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League of Legends is one of gaming's media juggernauts. When it debuted in 2009, I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me that a concept that began as a Warcraft III map would go on to be the basis for multiple games, several fun music videos and live K-pop performances, and of course, a hit Netflix show. With the continuing expansion of League, you might assume that League of Legends, which is honing in on its 13th anniversary, is heading into its retirement phase. But League is as good as it has ever been. Constant balance changes, new champions and complete reworks of old favorites mean there is almost always something new to learn. That’s not to say there aren't live issues. With Riot reporting at the end of 2021 it had over 180 million monthly players, it would be impossible to please everyone. But after years of experience, the development team has become incredibly skilled at interpreting and responding to these issues, often pretty quickly and with a good amount of communication. I think that League and its overall community is in one of the best positions it has been for many years. Riot's Netflix series Arcane won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation. (Image credit: Riot Games/Netflix) What’s been happening recently? The Durability Update, which Riot deployed in May, has been a divisive subject since it was implemented. One of League's biggest mid-season patches, the goal of the update was to make champions tankier after years of damage creep across pretty much every area. Every champion in the game was given more HP, armor and magic resist, while systems such as healing, shields and everything else that can be used to try and sustain your health pool during fights were rebalanced, with most being made more effective to stay in line with the increased health pools. The goal of this update was to try and make fights longer, and reduce the frequency of one-shotting opponents before they have a chance to react. The impact on the meta was almost instant and mostly delivered on the promise, with fights stretching out into longer engagements and the ability to one-shot an opponent greatly reduced. I think the only realistic solution is to continue to balance champions individually. But there was one big consequence of the update that most people, including Riot, weren’t keen on. As every champion is now tankier from the get-go, kills during the opening minutes of matches became harder to secure. At the top levels, this meant the meta shifted to favor champions that scale to their peak in the late game, such as Gangplank and Jinx, because the typical counter of shutting them down early when they are weak wasn’t particularly effective. They were often backed up by healers and other champs who can help sustain them into the late game. Most of the recent patches have tried to address this in a few ways. In patch 12.14 healing potions and defensive runes were nerfed significantly, making it harder to stay in lane and get back to full health without a trip back home. While champions with strong healing abilities, who had sometimes felt like must-picks, have mostly seen their effectiveness reduced in recent updates. It’s certainly been a step in the right direction, but it still feels like more could be done to make the early game more meaningful. Simply increasing damage would just walk back the impact of Riot's durability update. I think the only realistic solution is to continue to balance champions individually, hopefully making some early game supports effective enough to occasionally shut down late-game-scaling champs in the opening minutes of a match. (Image credit: Riot Games) Are players happy? Acknowledging that League's player population is one of the biggest and most diverse on planet Earth, the answer for most players is yes. Despite some shared frustrations League of Legends is in a good state, and crucially, when a major issue does pop up Riot has been quick to fix it in recent years, as it did with the Durability Update with initial changes coming in the first few days and a massive patch in a couple of weeks.. League's recent controversies, or at least those that were big in the Western communities, tend to focus around systems that sit outside of the game itself, such as Riot’s communication, management of the pro scene or customer service. We finally got to see Udyr’s new look recently and initial impressions are good. There’s been a lot of chatter about both the pro scene in North America and how Riot is marketing the game in the region. One example being the disappointment from fans when they banned LCS players from taking part in the big Mr Beast vs Ninja celebrity showmatch, and then banned former pro Doublelift from co-streaming the LCS for criticizing their decision. Then there was the viral story which easily topped the sub-Reddit of a Korean streamer who was trolled for three hours in a single match and then banned, which isn’t a great look. (Image credit: Riot Games) When’s the next big update? The next game-changing patch will arrive at the end of the year when pre-season hits. Slowly, details of what we can expect in pre-season are starting to trickle out, with the first major area of change being the jungle. Riot revealed it wants to make the jungle less intimidating, which, for someone who only ventured in there when jungle Graves first became a thing and was OP, is incredibly welcome. Systems to show recommended paths to take in the early levels, simplifying the leash mechanics and even the addition of pets who will help you take camps have all been revealed as things the dev team is working on. Although there’s no specifics just yet and this could still all change with a few months of Season 12 left to go, the thought of the jungle being a role you can just drop in and play pretty easily with a wide range of champs like most of the others is pretty exciting. Until then we can expect the smaller, incremental patches to keep tweaking the strongest and weakest champions, and most likely keep tinkering with systems to try and reign in the impact of the Durability Update. Fans of Udyr can look forward to his complete rework that will, hopefully, revitalise the aged champion when it launches with patch 12.16. After winning a fan vote where he had more than double the number of votes of the next closest champion, we finally got to see Udyr’s new look recently and initial impressions are good. Visually it's a massive improvement, with a lot of fans on Reddit loving his more mature dad-bod look that ties into his lore a lot better. Early PBE testers suggest that the new and improved Udyr retains the core of the champion’s design (iconic stances that Udyr can change between), and that the bonuses you get from swapping stances add depth that wasn’t there before. The other change that could have a big impact on the game for most players is the addition of League of Legends to Xbox Game Pass, which is both exciting and mildly worrying at the same time. Subscribers to Game Pass will unlock every champion, which should encourage some players to experiment with new characters. The potential downside of this is that there’s a chance that for the first few weeks after it becomes available, your games will be filled with people playing champs they've never used. Things I’d like to see in LoL’s future (Image credit: Riot Games) A new or just significantly improved client, please, literally anything to make it better The League of Legends client continues to be underwhelming at best and incredibly frustrating at worst. Many players continue to complain about the system resources it takes for seemingly doing very little, you still have to sit on the loading screen for an age instead of it loading assets in the background as pretty much every similar game does, and it's lacking basic features like being able to preview a skin you might want to buy in-game. Unfortunately a client update doesn’t seem to be on Riot’s priority list, with no significant client updates announced. Community sentiment, especially on Reddit, also seems to be getting less positive over time, with at least one major thread a week popping up about the state of the client, no doubt helped by how resource intensive the recent Star Guardian homepages have been. The second most-upvoted thread on r/LeagueOfLegends in the past month featured video clips of some nice client animation improvements Riot showed off in 2016 that never materialized. (Image credit: Riot Games) A big map change Games can and should change their play spaces. Basketball's three-point line—something we associate with the sport inseparably—was only introduced in 1979. Valve has overhauled and tweaked Counter-Strike maps that have been around since '99. I'm sure that a lot of players would object to major changes to League's map, but there hasn’t been a truly game-changing core map update since 2014. At this stage in the game's lifespan, everyone knows the best routes to take through the jungle, the most important objectives and the optimum locations to fight or sneak up on opponents. Wouldn’t it get us all out of our comfort zones if a lot of that ingrained knowledge had to be relearned? Taking a look across the other side of the river, map changes are one of the key ways Dota 2 has managed to keep itself fresh and exciting over the years. Its map is almost unrecognisable from the one it had in 2014, and the map changes have proved much more impactful in shaking up the entire game than adjusting individual heroes or core systems. When shrines (healing pools dotted around the map), were added to Dota 2 it created a meta where you had to burst down foes quickly before they could heal up without a trip to base. When they were removed and outposts were added (a neutral structure on either side of the map that one team can control), position and territory control became even more important. The repositioning of Roshan, Dota’s version of Baron, completely changed how fights happen around the objective and removed one of the major advantages for one team. All of these changes meant players had to relearn what were core parts of the game for many years. It would take some getting used to, and no doubt it would be one of the biggest shakeups in LoL history, but after eight years of largely the same map, it sure feels like a good time to flip the table on Summoner's Rift. View the full article

If Roadwarden had a smell it would either be setting-appropriate horse manure or the crispness of a secondhand but new-to-you 600 page paperback. I've recently been getting back to my roots reading fantasy novels the width of my forearm and just an hour with the demo for this narrative adventure RPG feels similar. Roadwarden's medieval fantasy story leads with proper nouns and a glossary to study them with, ambient guitar tracks, and pixelated art in muted colors to round out the dense fantasy vibes. Solo developer joint Moral Anxiety studio explains that it "tells the tale of an explorer hired by a powerful merchant guild, tasked with journeying to a mysterious peninsula to spread the guild’s influence." Roadwarden's developer says it borrows from the stylings of RPGs, visual novels, and interactive fiction. The center of the screen displays all the text and dialogue while the left is a pixel art rendering of the setting that evolves as you progress through the scene with your choices and occasional text prompts. Taking up the role of a Roadwarden, I chose my name and background for wading into a world of magic (pneuma), dangerous beasts (griffons), and several religious factions where just keeping the roads safe for trade is an unenviable job. I won't recount the rest of the lore bits for you. Either you're into that sort of thing, in which case Roadwarden will give you more than enough on its own, or you aren't and I'll avoid brewing you the setting soup. Suffice it to say it's got the texture of dark, dangerous RPGs of old—monsters and magic and beleaguered innkeepers and all. In conversation, I was able to opt for various dispositions—playful, polite, distant, threatening. Different encounters call for their own measures, which I found when getting to know the guards and proprietor of an inn along the road. The guards were happy to have a joke at my expense and responded well to my playful banter though they warned me their boss didn't take as well to levity. As time passed with my actions, I also managed my health, pneuma, appearance, and food, along with an inventory of useful items and a quest log of loose ends. Even deeper in my journal, personal statistics like "spared animals" and "gambling experience" promised as much character development as I could want to wrap my mind around. Roadwarden has just launched a new demo on Steam for you to try all this for yourself if you like. It's also slapped a September 8 launch date on its store page, so the full release—which Moral Anxiety Studio has estimated is about 40 hours of play time—will be available in short order. View the full article

As the most feared and powerful members of the undead, vampires still have to follow a heck of a lot of rules. You have to stay out of sunlight. Garlic and crucifixes are a no-no. You can't cross running water, can't enter churches, and if someone throws rice at your feet you have to stand there and count the grains. Most annoyingly, you can't enter someone's house unless invited. But here's an excellent solution to that last rule: Instead of entering your victims' homes, just have them come to yours. In the first-person management sim Bloody Hell Hotel, which looks like a mix of House Flipper, Stardew Valley, and V Rising, you're a vampire renovating your spacious manor and turning it into a classy hotel. And unlike most hotel owners, you can dine on the blood of your guests. As an ancient bloodsucker, you awaken after a slumber of centuries to find your once great manor in utter shambles. It'll be lots of hard work restoring the estate, but on the plus side, you're a vampire. As you can see in the trailer above, via IGN, you can enchant a broomstick to start sweeping up and use telekinetic powers to move furniture and clear debris. Install appliances that probably weren't invented the last time you were awake, grow plants in the gloomy cellar and harvest them to make meals, and decorate your hotel so it's appealing to wealthy bloodbags, er, visitors. Making your guests happy is important to any hotel manager, but once again, don't forget that you're a damn vampire. If a particular guest is a pest, kicking in their door and drinking their blood is much easier than dealing with a bad review. And no need to let the fresh corpse go to waste. Along with milking your undead cow and collecting eggs from zombie chickens, you can use your deceased guests for meat while preparing delicious room service meals. Turning a dusty, busted mansion into an upscale hotel takes more than magic and a supply of necks. Resources need to come from somewhere, so you can forge weapons in your basement and visit the catacombs beneath your estate to kill skeletons, zombies, and other horrors as you hunt for new ways to upgrade your hotel's amenities. You can even recruit vampire assistants to help you out, giving them jobs at the front desk or in the kitchen. Bloody Hell Hotel comes from the maker of horror puzzle platformer Darq. There's no release date yet, but the dev is planning to launch it on Steam, GoG, and the Epic Games Store. View the full article

Sony has been wading into the sweet waters of PC gaming with real intent over the past few years with some very good ports of previously PlayStation-exclusive hits including Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and—coming soon—Uncharted. It may be getting ready to go deeper with its own exclusive game launcher: VGC reports that references to a "PlayStation PC launcher" have been found in the files of the recently-released PC version of Marvel's Spider-Man. Currently, Sony's PC releases go where you'd expect them to: Steam and the Epic Games Store. But the reference to a separate PlayStation launcher opens the possibility that Sony could follow in the steps of Activision and Bethesda by offering its games in its own walled garden. Given that PlayStation's games are already on Steam, my guess is that Sony will introduce an intermediary launcher not unlike Ubisoft's Ubisoft Connect, which contains a separate user profile and appears whenever you launch one of its games from Steam or Epic. The discovery of a reference to a PC launcher follows shortly behind a report of a similar finding indicating that Sony could be preparing to let PC gamers link PlayStation Network accounts to its games, with in-game bonuses on offer for those who do so. This again would be in-line with the kind of incentives Ubisoft offers through Ubisoft Connect. Sony has established a stronger foothold on PC after releasing five first-party exclusives in the last two years: Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition (Aug 7, 2020)Days Gone (May 18, 2021)Predator: Hunting Grounds (Apr 29, 2021)God of War (Jan 14, 2022)Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (Aug 12, 2022) Moving to a proprietary platform would potentially allow PlayStation to make more money from fewer sales, as the publisher has to fork over a 30% cut to Valve on all Steam sales (reducing to 25% after $10M earned, and 20% after $50M; and a somewhat less onerous 12% to Epic for EGS sales). And we're not talking about couch change here: Sony predicted in May that it will earn $300 million in PC game sales in 2022, a huge jump from the $80 million it earned in 2021, and $35 million in 2020. Even with its own launcher in play, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of PlayStation PC sales would continue to be made through Steam. But a standalone launcher could simplify the process of integrating PlayStation Network functionality into its games, for instance, and possibly even gamer-friendly features similar to Play Anywhere on Xbox, which grants multi-platform access to games regardless of which platform they're actually purchased for. Interestingly, this isn't the first time that a possible PlayStation PC launcher has come up: XboxEra Podcast co-host Nick Baker referenced a rumor about a PlayStation PC launcher back in February. "I've been told that they are going to have a PC launcher, and I believe they're looking into implementing cross-buy with that," Baker said. "So if you get a PlayStation version, you get the PC—just like Microsoft has Play Anywhere." Uh…I talked about the PlayStation PC launcher 6 months ago lolhttps://t.co/Q7Ki23tvwcAugust 16, 2022 See more I've reached out to Sony for comment on the PlayStation PC launcher discovery, and will update if I receive a reply. View the full article

More top Genshin Impact builds (Image credit: miHoYo)Genshin Impact Heizou build: Brawling detective Genshin Impact Klee build: Little red bomber Genshin Impact Kazuha build: Anemo ronin Genshin Impact Yelan build: Hydro spy Genshin Impact Kuki build: Loyal lieutenant Tighnari is one of the three characters that is arriving with the Sumeru update, and like Collei, he's also an archer that belongs to the brand new Dendro element that's being introduced in version 3.0. Dendro is the power of plants, and though it already exists in Genshin Impact in a minor form, the Sumeru update is the first time we'll see Dendro vision characters. So, what do we know about the fox boy? Unlike Collei, who features in the Genshin Impact prequel manga, we don't know much about him except that he's the head of the Avidya Forest rangers; a new location that we should get to visit when Sumeru arrives. His kit of abilities also sounds pretty wild, firing arrows that break up into multiple homing projectiles. In this Genshin Impact Tighnari guide, I'll explain his possible release date, as well as his newly-revealed abilities so you can get a better idea of what this five-star Dendro character is capable of. Release date What is the Tighnari release date? Tighnari will release alongside Sumeru in version 3.0 on August 24. His banner, Viridescent Vigil, will run throughout the first phase of the update with Collei as a four-star alternative. "I brought back a specialty from the desert, two packs of honeyed dates, which helps to replenish your energy, whether in the morning or at night." —An anonymously source◆ Tighnari◆ Verdant Strider◆ Avidya Forest Watcher◆ Dendro◆ Vulpes Zerda#GenshinImpact pic.twitter.com/we5Mx9w53cJuly 11, 2022 See more Abilities Tighnari's abilities Thanks to Honey Hunter we already know Tighnari's abilities, constellations, and passives, though these might change before he's actually released. Normal attack: Khanda Barrier-Buster NormalFires up to four consecutive shots with a bow.Charged Fires a precise charged shot that deals more damage. Charge level one fires an arrow that deals Dendro damage. Charge level two fires a Wreath Arrow that deals Dendro damage and spawns four Clusterbloom Arrows that track opponents and deal Dendro damage.PlungingFires off a shower of arrows before hitting the ground, dealing AoE damage on impact. Elemental skill Vijnana-Phala MineTighnari throws a Vijnana Stormheart that deals AoE Dendro damage and creates a Vijnana-Khanda field that confuses enemies within. Tighnari also gains the Vijnana-Penetrator effect which decreases Wreath Arrow charge time by 1.5 seconds. This effect ceases after three Wreath Arrows are fired. Elemental burst Fashioner's Tanglevine ShaftFires six Tanglevine Shafts that track opponents and deal Dendro damage. After these hit, they create another wave of Tanglevine Shafts. Passives Encyclopedic KnowledgeDisplays the location of nearby Sumeru resources on the mini-map.Keen SightAfter firing a Wreath Arrow, Tighnari's elemental mastery is buffed by 50 for four seconds.Scholarly BladeFor every point of Tighnari's elemental mastery, his charged attack and Fashioner's Tanglevine Shaft damage are increased by 0.05 percent. The max bonus from this is 50 percent. Constellations Beginnings Determined at the RootsTighnari's charged attack crit rate is increased by 15 percent.Origins Known From the StemWhen opponents are within the Vajna-Khanda Field, Tighnari gains 20 percent increased Dendro damage for six seconds.Fortunes Read Amongst the BranchesIncreases the level of Tanglevine Fashioner's Shaft by three. Maximum upgrade level is 15.Withering Glimpsed in the LeavesWhen Fashioner's Tanglevine Shaft is used, all party members gain 60 elemental mastery for eight seconds. If it triggers Burning, Bloom, Aggravate, or Spread reactions, their elemental mastery will be buffed by a further 60 and the duration of the buff will be refreshed.Comprehension Amidst the FlowersIncreases the level of Vijnana-Phala Mine by three. Maximum upgrade level is 15. Karma Adjudged From the Leaden FruitWreath Arrow's charge time is decreased by 0.9 seconds and produces an extra Clusterbloom Arrow on hit. View the full article

More top Genshin Impact builds (Image credit: miHoYo)Genshin Impact Heizou build: Brawling detective Genshin Impact Klee build: Little red bomber Genshin Impact Kazuha build: Anemo ronin Genshin Impact Yelan build: Hydro spy Genshin Impact Kuki build: Loyal lieutenant Collei is one of the new Genshin Impact characters to be revealed in advance of version 3.0 and the introduction of the Sumeru region. She's one of two characters, alongside Tighnari, who use the new Dendro element which will be added with the tropical, jungle-strewn region. Dendro is a plant element, after all, letting players manipulate life to create all sorts of new reactions. Collei is a ranger-in-training in the Avidya Forest; one of the new locations we can expect to visit in Sumeru. Like Tighnari, the head ranger, she is also a Dendro bow-user, though she's a four-star character. Collei actually features quite heavily in the Genshin Impact prequel manga, due to her grudge against the Fatui, and she's even acquainted with fellow Mondstadt ranger, Amber. Chances are her story will play a reasonably big part in Sumeru's questline. In this Genshin Impact Collei guide, I'll talk through her possible release date, as well as her newly released abilities so you can find out what she's capable of. Release date When is the Collei release date? Collei is arriving at the start of version 3.0 on August 24. She will be available as part of both Tighnari and Zhongli's banners during the first phase of the update. It's also worth noting that you'll get Collei for free just by completing the tutorial quest for the Graven Innocence event. "Oh, you're going to Sumeru? Can you give my regards to Collei? Well... it's been so long, I wonder if her hair has grown out and if she's taller?" — Amber◆ Collei◆ Sprout of Rebirth◆ Avidya Forest Ranger Trainee◆ Dendro◆ Leptailurus Cervarius#GenshinImpact #Sumeru pic.twitter.com/sYz8bk8o57July 11, 2022 See more Abilities Collei's abilities We already know Collei's abilities, constellations, and passives (Thanks Honey Hunter), though since these are pre-beta, chances are they could change before version 3.0 comes out: Normal attack: Supplicant's Bowmanship NormalPerform up to four shots with a bow.ChargedPerform a precise shot with increased damage. Fully charged shots deal Dendro damage.PlungingFire off a shower of arrows before plunging to the ground dealing AoE damage. Elemental skill Floral BrushThrow a Floral Ring that deals Anemo damage to opponents along its path. The ring returns after a short time dealing another instance of Dendro damage. Elemental burst Trump-Card KittyThrows the doll, Cuilein-Anbar, causing an AoE Dendro explosion and creating a Cuilein-Anbar zone that deals AoE Dendro damage. Passives Gliding Champion of SumeruReduces gliding stamina consumption for your party by 20 percent.Floral SidewinderIf a party member triggers Burning, Quicken, Bloom, Aggravate, Spread, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon reactions before the Floral Ring returns, the character is granted the Sprout effect. This deals Dendro damage equivalent to 40 percent of Collei's attack to nearby opponents for three seconds.The Languid WoodWhen a character within the Culein-Anbar zone triggers Burning, Quicken, Bloom, Aggravate, Spread, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon, the zone's duration is increased by one second. Constellations Deepwood PatrolWhen in the party and not on the field, Collei's energy recharge is buffed by 20 percent.Through Hill and CopseAllows you to increase the duration of Sprout from Floral Sidewinder by three seconds when you trigger Burning, Quicken, Bloom, Aggravate, Spread, Hyperbloom, or Burgeon reactions.Scent of SummerIncreases level of Floral Brush by three. Maximum upgrade level is 15.Gift of the WoodsUsing Trump-Card Kitty will increase all characters' elemental mastery by 60 for 12 seconds, excluding Collei.All EmbersIncreases the level of Trump-Card Kitty by three. Maximum upgrade level is 15.Forest of Falling ArrowsWhen the Floral Ring hits opponents it will create a Cullein-Anbar that deals 200 percent of Collei's attack as Dendro damage. Each Floral Brush can only create one. View the full article

Need to knowWhat is it? A platform fighter with an eclectic, iconic cast of characters. Expect to pay Free-to-play Release date August 16, 2022 Developer Player First Games Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Reviewed on Nvidia GeForce RTX3070, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 16GB RAM Multiplayer? Yes Link Official site I'm Adventure Time's Jake the Dog, standing on the edge of a Ricky and Morty-themed arena. I'm about to beat Shaggy from Scooby-Doo into a bloody pulp while my teammate Arya Stark is casually stealing Batman's face. A few years ago this would have given me severe whiplash, but in a world where tennis star Naomi Osaka is throwing hands at Naruto in Fortnite, nothing surprises me anymore. Well, except for one thing: MultiVersus is actually pretty damn good. Believe me, I never expected it either. The initial reveal left me disinterested—it looked like another weaksauce attempt to be Smash Bros., and I'm not much of a platform fighter gal anyway. I much prefer my fighting games in a tight, enclosed 3D arena a la Tekken and Soulcalibur. I came into MultiVersus not expecting much, yet found that Player First Games have begun to lay the groundwork for something remarkable. Don't get me wrong, MultiVersus doesn't try to hide its inspiration. Anyone who has spent a modicum of time with Nintendo's brawler will quickly get the gist: smack your opponent with a mixture of normal, air and special attacks in order to increase their damage meter; avoid letting them do the same to you. Victory has nothing to do with getting a health bar from 100 to zero, it's all done through the damage meter. While the number is low, you're weighty and difficult to knock off the top and sides of the arena. As it gets higher though, your character turns into a rubber bouncy ball and becomes susceptible to all kinds of spikes and knockbacks that can fling you straight into the death zone. Knock your opponent out of the arena enough times and you'll claim victory. Wombo combo It's your standard platform fighter fare at this point, but MultiVersus manages a few key differences that really set it apart. The first one is how the game handles its roster—every single character is allocated a distinct class: tank, support, mage, bruiser and assassin. Tanks like Wonder Woman and Iron Giant can take more hits and are harder to ring out but are generally slower. Assassins like Finn the Human and Arya Stark are nimble fighters, pulling out every trick in the book to deal big damage quickly. (Image credit: Warner Bros.) What's nice is there doesn't feel like any pressure to match up particular classes—you can easily run a team of two supports and successfully outmatch heavy artillery bruisers and tanks if you have the skill. They're a great initial indicator of how you can expect to play each character, but it doesn't feel like any one class is at an inherent disadvantage compared to the others. There are also the game modes themselves. While other platformers feel more at home in a free-for-all or 1v1 setting, MultiVersus thrives off a 2v2 format. The other two modes are present in the game, but this game was absolutely made for 2v2 and it's where I spent most of my time. Every character has abilities that can support teammates as well as harm foes. Jake the Dog can swallow opponents and spit them out, but he can also quickly chomp an ally and save them from a nasty combo. Wonder Woman's lasso can grab onto opponents but also serve as a quick rescue for teammates. Killer instinct It took me a while to get used to the synergy of playing with another person, and to the way MultiVersus feels in general. It's an awful lot floatier than other fighting games I've played—it's lacking a bit of weight, and characters can hover around for what occasionally feels like a lifetime. It starts to feel pretty good once you're in the flow of things though. While I would still like a little more snap, the floatiness feels largely necessary for decent recovery and actually making use of those teammate abilities. I came into MultiVersus not expecting much, yet found that Player First Games have begun to lay the groundwork for something remarkable. I had access to the entire roster straightaway, but those coming into it free-to-play will have to work to unlock each one. Thankfully each one is readily available to try out in the training mode free of charge and a regular free character rotation lets you experiment with relative ease. It's also not too much of a slog to reach your first paid character, though subsequent progress slows down. As I tinkered around with each character, I ended up taking a liking to Iron Giant—he's about twice the size of everyone else and prone to a heavy smackdown, but in return he can dish out big damage and easily shield teammates, allowing them to safely get a fair few hits in on the other team. At first I was an absolute letdown, butt-stomping my way off the map and having my car-swinging shenanigans quickly shut down. But my god, nothing was as satisfying as moments where I could finally land my big shiny metal rear on an opponent, launching them into the air as my teammate jumped and poked them straight out of the arena. Playing each character also becomes a hell of a lot more fun once you level them up and gain perks. Every game played with a character gives them EXP, and levelling up grants access to unique and shared perks that give you small buffs and extra skills. You can even stack these perks with your teammate for extra benefits, which makes the pre-match setup feel a lot more strategic at higher levels. After I played around enough with Iron Giant, I was given a perk that made his rocket boots leave a trail of fire on the ground. It was a move I hadn't felt much need to use before, but once I was able to scorch my tiny nemeses beneath my feet I found myself integrating it into my play a lot more. Punching down There are some glaring frustrations with how MultiVersus plays, though. Hit priority is a mess, a problem that even I could spot at a casual level. For the uninitiated, when two moves connect the priority is generally given to whichever attack has more power. If both attacks hit simultaneously and have a similar power level, they'll cancel each other out. It doesn't seem to be at all present in MultiVersus. Couple that with what appears to be an odd hitbox and hurtbox system, and it's a pain in the 'donkey' to contend with. I noticed this with Finn in particular—his backpack has become a meme, having an oddly gigantic hitbox and causing him to win a lot of matchups he shouldn't. It's worth noting that the hitbox/hurtbox system is already receiving an overhaul, but right now it's a pretty major flaw. Those at a super casual level likely won't perceive it in finer detail, but it was something that became increasingly obvious to me as I spent more time with the game. I also have some pretty major gripes with the current map designs. There are currently eight stages in MultiVersus, with two of those being variations on another existing map. I had to go and look that up just now, because I can only remember two of the stages: the Scooby-Doo and Rick and Morty ones. The latter I only recall because it was unlocked as part of a community challenge. The Scooby-Doo one, however, has the honour of being my most and least favourite stage. It's the only one I recall having some form of fun interactions—you can punch a wee cog on either side of the arena to cause a portion of the platform to disappear. It's also painstakingly small, bordering on suffocating. It doesn't help that I play a character who is three times the size of the rest of the cast, but larger maps wouldn't go amiss. (Image credit: Warner Bros.) Most stages consist of one main platform and then two or three smaller platforms above it. They're fine. But they feel so cramped and uninspired, like being stuck in an elevator made of white bread. There are a couple of wall breaks here and there and they look pretty enough, but they're devoid of the levels of creativity Player First Games has managed to demonstrate through its roster. Baby steps Unsurprisingly, MultiVersus is also home to a battle pass. I've never been a fan of them and this one is no different. It's only a short preseason battle pass right now with 15 tiers. There's a nice distribution of rewards throughout the tier, but progression feels unsatisfying. I spent most of my time farming my seasonal milestones, which are randomised per player with no ability to reroll. It meant I was gunning for some ridiculous and unfun goals like ringing out 25 opponents at less than 60 damage or connecting 200 fully charged attacks. More battle pass points per match would go a long way, along with the ability to reroll some more frustrating milestones outside of my skill level. As it stands, MultiVersus has done a bang-up job of laying the foundations for a fantastic platform fighter that has the potential to blossom into something amazing. Killer backpacks and janky hitboxes aside, each character is brimming with personality and movesets that never feel too out-of-character. It's definitely helped by the fact that Warner Bros. was able to recruit a ton of the cast's original voice actors, something that you don't see very often. It's a game not without its teething problems though—until hitbox and hit priorities are set straight, MultiVersus will continue to fall flat for people at a higher skill level. But for a game still technically in open beta, MultiVersus is a worthy competitor in the platform fighter genre. View the full article

I've written so many articles covering AI image generators recently, specifically super poignant things other people have generated, and it's compelled me to do a bit of testing. I decided to gauge the AI image generation prowess of Midjourney, an image generating discord bot, with something a little closer to the hearts of the PC Gamer crew, and of course PC gamers in general. It's been a wild time checking out AI's interpretations of human text input. Whether that be asking it to predict the "last selfie ever taken"—and by extension the future of humanity—or what lies beyond Michelangelo's 'Creation of Adam,'' there have been some truly breathtaking examples; some that have genuinely caused me to consider the universe at large, and my place within it. But between existential crises, I've been wondering how we might somehow benchmark these AI image generation models. Without access to the kind of immensely high-end hardware it takes to power AI models like these, I wasn't sure how to approach it. But then it dawned on me: "It's a graphical interpretation of words, so why not use words to test it?" Using the same out of context PC game quotes we use to test the best microphones, which we also put on our PCG Soundcloud if you'd like to have a listen, I figured we could at least put the AI through its paces. And we even ended up with a cohesive art collection that we can call our own. What Midjourney has done with these out of context gaming quotes will forever be a part of the PC Gamer meta. StarCraft "You require more Vespene Gas." "You require more Vespene Gas." (Image credit: Midjourney) This quote from StarCraft appears to have been interpreted with the idea of colonising space in mind, at least, which is highly appropriate. The bottom right corner image is truly a work of art, turning the quote into what looks like a 1920s poster ad. Behold the death of the graphic artist. Resident Evil "Jill, here’s a lockpick. It might come in handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you." "Jill, here’s a lockpick. It might come in handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you." (Image credit: Midjourney) Regarded as one of probably one of the worst lines ever written in a game, this Resident Evil quote seems to have got the AI in an abstract mood. This interpretation involves no humans handing over lockpicks as anticipated. Instead we're presented with some slightly Dali-esque scenes of lockpicks and other metal instruments bent to form thresholds, glowing portals included. Very surreal. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets." "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets." (Image credit: Midjourney) Something I was expecting a lot of great designs from was this Castlevania quote. Already it's pretty loaded, and while the noir images are all incredible the bottom left design is my favourite. Faceless AI generated entities give me the shivers, honestly. Dragon Ninja "The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you bad enough dude to rescue the president?" "The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you bad enough dude to rescue the president?" (Image credit: Midjourney) This quote from Dragon Ninja, or Bad Dudes as the English release is called, is a little more abstract. I can see obvious Trump references, and I'm pretty sure the AI is trying to tell us he's actually some kind of alien. Take from it what you will, but none of those look like ninjas to me. View the full article

The Odyssey Ark is "the world’s first 55-inch, 4K curved gaming screen with 165Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time," according to Samsung. It's also a gaming monitor that's perfect for the solo gamer looking for a personal gaming getaway. The Odyssey Ark first made its presence known at CES 2022, but this was the first time I got to see it up close. And, man, this thing is intimidating. I've seen large format displays before there's something about the curvature at this size that feels like it's enveloping you more than any semi-enclosed workstation could. I got a chance to spend some time with the Odyssey Ark a few weeks ago at a Samsung press event in New York City. The first impression is that this thing is an absolute beast. Because you have to sit fairly close to it to get the most out of it, it's easy to become fully sucked in whatever game you're playing. I spent about 90 minutes playing games like DOOM (2018), Forza Horizon, and Microsoft Flight Sim. An hour was enough for me because if I spent any more time playing Doom, the Odyssey Ark was actually starting to look like a portal into Hell, which is a compliment. The Samsung rep stressed that the Odyssey Ark is about a more personal immersive experience. Because of the curved nature of the screen, the Odyssey Ark is best enjoyed by one person sitting at the center at a pretty close distance. This isn't something you could realistically put in your living room and have a bunch of buddies over and watch the game since the viewing angles aren't the best. Plus switching from Cockpit Mode back to horizontal mode felt unwieldy since it requires a little muscle to lift and turn the thing. If it becomes too much, you can shrink the screen size to 27 inches using the fancy Ark dial wireless remote and a more standard TV remote. This way, you don't have to have your eyes dart around too much when playing a shooter and play games at a size easier on the eyes. More importantly, you can do this without reaching behind or under this giant display. The massive display even rotates into a portrait mode which Samsung calls Cockpit Mode. The idea is that you stack up to three different displays on top of each other. So you could have a game, YouTube, and Discord all going on simultaneously with audio sources coming out of two places. It looks very sci-fi and overwhelming at first, but I can see some folks really getting into this and using the Ark as a very expensive second screen. For productivity's sake, it might be easier to just work from your PC desktop and mess around with your size windows than fiddle with the display's built-in apps. Though, I didn't have much time to test that theory. I couldn't imagine trying to work on a screen this big without thinking I was going to be pulled into a blank page of a Word doc aka a writer's nightmare. Everything is connected through Samsung's One Connect Box, which plugs a single cable to the Ark. It has 4 HDMI 2.1 ports, so you'll be able to plug in the latest game consoles and GPUs and get the best frame rate they can support at 4K. Image 1 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 2 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 3 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 4 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 5 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 6 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 7 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 8 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez)Image 9 of 9 (Image credit: Future - Jorge Jimenez) Screen queens (Image credit: Future)Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gaming It includes all the features and apps you'll find on current Samsung TVs, so it's like you're getting a hybrid of a gaming monitor and TV. But it's really for the gamer who has an elaborate cockpit set up for games like Forza, Elite: Dangerous, and MS Flight Simulator, who, instead of paying for 2-3 ultrawide displays, can buy this single display for roughly the same price. Speaking of price, having your own personal gaming fortress of solitude isn't going to come cheap. The Odyssey Ark is going to retail for $3,500. Still want that second, or even third, one? Samsung is currently taking reservations to pre-order the Odyssey Ark on its website. Anyone that reserves the Ark right will get $100 slashed off the price when pre-orders open, and expect to receive the massive curved gaming screen in early September. Oh, and yeah, we will definitely be reviewing this lovely monstrosity when it becomes available to us. View the full article

A new version of Nvidia's DLSS has appeared with the release of Final Fantasy Origin and Spider-Man Remastered. The new DLL, which has a version number of 2.4.12.0, can be used in pretty much any game that supports the DLSS 2.x, although you need to be careful with any multiplayer games as swapping out the DLLs could be seen as cheating, and potentially get you banned. You also can't use DLSS 2.x files with DLSS 1.x games. It's worth noting as well that the DLSS version isn't part of the driver package, but rather ships with the individual game. This is why any new game release that supports DLSS is potentially interesting—it could lead to a better version of the upscaling technology for every game. It rarely works quite like that, but if a game isn't actively being updated, it could miss out on a newer version for sure. You can grab the new DLSS DLL file yourself (available to download from TechPowerUp) and copy it over the existing version in your games of choice—make sure you back the original file up first though. There is a much better way, though, in the form of DLSS Swapper. It's a cool little app that now exists on the Microsoft Store, so no tricky installation is needed. This is a great tool for managing the various DLSS versions you have installed and lets you swap to whichever one you want to use for a particular game. It'll even automatically download the latest version, which makes life easy. As for this new DLSS version 2.4.12.0, the general consensus (at least according to this subreddit) is that this is one to pass on. It appears to introduce more ghosting and shimmering than previous versions. Your experience may differ though, and if you're unhappy with the DLSS that ships with a game, then it's certainly worth experimenting with. The general takeaway at this stage is that version 2.4.6.0 is still wildly seen as the version of choice for most games. That's the one you want to use where possible. Still, it's good to see Nvidia is still tweaking its upscaling technology, even though it's generally considered to be the best upscaling option around. AMD has garnered plenty of support for its FSR 2.0 technology though, which is keeping the pressure on View the full article

Razer's DeathAdder line of gaming mice has become a trusted staple among PC gamers, spawning an impressive lineage of devices since the original launched in 2016. Now in 2022, these mice have continued to garner acclaim with the Razer DeathAdder V2 wired mouse sitting atop our list of best gaming mice you can get. The wireless version, the Razer DeathAdder V2 Pro also holds a respectable second place spot in our list of best wireless mice on offer. Razer has recently announced the new specs on the wireless successor, the DeathAdder V3 Pro. With some of these changes, our current number one wireless mouse, the Logitech G502 Lightspeed mouse might just want to watch its back. One of the biggest notable changes on the new Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro is the weight, dropping down to only 63 grams for the black mouse, and 64g for the white. The V2 Pro weighs 88g so that's a significant drop. It's nearly as light as the Razer DeathAdder V2 mini which will still take the cake as the brand's lightest mouse weighing in at 62g. If the DeathAdder V3 Pro releases in a colour that somehow weighs less than black mind, it could be in trouble. Lightweight mice are all the rage this year, especially for wireless devices. Not only does it make them easier to carry around, but can genuinely make them much nicer to use. Picking up a mouse for flick shots or even just general maneuvering does feel easier with less weight, so it's nice to see Razer following the trend. Perfect peripherals (Image credit: Colorwave)Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend... Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audio Another upgrade to the V3 is an improved optical sensor. The new Focus Pro 30k Optical Sensor is a step up from last years' 20k version and is also packed with AI features to help improve your mousework. Plus it will also work on a greater range of desk surfaces, including thick glass. The Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro will support Razer's new 4000 Hz wireless dongle which attaches to your desk and is designed for people who really want a super accurate wireless experience. Razer's HyperPolling Wireless Dongle won't come with the standard V3, but is releasing on July 22, before the V3 mouse launches on August 11. It will be compatible with both the V3 and the Viper V2 Pro, as well as future mice yet to come. The Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro and the HyperPolling Wireless Dongle are set to retail for $150 USD and $30 USD respectively when they release in the coming months. A bundle with both products together will be available for preorder for $165 but so far will only be on the Razer store as opposed to other retailers. View the full article

A recent thread in tech news has been BMW's move towards nickel-and-diming owners of its cars with microtransactions, a move so popular that BMW software hacks are now available. This is a shard of a wider debate about modern technology which, from cars to iPhones, has in many cases been trending towards locking the user out of the internals of something they apparently own. This is most relevant when it comes to the right to repair old equipment without having to involve the original manufacturer (and of course pay an inflated fee for the privilege). While the mainstream reacted with disgust to the BMW stuff, anyone who's ever been near a farm probably wasn't so surprised: farming equipment has been screwing them like this for decades. The biggest firm in the agricultural manufacturing field is John Deere, which makes all kinds of machinery that runs on the company's proprietary software: which both monitors farmers extremely closely and force them to involve John Deere whenever there's a problem. These tractors are designed so that farmers can't fix problems themselves. This is on one level a nasty monopoly practice, but the implications of it are much wider. There's the simple fact that a huge amount of the world's food supply depends on John Deere equipment, and so any large-scale software problems could be catastrophic. John Deere itself might not have any plans to do such a thing, but then again it did recently show it could 'brick' Ukrainian farming equipment stolen by the Russians. The scarier prospect is that so much of the farming industry depends on John Deere keeping its systems secure from bad actors. Most farmers, meanwhile, would probably much prefer a world where they could maintain their own machinery and not have to pay engineers to come out and tap a few commands on a tablet. Tough cheese, cheesemakers! The company's various rationales for its big closed system contains some ridiculous arguments, including that farmers don't own these tractors but license them, and that locking farmers out is for their own good. Needless to say the John Deere system has attracted some white hat attention, and Australian hacker Sickcodes recently gave a presentation during the security event Defcon, held at Caesar's Forum in Las Vegas, where to audience cheers they executed a jailbreak on the control unit of a John Deere tractor. Then, they demonstrated their control of the system by playing a special farm-modded version of Doom on the hardware. The Doom flourish is lovely, and cam about thanks to help from Doom modder Skelegant Playing Doom on a John Deere tractor display (jailbroken/rooted) at @defcon pic.twitter.com/ih0QUTGNuSAugust 14, 2022 See more With epic just-in-time help by NZ based doom modder @Skelegant. She helped get this run using DeHacked Doom, since gzdoom was a mission. Together, we teamed up to make this happen. She is amazingly talented. pic.twitter.com/OfVDMvRhzRAugust 14, 2022 See more Blasting through fields aside, the implications of this hack could be seriously big within the agriculture industry. One attendee of the talk was prominent tech thinker Cory Doctorow, who subsequently wrote: "While it's true that the John Deere tractor monopoly means that defects in the company's products could affect farms all around the world, it's also true that John Deere is very, very bad at information security:" Essentially John Deere has the entire agricultural industry by the short-and-curlies, justifies this with dubious claims about why the status quo it has constructed is essential, and has power over farmers that it has no right to hold. As the Ukrainian incident showed, and as Doctorow pointed out at the time, "this meant that anyone who could hack John Deere's system could brick any tractor—including, say, the Russian military's hacking squads." Another attendee at the talk was right-to-repair advocate Kyle Wiens, who pointed out that John Deere's control unit is built on outdated and unpatched systems: Sick Codes has jailbroken a John Deere, and this is just the beginning. Turns out our entire food system is built on outdated, unpatched Linux and Windows CE hardware with LTE modems. pic.twitter.com/OLDBckluxrAugust 14, 2022 See more "John Deere has repeatedly told regulators that farmers can't be trusted to repair their own equipment," writes Wiens. "This foundational work will pave the path for farmers to retake control of the equipment that they own." The jailbreak developed by Sickcodes is not remote, but requires physical access to the equipment. Regardless of hacks, however, John Deere is also facing serious government and regulatory pressure. The European Union announced earlier this year it was establishing a right to repair principle, while some US states have already passed their own right-to-repair laws: the pressure resulted in the company announcing this March that it would widen access to repair tools. So: this hack runs Doom, and also has potentially enormous consequences for agribusiness: or, at the very least, for farmers who've had enough of John Deere's practices. Among Sickcodes' many findings were that the control system was sending huge amounts of data back to John Deeere (once he had admin access, the unit tried to send 1.5GB of data), various security backdoors including one enabled through placing an empty text file on the drive, and John Deere's apparent reliance on open source software that may not be being used appropriately under its licensing terms. Sickcodes says he's working on an easier method for executing the hack, as his demonstration was pretty involved, in order that more farmers can make practical use of this thing. I've dropped him a line with some follow-ups, and will update with any response. View the full article

OLED panels are becoming a common trait in TVs, but why aren't there many gaming monitors with the exciting panel technology? Don't fret, Asus may have two new products to try and push OLEDs onto our desktops: the ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ and ROG Swift OLED PG48UQ. These impressive new OLED gaming monitors are set for a release towards the end of the month, however, Asus has allowed us to take a look at them in-person ahead of time to see what all the fuss is about. And I have to say the panel is very impressive, made a little more so by its ultra-slim and nearly bezel-less frame. First off, the key specs. Of the two new OLEDs headed out from Asus this month, the only difference is their size: the PG42UQ is a 42-inch panel and the PG48UQ is a 48-inch panel. It's the 42-inch that I'm most interested in. That's already a seriously massive screen but does just about engage your complete vision from a normal seated position at a desk. The 48-inch, on the other hand, really is rather massive. That's much more of a living room-style gaming monitor than one intended for the desktop, though I'd behove you to try it nonetheless. Both screens share the same core functionality, at least. Each is built to offer up to 800 nits of brightness (which was originally touted as 900 nits but later revised down) with a contrast that you really can only expect out of an OLED. That means near-perfect blacks and a real depth to the image on display. Each OLED panel is rated to 0.1ms response time and 120Hz refresh rate, though you can push that up to 138Hz via overclocking and a DisplayPort connection. They're also noted as G-Sync compatible. Asus says long running times and continued use at these sorts of speeds is no issue for these monitors; while they're extremely thin around the edges, I'm told the chunky heatsink in the back actually keeps them running relatively cool. Each panel comes with a selection of HDMI 2.0 and HDMI 2.1 ports, which means you can hook up a modern-day console to this panel and get the most out of it. That's going to be particularly handy on the larger of the two screens, as this could be a realistic stand-in for a TV. I tried out a couple of laps in a sim rig with three of these screens loaded into it— a mighty experience that made me wish I had £30,000–£40,000 to take it home with me. In a more realistic gaming scenario, I blasted a fair few grunts in Halo on a single monitor gaming setup and the picture was thoroughly impressive. From the inky blacks to the swift response, it all gelled together very nicely indeed. I didn't notice a drop of haloing nor any backlight bleed during my hands-on time, though the room was relatively bright so I couldn't quite test it at the extremes. Similarly I never noticed much ghosting, but we'll have to take a closer look to properly verify. (Image credit: Future) Screen queens (Image credit: Future)Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gaming Yet these look to be two very impressive gaming monitors, and unsurprisingly they come at a premium price. The ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ will launch for around £1,400 and the larger ROG Swift OLED PG48UQ for £1,500 (US pricing not confirmed). Now that's not much of a price difference for another six inches of screen real estate, but again I do think the 42-inch option is the better buy for a desktop PC setup. Will these two monitors be able to make a bigger OLED-shaped dent in the PC gaming monitor market? Well, we hailed the Alienware 34 AW3423DW QD-OLED as the arrival of OLED on PC, and one of those will set you back £1,099, or $1,299 in the states. These two Asus models are asking more than that, so we'll have to see. At the very least the arrival of Alienware and Asus into the world of PC OLEDs is a sign of things to come—I have a feeling if these two are doing it then we'll see a whole lot more OLEDs designed for PC make it to market in the second half of 2022 and into 2023. Bring on CES, 2023; there's sure to be a heap of OLED gaming monitors at the Las Vegas tech show if these recent releases are any indication. View the full article

How much of your budget should the CPU use up for your next build? It's a question plenty of us will need to ask as we head into new CPU territory this autumn. AMD's Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 chips are expected to launch at the same time as Intel's Raptor Lake, and pricing rumours are already appearing. And depending on which rumour you look at, it could be bad news for your bank account. Serial leaker, momomo_us, has taken to Twitter, highlighting the pricing of four Ryzen 7000 chips that have turned up on the PC-Canada website (via Tom's Hardware.) pic.twitter.com/6OyYrKSuDzAugust 14, 2022 See more The most affordable chip is the Ryzen 5 7600X at CAD$435 which equates to $339 US. If that's right, then that represents a $40 premium compared to the launch price of Ryzen 5 5600X, which debuted at $299. The top of range Ryzen 7 7950X meanwhile, rolls in at CAD$1,158 which equates to $896 US, compared to the Ryzen 9 5950X launch price of $799. An argument could be made for such price increases—it is a new technology after all, and one would hope that there is a significant performance increase over the previous generation. In fact, the market is very different to when AMD released its Zen 3 chips almost two years ago when Intel was not as competitive as it is now. These days Alder Lake is a much more tempting option, and Intel has priced its chips very competitively, with the likes of the Core i5 12600K available for $280. The fact that the last full generation from AMD could command a premium was also down to the fact that they were potentially a drop-in replacement for existing systems. Zen 3 used the same AM4 platform as the previous generations, and a BIOS update was potentially all that was needed. That isn't the case with Zen 4 though, which entails moving to a whole new platform—you'll need a new motherboard and DDR5 memory too. You should be able to carry across your CPU cooler at least, although you're still looking at a costly upgrade. Your next upgrade (Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD Best gaming motherboard: The right boards Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest This isn't the only rumour doing the rounds though, and another has popped up on Wccftech that has the Ryzen 5 7600X starting at closer to the 5600X's current price of around $200 US. That's far more tempting a price point given the investment needed for the overall system upgrade. It isn't clear where this pricing information has come from though, and it could just be down to wishful thinking. There are often pricing leaks before a new family of chips is launched, and this generation is obviously no different. However, it's also worth pointing out that these are rarely accurate. In fact, I can't remember the last time any pre-release pricing held up, particularly this early on. And that's chiefly because of the nature of the beast—pricing is often one of the last things to be locked in with a new product launch. Given we don't have an exact date for Zen 4 yet, you should take all of this with a small pile of the finest sodium chloride. View the full article

The popularity of city builders with a survival bent has seen the genre become quite a bit more stressful in recent years, but while Airborne Kingdom occasionally throws you a curveball, like your floating city is tilting too much and everyone is rightly fleeing in case they plummet to the ground, it's more of a leisurely journey across the sky. And one that's about to take players to new places, as some DLC is on the way. Good news: it's free. While Airborne Kingdom has revelled in its reputation as a more relaxing city builder, The Lost Tundra is designed to be a bit more challenging than the rest of the game. If you want to push your city a bit more than usual, or you want to add an element of risk to your skyfaring holiday, this might be up your street. Food, water and coal can't be found in this chilly place, and the weather heightens the danger, freezing parts of your city and generally making it harder to maintain. There are new components you can add to mitigate this, but at the cost of resources and extra weight. For those who can survive in this inhospitable region, developer The Wandering Band promises "great rewards" and hidden locations where you can discover new cosmetics and customisation options. In my Airborne Kingdom review, I called it a "smart, hypnotic city builder that won't leave you tearing your hair out," and while that last part might no longer be true when the tricky DLC arrives, I'm still eager to return—if only to repaint my clockwork city and make it even more striking. The Lost Tundra is due out on September 19 via Steam and the Epic Games Store. View the full article

An announcement from Stability.ai comes with some great news for anyone on the AI image generation hype. Stable Diffusion, an image generation software that uses consumer level hardware, will soon be going public. As you can see from the header image the pictures being generated by the soon-to-be-released AI model are looking pretty incredible, especially considering how little GPU power it needs. The image generator has been led through development by Robin Rombach of LMU Munich's Machine Vision & Learning Research group, and Patrick Esser who helped develop video editing software, Runway. The announcement notes that the AI model runs on "under 10GB of VRAM on consumer GPUs." Essentially you can run it on a 10GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, an AMD Radeon RX 6700 or potentially something less powerful, though there's nothing here about the minimum graphics requirements. That's still contrary to a lot of AI generation models, which tend to be hosted by servers since they take several Nvidia A100 GPUs to run. Stable Diffusion is trained on Stability AI's 4,000 A100 Ezra-1 AI ultracluster, with more than 10,000 beta testers generating 1.7 million images per day in order to explore this approach. The core dataset for Stable Diffusion comes from the upcoming CLIP-based AI model LAION-Aesthetics, which filters the images based on how "beautiful" they are. I'm not exactly sure how beauty has been defined in this instance, however. LAION-Aesthetics selects and reworks images from LAION 5B's massive database, that was created in order address the issue that datasets—such as the billions of image and text pairs used by Dall-E and CLIP—have not been made openly available. (Image credit: Stability AI) Apparently the AI can generate images at 512x512 pixel resolution in just a few seconds, though I assume upscaling to larger images will take a little longer. There's still a long way to go, with the Stability AI team still researching the current method of image generation. 100% open. 100% free Christoph Schuhmann The great news is that "this will provide the template for the release of many open models we are currently training to unlock human potential." What a time to be alive, hey? "We look forward to the open ecosystem that will emerge around this and further models to truly explore the boundaries of latent space," the announcement says. Your next upgrade (Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD Best gaming motherboard: The right boards Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest There's also a note at the bottom from LAION's Organizational Lead & Researcher, Christoph Schuhmann, who says: "With this project we continue to pursue our mission to make state of the art machine learning accessible for people from all over the world. 100% open. 100% free." A noble sentiment. What that appears to say is that Stable Diffusion may well be coming to consumer PCs completely free. If you're looking to get involved sooner, you can sign up for a first stage of release of the Stable Diffusion AI image generator here—that's for research and academic purposes only, mind. View the full article

Intel has officially removed native DX9 support from its Arc and 12th Gen graphics hardware. You might now be wondering where that leaves older games in your library that still utilise the ageing API. There's nothing to fear, Intel isn't ending DX9 support completely, it's instead differing bug testing and support to Microsoft and its D3D9On12 emulation layer. Intel is ditching its native DX9 driver and will call on Microsoft's D3D9On12 mapping layer when required. This layer essentially takes DX9 commands and translates them to DX12 commands, thus cutting out a whole stack of driver optimisations that Intel would have otherwise needed to build for itself. Think of it in a similar vein to how Valve's Proton compatibility layer converts DirectX commands to Vulkan API commands, in order to make gaming on the Steam Deck a whole lot simpler. "12th generation Intel processor's integrated GPU and Arc discrete GPU no longer support D3D9 natively," a support page on the Intel website says (via Tom's Hardware). Applications and games based on DirectX 9 can still work through Microsoft* D3D9On12 interface." This should work in Intel's favour, as the company has admitted it is struggling with APIs that are older than the more recent DX12 and Vulkan APIs on its latest Arc GPUs. "It's just going to be a labor of love for forever making DX11 titles better and better and better. And DX9 as well," says Intel's Tom Peterson. "But then Vulkan and DX12 titles are just, in general, going to be more optimised for Intel GPUs as we start to have a larger footprint." Sitting comfortably? (Image credit: Secretlab)Best chair for gaming: the top gaming chairs around Best gaming desk: the ultimate PC podiums Best PC controller: sit back, relax, and get your game on With this compatibility layer from Microsoft, Intel can effectively set aside efforts on DX9 titles and instead refer to Microsoft's expertise with its own API to optimise these games instead. "Since DirectX is property of and is sustained by Microsoft, troubleshooting of DX9 apps and games issues require promoting any findings to Microsoft Support so they can include the proper fixes in their next update of the operating system and the DirectX APIs," Intel says. Though Intel does still need to figure out DX11 support, and that is by far the more important piece of the Arc driver puzzle that Intel needs to figure out. Many popular and modern games still rely on the DX11 API, so making that work with Arc will be one key to any success it hopes to achieve. View the full article

It is the year of our lord 2022, and Half-Life 1 just enjoyed its highest number of concurrent players on Steam since it hit the platform 19 years ago. WE DID IT! #RememberFreeman 12,280 Half-Life players!New all-time peak player record for Half-Life on Steam pic.twitter.com/Up1bxAruQRAugust 14, 2022 See more Depending on which Steam stats tracker you're looking at (the numbers are slightly different between SteamDB and the official Steam stats page), Half-Life 1 was being played by anywhere from 12,280 to 12,310 players across the world on the balmy afternoon of August 14. Its previous record was 6022, set during a week when the game was free-to-play in January 2020. The new record was set by players participating in the #RememberFreeman campaign, organised by the Half-Life community and popularised by Youtubers like Radiation Hazard and Noclick. The purpose of the campaign is honestly quite sweet: to show that Valve's 1998 classic still has a dedicated community of fans that love it. It's a marked contrast from the recent campaign by fans of Team Fortress 2, which was launched out of frustration in order to get Valve to pay attention to an infestation of bots that's plagued the game for years. The #RememberFreeman campaign is a sequel of sorts to last year's "Breaking the Bar" event, which smashed Half-Life 2's concurrent player record by getting 16,601 people to boot up that game and play for at least half an hour. Personally, I'm hoping that next year we get a quarter of a million people playing Ricochet. We can do it if we just believe. Of course, this is only the highest number of concurrent players since Steam began keeping these records. Half-Life 1 came out in 1998, imprinted onto unknowable alien relics called compact discs and was, you may recall, quite popular. It's very unlikely that this record is really the most people that have ever played Half-Life 1 at the same time, but it's a pretty impressive achievement for a 24 year-old game nonetheless. View the full article

The Fortnite x Dragon Ball crossover event is now live and will run until September 17. As well as new Dragon Ball-themed skins, emotes and other goodies in the item shop, you'll be able to visit a new point of interest where you can view Dragon Ball Super episodes, travel to new locations and complete time-limited quests. Son Goku, Vegeta, Bulma and Beerus are available in-game, and completing Dragon Ball quests will increase your power level, which in turn earns your Dragon Balls. Dragon Balls can then be used to unlock in-game rewards, like emotes and back blings. You can view your progress in the Power Unleashed tab, as well as all the rewards and quests. The quests focus on skills like strength, agility and focus, so as you complete each set you'll earn more Dragon Balls. If you manage to complete all your training, you'll get the super rad Shenron Glider. You'll have until August 30 to complete all the quests and collect your rewards. (Image credit: Epic Games) It gets even more exciting—from August 19 you'll be able to travel to Dragon Ball Adventure Island, where you can complete even more new challenges and will be able to battle it out against other players in the Tenkaichi Budokai battle arena. You can also soar through a ring course on a Nimbus Cloud at Kami's Palace, prepare food at Goku's House and run an obstacle course at the Room of Spirit & Time. Versus boards will replace bounty boards during the event, and you can battle it out in a 1v1 match. You'll then have five minutes to seek out your enemy and defeat them. In all modes except Competitive matches—except the time-limited Tournament of Power—you can pick up the Kamehameha from Capsule Corp deliveries and unleash a devastating beam of energy toward an opponent. You can also travel to Kame House where you can find Bulma, who has some powerful new items on offer. View the full article

Rollerdrome is a game about performance. There is combat, but it's not about winning, as such. It's about style. The attitude you bring to it. Putting on a show. Efficiency is a by-product of mastering its violent dance—really, you're here to look good. It might be my favourite action game since Devil Daggers. A single minded, stylish and evocative beast that pulls you along for a ride it's hard to let go of. Let's just say I've had more than one after-midnight session of Rollerdrome, chasing those high scores. The main character, Kara Hassan, finds herself thrown into a gladiatorial contest on roller skates. Think Running Man on wheels and you're basically there. In essence the game is pretty simple: you skate and shoot. The joy of it is that while it builds so much upon that foundation, it's still great fun even if you only ever learn the basics. Coming from Roll7, the folks behind the joyous skateboarding series OlliOlli, that's no surprise. Skating is simple—you simply steer and build momentum—but it feels great. There's a real sense of speed that adds to all your actions, however many you master. With Max Payne-esque bullet time, landing shots is a matter of timing more than aim, which makes combat feel part of the game's overall rhythm instead of an interruption to your flips and tricks. You can get health by killing enemies, but only get ammo back from doing tricks like grinds or perfect dodges. There always has to be a balance between movement and attack. Nailing that combo is the sweet spot where Rollerdrome becomes electrifying, pushing you to go faster and faster. What weapon combinations let you take down a shielded foe in seconds? Can you trick that enemy into launching mines at their allies? I expect to see social media flooded with clips of people's best runs. It's a game that's almost as fun to watch as it is to play. The visuals certainly don't hurt on that front. It has a sketchy, vibrant look reminiscent of last year's Sable with retro future, 70s-inspired design. All of it clearly owing influence to the work of artist Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius. (No, not the double box office bomb vampire.) It's striking in screenshots or in motion, but moreover, highly readable. Strong colours, high contrasts. Even the big bold text that introduces new levels speaks to the clarity they're aiming for. (Image credit: Roll7) The game can afford to get incredibly chaotic and explosive (especially in its later stages) because it so clearly communicates information to the player. Sniper beams or charging lasers turn white to indicate the perfect dodge, for instance. Even the sounds are great, that harsh roll of wheels on concrete pulling you in before the symphony of explosions, rockets and shotgun blasts is unleashed. The soundtrack itself seems to mimic the increasing tempo of each level, letting you know when the timer has kicked in. All this combines to ensure you know what's going on in any given moment without ever really having to think about it. It just happens to look and sound damn good doing it. Rise and grind It might be my favourite action game since Devil Daggers. As you progress, complexity increases rapidly. Enemy types pile up, each asking for new tactics from the player (check out challenges for hints) as do player abilities. Skating gets complemented by wall running, and your starting pistols are soon kept company by a shotgun, grenade launcher, and rail gun. Each of these offers a new dimension or play style, letting you tackle enemies with specific combinations until you have a routine that will make even your first runs pretty successful. I loved coming into crazy new spaces with heaps of confidence. In fact, the difficulty curve of the game feels perfectly pitched all the way through. Things definitely get tougher towards the end but I never felt out of my depth. New enemies never felt like setbacks, just exciting new puzzles to solve. No matter how much it stacks on top, the core of the game is always on performance. It's not about taking out your enemies, it's about doing it with style. Rushing past an enemy so you can spin and shoot him the back looks cool—and the game is quick to acknowledge that. Doing a flip right before launching a grenade down on a walking mech is what gets the audience excited at this ludicrous death-sport. There's a heap of tricks to master too (with a handy "tricktionary" listing them all) and fitting them into your runs is essential if you want those high scores, or to complete the game's challenges. (Image credit: Roll7) Progress through the game's campaign (about a dozen levels, plus an unlockable mode after completion) is tied to those challenges, which encourage players to try out daring moves or chase impossible score multipliers. You don't have to work those into a serious run—even if you hit a challenge before defeat it still counts, so you can just tackle each challenge on its own if you want. Again, if you wanna just take it easy, the game allows that. In fact, there are a host of modifiers to make the game easier, including invincibility, ensuring the experience is as accessible as possible. Using them takes you off the leaderboards, but you get to enjoy the game on your terms. Bloodlust If you're anything like me though, you'll want those high scores. Chaining some challenges and a high multiplier together? Let's get to work. Having a few practice runs before pulling off some wild feat is a thrill only the best of action games can offer, but I don't know that I've played any such score focused games that left me feeling so… relaxed. I seldom got frustrated over a failure or a messed up stunt. There's a sense that it's all just practice, putting in the work to get it right next time rather than a loss. Which only adds to the joy as you start not only doing well but throwing in little flourishes. A spin before a shotgun blast here, a somersault before taking out a sniper from above. This bravado forms part of Kara Hassan's identity too. She's practically a silent protagonist, but there's a sense of who she is through the game's encouragement of stunts, and in its small sprinkling of narrative sections. At the outset of each new tier of the championship, you get a little breather, a small slice of life in the shoes of the champ as she explores behind the scenes spaces to flesh out the world. The way she'll comment on some of her aloof rivals, or play with an action figure, sketches out someone competitive but just humble enough to understand stakes beyond this sport she's in. (Image credit: Roll7) I don't know that I've played any such score focused games that left me feeling so… relaxed. You will too as you play, finding hints of protests and revolution outside the arena but on some level knowing that… you like this terrible thing. You're good at it. At what point do you go from reluctant combatant to complicit champion in this world? It's a slippery slope, especially when you've got skates on. All that's a complementary story, applied with a light touch. Just enough to get you to take a breath and wonder about where this is all going. As badly as Kara, I wanted to see the end. Partly because of the sights, with each new level raising the spectacle from stadium battles to all out battlefields. There's a truly spectacular spider tank fight later that slots into the game's over the top sensibilities effortlessly. If you could see what you're up against at the game's end from the beginning, you'd think it impossible, but by the time you get there, the overwhelming odds will just put a smile on your face. Bring it on. Skate outta ten Keeping on top of the rising chaos is a key survival skill, but you can't keep things too calm or it'll become impossible to chain together those score multipliers. Enemies almost become dance partners, and you have to plan out some careful choreography to reach those high scores rather than just killing everything in sight. You might hit an enemy once to keep a multiplier going and leave them for the next go around the map instead of killing them. Once you start to think about Rollerdrome in those terms, you'll be amazed at the ludicrous heights you can reach. (Image credit: Roll7) Not that speed isn't important. You get a bonus to your score for how much you beat it under the time limit, and a penalty for any time over. Just don't lose sight of what's important. The game certainly doesn't. Because Rollerdome is a game that squints its eyes, takes aim, and lasers in on the bullseye. Its focus is squarely on delivering that loop of blisteringly paced action, the kind of thing you can play again and again because each individual beat hits so hard and flows into the next effortlessly. No skill trees, no unlockable abilities or experience points to grind. No obstacles between you and the exhilaration on offer. It's a game that knows exactly what it wants to be and lets nothing get in its way. Kara Hassan certainly isn't gonna stop until she's conquered this sport. After over dozens of hours in the Rollerdome, I'm starting to think I won't either. View the full article

Way back in the '90s there was a pretty decent football game called Fever Pitch (renamed Head-On Soccer in America) where the idea was essentially footie with special moves. So, all the players could play normally but Peter 'Cheesy Keeps' Stilton was a goalkeeper who'd keep out anything barring a comet, while there was a striker whose special move was to dive and win cheap free kicks. Sport with superpowers is an interesting concept and when games pull it off, like NBA Jam, it can result in greatness. Fever Pitch sprang to mind this morning as I tried to puzzle out a somewhat confusing announcement from EA about the upcoming FIFA 23, the last game under the current license before the series relaunches as EA Sports FC. EA has collaborated with Marvel in order to bring some superhero flavour into the game's enormously popular FIFA Ultimate Team mode, which already includes footballing 'heroes', though the actual implementation remains a little fuzzy. What it seems to boil down to is that there is going to be a lot of slightly odd art featuring great footballers reimagined as superheroes in the Marvel style, such as America's own Landon Donovan. (Image credit: EA Sports) If The Brave just makes you think of The Deep, you're not alone (and if it doesn't then watch The Boys, it's great). The publisher's announcement says the intention is to "celebrate [the players'] larger-than-life cult hero status alongside the amazing artists at Marvel. Recognising their memorable careers for club and country, each FIFA World Cup FUT Hero will receive a special illustrated FUT item at the launch of the World Cup game mode, with base versions of FUT Heroes being available at launch of FIFA 23." Other footballers receiving the treatment include Claudio Marchisio, Yaya Toure, Park Ji-Sung, and Ricardo Carvalho, whose reincarnation as The Anticipator has to be one of the funniest of the lot. Image 1 of 4 (Image credit: EA Sports)Image 2 of 4 (Image credit: EA Sports)Image 3 of 4 (Image credit: EA Sports)Image 4 of 4 (Image credit: EA Sports) As well as the mock-ups, the collaboration will include other items Marvelled-up including tifos, kits, balls, and other cosmetics. The collab naturally comes with a Marvel Heroes comic book featuring Marvel-written bios for each player, which will have a limited physical run. The Marvel crossover will be in FIFA 23 at launch, with certain elements rolling out over time. It doesn't seem like the most obvious crossover but I suppose the mythologising of football greats has always been a part of the game, and it's a short step from that to hero status and statues outside grounds. Now, if they put them in the main game and added some special moves, I might be a little more interested… View the full article

Guild Wars 2 is coming to Steam. We've known this for a while—originally ArenaNet had planned to launch on Steam back in late-2020, before putting the release on hold. Now, though, the Steam release date has been revealed. It's out next week on August 23, meaning it coincides with the MMO's tenth anniversary celebrations. In addition to the base game, which is free and has no subscription cost, ArenaNet is also introducing a Complete Collection bundle through Steam for $100/£87. Unlike previous Guild Wars 2 bundles—such as the expansion collection available on the game's website right now—this actually unlocks everything, including the five Living World seasons that bridge each expansion story with new maps and features. I've seen plenty of players complaining on the subreddit and forums about the additional, hidden cost of the Living World story episodes—currently only available through in-game microtransactions. Frequently the maps they add are some of the most replayable, with Season 4's Dragonfall and Icebrood Saga's Drizzlewood Coast being two of the best farming spots in the game thanks to their lengthy meta event chains. They're also required for two of the best mounts—the roller beetle and Skyscale—and offer the easiest access to ascended trinkets, which offer the best stats. For regular players, they're basically essential purchases, so it's good to see an easier, more upfront method of purchase. Sure, it's $100, but that's 10 years of stuff—all of it still relevant thanks to the game's horizontal progression system. ArenaNet has clearly spent the last few months making preparations for the Steam release, through a bunch of tests and changes that improve the new player experience. The biggest of these is a tweak to the mount system. Where previously players could only unlock their first mount when they started the Path of Fire or End of Dragons expansion stories, now you'll be handed one while levelling. Any player who owns one of the expansions will be given a raptor for their account at level 10. And players who don't own the expansions will still get a raptor—but only for a 10-hour trial. This is a pretty good change. While the core maps were designed before mounts were introduced, they're still regularly visited by veteran players looking to kill world bosses or get their daily mystic coin from the ley-line event. And so while you don't need a raptor to traverse the game's original zones, it sure is good to have one to keep up with other players. (Image credit: ArenaNet) Also on August 23, a new balance patch is due that aims to improve damage for core class weapons. While this is part of a larger series of balance changes, many designed to restore viability for power builds (as opposed to condition builds, which apply damage over time and are the current meta for most instanced PvE bosses), it should have the added effect of making the levelling process smoother for newer players who haven't yet unlocked elite specialisations of their classes. This Steam launch comes at a pretty good time for the game at large. While there is some griping about balance among the community right now—specifically around just how dominant the engineer's Mechanist specialisation is—the game at large is still coming down from the highs of this year's End of Dragons expansion. Recently ArenaNet has also been reintroducing Season 1 of the Living World story, reformatting it into the more instanced, mission-based approach of later seasons. After that, we're expecting new Living World updates—with a new map set in End of Dragons' Canthan region. It's a good time to jump in, basically, not least because a fourth expansion has already been confirmed—ensuring there's plenty of life in the old MMO yet. View the full article

After a brief delay, MultiVersus season one has arrived. It's been a rocky launch for the patch with plenty of frustrating bugs to contend with, like Wonder Woman hurting herself and Arya's up special not connecting. There's also the game's first 50-tier battle pass, which is going down like a lead balloon with players for one reason: there isn't a single bit of gleamium, MultiVersus' premium currency, to be seen on either the free or paid track. It's an interesting choice, especially in the face of other games like Fortnite and Apex which incentivise players to plough through the battle pass in order to have enough premium currency to buy the next one. Not only is MultiVersus completely lacking in a gleamium reward, there are also rather a few empty tiers in the former. Coupled with its $10 price tag, the pass is proving unpopular among many players. A ton of Reddit posts have cropped up in the last few hours with fans lamenting the rewards and the battle pass's overall worth. One poster said the battle pass "sucks," adding they were "so disappointed right now." Many comments agreed, with one saying how "missing tiers is a real killer." Another comment reads: "The pricing on this game is outrageous. It's right on par, maybe even a little worst than Fortnite, which is pretty pricey." does_the_multiversus_season_1_battlepass_pass_the from r/MultiVersus Some players didn't seem to mind however, with one saying "I might be ignorant but I've played many F2P games where the battle pass doesn't include the paid currency. It's not required by any means, especially if the other content included gives more than gleamium is worth." If words and debates aren't your cup of tea for decision-making, there's also a post that compares the battle pass to a Chick-fil-A spicy chicken deluxe meal (also $10). Spoiler: the Chick-fil-A wins. It's true that MultiVersus isn't the only game with a battle pass to forgo premium currency rewards, but it's a disappointment regardless. Earning a small portion of gleamium towards the next battle pass would have been lovely, but at the very least filling up those empty free tiers feels like a major priority right now. Surely the whole point is that each tier of progression should mean something, no matter how small: a little bit of gold or even a couple of extra toasts would go a long way to keeping the battle pass feeling satisfying. MultiVersus is a game still finding its feet, and things could end up looking a lot different in season two. I'll personally be giving this one a miss, but if you're a Harley Quinn or Tom & Jerry main then the battle pass may be one worth scoping out for their respective skins. View the full article

World of Warcraft's 9.2.7 patch is due to land with the weekly reset later today—or tomorrow for EU servers—and Blizzard has posted a warning to boosters to keep to their own (new) chat channel or "proper actions will be taken". "With the separation of trade services into its own chat channel, a new policy will take place," states Blizzard's blue post. "Any boosting, carrying, or other similar services offered for gold that’s advertised outside of the Trade (Services) chat channel will be considered spam and the proper actions will be taken, so be sure to switch your service advertisements to the new chat channel when it becomes available after this week’s regional maintenance." Boosts (or carries) are services offered by groups of players to help you get through a dungeon or raid in return for gold. You might opt for something like this if you're after a specific achievement or if you don't have the time—or skill—to get it the usual way. The new Trade (Services) channel was announced back in July. The original trade chat has traditionally been a place for random chatter and guild recruitment, rather than its intended purpose of buying and selling items and profession services. But in recent years it's become clogged with groups selling boosts for dungeons or raids for in-game gold, to the point where it's almost impossible to see anything else that might be posted, especially if you're on a busy server. Trade chat isn't for everyone, but at the very least it's a reminder that you're in Azeroth with other people. So here's hoping this will put an end to the non-stop macros for boosts. Along with the new chat channel, changes are heading to the auction house in the 9.2.7 update. After this weekly reset, commodity listings on the auction house will become region-wide, rather than server-specific, so you should expect the cost of items like flasks and potions to fluctuate over the next few weeks. In the long run, though, this should mean low-population servers shouldn't suffer so much with inflated prices. So once prices settle down, maybe you'll get the chance to save some gold ready for Dragonflight, later this year. View the full article

Paradox has sent the Crusader Kings 3 community into a tumult after announcing a retroactive price change for CK3 flavour packs that almost doubles their cost. The change, which is due to take effect on September 13, will ratchet up the price of CK3's smaller DLCs from $6.99 to $12.99 (though regional pricing means the scale of the increase might change a bit depending on where you are). It affects the two previously released flavour packs—Northern Lords and Fate of Iberia—plus any flavour packs that are yet to come, whose cost will "be more in line with this price point" when they come out. Neither the base game nor the game's bigger expansion DLCs will be changing in price. Inflation seems like the most obvious explanation. With everything else in the world getting precipitously dearer, why not CK3 DLC? But Paradox's announcement doesn't mention the global economic situation at all. Instead, a Paradox community manager says only that, "These changes are being made to keep up our quality level with the increase on all Flavor Packs and related content". Paradox has been through a lot of turmoil recently. After a much-feted announcement, work on Bloodlines 2 ground to a halt before Paradox took the project off Hardsuit Labs and gave it to a new, still unknown developer. During that time, Paradox lost CEO Ebba Ljungerud after her resignation in 2018. Her replacement, returning CEO Fredrik Wester, almost immediately had to issue an apology over his "inappropriate behaviour" toward a colleague at a company conference held that same year. These crises have all carried a price in terms of time, morale, and money, and it may be the case that price hikes like these are part of an attempt to make up for that. Players haven't taken the news well. The Paradox forum post announcing the price hike is flooded with comments from fans upset by the unexpected and—to be fair—pretty significant leap in price. Paradox has recommended that players pick up the currently available packs before the price change kicks in, and suggested that players could avoid the pinch on future packs by buying future expansion passes. If anything, those suggestions only seem to have fueled the community's belief that these changes are motivated by greed rather than necessity. CK3's flavour packs are the bitesize cousins of its bigger, full-blown expansions. Where expansions bolt on entire new layers to the game as a whole, flavour packs focus on adding more specific cosmetic and mechanical differentiators to the game's myriad cultures and religions. The two that have been released thus far have focused on adding new customisation options and mechanical intricacies to the game's Iberian and Norse cultures, but there's almost certainly a lot more to come if CK2's gargantuan library of DLC is anything to go by. If, like me, you have a crippling and self-destructive addiction to buying Paradox DLC and then not playing it, that habit is now going to cost us around twice as much from September on. Maybe I can get a loan from the Pope. View the full article