I meet Theon Greyjoy, who is probably just hanging out there innocently and not planning to betray anyone. I hire a few lowly mercenaries to ride with me and run into a woman named Scabby Sansa, who I assume is not the Sansa we know from the fiction. More looters accost us after we leave, but this time I'm victorious, and so begins the familiar practice of winning fights, taking prisoners, and selling them and their gear to make a bit of bank. Over at the Dreadfort I meet Ramsay Snow, who hasn't been made a Bolton yet, apparently, but already seems on his way to becoming an evil scumbag. Growing impatient in the cold north, I ride for the place everyone in Westeros really wants to go: King's Landing. It looks great in the mod, too, and in the tavern I find my first real Game of Thrones A-lister: Tyrion Lannister. I add him to my slowly growing clan. He seems like the kind of guy you could put in charge of just about anything, but for now it's nice to just have him hanging out with me. We take a few small jobs here and there, and while guarding a caravan we run into some raiders, but once again my growing little band comes out on top. Then, just because I'm on a roll, I raid a village in the north, killing and capturing a bunch of villagers and making a whole lot of people, including the Starks and the Boltons, extremely angry at me. Luckily, I'm able to outride Robb's warparty and decide it's getting a bit too hot to stick around, though I make a quick detour back to Castle Black to pick up Sandor again, who managed to escape from the looters who captured us earlier. I flee to Essos, the less-popular continent, and there I find my memory a bit fuzzy when it comes to places like Pentos. Did stuff happen there? Important stuff? Or am I thinking of Bravos? I really can't recall—it's been years since I read the books and after the final season of the show I think I blocked out a lot of it. Joanna Swyft, Boros Blount... these names seem familiar to me but when I meet them I draw a blank on who they are and what they did. (Image credit: Taleworlds / Carolina Warlord) Dragon lady Whatever. I know why I'm really in Essos, and it's to track down Daenerys, who is way the hell over in Mereen. The scale of the Realm of Throne map really comes into focus as we ride and ride, and ride some more, for days, just to even get close to Meereen. Finally, I stroll into the throne room and meet the Mother of Dragons, though she does not seem to have her famous pets yet. I try to marry her but all my gold, animals and weapons don't add up to enough in the trade window to even make a dent in her opinion of me. I can't even join her because I'm at war with the North over that village I raided, so I settle for helping her out with a quest to deliver some horses, and put Sandor and Tyrion in charge of a caravan to make some money. With not much else to do in Essos other than pine for Daenerys, I head back to Westeros. I sell almost everything I've collected from raids and looters and prisoner sales to give a heck of a lot of gold to the North so I can make our little war go away, then figure it's time to really get into trouble. I ride north of the Wall with my 30 or so followers, and into wildling and wight territory. The wildlings aren't particularly friendly—I can't get into Craster's camp, and everyone else will only speak to me from atop their castle walls rather than letting me in. (Image credit: Taleworlds / Carolina Warlord) Wight wedding And then we run into some actual wights patrolling the snowy woods. There are... a lot of them. They're pretty well-spoken for the undead, but rather than trying to negotiate I decide to challenge them to combat. While my clan puts up a good fight and we kill about half the wights, what's left are more than enough to wipe us out. All my progress, gone, Clan Happyfish destroyed. It's back to square one, as I'm once again dragged around the country in chains, this time by undead ghouls. On the plus side, I did get to see a lot of both Westeros and Essos, and met just about everyone I wanted to. The mod, even in Early Access, is absolutely playable as it is now, and the map is massive. Any Game of Thrones fans should find a lot here to enjoy. Just stay south of the Wall, at least until your warband is bigger than Clan Happyfish. View the full article

505 Games has announced that Kojima Productions' Death Stranding is coming to Game Pass for PC on August 23. In a press release, 505 Games stated that "The original version of Hideo Kojima's critically acclaimed and genre-defying epic lands on the Microsoft ecosystem for the first time, available to audiences who are subscribed to the PC version of Xbox Game Pass". The crucial phrase in the above sentence is "The original version", implying that the Game Pass version does not include the improvements and additions made by Kojima Productions in Death Stranding Director's Cut. This includes new story missions, weapons, delivery equipment, and combat mechanics. This could be due to existing licensing agreements between Kojima Productions and Sony. Director's Cut launched on PS4 and PS5 in September 2021, and while the upgrade was made available on Steam in March this year, it's possible that there's an existing console exclusivity deal that prevents the upgrade being released on Microsoft's platform – the kind of deal that Microsoft rather provocatively referred to as blocking fees. Alternatively, it could just be that Kojima Productions doesn't want to make absolutely everything Death Stranding available to Game Pass players. Either way, vanilla Death Stranding isn't exactly light on things to do. Kojima Productions' epic, which sees you playing as post-apocalyptic delivery-man Sam Porter Bridges, is both vast in scope and incredibly mechanically rich, with all manner of systems and gizmos that help you build pathways and delivery networks across its stunning recreation of Icelandic landscapes (which is supposed to represent a shattered United States). PC Gamer alumnus Andy Kelly found its story a bit indulgent in his review, but was fond of the game more generally, stating "every misgiving I have about it is ultimately snuffed out by the magnificence of hiking across that sweeping, rugged wilderness." Kojima Productions will deliver Death Stranding onto Game Pass this coming Tuesday, specifically at 5pm Pacific Time. That's 1am for us Brits. Much as I like Death Stranding, I'd wait until a more sensible time to start playing, as you probably won't even finish the introduction before the sun comes up. View the full article

Chuhai Labs co-founder Giles Goddard thinks minimum settings are going out of fashion. A veteran of Nintendo in Japan who has worked on everything from Amiga and N64 to Wii and Oculus Quest, he's noticed a change over the years with regard to developing for different PC specifications. "It used to be that the developers would aim for the lowest spec, and they'd make it look great on that, regardless of anything," he says. "And then, if you had a faster PC or graphics board, you could put more bells and whistles on top for post-processing effects or whatever, but only to make what was already there nicer-looking. "I think nowadays, because everybody's got a [powerful computer] the bar is so high that all the AAA makers are basically just aiming for the highest spec PCs. They're assuming that if you're going to pay that much for the game, you're also going to pay a lot for your gaming setup [so] obviously, they spend a lot of money, time, and effort making the games as great as possible on those machines. I don't think it's really in their interest any more to aim for the lower spec. It definitely used to be the priority, I think, maybe ten or twenty years ago." (Image credit: Sega) High life, low spec These shifting priorities are reflected, Goddard suggests, in the way games are discussed and reported on. "It used to be quite a hot topic—if you turn on these settings on this PC with these specs you can get these kind of graphics. It used to be in all the reviews and all the magazines, how to get the most out of this game. And that's just not talked about—you just assume it's going to be max settings." "That goes with my experience of this sort of stuff," agrees Terry Goodwin, technical director at Lab42, whose projects include the PC versions of Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami. Studios that specialise in porting tend to feel it most when clients neglect lower spec hardware. "Especially with developers that are very PC-focused, even if their goal is not to make the most amazing-looking game, they often don't think about the low end at all, which is a problem for us when they come along and say they want a Switch version, or whatever." On PC especially, he says, "Optimisation is not as considered as much as it probably should be." One reason it's a fine time to pay more attention to lower spec gaming is that it's better for the environment. Playing with the settings turned down tends to consume less electricity, though newer components may be more energy-efficient in themselves, and supporting older hardware is obviously more sustainable. Developing for cheaper components also makes games more inclusive—an important extension of conversations about diverse representation or creating accessibility options for players with disabilities. But the simpler point is that tailoring and optimising a game for leaner PCs involves a lot of craft that tends to be disregarded amid the industry's endless arms race for the cutting edge. It's every bit as much a 'feat of technology' as capitalising on the latest rendering techniques. Take your benchmarks Choosing and developing for a minimum specification is a complicated battle that, ideally, begins on the very first day of production. "When you set up a production, you set up budgets, right?" says Hjalmar Vikström, co-founder and game design director at 10 Chambers, developer of horror squad shooter GTFO. "So the financial budgets, of course, but then you have performance budgets, memory, RAM, some kind of performance goal for certain hardware. And that's basically where that whole thing starts. What's the target audience, what's the low spec and the recommended spec? And what you do then is you test for that all the time. "If [any single] team is responsible for the low spec, that would be the delivery team in our company, or what you would call QA." But adhering to those target specifications is a task for everybody. "There's always a big combination of QA, programming, technical artists, and render programmers and system programmers, a whole big team effort to make the game perform. In any production I've been on, performance is a concept you always work on, because when a game is not performing, the rest of the experience is suffering." (Image credit: 10 Chambers) Hence, among other things, GTFO's marvellous fog, which blends and accommodates the needs of artists, narrative designers and programmers. One one level it's a homage to Alien's murky corridors; on another, a way of avoiding 'load steps' or incremental environment loading, to keep the framerate up and minimise work for artists. "So performance is a thing, and the visual inspiration comes from Alien, and we're a small team with limitations on our art pipeline—all that comes together to create a plan. Fog is not there for performance, but [...] it fits together and we leverage that as much as we can." Some players miss the point here, Vikström adds, assuming that the fog exists simply to lessen the load on the game's engine. "The fog in GTFO is so much more than just a vision limiter, it's a mood setter, right? So sometimes I get the question, can you disable the fog? And I'm like, 'No, you're basically disabling half the game.'" For a small team like 10 Chambers, testing for things that threaten the target specifications can be practically a horror game itself. "A simple chair could be low res in polygons, but then accidentally have a super high res shadow mesh, or something like that. It's a simple problem to fix, but first, somebody needs to find that. So you need to have an analytic toolset to evaluate the complexity of the meshes. Do some kind of filtering to see if, oh, there's a shadow mesh here with tens of thousands of polygons or triangles—that doesn't make sense. Or maybe the test is automated, and then maybe somebody needs to add safeguards, but it could also be that our render programmer needs to optimise the order in which things are rendered, or an assistant programmer needs to make sure that chairs are never rendered if they're behind a door." It might sound more sensible to focus on honing an optimum look and framerate, then dialling things back for less powerful systems down the road, but this can be catastrophic, Vikström says. "It's really hard to go down in quality after years of production. You need to plan for low spec straight away, and constantly work towards it. Because after a couple of years, if you don't do that, it just becomes too big of a hurdle. And then your low spec slowly creeps up until it's meeting your high spec." (Image credit: Focus Entertainment) Setting expectations While he feels that developers today disregard lower spec machines, Goddard also suggests that today's players have more ways of customising their PC games today. "You have settings for everything, like turning the rain on and off. I think it's become more a question of personal preference, rather than whether your PC can handle it, and I think people expect to have the control. Because maybe they have really specced-out their PC and they know exactly what it can do. Whereas in the old days, it was basically choosing low, medium or high, and the game would decide what to turn off and on." This certainly encapsulates Lab42's approach to porting Yakuza. "A lot of the time, designing settings isn't a matter of making those things exist, but exposing them," Goodwin comments. "[For Yakuza] we looked at what was in the engine, and just made a slider and graphics option for literally everything that was going on." The studio repurposed the game's level-of-detail system, for example. "Where things that are far away render at reduced detail—it's quite trivial to use that system as a graphics feature, which is what we did for geometry. If it's lower then we force the lower [detail] ones, if it's higher than we turn on the higher ones all the time, or if there's particularly attractive visuals in a cutscene, I think we added a setting where you can use cutscene models for the main characters in the rest of the game." Lab42 added a few computing-intensive options for beefier systems, such as supersampling anti-aliasing, which renders graphics at a higher resolution than your screen, then squashes them down to smooth out edges. But Lab42 was also keen to support older computers by, for instance, accommodating processors that don't support the latest SSEs or Streaming SIMD Extensions (essentially, instructions for how your PC thinks). "We went in and rewrote everything to work with the second set of instructions, implementing all of the stuff from the third set in the second set, so that it launched on all the machines—that was important to us, because we wanted to let everybody run it." (Image credit: Sega) Minimum's the word The intricacy of solutions like these reveals that optimising a game to work on older or cheaper PCs isn't just about selling to a larger audience. There's a playfulness to it, with different settings giving rise to different aesthetics within the game's overall direction. It's not just about making compromises, but experimenting with the look, sound and feel of the simulation. To design for lower specifications can, moreover, be an exercise in time travel. "Talking about SSAA in Yakuza, we did enjoy that you could really crunch down the resolution, but keep the UI sharp, so it looked like a PS1 game or whatever," Goodwin says. "Stuff like that was fun to do." GTFO, similarly, resembles a totally different game when you drop the resolution and peel off the UI. "I really enjoy that you can do that—hide the UI, go down to 720p or below, and get this old-style Quake feeling," Vikström enthuses. This is, of course, especially the case for games that openly try to bridge old and new in their narrative or visual concept, such as Trigger Happy Entertainment's forthcoming Turbo Overkill (see p40), which blends a flashy cyberpunk setting with the chunky pixels of classic Doom. The usual conflict between features and performance aside, Turbo Overkill is a tug of war between different eras of videogame graphics. "When I first started the project, I made a list of rules that I should follow," says lead developer and Doom modder Sam Prebble. "Like, you can't use any technology like shaders, or reflections, advanced lighting methods, that were invented after the year 2000. I would try to avoid putting those into the game [...] but eventually I got to a point where I just didn't like the way it looks. If I want a neon-drenched cyberpunk city where it's always raining, you have to have reflective surfaces, there's no way around it—well, there probably are ways, but everything I tried wasn't very pleasing to look at. "So I kind of just stumbled into slowly adding more modern rendering techniques, and I just got to a point where I said, 'OK, screw it. I'll just throw it all in, but try and ground it in a retro look, or I guess it's kind of cringy, but 'retro plus', to find a nice balance of modern and old technology.'" Prebble has spent the best part of a decade picking which assets to update. "It's like, this headset doesn't look too great. I could go back and bring it up to scratch, but I don't want to polish it too much and detract from the original look of the game." (Image credit: PlayStation) Kill switch One ironic outcome is that Overkill currently requires quite a 'hefty' PC. But it does accommodate players who want to excise the modern flourishes and experience something like Prebble's original, heavily rule-bound retro prototype. "I have seen a lot of people run the demo on low settings, and some people look at that and say it's a retro game, it's supposed to look chunky. I kind of agree with that. Originally Turbo Overkill had a pixelation filter in it, which is something I used to play with all the time, just because I liked the look of, you know, low resolution graphics." Prebble is considering a lo-fi version for 'potato PCs', following on from the lo-fi options he made for his Doom mod Total Chaos, which "basically downgraded all the textures and stripped out a lot of shaders and all our models had half the polygons. That's something I'd love to do for Turbo, but it would only be later in development". Boxed off There are parallels between low-spec gaming and demaking, the practice of remaking a game to run or look as if it's running on old hardware. They're arguably the same thing—demaking redefines developing for lower specs as an art form deserving celebration. Having spent decades wrestling various technologies into submission, Goddard is both fascinated and repelled by the thought of adapting new games to platforms such as Gameboy. "To me it just sounds like hitting my head with a hammer non-stop. That doesn't seem to be anything enjoyable there from my point of view, but because [younger developers haven't] gone through all that pain they don't see it—they find it fascinating and really intriguing." (Image credit: Playism) Goddard argues that for larger established teams, the question of high or low spec may become irrelevant in a few years thanks to technologies that automatically adjust for different hardware capabilities. Take Unreal Engine 5's geometry system Nanite. "Basically, you throw as many polygons as you want at it, and it just figures it all out. Up until now all the games I've ever made [have been] a constant battle for framerate. You're always trying to reduce polygons. With UE5 now you don't even think about it. You don't even have to make reduced polygon versions of things any more. Everything's automatic." Features like these could transform the industry, he says, much like the spread of intuitive middleware tools such as Unity. "It's getting to the point where it's no longer a programmer job worrying about framerate. It's basically artists buying assets from a store and throwing them in without even worrying about texturing or LOD or anything like that. Three million polygons, ten million polygons, whatever, just throw it in and it just works on any hardware. So that's the kind of end goal of all this fighting over settings—it's all just handled within this black box here." This certainly sounds like it would remove much of the stress from projects like GTFO and Turbo Overkill. But from a player perspective, it's energising and inspiring to be given more direct control over how a game looks and runs. And as Vikström concludes, planning out a game so as to accommodate lower specs is a source of creative satisfaction. "You have expert programmers, expert artists, expert sound designers and storytellers, and they're all working together as tightly as they can. That's one of my favourite things about game development—these really varied talents that need to work together. And also, the big challenge." View the full article

Deep Silver Volition has officially released the full system requirements for its upcoming reboot of Saints Row. The studio had previously unveiled the minimum system requirements back in June, but now you can get a much clearer picture of how well your PC will run the game. To run the game at recommended settings (1080p at 60FPS), you'll need an Intel Core i7-6700k, or an AMD Ryzen 5 1500X. Moreover, you'll need a card with at least 8GB VRAM, with the devs specifying a GeForce GTX 1070 or an AMD Radeon RX 5700. The game also specifies 16GB RAM to run at the recommended settings, which as Andy noted in a post about the PC port of Marvel's Spider-Man, is becoming increasingly common. If your PC can't quite stretch that far, then for minimum settings (1080p, 30FPS) you can get away with an Intel Core i3-3240, or an AMD Ryzen 3 1200, as well as a GPU with at least 4GB VRAM, such as a GTX 970 or RX 480. You also only need 8GB of RAM to run the game on minimum settings, which is a little more forgiving. On the flipside, if you want to crank Saints Row up to the max (4k 60 FPS), that'll warrant a Core i5 12600 or a Ryzen 7 5800x. Card-wise, you're going to need 12GB of VRAM, such as a 3080ti or a RX 6800XT. All versions of the game require Windows 10 64bit to run. So if you're still running ye olde Windows 7 or 8, you're out of luck. Deep Silver Volition also states the game will require 50GB of drive space to install, and for any setting above the minimum specs, will necessitate installation on a solid-state drive. You can view the full breakdown of Saints Row's system requirements below: (Image credit: Deep Silver) Deep Silver Volition hasn't specified what kind of graphics settings the PC version will have, but in a recent tech preview, Digital Foundry noted that the game "packs a huge suite of options and each setting updates on-the-fly, conveniently showing the game world on the right as the presets change." These settings include support for Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion with four different presets – low, medium, high and ultra. The game doesn't support ray-traced reflections, however, although it does offer multiple presets for screen-space reflections. Interestingly, Digital Foundry also mentions that its own RTX 3080 and Core i7 7700K rig struggled to maintain 4K 60fps in the open-world sections of the game. That said, this would not have been a final build of the game, and Volition may have improved the game's overall performance since. View the full article

The rules1. Two in-game weeks to gather intel on most Soviet Outposts. 2. Try and find as many high-ranking officers as possible. 3. Only observe. The Soviet Army can never know I was there. This is a debrief report from Flaming Buffalo (I arrived late to codename assignment), from reconnaissance in the Soviet Army controlled region of Afghanistan. I was given two weeks to navigate and gather as much intel as possible on the USSR presence ahead of Big Boss' arrival. He's a busy guy, you know—it's not like he can be in two places at once. after all. I was inserted by helicopter at 1800 hours near Spugmay Keep at the region's southernmost point, with the intent of navigating the entire outer edge. On foot I made my way to the nearest small guard post, where I planted myself up on a ridge with a view from above. I spent a whole day watching this meagre camp to glean what I could about their operation and let me tell you, these Soviet soldiers are a disciplined bunch. They barely sleep, barely chat, and certainly don't take breaks. As the one and only sandstorm of my two week excursion rolled in they barely flinched. If we find out they're all robots, I wouldn't be surprised. (Image credit: Konami) Heading north I came to a larger settlement called Da Shago Kallai with a dozen or so soldiers, though something that I would come to learn is quite standard across their occupation is the use of decoys. I planted myself this time in an abandoned house at the edge of town, which was useful for its close proximity and great view, but also because it made it a bit easier to rest and pass the time. From here I made a log of the trucks coming and going. Or single truck, with the same one seeming to go on rotation with a few neighbouring settlements, returning roughly every four hours. I couldn't identify any hierarchy here. There were specialist roles like radio operators, but no officers or leadership visibly apparent. I spent over a day observing this place and noticed a few shift changes, with two guards getting sleep at a time. Eventually, at no discernible prompting, they decided to expand the perimeter of their patrols to include the outskirts, where my building was. On the afternoon of my third day a guard decided to use this as his vantage, and forced me to stealthily climb down the back of the building to find a position on a ridge nearby. I waited until nightfall before moving on, evading trucks and searchlights to head out into the dunes for a resupply before heading on to Lamar Khaate Palace. It occurred to me how little the region resembles the mountainous Afghanistan, home to rains and snows, I'd been told about. In fact, it sure looks a lot like Jordan, a country almost 3,000 kilometres away. Perhaps the Soviets terraformed it, like how Big Boss encountered that Russian jungle years ago. The palace is one of the few places that does resemble somewhere in Afghanistan, looking a lot like the Darul Aman Palace. It turned out to be defended by a skeleton crew bolstered by decoys and numerous mines. A truck came and went, stopping for less than an hour on each trip north or south. Do these soldiers have any orders besides defending these arbitrary spots? (Image credit: Konami) Words and deeds It's about day five when I start listening to cassette tapes to help pass the time while I observe, in the absence of any life in the world or any dialogue from the soldiers. The only time I've heard these soldiers speak so far was to urge some goats to clear the road, an admittedly rare sign of activity. The most surprising, or maybe alarming, thing I came to realise was that there were no Afghan people—civilians, resistance fighters, or otherwise. It seemed absurd that there wouldn't be a single one present, especially given their resistance is one of the only things the Soviet soldiers stationed here spoke about. In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan simply so they could stand around and wait for Big Boss to show up. After a day of observing the palace I moved on, heading north to reach the Wakh Sind Barracks. While weaving through a small canyon I stumble across a bear. Despite the threat the creature poses, it's honestly pleasing to see a living thing out in the world. I watched it for longer than is probably reasonable given my mission. Thankfully, I didn't get mauled to death. Arriving south of the barracks, it was immediately apparent this is the most well-defended place I've encountered. Nestled on a steep slope, the place can only be entered from the front and is heavily fortified with high barricades and several emplacements where sentries scan with searchlights. There were still only a dozen guards present but the dense outpost makes those numbers count. With so little of the interior visible from outside, I decided I had to find a way inside if I was going to gather useful intelligence. Before I could get that far, though, a searchlight exposed me for a split second. Enough time for a guard to be convinced he saw something and call for someone to come check it out. I didn't hang around, and quickly reached a crack in the rock face, which I climbed to get inside the barracks. (Image credit: Konami) Soldiers were speaking! An honest to god conversation! Something about Reagan and the futility of nuclear war. A sign of life in these automatons all the same. I crossed over the gateway to a high-up dugout that seemed disused and set up for a day of observation. At dusk, perhaps due to me spooking them the night before, they had sentries posted above the gateway which certainly made my exfiltration trickier. I was halfway across the gateway when someone thought they saw me. Pushing on, I hugged the edge of the cliff and could do nothing but hold my breath as the soldier approached, torch in one hand, scanning the bushes. He came to stand just a few feet away. If I had a tranq gun and no restrictions, this would be a nothing moment and he'd be unconscious already—but for my mission, this was as good as dead. I figured this was it, I'd blown the whole thing. There was no way he wouldn't spot me. I even got ready to draw my rifle. Then, impossibly, he failed to see me, and assumed he must have imagined it. Turning, he headed back to his post like an enemy spy hadn't been two steps away from him. Phew! (Image credit: Konami) Escape from new folk Eh... I hesitated to add this to my report, but after my escape I noticed I was being pestered by flies—a sign my odour from a week in the field had grown quite strong. Sadly, a dip in the nearest river didn't wash me well enough to get rid of them, so I was stuck listening to their buzzing. Facing certain death or torture is one thing, but these flies, boss? Nothing in my training prepared me for them and their incessant noise. They're the USSR's greatest asset, a weapon to surpass Metal Gear. Ahem, once Metal Gear is invented, I mean. What year is it? The supply depot to the north is surprisingly light on defences and vulnerable from the back, where I posted myself on a ridge that views the whole site. I'm not sure what supplies are kept here, since trucks never seemed to stop on their way through. I watched for a day and like every place before it, nothing unexpected happens. The Soviet Army is a well-oiled machine, its soldiers following an endless, unchanging routine. It feels... inhuman. I'd grown too comfortable and stopped being as cautious, like a fool! I moved on under darkness to Central Base Camp, supposedly the largest presence the Soviet Army has in the region. What I found was skeletal: the bones of a massive base occupied by a handful of soldiers stretched too thin to adequately defend it. It looked formidable from the outside, but I infiltrated it quite easily. Half the hangars are ruins. There were no tanks or armoured vehicles of any kind. Again, I failed to find officers. I saw what seemed like some kind of briefing among soldiers, but nobody seemed to be in charge. Who is running this place? There's a sense that their forces are simply locked in a futile effort, dwarfed by the vast landscape around them, in no way up to the task. They're little more than cannon fodder for Big Boss. After a close call with a patrol, I got out of there and started the long march south, now worried I wasn't going to make the rendezvous on the 14th day. Thankfully the remaining sites I had to visit were easily observed and poorly defended. Things seemed to be going smoothly until I stumbled into a minefield. I'd grown too comfortable and stopped being as cautious, like a fool! I detonated one of the explosives by accident and injured my hand, but worst of all, put the entire area on high alert. I hope they thought it was a wild animal that set it off. None of the other outposts I passed afterwards seemed to be awaiting attack. I think I got away with it... (Image credit: Konami) Heading south again I found a single soldier patrolling alone out in the middle of nowhere. Mostly the soldiers stuck to their designated posts, so this was well outside the norm. Why was he here? And why on his own? I stalked them for a little while, matching my footsteps to theirs just a few paces behind until I could finally make my way around them, undetected. On the 11th day I arrived back at Spugmay Keep. I hadn't anticipated being early, and made a brief scouting hike to the town to the north, which was as poorly defended and unremarkable as the others. When the helicopter arrived at dawn, I climbed aboard without hesitation, but started to feel a little wistful as the landscape rolled away beneath me. Not for my two weeks in this place, but for what I thought it might be when I first saw it years ago: a bustling, complex beast full of life and the unexpected. Instead it's a lifeless rock, populated by robots that pose about as much threat to the boss as shrapnel to his face. He's going to have no trouble here. Hell, I think he's going to have to make his own fun to get any kind of challenge or tension out of the place. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need that shower. Flaming Buffalo, out. View the full article

Quake Champions, the free-to-play spin on Quake's landmark multiplayer shooting, has officially left Steam Early Access. The game, which melds the gib-splattering, rocket-jumping FPS fun of the original Quake with more modern "hero"-style characters, each of whom has their own special abilities they can deploy across the course of a match, was originally launched in 2017, co-developed by id Software and Saber interactive. Champions has been updated fairly frequently over the last five years, with new maps and playable champions added to the existing roster, alongside a few new features such as the ability to play against bots. Considering the length of time the game has been in development, however, it's not a huge amount of new content, perhaps reflecting the fact that Champions never saw the riotous success of other character-led shooters like Apex Legends. Nonetheless, Quake Champions is a perfectly enjoyable multiplayer romp. Alongside the official Steam release, the game has also been added to PC Game Pass. This might seem a bit pointless considering it's free-to-play anyway. But if you have a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, Quake Champions comes with the additional perk whereby all the game's sixteen champions are unlocked from the get-go. This includes characters from id Software's broader canon like the Doom Slayer and B.J. Blazkowicz, alongside more familiar QC characters like Ranger and Visor. Champions isn't the only Quake game recently added to Game Pass. Raven Software's underratedQuake 4 was added to Microsoft's subscription service at the same time, alongside a couple of Wolfenstein titles, namely 1991's Wolfenstein 3D, and 2001's Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Microsoft has even added the worst Elder Scrolls game onto the service. These releases are all part of the ongoing QuakeCon festivities, which run through today and conclude tomorrow. View the full article

Don't worry if you've found yourself a bit stuck with today's Wordle. I've got the answer as well as a whole host of hints and tips for the August 19 (426) online puzzle just a little further down the page. I had an unexpected issue with today's Wordle; a furry, purring, heat-seeking one. Yep, that's right—my cat thought she had something to contribute to today's game (and to be honest, I've had days where I may as well have let her loose across my keyboard). Luckily for me, SCFGY isn't a valid word. Wordle hint Today's Wordle: A hint for Friday, August 19 Today's word is the physical manifestation of "Whatever", usually indicated by a rise and fall of the shoulders. It's a dismissive and disinterested action, although not necessarily rude. The same word can also be used to describe a sort of short-length jacket too. 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 426 answer? You'll know it when you see it. The answer to the August 19 (426) Wordle is SHRUG. 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 18: TWANGAugust 17: TWICEAugust 16: GRUELAugust 15: POKERAugust 14: KHAKIAugust 13: HUNKYAugust 12: LABELAugust 11: GLEANAugust 10: CLINGAugust 9: PATTY 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