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Tokyo Game Show is two weeks away, and it may be Konami's most exciting showing at a big gaming event in years. According to Konami's TGS schedule, it has a reveal of a new game planned for September 16. There's a long list of Konami series that deserve a comeback—Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Castlevania, Contra, Suikoden—and according to a report by VGC, we might see one of them on stage at the event. "One publishing source told VGC that the reveal is likely to be related to a smaller project, rather than Konami’s larger planned revivals for Castlevania, Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid (the first of which is understood to be furthest along in development)," wrote VGC. Maybe Metal Gear won't be at this show—but accumulating evidence points to Metal Gear's return being a matter of when, not if. The first three Metal Gear Solid games are almost certainly getting remasters for PC and current consoles. VGC's Andy Robinson first reported in October 2021 that MGS 1-3 are being remastered for release ahead of a full-on remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The remasters have been corroborated by Silent Hill leaker Dusk Golem, who wrote on ResetEra this Wednesday: "The thing I've been a bit teasing of, and I know is 100% true, is Metal Gear Solid 1-3 are getting new Remasters, planned to come to everything, including Steam and consoles. The plan is new remastered versions of Metal Gear Solid 1-3, can buy them separately, but if [you] buy them together as a collection also get Metal Gear 1+2's MSX versions. I've had this confirmed to me more than once from more than one reliable source." Even if these remasters don't appear at Tokyo Game Show, an announcement seems likely before the end of the year because Konami has essentially teased them already. Last November Konami had to remove Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 from digital storefronts due to licensing issues with historical archival footage they included. They're still gone, but on July 13 of this year, Konami tweeted "Today marks the 35th anniversary of the #METALGEAR series! Thank you to everyone that enjoyed and celebrated the series so far. We ask for your patience as preparations are underway to make the temporarily removed titles available again." (Image credit: Konami) Given how long it's taken for Konami to bring back MGS2 and 3, it would make sense to hold off on selling them again until the remastered versions are complete. Both games were originally released for the PlayStation 2 and remastered for consoles in the 2011 HD Collection. A remaster would mark the first time MGS3 has been released on PC. According to VGC Metal Gear Solid 3 will also be getting a ground-up remake from Virtuos, a Singaporean game company with 15 offices and 3000+ employees across the world. Virtuos has an extensive list of credits for contributions to triple-A games and has contributed to Switch ports for Dark Souls Remastered, Dying Light, and The Outer Worlds, among others. "Konami’s Japanese bosses are understood to have historically pushed back against most pitches to outsource its key games brands," VGC wrote in 2021. "However, following the disappointing performance of recent in-house titles Metal Gear Survive and Contra: Rogue Corps, VGC’s sources said the company has become more willing to contract outside studios for its major franchises." Even if you love MGS1's PS1 aesthetic, its PC port could use some modern niceties. (Image credit: Konami) Supposedly a new Castlevania, as well as Bloober Team's Silent Hill, are both in development thanks to Konami's increased willingness to work with more external studios. Given the smoke around Silent Hill earlier this year, it may be the one destined for the TGS stage this month. But in Konami's own words, Metal Gear Solid's coming back. We don't know exactly when or exactly how, but after more than a decade since the (ironically 720p) HD Collection, a new round of remasters feels like as safe a bet as bets come. Once the first three games are all properly playable on PC, I hope Konami tackles a trickier challenge: figuring out how to extricate Metal Gear Solid 4 from the PlayStation 3's Cell processor and making it playable on hardware from this decade. View the full article

The good news: We've got a new trailer for Men of War 2, the upcoming sequel to the 2009 WW2 RTS Men of War, and it looks pretty good. The bad news: The trailer is here to let us know that the release has been delayed until 2023. Ironically, given the trailer's focus on the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, developer Best Way said the delay was caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "The Ukrainian studio Best Way was based in Severodonetsk and had to help its staff and their families relocate after the events of February 24th, 2022, during which period the development was put on hold," the studio said. "Despite this, the Best Way team has eagerly returned to development in the last several months, and with the help of the supportive community of fans surrounding the franchise, already ran several rounds of closed playtests and the participants were satisfied with the combination of classic Men of War gameplay and new features like the Frontline, Direct Control, and much more." Severodonetsk is located in the Luhansk Oblast, the easternmost region of Ukraine, and was captured by Russian forces in June after being heavily damaged during the battle for control of the Donbas. Best Way said that player feedback during the tests gave the team ideas to make Men of War 2 "bigger and better than anyone originally imagined," including a standalone campaign for Germany, new missions for the other factions, and an upgraded interface. But it won't be possible to get it done within the original time frame. "We believe that meeting a deadline should never compromise quality and we are happy that Fulqrum Publishing agreed to give us the time we need to produce a truly great game," Men of War 2 producer Maxim Kamensky said. "Also, this delay provides us with enough time for all the polishing and balancing phases, much needed for a game the scope of Men of War 2. Thanks to our great community for their positive feedback during closed tests—this is very valuable. This extra time will give us a chance to deliver an exceptional experience to the players." Unfortunately, there's currently not a more specific new launch target than 2023, so we could end up waiting more or less than a year before Men of War 2 arrives—we'll just have to wait and see how it works out. For now, you can follow along with what's happening on the Men of War 2 Discord. View the full article

One of the most successful Twitch streamers has decided that she's not that into it anymore. In her first video after a month-long break, Imane "Pokimane" Anys said that she will stream less often on Twitch than she has in the past and will focus on posting non-gaming content on other social media platforms like Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. "I feel like other platforms fit into my lifestyle nowadays a little bit better," she said. The 26-year-old streamer, who started streaming League of Legends in 2013 and is now one of the biggest creators on Twitch, said she's lost her passion for the platform. "I hope it doesn't sound big-headed of me to say, but nowadays when I see things on Twitch, it kinda feels like 'been there, done that,'" she said. "There's such a pressure on streamers to follow every trend, to capitalize on viewership, to stream longer than the guy next to them…" Pokimane explained. "It's just a hyper-competitive industry. But ultimately, the reason I say this is because I'm just at a point in my life that it doesn't feel creatively fulfilling to feed into that anymore." It's unclear how the 9.2-million-follower streamer's recently renewed exclusivity contract with Twitch will be affected by her new schedule, but it's probably not a massive hit to her bottom line: In addition to streamer, Pokimane is also the co-founder of successful creator collective OfflineTV, the chief creative officer of the company that co-owns fighting game tournament EVO, and was financially comfortable enough to turn down a $3 million sponsorship deal in 2020. Pokimane still wants Twitch "to be a part of my arsenal" but wants to avoid the "pressures" of being a full-time streamer. "When I wake up nowadays, I don't want to run to my PC and game for eight hours straight," she said, a sentiment that resembles comments from other career Twitch streamers who cited the struggles of the daily grind when they moved to other platforms. Twitch recently lifted the ban on streaming to YouTube and TikTok for partnered Twitch streamers, possibly an acknowledgement that creators have to stretch themselves across the multiple platforms to increase their odds of success. According to data leaked from Twitch's internal records last year, only the top 0.015% of its streamers make a livable wage on the platform. Burnout and waning passion are common reasons for Twitch's most popular streamers taking breaks. Pokimane is fortunate to be able to step back from full-time streaming without fear of losing her audience, but for the millions of people who yearn to reach even a fraction of her success and turn Twitch into a meaningful job, the grind continues. View the full article

Paradox has announced a new species DLC coming to Stellaris on September 20: the Toxoids. The teaser trailer for the new add-on ends with the tagline "The End Justifies the Ruins," and playing as them looks to give bonuses for high-risk, aggressive play that destroys planetary environments for the sake of industry. Basically, you're playing as the bad guys from every sci-fi story. Environmentalist parables? Who needs 'em, we have heavy industry and Toxic Baths. "Empires featuring the Toxoids species can grow and adapt faster than most creatures," Paradox's announcement reads, "but tend to make life unpleasant for their neighbors⁠—and often for themselves." I can't help but think of the smog-choked Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime from Dune. The species' full mechanical offerings are as follows: New Origins Knights of the Toxic God: In the depths of your homeworld, rumors rumble of a true power buried under the toxic sludge. Do you dare to dredge up the secrets of your past and potentially unleash them upon the galaxy?Overtuned: The candle that burns the brightest, burns itself into the galaxy’s memory! Play as a species that can gain more and more traits at the cost of its own lifespan, and live for today without worrying about sticking around for tomorrow! New Civics Toxic Baths: Grow your population fast with a fresh infusion of mutagenic sludge so long as you’re willing to tolerate the costs to your planet and your people!Scavengers: One empire’s trash is your empire’s treasure! Don’t be too proud to harvest debris and destruction for quick construction projects of your own.Relentless Industrialists: If you’re going to keep up with demand, you’re going to have to learn to ignore all of those petty regulations and negative opinions. The surviving population will thank you for all of the resources you gain! New Traits Incubator: Repopulate quickly when your planet is empty, but those growth facilities can fill up fast!Inorganic Breath: Your own people are a source of valuable exotic gasses! It’s a shame the respirators are so expensive.Noxious: Other species can’t stand being around you, and it seems like your mere existence is making your planets awful places to live. On the other hand, other empires have a very difficult time wanting to fight or subjugate you, and it’s hilarious to see the look on their faces when you’re in the room!Exotic Metabolism: You’ve adapted to ask “are you going to eat that?” where other species would be calling the hazmat team. Eat faster, live longer, and enjoy a terrifying rainbow of flavors!New Cosmetics: Species portraits, ship models, and cityscapes that only a mother could love.New Advisor: Grow your empire alongside a relentless source of noxious sarcasm! I'm a sucker for that first origin, Knights of the Toxic God. It sounds like it should be an album by British extreme metal band Slugdge. I also like the sound of "Species portraits, ship models, and cityscapes that only a mother could love." We are leaning fully into the Stinky Empire fantasy. Sometimes you just look at the endless expanse of the cosmos and the goody two shoes Federation types exploring it and want to cover it all in industrial runoff. The Toxoids species pack is available for pre-order now on Steam, GOG, and the Microsoft Store for $10, and you will be able to destroy all that is beautiful and good in the universe come September 20. View the full article

Ukrainian development studio Frogwares is wrapping up its Kickstarter for Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened with an unusual and controversial promotion: A raffle to have a personalized message written on an artillery shell that will be fired at invading Russian forces in Ukraine. The Kickstarter campaign, which ends on September 3, is already a runaway success, having raised nearly €230,000 on a €70,000 goal. To help give it a final push, fans of the studio currently serving with the 24th Separate Assault Battalion of the Ukrainian Ground Forces reached out with the idea of giving three fans a shot at having a message of their choice written on a 152mm howitzer shell, just for liking and sharing a link to the campaign on Twitter. Message can be anything you want, but subject to our team's approval.Winners will each get a photo of their message on a shell, proudly presented by our troops. pic.twitter.com/b7vAYEui4NSeptember 1, 2022 See more The tradition of putting messages on munitions goes way back. Task and Purpose notes that it's been common practice in the US military since the WWII, but you can go even farther back than that, all the way to the days of ancient Greeks and Romans. Despite that, several responses on Twitter to Frogwares' message are critical of the offering, accusing the studio of glorifying violence and gamifying real war. "Talk about being tone deaf," Twitter user MrInspirer wrote. "That shell has a non zero chance to land next to a civilian, that's an unfortunate nature of artillery. So go a head folks, donate your money to write some cringe text on something that will kill some kid." Another Twitter user, Brutal1ty512, replied, "You are animals and all your games should be pulled of the shelves worldwide if this is your idea of PR. Worst of luck to you and your joke of a country." tell me this is a joke? This isn't to be used to potentially KILL and MAIM people?September 1, 2022 See more This is a terrible idea. No matter who's right or wrong in this conflict, you are incentivizing gamers to be a part of the violence.September 1, 2022 See more In a message sent to PC Gamer responding to those accusations, Frogwares was unapologetic. "Please understand we as a team are literally in the centre of this war," the studio said. "We have people on our team who have had their homes bombed into rubble. Some of us have lost relatives. Some of us are in occupied areas like Kherson where they are trying to annex the city [to] say it is now a Russian city. We have team members who lived near Bucha. We have team members who fled their homes in Donbas in 2014 and then had to flee again in 2022. Others are actively fighting. Others have been forced to flee to countries around the EU and leave behind their families who couldn’t come with them. "We are angry. We are hurt. Our entire lives were thrown into hell because of Putin who used the term 'Nazi' as a dog whistle against our entire population and sent his troops in." The soldiers in the video who suggested the promotion "are actual friends of ours," Frogwares added. "Six months ago they were normal people living in Kyiv having normal day jobs, homes and families. After February 24th they decided they had to leave all that behind and signed up to defend their homes and families." We are angry. We are hurt. Our entire lives were thrown into hell because of Putin who used the term 'Nazi' as a dog whistle against our entire population and sent his troops in." Frogwares also addressed questions about the 24 Separate Assault Battalion itself. Also known as the Aidar Battalion, the unit was originally formed as a volunteer unit following the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in March 2014. Within months, the unit faced accusations of war crimes leveled by both Amnesty International and the OCSE; multiple members of the battalion were also charged with criminal offenses by the Ukrainian military. Aidar was disbanded in 2015 and then reconstituted around a selection of former members as the 24th Separate Assault Battalion, under the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade—part of the regular (and, presumably, more disciplined) Ukrainian military. "Where they got assigned is where they were told to go," Frogwares said of the soldiers in the video. "They didn’t get a list of units they could pick from. But more important, whatever history and command structure the unit has from when it was formed by volunteers back in 2014 is gone. That unit was disbanded in 2015 and under the watch of the armed forces was rebuilt and integrated into the actual armed forces." Kickstarter prohibits projects from raising funds toward a charity or "cause," and it also prohibits projects under the subject matter of "Weapons, replicas of weapons, and weapon accessories." The Sherlock Holmes game is neither a weapon nor a cause, so running a promotion adjacent to its Kickstarter campaign skirts these rules. Kickstarter confirmed to me via email that the promotion does not violate its rules. (Image credit: Frogwares) From Frogwares' perspective, the company is using a videogame to remind the world that Ukraine—its home country—is still waging full-scale war for its very existence. And the Ukrainian military has leaned heavily into crowdfunding since the beginning of the second invasion earlier this year—in fact, it's been possible to pay to have messages written on Ukrainian munitions and military hardware for some time now. As for Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, the Kickstarter campaign will end on September 3, and Frogwares said that it hopes to have the game ready for launch in February 2023. "But we want people to understand that anything could change, be it in the country as a whole or just internally with our own team to force us to release later," producer Denys Chebotarov said. "The priority will always need to be the safety and ability of our team to work above all other choices on when to release." View the full article

When you've been playing for a decade, Minecraft shaders are probably the second quickest way to fall back in love with its voxel worlds—right behind picking a new Minecraft texture pack. Whenever my latest build is starting to feel a little dull, or I'm plagued by a lack of inspiration, turning on a great set of shaders and staring directly into the god rays is a surefire cure. With that in mind, I'm going to help you get set up with some of the best Minecraft shaders out there. As with everything else in Minecraft modding, installing them is easier than ever. Best of Minecraft (Image credit: Mojang)Minecraft update: What's new? Minecraft skins: New looks Minecraft mods: Beyond vanilla Minecraft shaders: Spotlight Minecraft seeds: Fresh new worlds Minecraft texture packs: Pixelated Minecraft servers: Online worlds Minecraft commands: All cheats Before you keep scrolling though, here are the general prerequisites for installing Minecraft shaders that you'll need to know: First off, these currently only work with the Java Edition of Minecraft. Now that all players own both versions of the game through the launcher, that shouldn't be an issue though. If you're attached to Bedrock Edition, you'll want to look into Minecraft RTX to get similar lovely lighting effects. All of these shader packs also require that you first install a graphics mod called Optifine (or, in a couple cases, one called Iris). If this is all old news to you, carry on. If you need a quick explainer on installing Optifine and individual shader packs, head down to the bottom of the page. As another quick aside, most of these shader packs offer tons of customization options (the speed that water animates, the amount of ambient fog, or the exact RGB values of lighting for each time of day). If you know what you're about, you can do a lot with any of these shaders, so I'll be focusing on how they look and feel to those who just want to install and play right away. The best Minecraft Shaders What are the best Minecraft shaders in 2022?Sildur's Vibrant Shaders, SEUS Renewed, and BSL Shaders are the best Minecraft shaders right now. You can read more about our top Minecraft shader picks down below along with several other really great options. Sildur's Shaders (Image credit: Mojang, modded by SildurFX) (Image credit: Mojang) Download from: Curseforge If you want your Minecraft world to look gorgeous right this second, don't even keep scrolling. Sildur's shaders look amazing right out of the box with bright colors, soft shadows, god rays, and everything else you'd want, whether it's your first time installing shaders for Minecraft or you're coming back to see what's hot. Sildur does recommend using Iris (explained below), but as of 2022 the Vibrant shaders also look great through Optifine with no immediate settings changes needed. For those without quite as much a powerhouse PC, the Sildur's Enhanced Default shaders will soup up your game with shadows and god rays without straining your machine. BSL Shaders (Image credit: Mojang, modded by BitsLabLab) (Image credit: Mojang) Download from: BSL's website BSL is my personal favorite shader pack. I prefer its softer look to Sildur's super powerful colors. It's great for build screenshots and easy on the eyes while playing. BSL is still getting regular fixes and updates as of 2022, so you can be sure this one will stay relevant for a while to come. BSL works well for me with a fresh install, but you can find solutions to common questions and issues in BSL's FAQ section. SEUS Renewed (Image credit: Mojang, modded by Sonic Ether) (Image credit: Mojang) Download from: Sonic Ether's website SEUS shaders are a long time favorite for Minecraft players and for good reason. Sonic Ether's shader pack is bright and clear by default, and not quite as color saturated as Sildur's. SEUS has a great realistic feel with crisp days and dark nights. Tip: If everything on the ground looks weirdly shadowy, open your Options > Video Settings > Shaders and make sure Normal Map is toggled on. Complementary Shaders (Image credit: Mojang) Download from: Curseforge Complementary is based on BSL shaders, and its creator says it aims to "provide you with the most issueless experience possible." True enough, I didn't feel the need to tweak any of Complementary settings. You can spot that it has a realistic vibe, maybe even more so than SEUS. Chocapic's Shaders (Image credit: Mojang, modded by Chocapic13) (Image credit: Mojang) Download from: Curseforge Chocapic's shaders attempt to maintain high quality even at low settings and comes with different files for Low, Medium, High, Extreme, and Ultra. I'm using the Medium pack in my screenshots, and you can spot that it does still look great but doesn't have as intense lighting effects on torches as some of the above options, for instance. Tip: If you're seeing a wild amount of bright white light in the sky, go to Options > Video Settings > Details and toggle clouds off. Project LUMA (Image credit: Mojang, modded by dedelner) (Image credit: Mojang) Download from: Curseforge Project LUMA is the successor to formerly popular shader pack KUDA, which says its aim is "playing Minecraft without the effects distracting you from the gameplay." I felt this most in how clear LUMA plays while underwater or in the rain. Other shader packs heap on a lot of atmosphere and fog effects for a moodier underwater experience but LUMA maintains a lot of clarity. If you enjoy playing underwater, this may be the way to go. LUMA hasn't been updated since 2019 but still players well in 2022. Sora Shaders (Image credit: Mojang) Download from: Curseforge The Sora shader pack bills itself as another gameplay focused pack that isn't super high contrast. You can definitely get that feel in this screenshot, which has brighter shadows than other popular packs. Sora also advertises its many color profile settings, which you can toggle between really easily in its settings to get a different look. Vanilla Plus (Image credit: Mojang, modded by RRe36) (Image credit: Mojang) Download from: Curseforge Vanilla Plus is a pack that really pares the shader experience down to shadows and god rays. No realistic clouds or water here. This is vanilla Minecraft but just slightly prettier. The bonus is that the fewer effects are much easier on your machine than some of these shader packs. PC gamers without fancy rigs deserve a beautiful mining experience too. If you're up to it, Vanilla Plus does have a "Fancy" profile in its settings that includes pretty, reflective water. How to install Minecraft shaders How to install Minecraft shaders Fortunately, installing shaders is pretty easy these days. Almost all of these packs require the graphics mod Optifine, which you can download from its website. Some recommend a recent mod called Iris instead, but right now most of these packs don't support Iris. In your Minecraft launcher, run the version of Minecraft you're planning to play at least once.Download the corresponding version from Optifine's site.Double-click the .jar file, which will automatically install Optifine.Back in your launcher, select "Optifine" as the installation you'd like to play.In your Minecraft menu, select Options > Video Settings > Shaders > Shaders FolderAlternatively, you can find this folder manually at C:\Users\[Yourname]\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\shaderpacksPut the .zip file shader pack you've downloaded into this "shaderpacks" folderSelect any of your added shader packs from the Shaders menu You don't often need to worry about version compatibility for the shaderpacks you're using. Although new game versions may sometimes introduce issues, you're more bound by the version of Optifine you're using, which fortunately usually updates quite quickly after major Minecraft version changes. View the full article

Obviously we're all PC gamers here, but plenty of our team enjoy a balanced gaming diet. I've always felt a Switch makes the perfect accompaniment to a desktop, there are still some PlayStation exclusives that haven't made their way over, and I'm obsessively checking my email for that Steam Deck reservation notification. In an effort to know our audience better, we'd appreciate your feedback via survey about your gaming habits and purchases. Thinking of grabbing a PS5 or Series X console? Are you looking at a whole-PC revamp for your next build, or swapping new components in piecemeal like a Rig of Theseus? Let us know! I know many people aren't dedicated survey-heads like me, filling out forms simply for the sheer delight of it, but there's an actual incentive with this one: the chance to win a $250 voucher for Amazon, perhaps to help you fulfill some of those gaming plans, or maybe you'll just use it to get a 15-17 lbs cured Serrano ham bone with ham stand from Spain. You have until September 23 to enter. Click here to take part in our New Generation Gaming Survey 2022. Our full terms and conditions apply, and remember: we're accepting new entries no later than September 23. View the full article

Four years after being delisted from Steam, multiplayer sidescrolling action game The Showdown Effect is back in a completely fan-made resurrection that's been given official approval by Paradox Interactive. Paradox released The Showdown Effect in 2013 to decent reviews—we called it "a cheap and cheerful action game that won't win any awards but provides solid knockabout laughs" in our 70% assessment—but it didn't really go anywhere. Player counts tailed off quickly after launch, and in 2018 Paradox pulled the plug and removed it from Steam. That was the end of it until a couple of years later, when GiuseppeIII (who asked that we not use his real name) got involved. He was a player from the early days, but ironically came into it almost entirely by accident: He ended up with a copy of The Showdown Effect by way of a Humble Bundle that came out a few months after the game did. "A little while later when looking for stuff to play and scrolling through my Steam library I noticed the game, and remembering the trailer from when I got the Humble Bundle I decided to check it out," GiuseppeIII told me in a recent chat. "At this time the game was already on the decline user-wise and the bump it had gotten from the Humble Bundle had mostly gone away. "While a low-player count is usually a death knell to a multiplayer game, it is actually one of the things that attracted me to the game and kept me playing. The welcoming tight-knit community and seeing the same names week after week was something that kept me playing." One of those community members, who goes by the name Deathaxe, reached out to GiuseppeIII in 2020 with the idea of getting the old gang back together. They set up a Discord to welcome players back, but they couldn't do anything about growing the community because the game was no longer available for purchase, so it was effectively impossible to bring in new players. Amusingly, The Showdown Effect's removal from Steam was seemingly the result of a mistake. GiuseppeIII said that, based on his talks with Paradox and original developer Arrowhead Game Studios, Paradox removed the game from Steam after shutting down its microtransaction store server as part of a cleanup operation. Someone at Paradox apparently assumed that the shutdown would kill the entire network infrastructure and render the game unplayable—thus the Steam removal—but The Showdown Effect actually makes use of peer-to-peer networking to connect players, and so it continued to run just fine. The problem was that while old players could continue to beat each other senseless in violent cartoon action, newcomers could only get in if they found an old key lying around (say, in a Humble Bundle) or purchased one from a third-party reseller. The welcoming tight-knit community and seeing the same names week after week was something that kept me playing." TESR creator GuiseppeIII To help bulk up the player base, GiuseppeIII first got about 100 old keys from Arrowhead and gave them away. He then reached out to Paradox, which was sympathetic but not inclined to make The Showdown Effect, which had already failed once, a priority. So he took a more aggressive approach to the problem by eliminating Steam from the equation. "Starting in late December of 2021, I was able to unpack and decompile the game’s source files," explained GiuseppeIII—who, in case there's any doubt, is a programmer, although his real job is unrelated to games. "Then, with some consultation with the team at Magicka Wizard Wars Reborn (shoutout to Alias, Rat, and Neon) who were doing a similar project for a different Paradox title which used the same game engine, I was able to create a lua DLL injector, which along with the decompiled source allowed me to freely change the game’s code." After getting that far he contacted Paradox again, which after some discussion granted him a non-commercial license to develop and release the game for free. With that secured, he continued to work on the project as time allowed before launching The Showdown Effect: Reloaded on August 20. The updated game includes a brand-new launcher, bug fixes and balance improvements, new features (including new levels, a ranked mode, and new gameplay settings), and the ability to access old real-money characters and skins through the standard experience system. It still uses Steam as a backend for its "networking stuff" and will automatically install a Steam-based wrapper to make it work, but all of the actual game files are only available through GiuseppeIII's site. Since going live in August, The Showdown Effect: Reloaded has signed up about 150 players, and GiuseppeIII hopes that number will grow as word of the revived game spreads. He's not finished working on it, either: He wants to use the new leaderboards and Elo rankings to organize tournaments with in-game rewards, and also plans to incorporate a new "weekly challenge" feature. "Looking out to the future, anything is possible," he said. "I know a planned feature a lot of people are excited for is bots. TSER is semi open-source (I give access after vetting), so if people are interested it is easy and straightforward to contribute!" I tried The Showdown Effect: Reloaded myself last night, and it works very well. The installation process is quick and smooth (the installer automatically sets up what it needs from Steam) and the game itself runs perfectly. The gameplay basics are simple, but there are complexities to movement and combat that clearly take time and practice to pick up: GiuseppeIII repeatedly owned me in our 1v1 showdown, until I finally stumbled upon a strategy that enabled me to score a kill: I asked him a question and then pasted him while he was typing a response. I am not too proud to take it where I can get it. (Image credit: GIII Holdings LLC/Paradox Interactive) Regardless of where it goes from here, The Showdown Effect: Reloaded is entirely GiuseppeIII's project. "Paradox doesn’t play a huge ongoing role in terms of development but allowing the project to happen in the first place (through their license) shows their amazing commitment and relationship with fans of their properties (even those as niche as TSE)," he said. "It's been super nice how supportive Paradox has been with everything, when it would have been super easy to just ignore my requests!" The Showdown Effect: Reloaded, and a link to the community Discord (which is handy for setting up matches), are up at theshowdowneffectreloaded.com. View the full article

The phrase "monster dating sim" kinda just washes over me at this point like "roguelike'' or "live service game," but Pararomantic, first spotted by Alpha Beta Gamer, is something special. This game's first person exploration and chunky retro visuals got me in the door but its development origins are quite surprising: Pararomantic is a class project by a group of game design students at the University of Lapland in Finland. Pararomantic sees you trapped in a mysterious inn, avoiding a supernatural storm, and you have the chance to get to know, and perhaps para-romance the establishment's strange residents. Think a more quirky and less horrifying take on The Thing or The Hateful Eight and you're 75% of the way there. While the free demo on Itch.io doesn't give you a ton of time to get to know its cast, the designs are fun and creative. One is a "biblically accurate angel" (floating orb ringed with eyes, unknowable form, that jazz) who's got an "uwu shy" thing going on. My favorite is a skeleton or skeletons hiding in a trench coat who seem to be some kind of gestalt Marxist philosopher. The real stars are the inn itself and the demo's first person exploration. It's a simultaneously unnerving and very cozy environment, with the sound of rain and crashing thunder coming in from outside. I love the little touches too, like the clutter on the tables or the shelves of multicolored bottles behind the bar. It reminds me of great RPG inns like the ones from Dragon Quest or the Elder Scrolls. By far the most intriguing thing for me was a discovery in the bathroom. One of the stalls opens up to reveal a passageway underground. Pushing on leads to a stilted and surreal conversation with a cutesy onion creature followed by an assuredly deliberate hard crash to desktop. I'm a sucker for Undertale/Pony Island-style interface gags like this, and I'm curious to see what secrets await underground in a more full version of the game. This student project has a lot to love, and the 15 minute or so demo is well-worth your time. The students comprising developer Vabajaba haven't said much about their future plans, but I hope they find time to flesh out Pararomantic into a more full experience some day soon. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: vabajaba)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: vabajaba)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: vabajaba)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: vabajaba)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: vabajaba)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: vabajaba) View the full article

Details about a new Assassin's Creed game leaked in February, when Bloomberg reported that Ubisoft was working on a smaller, stealth-focused Assassin's Creed game alongside its bigger Assassin's Creed Infinity project (which we don't know a lot about, but is likely a big live service game). The other day, another leaker purported to reveal that this second upcoming Assassin's Creed game will be called Assassin's Creed Mirage. Now we know that's true. Ubisoft confirmed the leak today with an image posted to Twitter and a sentence that it's hard not to read without adding an exasperated sigh: "Assassin's Creed Mirage is the next Assassin's Creed game." They always leak, and this one happened with just over a week until Ubisoft Forward, the livestream event where the proper Assassin's Creed Mirage reveal will take place. That's happening on Saturday, September 10. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier says his source isn't in complete agreement about the details in the latest leak, but we can safely say that Assassin's Creed Mirage is set in Baghdad and stars Basim Ibn Ishaq, and probably did start as Valhalla DLC, as Schreier reported in February. The two reports also agree on the idea that Mirage will be a "return to basics" for Assassin's Creed: a game focused on stealth, not RPG-style leveling and dialogue choices. The classic hooded assassin look in the teaser image fits the part. We'll learn more at Ubisoft Forward. View the full article

Factori is a lovely little logic puzzle game that made me feel as smug as a bug in a rug. Wait I think that's supposed to be snug but you get the point. It's currently available on Itch.io but with the announcement that it was coming to Steam, I decided to give it a try and it made my morning so much more satisfying than my now-cold cup of coffee. Factori centres around the letter I. The best letter in my opinion, as it's the one my name begins with. With a variety of distortions, merges, and rotation machines, Factori allows you to make the letter I into any other letter in the alphabet. And then once you've got a hang of these letters you can begin to make words which is the ultimate aim of the game. From Ox to Dragon, the game sets up some challenges, and then you can input your own words when the game's complete to give yourself more variety. The game is simple but getting through these words elegantly can get tricky. At first you start out easy with two Is becoming a V, introducing merges. Then you can bend Is into Cs, rotate them, and combine them until you've got the entire alphabet. There are various ways you can make some letters. It's up to your imagination of how shapes can come together to make something new, but once you're down manipulating the shapes to your will, stats make the game competitive. You could get through every word the game gives you within an hour or two. Once I understood the logic of Factori, I got very quick at making new letters but the end-of-level stats are what intrigued me most. How did anyone complete this level with only 8 buildings? I needed 10! Or how have you made it through with only a few letters overflowing? I've got 60 Ls still on screen for every P I could produce. The logic gets even better when it challenges you against how well other players built their alphabet factories. And this is where the game weaves in multiple ways to construct the same letter. Some will need less steps than others while adding more factories for another may actually help you overflow less letters. It's all ingenious resource management. Factori is small but mighty. It's currently available on Itch.io and I'd encourage you to try it out yourself as a nice breath of fresh air between other games, or you can wait until it gets to Steam next year for some logical fun. View the full article

Halo developer 343 Industries has posted a new update about the shooter's future, a roundtable discussion between three of its developers over the areas they're focusing on. The good news is that Forge finally has a release date of November 8, and the bad news is that Halo Infinite will no longer be receiving the option to play the campaign in local split-screen co-op. The latter news may not seem all that unusual, but for anyone who's followed this series from the start Halo always had that additional selling point of a local splitscreen campaign. The Bungie games all had it, and I played through most of those with mates hunched around the TV. It's not exactly a killer feature in 2022, but it is sad that something which was once part of the Halo 'package' is being left behind. "In order to improve and accelerate ongoing live service development, and to better address player feedback and quality of life updates, we have reallocated studio resources and are no longer working on local campaign split-screen co-op," 343 Industries said in a statement. Oh well. To be clear, Halo Infinite will still add online campaign co-op. It arrives as part of the Winter Update on November 8 and, as well as Forge and network co-op, will include two new maps showing what Forge is capable of, a free 30-tier battle pass for all players, one new competitive mode called 'Covert One Flag', and in-game events scheduled over the winter months. Oh and a tonne of cosmetics, because that's what we all want developers to spend their time making. 343 Industries is choosing to call the Forge release a beta, though given that Halo Infinite will have been out for a year by the time it arrives that feels like over-caveating. The winter update takes Halo Infinite through to March 7 2023, at which point season 3, rather grandly titled 'Echoes Within', will kick off. This promises Arena and Big Team Battle maps, a custom game browser, a "new narrative event", and a whole lot of minor additions like a new weapon and equipment. Here's the roadmap: (Image credit: 343 Industries) Halo Infinite is a pretty fun game, and it's definitely my favourite entry by 343 Industries. With this one the studio felt like it had finally really cracked the moment-to-moment feel that competitive Halo should have. When it came out I was excited for its prospects. Unfortunately the pace of updates has been slow, and elements like Forge are badly needed, because the overall experience, that Halo 'package' I mentioned, feels anaemic. There was a time when Halo was the most forward-thinking and comprehensive shooter on the planet, each new entry setting the pace for the competition. Now it feels, sadly, like the Master Chief is struggling to keep pace himself. View the full article

In this week's Fortnite challenges, you're going to be using Junk Rifts to add more random trash to some of the island's areas, namely Wreck Ravine or Rocky Wreckage. While not quite as simple as getting inside the Cuddle Team Leader head and dancing, this challenge shouldn't take too much time, since it's basically about grabbing a specific item and finding where to use it. Junk Rifts are a lot of fun, though, spawning random giant objects that fall from the sky and crush anyone or anything that happens to be underneath. In this Junk Rift challenge guide, I'll explain how to get the junk jars you need, and where to hurl them. How to get a Junk Rift (Image credit: Epic) Junk Rifts look like jars with rockets strapped to them, and once you throw one, it'll create a car or even a dinosaur which will flatten whatever happens to be in proximity. You can find these items as floor loot or in supply chests including the ones around Rocky Wreckage, so don't worry about farming up loads before you head to either location. If you need some around Wreck Ravine, you might want to try the gas station to the east of it. Where to find Wreck Ravine and Rocky Wreckage Image 1 of 2 You just need to throw a Junk Rift in one of the areas (Image credit: Epic)Image 2 of 2 Tracking the quest will show you where both locations are (Image credit: Epic) If you select to track the weekly quest in the quests menu, it'll give you the location of both Wreck Ravine and Rocky Wreckage. The first is west of Logjam Junction and the gas station, north past the Rave Cave. Rocky Wreckage, on the other hand, is near the centre of the island, to the west of Rocky Reels. Either location is pretty easy to find since they are both essentially junk piles. If you're tracking the quest you can tag either with a visible waypoint when you drop in. You can also use one of the handy Fortnite interactive maps that displays weekly quests, such as Fortnite.gg. Once you get to either, you just need to pull out your Junk Rift and throw it on the ground nearby. As mentioned, this will spawn some big falling object above that location, so don't stand nearby and accidentally get crushed, which totally didn't happen to me. Do that at either location and you'll get that 15,000 XP from the weekly quest. View the full article

On Wednesday, US officials ordered Nvidia to halt sales of two of its chips to China. This means that Nvidia won't be allowed to sell its A100 and H100-powered data center super-GPUs to China. Nvidia told Reuters that US officials claim this new rule "will address the risk that products may be used in, or diverted to, a 'military end use' or 'military end user' in China." According to the SEC filings, Nvidia stands to lose $400 million in sales from the two chips being banned, potentially hurting China's advanced computing capabilities for civilian and military applications. "We are working with our customers in China to satisfy their planned or future purchases with alternative products and may seek licenses where replacements aren’t sufficient," an Nvidia representative told me. "The only current products that the new licensing requirement applies to are A100, H100, and systems such as DGX that include them." Outside of the order, the US Department of Commerce has not explained what prompted the decision, outside of keeping "advanced technologies out of the wrong hands." 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 The Chinese foreign ministry responded in state media on Thursday by accusing the US of imposing a "tech blockade" that would affect the stability of global supply chains. The Chinese commerce ministry says the US "continues to abuse export control measures to restrict semiconductor-related items to China." Nvidia will be applying for a license to continue some exports to China, but hasn't said if it expects the US will grant the exemption. The SEC filing also noted that Nvidia does not currently sell any of its chips to Russia. This isn't the first time the US has stopped chipmakers from selling to China. In 2019, the US government put smartphone maker Huawei on an export blacklist, citing national security concerns. This prevented US suppliers from selling to the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker at the time. AMD has also stated that it will prevent its MI250 AI chips from being exported to China, although the company told Reuters that it believes the new rules will not affect business. Regardless, these new bans won't help the already tense relationship between the US and China. View the full article

The best mechanical keyboard offers a sublime typing experience. You won't just find them sleek to use, you'll actually want to type on these keyboards. They feel good and happen to sound pretty great too. Mechanical switches are in another league to even the best membrane options, and of course they'll be great for gaming, too. You may find you have to sacrifice some of the bells and whistles that the best gaming keyboards have if you want to save monto type on these keyboards. They feel good and happen to sound pretty great too. Mechanical switches are in another league to even the best membrane options, and of course they'll be great for gaming, too in a store. Most mechanical keyboards are on display in the computer section for you to test out, and see what all the fuss is about. The supreme feel of mechanical keyboards comes down to their key switches. There are tons of different types of mechanical switches. The key switch spectrum is vast and caters to a variety of tastes. From loud and tactile, to quiet and spongy, each has a different feel. Our guide can help you determine which might suit you best, and you can often find keyboard switch samples if you're invested but want to check them out first. In the meantime feel free to peruse the list below, where we've jammed the best mechanical keyboards we've tested over the years. These made us feel super productive, and many are the keyboards the PC Gamer hardware team uses in the office today. If you find that price is a barrier, and it will be with the more premium mechanical keyboards, our best cheap gaming keyboards guide has some great options for those on a budget. Best mechanical keyboards Image 1 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 5 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 6 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 7 of 7 (Image credit: Future) 1. Ducky One 3 The best mechanical keyboard for typing Switch: Cherry MX | Size: Full size | Backlight: None | Passthrough: None | Media Controls: Volume controls | Wristrest: None BeautifulBuilt to a very high standardWill outlive most PC buildsColour-matched cablePBT keycapsNo Play/Pause/Skip keysDIP switches don't work on mineLook elsewhere for RGB backlighting Ducky has one helluva reputation in the mechanical gaming keyboard world. Even in an age of dazzling keyboards plastered in flashing lights, it's kept up its no nonsense design philosophy (which it calls "Quack Mechanics"—no joke). But even dear ol' Ducky is also leaning into the weird and wonderful a little more; the Ducky One 3 Fuji is prime example of a more stylised and vibrant Ducky at its best. Look no further than the One 3's wonderfully colourful design for proof. This is Ducky's latest flagship keyboard and it comes in many different colours and styles, but this one is called Fuji. Every key you see in my images of the One 3 is included in the standard Fuji design, which makes it feel like I've received a keyboard with a custom keycap set pre-installed. Every keycap on the Ducky is made from strong PBT plastic. Unlike ABS plastic, PBT tends to last a little longer, reject stains, and keep its colour-matched legends from rubbing away. The One 3 looks absolutely stunning and it's a dream to type on. From the superb quality keycaps to the rest of the board the Ducky continues to impress. The blue underbelly of the Ducky contains cable runs for the included (and removable) braided USB Type-C to Type-A cable. The cable on the One 3 Fuji is a perfectly matched shade of pink to the rest of it, of course. There are also four DIP switches that offer a couple of hard-coded shortcuts for various keyboard modes, however, I couldn't get them to work. I tried unplugging and waiting a little while before trying again, but couldn't get them to do anything at all. That aside, the One 3 is build like a tank and there's absolutely no flex to it whatsoever. Perhaps it wouldn't love a drop from a high place, but I don't dare to try it with this gorgeous review unit. You have a wide choice of Cherry MX switches to choose from with the Ducky, depending on where you buy it from. I opted for Cherry MX Speed Silver switches, which are some of Cherry's finest for gaming. They offer a smooth press with only 1.2mm of travel before actuation and a total distance of 3.4mm. The swift actuation helps with the sort of snappy response I want while gaming, while the linear press without a tactile bump or click makes for moderately low-noise operation. The Ducky barely rattles whatsoever as I'm tapping away at its positively pink caps. The spacebar and enter keys have a certain tell-tale thud to them, but beyond that the switches, including those with stabilisers, are impressively uniform in sound. There's a whole lot of sound dampening going on with the Ducky under the surface, and that satisfying mechanical thud as a result is amicable to my ears for a day's worth of constant typing, or gaming with a microphone nearby. You can pluck switches out of the Ducky at will. (Image credit: Future) But I haven't mentioned the best bit yet: the Ducky One 3 is hot-swappable. A key switch breaks? Swap it out for another. You bought some new key switches online because they looked nice even thought you'll never really see them once they're installed? Just pull the old ones out and slot the new ones in. Plenty of gaming keyboards are hot-swappable nowadays, but this particular inclusion with the Ducky One 3 really feels like a win overall. You do have to forgo RGB lighting, or backlighting of any sort, with the Ducky. But honestly I don't mind that. The One 3 looks absolutely stunning and it's a dream to type on. Plus it's a bit cheaper than some other flagship boards of this high standard today. Read our full Ducky One 3 review. Best gaming keyboard | Best graphics cards| Best gaming chair Best VR headset | Best wireless gaming mouse | Best wireless gaming keyboard Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: DAS)Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: DAS) 2. Das Keyboard 4 Professional An iconic mechanical keyboard design Switch: Cherry MX Blue, Brown | Size: Full size | Backlights: No | Passthroughs: Yes | Media controls: Dedicated | Wrist rest: No Attractive modern designLots of featuresSimple and straightforwardProven Cherry MX switches No backlightsFeet aren't very grippyOnly two switches to choose from Productivity doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. Neither do you have to put up with a budget membrane that came free with your work PC just to look professional in the office. Those who want a bit more style and a few more features from an otherwise down-to-earth keyboard can opt for the Das Keyboard 4 Professional. Das Keyboard devices have been floating around the best mechanical keyboard lists for ages, and for good reason. Stylistically speaking, the Das Keyboard 4 Professional strikes a delicate balance between professional and flashy. Its weighty metal front plate helps function and form, planting the keyboard firmly on your desk while keeping it looking sharp. Where other keyboards use small volume rollers, the Das includes a large tactile volume knob decorated with eye-catching red chrome accents. The Das Keyboard 4 Professional strikes a delicate balance between professional and flashy. But aesthetics aren't what put Das on the list. Performance did. Designed for typists first, the Das only comes with the clicky Cherry MX Blue or the tactile Cherry MX Brown, two of the most popular switches for typing. Cherry MX Brown is especially favored as a great all-around switch for typing and gaming, thanks to its silent actuation and tactile bump. Though we'd recommend the Cherry MX Blue switch if you don't need to keep your keyboard clacking down to a minimum. The Blue switch is loud as heck, but it's so responsive and feels great under finger for typing quickly and accurately. We love it, and Brown switches are a bit hot or cold; some people love them, others find it a bit grainy. Blue it is, then. You get all these goodies for $169, but don't expect premium keycaps, backlights, or stable elevator feet. The elevator feet are especially irritating since they don't grip as well as they should—otherwise, the Das Keyboard 4 blends essential features and excellent typing performance into a stylish package. It's by no means as fully featured as what we'd expect from a gaming keyboard, but we're here for mechanical operation and construction. The Das Keyboard 4 has that in swathes. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Filco)Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: Flico) 3. Filco Majestouch 2 A barebones, reliable typist's keyboard Switch: Cherry MX Black, Blue, Brown, Red | Size: Full size | Backlights: No | Passthroughs: No | Media controls: No | Wrist rest: No No-nonsense designGood selection of Cherry MX switchesThe absolute basics and not much else The Majestouch 2 is to typing as water is to thirst: they both represent the most straightforward solutions to an underlying problem and are equally bland. It's boring, but it is still one of the best mechanical keyboards for pure typing. That's because it's a purely mechanical upgrade to your bog standard office board, so if you're used to one of those and want something mechanically better but not much different, the Majestouch 2 is it. Even against the next most boring keyboard on this list, the Filco Majestouch 2 seems lifeless in comparison. It doesn't have any fancy features to boast of, nor does it have a unique trick. Customization is limited to picking your preferred Cherry MX switch from a roster of Black, Brown, Blue, and Red. What you see here is what you get. The Majestouch 2 is a great starter board or dependable backup. This simplicity, however, also explains its popularity. As it turns out, some people love no-frills keyboards. Filco stuffed 104 Cherry MX switches into a durable chassis and sold it at $139, establishing the Majestouch 2 as a great starter board or dependable backup. You can find some pretty great gaming keyboards for that price nowadays, however. Or simply more modern offerings. The Majestouch 2's monotony may be a bit too mundane for even the strictest of typists, and its lack of backlighting can work against it in a dimly lit room. Some users have also complained that the key legends fade too quickly. Still, we're happy recommending the Majestouch 2 for those users that care little for excess or excitement, and instead want a workhorse that will dependably keep typing for years to come. It's simple, straightforward, and doesn't ask too much of your wallet. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Topre)Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: Topre) 4. Fujitsu Realforce R2 RGB One-of-a-kind Topre switches Switch: Topre | Size: TKL or Full | Backlights: RGB | Passthroughs: No | Media controls: Dedicated volume keys | Wrist rest: No Smooth as butter Topre switchesAdjustable actuation pointExcellently builtBetter for touch typistsSwitch feel isn't for everyoneNot always widely available outside Japan Revered by ardent keyboard fans as the ultimate typing switch, the Topre switch (pronounced toe-prey, as it stands for Tokyo Press) rarely appears in gaming keyboards due to its high cost. The Topre is a mechanical switch for typists first and foremost. It takes some getting used to, but once you get up to speed it is rapid and responsive to type on in a way quite unlike any other mechanical switch available. Fujitsu is one of the few manufacturers with a catalog of Topre keyboards. We picked the Realforce R2 RGB to represent one of the best typing switches around, but it's also a good form factor for a spot of gaming in either its full-size or tenkeyless form. Though we'd usually recommend other keyboards for gaming alone. The Topre switch for typing is firm and allows for a rapid typing speed thanks to its quick key return. The switch is sometimes likened to a fancy membrane switch, which is understandable but undersells what the Topre is able to offer. It's squishy like a membrane, but it's not imprecise or sluggish as a result. If this is like a membrane switch, think of it more like the ultimate version of a membrane with few, if any, of the downsides. You can set the actuation distance for every key individually through the optional driver software. To please both gamer and typist, the Realforce R2 RGB can toggle between 1.5mm, 2mm, and 3mm actuation distances—the first for fast-paced gaming and the latter two for typing and general use. Fujitsu even reserved a key to cycle through them on the fly. Moreover, you can set the actuation distance for every key individually through the optional driver software. That's not something you can do with most mechanical keyboards, at least not without optical switches like those on the Wooting Two HE. Aside from bright RGB backlights, the Realforce R2 has excellent ABS keycaps with double-shot legends. The benefit of the R2 RGB model is that the stems on the Topre switches, which usually require bespoke keycaps, also offer compatibility with the far more popular and widely available Cross Stem design used with Cherry MX and compatible boards. That opens up this Topre board to the wonderful world of custom keycaps. Unfortunately, Topre's prestige and novelty have a matching price tag. You'd be hard-pressed to find a Topre keyboard for under $200. The Fujitsu Realforce R2 RGB costs $250 or more, and that still won't net you a metal case or braided cables. For die-hard fans, that's a fair price to pay for their favorite switch. Everyone else should try it in person before swiping their credit card. You either love it or think it's just fine. At least that's our experience in the office getting people to try out a Topre for the first time. Image 1 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 5 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 6 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 7 of 7 (Image credit: Future) 5. Mountain Everest 60 The best 60% mechanical keyboard Switch: Mountain Tactile 55, Linear 45, Linear 45 Speed | Size: 60% | Backlights: Per-key RGB | Passthroughs: No | Media controls: No | Wrist rest: No Great typing feelReassuringly robustResponsiveOptional modular numpad is greatBase Camp software remains a minor weak pointOverall package gets expensive Best gaming keyboard (Image credit: Corsair)Primarily in the market for a keyboard to fulfil your WASD needs? Look no further than our best gaming keyboard guide. The Mountain Everest 60 is just as ickle as the other 60% competition, just as cute, and has all the enthusiast keyboard extras you could want, but crucially has the total utility to be your daily driver of a keeb. the Everest 60 isn't modular like its bigger sibling, the Mountain Everest Max, but there is a dedicated numpad that can be purchased separately, and it's hot-swappable. Crucially, for me, it will also attach to either side of the board. If you're still rocking a numpad on the right-hand side of your gaming keyboard then you're just plain doing it wrong. The key benefit of a smaller keeb is that your mouse and WSAD hands are closer together, and switching the numpad to the left means you still get to use the extra buttons and the extra desktop real estate for your gaming rodent. And, hell, it's also way more convenient when thrashing your way through a good spreadsheet, too. Those benchmark numbers don't enter themselves, you know. That extra mouse space is the main reason 60% boards can have a place in gaming, but, at least for me, the traditional lack of cursor keys makes them incredibly frustrating to use full-time. Mountain obviously thinks so, too, and has squeezed them into the right-hand side of the board, squishing down the right shift key and adding in a del key as well. It's easily the best typing experience I've ever had. The original Everest Max is reassuringly solid, and feels good to type on. But the Everest 60 feels sooo much better. It's easily the best typing experience I've ever had, and is a real joy to use. The base of the keyboard has a layer of silicone inside it, to add weight and dampen the sound, but then there are also two layers of foam, on either side of the PCB, to again improve the aural experience. Mountain has used genuine Cherry stabilisers on the board, too, but has made sure they're fitted and lubed properly for the Everest 60 to ensure there's no rattle on even the broad spacebar. So the Mountain Everest 60 meets our needs as gamers and as gamers with jobs, which is what we want out of a mini 60% mechanical keyboard. The Everest 60 package isn't completely perfect, however. The main thing that lets it down is—as always seems to be the case with peripherals—the software. It's mostly fine. Mostly. But there are quirks, and the odd little bug I've experienced both in early review testing of the Everest 60, and in my time using the Base Camp software day-to-day with the Everest Max. Thankfully, once you've set your preferred RGB lighting layout, and maybe picked a few macros, you can pretty much just ignore it and get on with enjoying the experience of an outstanding gaming keyboard. All this good keeb stuff does come at a price. However, the modular nature also means you don't have to go for everything right away. Pick the base board, then grab a numpad some other time if you find it makes sense for you. And then later on maybe pick a mineral PBT keycap set, or some new switches if you feel the need for a change. Because if there's one thing I'm confident of, this board will be with you for many, many years to come, it's certainly earned a place on my desktop. Read our full Mountain Everest 60 review. Image 1 of 3 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 3 (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 3 (Image credit: Wooting) 6. Wooting Two HE The best analog gaming keyboard Switch: Lekker (Gateron) | Size: Full size | Backlight: RGB LED | Passthrough: None | Media Controls: Function shortcuts | Wristrest: Sold separately Analogue switchesHigh reliabilityHot swappable switchesAdjustable actuationSolid app with easy to navigate menus and featuresGames don't always play nice with analogue switchesAnalogue control takes some getting used to The Wooting Two HE is the best gaming keyboard, so unsurprisingly it's also great for typists. Many of its awesome analog features are gaming-centric, but not all, and you'll find a great deal of use in its adjustable actuations and clever macros to level up your typing. Essentially, the Wooting works like this: if you depress a key, say the W key, rather than send a simple on/off signal to your PC, the keyboard will measure the full range of that key's motion. This is especially useful in games that blend gameplay that best suits both analog and digital inputs on a regular basis, such as Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA V, or Mass Effect. The Wooting measures the entire key press. (Image credit: Wooting) Wooting helped usher in the analog age of gaming keyboards, and it's still ruling the roost with every new keyboard it designs. The latest, the Wooting Two HE, uses magnets and the Hall effect to achieve what is an incredibly accurate analog movement across every key on the keyboard. And because every key is analog, you can use the analog functionality to your advantage in heaps of interesting ways. The Wooting Two HE differs from the Wooting One and Wooting Two in how it measures analogue input, however. Where the older Wooting boards relied on optical Flaretech switches, the newer HE board uses the Lekker switch, made by Wooting with popular switch maker Gateron, and relies on the Hall effect (hence Wooting Two 'HE') to achieve analogue input. In the Wootility v4 software (amazing), a game will need to register this switch actuation as either DirectInput or Xinput. That means you'll largely want to set your left analogue stick up, down, left, right to your WASD keys on the Wooting, in order to replicate the best bits of analogue controller movement. Of all the peripheral-specific applications out there, and boy are there a lot of them, I don't mind the Wootility one bit, either. It's simple, well put together, and has only improved since I last used it. It puts some other larger manufacturers to shame with how easy and smart-looking it is, in fact. If you want heaps of customisability, this is the gaming keyboard for you. Do you want to have your entire moveset mapped to a single power key in-game? It's certainly possible. You could chain skills, moves, or spells in-game by applying them all to a single keypress. Or if you're really accurate, have a key do two different things depending on how far you press it. The keyboard is solid, well-built, and comes with a two-year warranty. If a switch breaks, you can swap it out, as the board itself is hot-swappable. That's one benefit of there not really being all that many mechanical moving parts with a magnetic Lekker switch, and another is that there's less to break in the first place. The Wooting Two HE is analog at its very best, and if you want heaps of customisability, this is the gaming keyboard for you. There's also the superb Wooting HE60, which we're big fans of but it is admittedly not for everyone due to its compact size. Read our full Wooting Two HE review. Best mechanical keyboards FAQ Which keyboard switch type should I choose?It's entirely up to personal preference with keyboard switches. If you love a noisy keyboard, go for the clicky kind. If you like a spongier feel, go for linear switches. Or, if you prefer some feedback with your keypresses, go for a tactile switch. It's possible to order keyboard switch tester packs from some suppliers, so if you want to try some out before you fork out, it might be a good idea to grab one of those. Check out our mechanical keyboard switch guide for a more in-depth look. Jargon buster - keyboard terminology Actuation Point The height to which a key needs to be pressed before it actuates and sends an input signal to a device. Clicky A switch that delivers an audible click every time it's pressed, generally right around the point of actuation. Debounce A technique to ensure that only one input registers every time a key is pressed. Housing The shell that surrounds the internal components of a switch. Hysteresis The result of the actuation point and reset point in a switch being misaligned. This generally means you need to release the key further than usual would before it can be actuated again. Linear A switch that moves directly up and down, generally delivering smooth keystrokes without noise or tactile feedback. Mechanical Keyboard A keyboard built around individual switches for each key rather than a membrane sheath mounted on a PCB. Membrane Keyboard A keyboard on which all the keycaps are mounted on a membrane sheath; when a key is pressed, a rubber dome depresses and pushes against the sheath and PCB beneath, actuating the key. Stem The component of a switch on which the keycaps are mounted on a mechanical keyboard. Switch The physical component of a mechanical keyboard beneath the keycaps on a mechanical keyboard. The switch determines how a key is actuated, whether or not it provides audible or tactile feedback with each press, and more. You can read a detailed explanation in our complete guide to mechanical keyboard switches. Tactile A switch that provides a 'bump' of feedback every time it's pushed. Tenkeyless A keyboard that lacks the right-hand number pad. 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Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder and CEO of the now-defunct crypto exchange Thodex, has been arrested in the Albanian city of Vlorë. Özer fled following the collapse of Thodex in April 2021: he initially claimed a halt in trading was due to cyberattacks, and that investors' money was safe, before disappearing. Almost immediately afterwards, Turkish police arrested dozens of Thodex employees and seized the firm's computers. It subsequently emerged that, in April 2021, Thodex had moved approximately $125 million worth of bitcoin to the established US crypto exchange Kraken. Given the number of investors in Thodex left with nothing, this looks like straightforward theft from a failing business. It's not the whole story, either. Cryptocrime analysis firm Chainanalysis addressed Thorex specifically in its overview of 2021, in the wider context of a total $2.8 billion worth of crypto scams over this year being 'rug pulls': wherein a seemingly legitimate business is set up, operates as normal for a while, then suddenly all the money is gone. It's large-scale fraud. "We should note that roughly 90% of the total value lost to rug pulls in 2021 can be attributed to one fraudulent centralized exchange, Thodex, whose CEO disappeared soon after the exchange halted users’ ability to withdraw funds," says the Chainanalysis report. That works out at an estimate of around $2.5 billion of crypto. However, other estimates given by Turkish authorities are lower, and as with any crypto story it is hard to work out even approximately what the true value of money lost may have been. Some reports claim Özer fled with 'only' around $20 million worth of crypto and, whatever the total amount lost is, he is not the only Thodex employee accused of wrongdoing. (Image credit: Getty - Zephry18) Interpol had issued a red notice on Özer in April 2021, which basically means every police force in the world was asked to locate and arrest him. The Albanian minister for internal affairs, Bledar Chuchi, said that the fugitive's identity was confirmed post-arrest by biometric results: Özer had apparently shaved his head. The Turkish government adds that: "The extradition proceedings of Fatih Özer to Turkey were initiated by the Interpol Department of the General Directorate of Security." Which is bad news for Özer, because this guy is probably going to spend the rest of his life in jail. Six people have already been jailed for their role in Thodex, including family members of Özer, while 20 other prosecutions are ongoing. The Turkish daily Harriyet reports that state prosecutors are out to set an example: "A prison sentence of 40,564 years is sought for each of these 21 people, including Özer, as over 2,000 people are included in the indictment as complainants." Thodex was founded in 2017, and its initial success was largely down to the wider context of Turkey's state currency, the Turkish lira, undergoing a period of rapid inflation. This led to crypto acquiring mainstream traction in the country as an apparently more safe option than the fluctuating lira. This was particularly the case when it came to protecting savings, to the extent that the Turkish government is currently working on a bill to further regulate the industry, which is due to be passed in the very near future. It's a sobering reminder that, behind the malfeasance and the big numbers of Yet Another Crypto Scam, this company was not just defrauding big-pocketed investors but ordinary people looking to safeguard their financial future. Now, at least, it looks like Özer and others will face the most serious of consequences. View the full article

Best of the best (Image credit: Paradox)2022 games: This year's launches Best PC games: All-time favorites Best free PC games: Freebie fest Best laptop games: Low-specs The deep appeal of survival games is simple to understand. After all, fighting to stay alive is hard-coded into our DNA, so it's easy to see why we'd become engrossed in experiencing it in games. The best survival games on PC push players to their limits, presenting them with tough problems and challenging them to find creative solutions. Beyond just a simple health bar, in survival games players need to manage their well being when it comes to elements like hunger, thirst, extreme temperatures, disease, and other threats. Exploring, gathering resources, crafting tools and gear, building shelters, and hunting, fishing, cooking, and farming are other common features in survival games. And some survival games aren't just about taking care of yourself but guiding a colony or settlement safely through extreme circumstances by managing resources, passing laws, and solving societal problems. In such a popular genre, which games provide the best survival experiences? Below you'll find our favorite examples of simulated survival on PC, whether it's among the stars, deep underground, and in other dangerous environments packed with monsters, mutants, zombies, dinosaurs, or the deadliest enemy of all: other players. Here are the best survival games on PC. V Rising (Image credit: Stunlock Studios) In a sentence: Crafting, base building, and survival, plus you're a vampire. Status: Released in Early Access on May 17, 2022 Link: Steam Being immortal you wouldn't think vampires would need to worry about survival, but in V Rising your ancient bloodsucker will have their clawed hands full with resource gathering and management, base building, and staying out of direct sunlight. It does feel a little strange to be a vampire chopping down trees and operating a sawmill, but it all works wonderfully, and you can build your base into a might gothic castle, and enchant NPCs to become your loyal minions. Naturally there are all sorts of enjoyable vampire powers to unlock and use in combat, too. V Rising pulls off a nice blend of RPG action and survival systems. Valheim (Image credit: Iron Gate Studios) In a sentence: Exploration and base-building in the Viking afterlife. Status: Released in Early Access on February 2, 2021 Link: Official site It didn't take long for Early Access co-op Viking survival game to draw a crowd, and it's easy to see why. A massive procedurally generated world, fearsome boss fights, and excellent base-building systems mesh wonderfully with survival elements like cooking and crafting. Solo play is great, but it really shines in co-op, and players can busy themselves with base construction or set out on perilous journeys across the sea to find dangerous new continents. Further reading: Valheim is making me love survival games again Subnautica In a sentence: Survival, crafting, and building—underwater. Status: Released January 23, 2018 Link: Offical site Explore an alien, underwater world while piloting your hand-crafted submarine through mysterious submerged landscapes. From beautiful coral reefs to deep-sea caves and trenches, you'll gather resources and sustenance, build habitats and a fleet of subs, and craft new tech to help you survive the depths. It's hard not to compare it to Minecraft, yet developer Unknown Worlds has put their own unique stamp on the survival genre. Further reading: Subnautica: Early impressions of Minecraft under the sea Grounded (Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment) In a sentence: You're tiny and trying to survive in someone's back yard. Status: In Early Access since July 28, 2020 Link: Offical site Obsidian shrunk you down and dropped you in a normal backyard, but due to your size it might as well be a jungle. Surrounded by killer spiders, hungry birds, and annoying ants, you can build a base by chopping down blades of grass and forage for food and drink by roasting aphids and collecting drops of dew. It's a beautiful and somewhat wonderous environment from the perspective of a someone the size of a bug. Further reading: Obsidian's Grounded has extreme spider horror and a few fun survival twists Frostpunk (Image credit: 11 bit studios) In a sentence: Survival, city-building, and crisis management in a frozen world. Status: Released April 24, 2018 Link: Official site Frostpunk is a blend of city-building, society simulation, and survival in a grim and frozen world. With a handful of cold, hungry, unhappy people, you'll need to construct a working city inside a snow-filled crater heated only by a massive coal furnace. Gather resources, hunt for food, and manage your citizens by giving them hope for the future. It's a harsh and beautiful survival game that confronts you with difficult choices at every turn. Further reading: Frostpunk review: an incredibly stylish and addictive survival management game. Project Zomboid (Image credit: The Indie Stone) In a sentence: The deepest and most complex zombie survival game, period. Status: Released Nov 8, 2013 Link: Steam If you're looking deep and complex survival systems in a massive sandbox sim, there's only one game that truly fits the bill. There's a big learning curve in this zombie survival game but once you've got a handle on how the various systems work you'll find an unending and engrossing challenge in the harsh post-apocalyptic world. Loot buildings, craft gear, farm and fish, fight zombies (or better yet, avoid them) and struggle with everything from injuries to disease to boredom to how much noise you make while moving around. This is a brilliant zombie survival simulation like nothing else out there. Escape from Tarkov (Image credit: Battlestate Games) In a sentence: A brutal and hyper-realistic shooter all about hoarding and managing loot. Status: In beta Link: Official site Escape from Tarkov is a savage evolution of survival games with just a pinch of battle royale thrown in for flavor. Instead of playing in a persistent world, you spawn on a map with a few other players and several dozen enemy NPCs. To survive, you have to reach an exfiltration zone on the other end of the map, but you also get to keep anything you loot to sell on a player-driven marketplace or use in subsequent rounds. It's a lot like poker only way scarier. What really sells Tarkov, though, is it's hyper-realistic gunplay and ridiculously deep gun customization. Further reading: How I became an arms dealer in Escape from Tarkov Outward In a sentence: A fantasy RPG with strong survival elements Status: Released March 2019 Link: Official site Sounds strange to say it, but this fantasy RPG where you can never actually die is one of the best recent survival games around. In Outward you're not only challenged by mystical monsters but the world itself, in which you must keep yourself fed, hydrated, and healthy. In the arid deserts heat will sap your endurance, in the marshy swamplands the water can poison you, and with no fast-travel or quest markers or even your own location shown on your map, each excursion is an exercise in preparation, patience, and survival. Further reading: Fantasy RPG Outward is the survival game I've been looking for RimWorld In a sentence: Sci-fi colony management simulation inspired by Dwarf Fortress Status: Released October 17, 2018 Link: Steam It's been five years of Early Access, but RimWorld has finally reached version 1.0. In this management and survival sim you oversee a colony of randomly generated people stranded on a procedural alien planet. Expand the base, keep your colonists healthy and sane, and deal with disasters thrown your way by RimWorld's AI director, which can include anything from disease outbreaks to alien attacks to weather events. The toughest challenge may be just making your colonists simply get along with each other: each one has a distinct personality, desires, and moods. Further reading: Making a clan of cannibals with RimWorld's scenario editor Raft In a sentence: Survive on a raft while building it into a floating fortress Status: In Early Access Link: Steam It sounds almost idyllic, floating through the world serenely on a raft, building and expanding upon it as you fish flotsam from the ocean with a grappling hook. There are sharks, though. Hungry ones, and if they can't eat you they'll settle for eating your floating home. You'll need to somehow find food and fresh water while keeping your raft afloat and growing. Luckily, you can play co-op with a pal and double your chances for survival. Further reading: How Raft conquered the seas of Steam The Long Dark In a sentence: Atmospheric survival in a Canadian post-apocalypse. Status: Released August 1, 2017 Link: Official site With a focus on atmosphere and environmental survival, The Long Dark stands out in an increasingly crowded genre. You play as a bush pilot stranded in the frozen wilderness after a mysterious global calamity. There are no zombies, no mutants, and no other players: it's just you fighting against the elements, the wildlife, and your own human fragility. Further reading: Survival gets serious in The Long Dark Oxygen Not Included In a sentence: Keep a handful of 3D-printed colonists alive in a dangerous and expanding underground colony Status: Released on July 30, 2019 Link: Official site The best games are those that are easy to learn and difficult to master. Oxygen Not Included fits that bill: jumping into it and learning the basics is a snap, but fully understanding it takes a lot of time and effort. While it's adorable, the colony-builder is also deep and complex as it simulates its harsh subterranean environment. You'll need to manage your colonists hunger, happiness, cleanliness, and naturally their clean and breathable oxygen as they dig out caverns, gather resources, build machinery, and try to turn a harsh environment into a comfortable underground home. Further reading: Oxygen Not Included is a deep and complex sim that's also easy to jump into Ark: Survival Evolved In a sentence: Survival, crafting, and building—with dinosaurs. Status: Released August 29, 2017 Link: Official site Dropped nearly nude on an expansive map filled with dinosaurs, you'll have to contend with extreme heat and cold, starvation and dehydration, and fellow humans (though you can play solo as well). Craft weapons and gear, build a base, tame and ride dinosaurs, and join with (or battle) other players. Ark's free Primitive Plus DLC adds tons more depth to crafting and farming. Further reading: Why Ark's best mount is a damn frog Don't Starve In a sentence: Survive a cartoon wilderness filled with beasts and monsters. Status: Released April 13, 2013 Link: Offical Site With charming artwork yet punishing gameplay, Don't Starve is an addictive challenge and one of the best survival experiences out there (and in a rare turn of events, one of the few games here to graduate from Early Access). The crafting is complex and satisfying as you attempt to survive busy days and deadly nights. Fight (and eat) animals, practice both science and magic, and keep an eye on your mental health so you don't go insane. The standalone expansion Don't Starve Together even lets you play with pals. Further reading: Don't Starve: Shipwrecked is a breath of fresh... Nope, that's a hurricane. Duskers In a sentence: Real-time strategy roguelike in which you explore creepy abandoned spaceships using drones. Status: Released May 18, 2016 Link: Steam Store Duskers may not feel entirely like a survival game, given that it's a real-time strategy roguelike about steering a fleet of drones through spooky derelict spaceships. But the reason you're exploring is to scavenge parts, collect fuel, and repair and upgrade your drones so you can continue traveling through space in hopes of finding safety and an answer to the unexplained event that seems to have left the universe uninhabited (by humans, at least). Its a tense and nail-biting experience as you must keep moving through increasingly dangerous situations in hopes of gathering enough resources to survive. Further reading: Duskers review DayZ In a sentence: Online zombie survival in the Eastern European countryside. Status: Released (but still not finished) December 13, 2018 Link: Steam Store Yes, it was a long road out of Early Access, DayZ's technically still isn't done. But the survival elements of DayZ are strong, with complex nutrition, hydration, and health systems that go beyond merely eating, drinking, and bandaging wounds. Scavenge a sprawling and decaying persistent open world, engage in tense interactions with other players, customize weapons and craft gear, and try not to die: if you do, you start again with nothing. Further reading: DayZ Diaries: the one where Ben force-feeds Andy a rotten banana Starbound In a sentence: Terraria in space. Status: Released July 22, 2016 Link: Steam Store From visiting distant galaxies in your customized starship to building a home and farming crops, Starbound satisfies as both a sprawling survival adventure and a cozy pastime. The 2D pixelated sandbox is a joy to explore, and along the way you'll meet friendly alien NPCs and battle surprisingly tough bosses. There's a story-based campaign and side-quests, but no real feeling of pressure to complete them except at your leisure. You can also play with friends on dedicated servers or simply by inviting them into your game via Steam. Further reading: Starbound review Rust (Image credit: Facepunch Studios) In a sentence: Naked men running around hitting each other with rocks. Status: Released February 8, 2018 Link: Official site Join or battle other players—or attempt to go it alone—starting with primitive tools and weapons and advancing to firearms and massive bases. You'll have to contend with wild animals, hunger, and thirst, but this is a very PVP-intensive survival experience and your main threat will come from the dozens of other players on the servers. Rust left Early Access in Early 2018, but continues to add new features. Further reading: Trick-or-treating in Rust went about as well as you might expect Minecraft In a sentence: Build things, destroy things, fight monsters. Status: Released October 7, 2011 Link: Official site You may have heard of it. There are many different ways to play Minecraft: alone, in creative mode, with friends and strangers, as an explorer, or with custom game modes on specialty servers. As a survival game, it's still excellent, with well-implemented hunger and thirst systems and incredibly robust crafting and building. Dive into its blocky and beautiful world and you may never want to leave. Further reading: The 40 best Minecraft custom maps The Forest In a sentence: Plane crash survivor angers cannibal tribe. Status: Released April 30, 2018 Link: Steam Store After picking through the wreckage of the plane crash that stranded you here, you'll quickly discover you're not alone. You share a mysterious island with a tribe of terrifying cannibals, and while you struggle to stay fed and hydrated, build structures from simple tents to log homes, and construct traps to snare animals, you'll have to defend against the hungry and determined locals. The Forest is built in Unity 5, which provides stunning visuals and effects. There's even a VR version. Further reading: The Forest review (Early Access) Terraria (Image credit: Re-Logic) In a sentence: Side-scrolling Minecraft. Status: Released May 16, 2011 Link: Offical site A wonderful, expansive, addictive, and not to mention inexpensive survival crafting sandbox. Explore randomly generated worlds, gather resources, and enjoy a simple yet satisfying crafting system. Tunnel through vast caverns, battle monsters, befriend NPCs, build yourself a palace, and play alone or with friends in co-op. Terraria has been around for years, but it's stood the test of time. Further reading: Terraria review This War of Mine In a sentence: Struggle to survive in a war-torn city. Status: Released November 14, 2014 Link: Offical site Depicting war not from the perspective of an elite soldier but from that of a group of civilians simply trying to stay alive amidst the chaos, This War of Mine is a different and more desperate kind of survival game. You'll face tough choices as you manage your survivors' health, both physical and mental. Scrounging for food and supplies during the night is tense and harrowing, and no matter what you find it never seems to be enough. It's not just a survival game but a harsh and unblinking look at the reality of war. Further reading: This War of Mine review Unturned In a sentence: A free-to-play multiplayer survival sandbox. Status: Released July 7, 2017 Link: Steam store It costs you nothing to play Unturned, but this isn't some slapped together free-to-play title. Its creator (a teenager) has released scores of updates to the zombie-based survival sandbox since 2014, which makes it easy to see why it's been downloaded by millions of players since its initial release. Despite Unturned's blocky visuals it contains deep and satisfying crafting, skill, and survival systems, plus there's a massive and exuberant community surrounding it. Further reading: How a survival game made by a 16-year-old racked up 24 million downloads View the full article

The best gaming keyboard is more than a dull plank of keys. For one, most of the best keyboards come plastered in RGB LEDs, so they're anything but dull. There's more to a great gaming keyboard than flashing lights, however, and the real key to success is excellent response. Most of the time that's mechanical, but hey we're in the camp that there are some times when a well-made membrane might be the best option on a budget. Gaming keyboard preferences vary wildly and the number of options can be overwhelming. Media controls, volume wheels, keycaps, macro keys, and the actual switches used are just some of the things you need to consider. And keyboard switches come in such a cornucopia of colors and types that it's enough to make the layman cry. Read up on the best mechanical keyboard switches if you're feeling like a deep dive, but it basically boils down to three types: linear, clicky, and tactile. The other thing to consider is keyboard size. The option of a 60% gaming keyboard or going tenkeyless (TKL) will help you reclaim precious desk space, whereas a full-sized keyboard is more likely to come packed with media controls akin to a high-tech space station. If you're not caught up with the keyboard types, we can help determine what keyboard style is right for you, too. Below we've compiled a list of the best gaming keyboards for every kind of gamer, whether you're a Cherry Red or a Razer Green person. These are all gaming keyboards each of us has tested vigorously, in our home and work life; our Alan's key presses alone are violent enough to check a board's integrity, for sure. And we've also tested out the best cheap gaming keyboards for anyone on a budget looking for further options than those budget boards listed below. Image 1 of 4 (Image credit: Corsair)Image 2 of 4 (Image credit: Corsair)Image 3 of 4 (Image credit: Corsair)Image 4 of 4 (Image credit: Corsair) 1. Corsair K100 RGB Optical The best gaming keyboard Switch: Corsair OPX | Size: Full size | Backlight: RGB | Passthrough: USB | Media Controls: Dedicated | Wristrest: Detachable | Keycaps: PBT double-shot Responsive optical switchesAll the RGB, all the timePremium build qualityLots of softwareIf you can forgo some extras you could buy a mechanical keyboard for much less Let me start by saying that while I was impressed by Corsair's previous offering, the K95 RGB Platinum, I struggled with the price. Struggled. No matter how good it is, $200 is a lot for any keyboard. It really was a good keyboard, taking the top spot in our best gaming keyboard guide for the last few years. That's a brief bit of context for the K100, which costs even more than its predecessor. At $230, it is 15 percent pricier, but will you get the 15 percent more out of it? Possibly. Possibly even more. The fundamental core of the K100 is very much like the K95, with the same premium quality throughout, the same overall design, the same macro keys down the left-hand side, the same metal roll in the top right corner, and the same media keys just below it, and the same double-shot keycaps. USB passthrough is easy to access and you get a comfortable wrist rest that snaps on magnetically just like before. The K100 also has more of that lovely RGB lighting that Corsair knows we love so much. In total there are now 44 zones for you to throw light out of (it spills out of the sides as well as out of the back too). And having rippling, wavy patterns play off your keyboard can be every bit as distracting as you can imagine. The K100 RGB nails the basics, as well as including the fancy extras, and that's why it's top of the list. As for the switches themselves, they are Corsair's new OPX optical-Mechanical switches. It's worth noting from the outset that the OPX switches are still digital units, not the variable analog type that can be found in the likes of the Wooting keyboards, which can detect how far down the key is pressed and respond by turning harder (for example). These switches feel great for typing, with a 1mm actuation point and 45g actuation force, bottoming out at 3.2mm. If those figures don't mean much to you, they're very sensitive. I found myself watching my fingers in games as I turned left and right without realizing I'd actually started pushing down on the keys. This is a sensitive keyboard and needs to be treated as such. After a week of use though, it feels incredible to work and play with. At the backend you have Corsair Axon Hyper-Processing Technology doing the grunt work of actually keeping the keyboard up and running. This new engine supports a native polling rate of 4,000Hz, although the benefit of this isn't obvious, and by default, it is set at the more standard 1,000Hz anyway. When it comes to software, Corsair Axon Hyper-Processing Technology supports a native polling rate of 4,000Hz, though it's set to 1,000Hz by default. You can even use the little iCue wheel on the top of the board to play around with the lighting. All in all, you're looking at an excellent key response, a decent spread of keys for most hand sizes, a satisfying tactile click to each press, and wonderfully dimpled keys to help you rest your fingers when you're not actually pressing down. While this all seems quite obvious, it shows that the K100 RGB nails the basics, as well as including the fancy extras, and that's why it's top of the list. Read our full Corsair K100 RGB Optical review. Image 1 of 4 (Image credit: Mountain)Image 2 of 4 (Image credit: Mountain)Image 3 of 4 (Image credit: Mountain)Image 4 of 4 (Image credit: Mountain) 2. Mountain Everest Max The best modular gaming keyboard Switch: Cherry MX Red, Blue, Brown, Silver | Size: Full size or TKL | Backlight: Per-key RGB | Passthrough: USB 3.2 Gen1 | Media controls: Dedicated unit | Wristrest: Magnetic, plush | Keycaps: ABS Fully modularSimple, elegant styleGreat hardwareUnsure about Base Camp softwareA thoroughly TKL or 60% keyboard will likely be cheaper Answer me this: why the hell has everyone been sticking the Numpad on the right-hand side of their gaming keyboards? The new Mountain Everest Max gaming keyboard means I can instead jam it onto the left-hand side, and that makes a whole lot more sense to me. It gives me all the benefits of a TKL keyboard design, but with the utility of a full-size board. And that also means this is now my new favorite slab. Especially in its fresh hot-pink trim. Gotta love those RGB LEDs. You probably haven't heard of Mountain, a fresh-faced upstart in the cutthroat world of PC peripherals. After all, it's maybe not the most memorable of names for a keyboard and mouse manufacturer, but then it doesn't also have the offensive overtones of other PC gaming race-related nomenclatures. That comparison is important though because the Mountain Everest is a gaming keyboard aiming to take on the big boys, and most especially at the enthusiast level in which Glorious has been making a name for itself. Crafting completely modular gaming keyboards, which can house any hot-swappable mechanical switches you can buy, is something Glorious has been doing for years, bringing once-niche custom keyboard fun into the mainstream. I'm still using my sample on a day-to-day basis as it totally suits how I game and work on my PC. I've reviewed a whole lot of keyboards in my time as a tech journo, and I always know when I've found a good one because it doesn't get unplugged the instant I hit publish on the review and dropped atop the heap of discarded peripherals that now fills my house. And the Mountain Everest Max is going to remain on my desktop for the foreseeable future. I'm probably going to play around with the keycaps (G.Skill's recent Crystal Crown pudding caps) have a strange draw to me) and I might even hook out the switches in the Logitech G Pro TKL keyboard for my 16-month-old son uses to emulate his dear ol' dad. Sure, modular keyboards are nothing new; Logitech's been in the game recently with hot-swappable switches, and Glorious' GMMK has been a quality option for years. Indeed removable numpads aren't either, though none have been able to be solid enough to look and function well on a high-end board. But, high pricing aside, the Everest Max has the edge on all of them for me and is going to be my keyboard of choice from here on. Put the numpad on the left side of the board if you want. Nobody will stop you. (Image credit: Mountain) I've had not a single issue with the Everest software either, not in use anyway, and I've been messing around with it a whole lot, from adding in new images and program-launching buttons, to customising the media dock with my own gurning DOOM face. That said, updating the app and the Everest's firmware fills me with dread. The last Base Camp update failed for no given reason, and the latest firmware update has been sat at 100 percent for the past two hours. That's been ironed out now for the most part, and I'm still using my sample on a day-to-day basis as it totally suits how I game and work on my PC. While you might not have heard of Mountain, a fresh-faced upstart in the cutthroat world of PC peripherals—it's maybe not the most memorable of names for a keyboard and mouse manufacturer—we've been impressed with the products it's produced so far. The Everest Max is just as excellent, too. Read our full Mountain Everest Max review. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: G.Skill)Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: G.Skill) 3. G.Skill KM360 The most affordable mechanical keyboard Switch: Cherry MX Red | Size: TKL | Backlight: White | Passthrough: None | Media Controls: Integrated | Wristrest: None | Keycaps: ABS AffordableReliable Cherry MX switches Bright white LEDNo RGB effects There is a trend towards $200+ gaming keyboards in the market at the moment, but that doesn't mean there aren't quality mechanical switch boards available at a more reasonable price. Often you'll find these more budget oriented options offering cheap switches from other manufacturers, but the G.Skill KM360 comes featuring the classic Cherry MX Red linear switch out of the gate and doesn't cost a bomb. To pick up legit Cherry switches you could run up quite a bill with the largest, most fully-featured gaming keyboards. The G.Skill does away with that, though. It's simple, mechanical, great for gaming and work, and still offers backlighting for better visibility in darker rooms. This TKL board is basic, but what it does, it does very well. If you can't cope without your gaming board being lit up like a rainbow then you may be disappointed with the single-colour option, but damn, the white LEDs on this G.Skill board are the brightest I've ever seen. Normally I like to keep at max brightness all day long, but the KM360 would burn out my retina if I did. It is very bright, but at least the lack of rainbows has helped to keep the price at a more reasonable level. This TKL board is basic, but what it does, it does very well. It's solid, well-built, reliable, and looks pretty decent too. I was a little disappointed at the lack of wrist rest, and the fact there's no passthrough, or media controls, but I'll happily give those a pass in favour of affordable functionality. The detachable USB Type-C is a real boon to the longevity of this board, too. It's a simple and reliable option all-round. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Logitech)Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: Logitech) 4. Logitech G915 Lightspeed The best wireless gaming keyboard Switch: Logitech GL low profile | Size: Full size | Backlight: RGB LED | Passthrough: None | Media Controls: Dedicated | Wristrest: None | Keycaps: ABS Lag-free wirelessGreat battery lifeLow-profile mechanical switchesMacro key placement is odd to someRequires semi-regular charging If you've got your heart set on a wireless keyboard, then the Logitech G915 is a great example of the genre. It's not a peripheral we believe requires wireless functionality; we much prefer a wireless gaming mouse or wireless gaming headset. But there are a few moments when a wireless keyboard is helpful, like gaming on the couch or if you regularly move your keyboard between devices and locations. There's a reason that I use this keyboard most days when I'm working from home. You'll be required to spend that little bit more for wireless functionality than what we tend to see for wired mechanical keyboards with similar features—the Logitech G915 is $250 (£210). There's a slightly cheaper TKL version, but not so much so that we'd instantly recommend it over the full-size model. What you get for that significant cash investment is a sleek and sturdy board plated in brushed aluminum. There are some smart media controls in the upper right-hand corner of the board, including a volume wheel that feels great to twizzle, and there's a handful of macro keys down the left side of the keyboard. These can be programmed to whatever you see fit on a per-app or per-game basis within the Logitech G software. Macro functionality has been shifted to a secondary program of the Function keys, can be flipped via the Logitech G gaming software in order to prioritise macro functionality in which case the Fn key will revert F1-12 back to the original input. Beneath that stylish exterior lies fantastically responsive Kailh-made GL key switches. You can pick from linear, tactile, or clicky, and we recommend the latter if you really want to make a racket. It packs in all this without a massive overall footprint, too, coming in as one of the sleeker boards of the lot today. The wired Cherry MX 10.0 has it beat there, though, for better or worse. Yet there's a reason that I use this keyboard most days when I'm working from home. It feels great to type on over the course of an entire day, and its low-profile standing takes some of the strain off my wrists. I don't feel the need for a wristrest when I'm leaning my wrists on the desk, either. Read our full Logitech G915 TKL review (that's the slightly smaller version). Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Future)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Future)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Future) 5. Keychron K2 (Version 2) The most affordable wireless keyboard Switch: Gateron | Size: 84-key | Backlight: White LED | Passthrough: None | Media Controls: Function shortcuts | Wristrest: None | Keycaps: ABS Well-pricedGreat overall build qualitySeamless connectivitySomewhat scratchy switches The Keychron K2 redefines affordability for wireless gaming keyboards. It's marked itself out, in the eyes of generalists, as a marvelous entry-level keyboard that can act as a gateway into the wider world of mechanicals. Starting out at just $69, you get a decent-sized gaming keyboard with great wireless functionality and Gateron mechanical switches for your money. Its design is simple with grey ABS keycaps and a slightly more compact 84 key layout that only skimps out on the numpad and offers a slightly squashed nav cluster. Whilst I’ve previously argued that 60% compact keyboards may be the way to go if you’re a space-savin' gamer, the Keychron K2’s 75% offering may just make me rethink that decision. The Keychron K2 redefines affordability for wireless gaming keyboards. You're also looking at decent overall build quality, and the triple device connectivity definitely makes short work of switching devices or locations through the working day. With that said though, sometimes it can feel like a cheap keyboard—the switches aren't the best around, but they're pretty impressive nonetheless at this price. As for backlighting, there are four levels of lighting to choose from, and a load of standard lighting effects. It's nicely vibrant and crisp and offsets the darker keycap coloring nicely, but it's a little bit of a pain having to cycle through all the presets to get to the static lighting mode. And with the battery at a 4000mAh capacity, the K2 can go the distance with or without backlighting. You’ll get 68 hours with full lighting and 240 hours without, meaning you can go weeks without touching the charging cable—that's USB Type-C in case you were wondering. All in all though, if you’re looking for an entry-level mechanical keyboard, this is a good choice, especially if you’re working from home and using multiple devices. That's not even considering its wireless capability, which really feels like the icing on the cake of the already impressive Keychron K2. Read our full Keychron K2 review. Image 1 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 5 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 6 of 7 (Image credit: Future)Image 7 of 7 (Image credit: Future) Ducky One 3 The best no-frills gaming keyboard Switch: Cherry MX | Size: Full size | Backlight: None | Passthrough: None | Media Controls: Volume controls | Wristrest: None | Keycaps: PBT BeautifulBuilt to a very high standardWill outlive most PC buildsColour-matched cablePBT keycapsNo Play/Pause/Skip keysDIP switches don't work on mineLook elsewhere for RGB backlighting Ducky has one helluva reputation in the mechanical gaming keyboard world. Even in an age of dazzling keyboards plastered in flashing lights, it's kept up its no nonsense design philosophy (which it calls "Quack Mechanics"—no joke). But even dear ol' Ducky is also leaning into the weird and wonderful a little more; the Ducky One 3 Fuji is prime example of a more stylised and vibrant Ducky at its best. Look no further than the One 3's wonderfully colourful design for proof. This is Ducky's latest flagship keyboard and it comes in many different colours and styles, but this one is called Fuji. Every key you see in my images of the One 3 is included in the standard Fuji design, which makes it feel like I've received a keyboard with a custom keycap set pre-installed. Every keycap on the Ducky is made from strong PBT plastic. Unlike ABS plastic, PBT tends to last a little longer, reject stains, and keep its colour-matched legends from rubbing away. The One 3 looks absolutely stunning and it's a dream to type on. From the superb quality keycaps to the rest of the board the Ducky continues to impress. The blue underbelly of the Ducky contains cable runs for the included (and removable) braided USB Type-C to Type-A cable. The cable on the One 3 Fuji is a perfectly matched shade of pink to the rest of it, of course. There are also four DIP switches that offer a couple of hard-coded shortcuts for various keyboard modes, however, I couldn't get them to work. I tried unplugging and waiting a little while before trying again, but couldn't get them to do anything at all. That aside, the One 3 is build like a tank and there's absolutely no flex to it whatsoever. Perhaps it wouldn't love a drop from a high place, but I don't dare to try it with this gorgeous review unit. You have a wide choice of Cherry MX switches to choose from with the Ducky, depending on where you buy it from. I opted for Cherry MX Speed Silver switches, which are some of Cherry's finest for gaming. They offer a smooth press with only 1.2mm of travel before actuation and a total distance of 3.4mm. The swift actuation helps with the sort of snappy response I want while gaming, while the linear press without a tactile bump or click makes for moderately low-noise operation. The Ducky barely rattles whatsoever as I'm tapping away at its positively pink caps. The spacebar and enter keys have a certain tell-tale thud to them, but beyond that the switches, including those with stabilisers, are impressively uniform in sound. There's a whole lot of sound dampening going on with the Ducky under the surface, and that satisfying mechanical thud as a result is amicable to my ears for a day's worth of constant typing, or gaming with a microphone nearby. You can pluck switches out of the Ducky at will. (Image credit: Future) But I haven't mentioned the best bit yet: the Ducky One 3 is hot-swappable. A key switch breaks? Swap it out for another. You bought some new key switches online because they looked nice even thought you'll never really see them once they're installed? Just pull the old ones out and slot the new ones in. Plenty of gaming keyboards are hot-swappable nowadays, but this particular inclusion with the Ducky One 3 really feels like a win overall. You do have to forgo RGB lighting, or backlighting of any sort, with the Ducky. But honestly I don't mind that. The One 3 looks absolutely stunning and it's a dream to type on. Plus it's a bit cheaper than some other flagship boards of this high standard today. Read our full Ducky One 3 review. Image 1 of 3 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 3 (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 3 (Image credit: Wooting) 7. Wooting Two HE The best analog gaming keyboard Switch: Lekker (Gateron) | Size: Full size | Backlight: RGB LED | Passthrough: None | Media Controls: Function shortcuts | Wristrest: Sold separately | Keycaps: PBT Analogue switchesHigh reliabilityHot swappable switchesAdjustable actuationSolid app with easy to navigate menus and featuresGames don't always play nice with analogue switchesAnalogue control takes some getting used to The Wooting Two HE looks decent, but it doesn't appear all too different from the mechanical gaming keyboards we've come to know. In fact, it's a little more boring than most in appearance, with some nowadays taking 'extra' to a whole new level. This one has a trick up its sleeve, though: analog action. What this means is if you depress a key, say the W key, rather than send a simple on/off signal to your PC, the keyboard will measure the full range of that key's motion. This is especially useful in games that blend gameplay that best suits both analog and digital inputs on a regular basis, such as Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA V, or Mass Effect. The Wooting measures the entire key press. (Image credit: Wooting) Wooting helped usher in the analog age of gaming keyboards, and it's still ruling the roost with every new keyboard it designs. The latest, the Wooting Two HE, uses magnets and the Hall effect to achieve what is an incredibly accurate analog movement across every key on the keyboard. And because every key is analog, you can use the analog functionality to your advantage in heaps of interesting ways. The Wooting Two HE differs from the Wooting One and Wooting Two in how it measures analogue input, however. Where the older Wooting boards relied on optical Flaretech switches, the newer HE board uses the Lekker switch, made by Wooting with popular switch maker Gateron, and relies on the Hall effect (hence Wooting Two 'HE') to achieve analogue input. In the Wootility v4 software (amazing), a game will need to register this switch actuation as either DirectInput or Xinput. That means you'll largely want to set your left analogue stick up, down, left, right to your WASD keys on the Wooting, in order to replicate the best bits of analogue controller movement. Of all the peripheral-specific applications out there, and boy are there a lot of them, I don't mind the Wootility one bit, either. It's simple, well put together, and has only improved since I last used it. It puts some other larger manufacturers to shame with how easy and smart-looking it is, in fact. If you want heaps of customisability, this is the gaming keyboard for you. Do you want to have your entire moveset mapped to a single power key in-game? It's certainly possible. You could chain skills, moves, or spells in-game by applying them all to a single keypress. Or if you're really accurate, have a key do two different things depending on how far you press it. The keyboard is solid, well-built, and comes with a two-year warranty. If a switch breaks, you can swap it out, as the board itself is hot-swappable. That's one benefit of there not really being all that many mechanical moving parts with a magnetic Lekker switch, and another is that there's less to break in the first place. The Wooting Two HE is analog at its very best, and if you want heaps of customisability, this is the gaming keyboard for you. Read our full Wooting Two HE review. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Razer)Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: Razer) 8. Razer Cynosa Chroma The best membrane gaming keyboard Switch: Membrane (non-mechanical) | Size: Full size | Backlight: per-key RGB | Passthrough: None | Media Controls: Shortcuts | Wristrest: None | Keycaps: ABS Best feeling membrane keys availableAffordablePer key RGB lightingMembrane doesn't live up to mechanical If even mecha-membrane keys don't suit you, and you demand a full membrane typing/gaming experience for whatever reason (no judgement here), the Razer Cynosa is the deck for you. I know there are people out there who prefer the soft embrace of a pure membrane switch, and that's fine—each to their own. The Cynosa has some of the best feeling, low profile membrane keys I've ever tested. The Cynosa has some of the best feeling, low profile membrane keys I've ever tested, and at a retail price of $60, it is one of the most affordable gaming keyboards out there (well, past a certain threshold of quality). While it may lack some of the features several gaming boards pack in, stuff like a dedicated wrist rest or media controls, it does boast Razer's extensive RGB lighting, which can be programmed on a per-key basis or applied by zones. Compared to a lot of membrane boards out there, the Cynosa Chroma is still pretty barebones, but coming from Razer you can bet it's heaps cooler than those ones you used to type on at school. It's a solid, no-frills, nice-looking keyboard that's the best membrane option of a huge range that I've tested. There is a step-up version of the Cynosa available. Still, for $20 extra, the only real addition is under-glow RGB, so unless that kind of 'ground effects' package is massively appealing to you, I recommend you save your cash and invest in the base model. Best gaming mouse | Best gaming chair | Best gaming PC Best VR headset | Best wireless gaming mouse | Best gaming monitor Best gaming keyboard FAQ What is the big deal with mechanical switches?We can talk for hours about the feel of mechanical switches versus membrane switches, but ultimately that's a personal choice. What makes mechanical switches objectively superior, however, is their far extended life span. They can take far more punishment and keep responding long after a membrane switch has collapsed in on itself. What is the most important thing to look for in a mechanical gaming keyboard?The switch type is arguably the most important choice to make when picking your new gaming keyboard. Cherry mechanical switches are the most common and most recognizable, but there are a host of alternatives on offer, as well a bunch of upmarket, specialist switches to choose from. Are dedicated media controls a deal-breaker?Only you can make that call, but we would suggest that at least having the option to toggle the top row between function and media controls would be our choice. Having a discrete volume wheel can be super useful, however. What size of keyboard do I need?Keyboard size is absolutely a defining factor. Full-sized keyboards tend to offer the most features and a Numpad, but if you don't have space, then all of those extras you paid for will be useless. Tenkeyless boards (the ones with no number pad) and compact keyboards can be a great option, too, if you don't care about all the extra bells and whistles or you don't have any use for alt codes (how barbaric!). Jargon buster - keyboard terminology Actuation Point The height to which a key needs to be pressed before it actuates and sends an input signal to a device. Clicky A switch that delivers an audible click every time it's pressed, generally right around the point of actuation. Debounce A technique to ensure that only one input registers every time a key is pressed. Housing The shell that surrounds the internal components of a switch. Hysteresis The result of the actuation point and reset point in a switch being misaligned. This generally means a key needs to be lifted off further than normal before it can be actuated again. Linear A switch that moves directly up and down, generally delivering smooth keystrokes without noise or tactile feedback. Mechanical Keyboard A keyboard built around individual switches for each key rather than a membrane sheath mounted on a PCB. Membrane Keyboard A keyboard on which all the keycaps are mounted on a membrane sheath; when a key is pressed, a rubber dome depresses and pushes against the sheath and PCB beneath, actuating the key. Stem The component of a switch on which the keycaps are mounted on a mechanical keyboard. Switch The physical component of a mechanical keyboard beneath the keycaps on a mechanical keyboard. The switch determines how a key is actuated, whether or not it provides audible or tactile feedback with each press, and more. Optical switch This is a type of mechanical switch which instead of a physical metal contact switch uses light to measure when actuation takes place. These can be more configurable too, allowing for not just off and on states, but more analog designs, and even dual actions for a single key depending on how far the switch is pressed down. Tactile A switch that provides a 'bump' of feedback every time it's pushed. Tenkeyless (TKL) A keyboard that lacks the right-hand number pad. View the full article

The giant Cuddle Team Leader head perched on the mountain above Rave Cave is one of the most recognisable landmarks on the current Fortnite island map—turns out a giant pink bear head surrounded by a rollercoaster isn't exactly subtle. But for one of Week 14's challenges, you're going to have to make your way inside it to emote for five seconds. That said, actually getting inside the bear's noggin is rather tricky, and there are many different routes you can take. In this guide, I'll explain how to get inside the Cuddle Team Leader head so you can complete that weekly challenge. How to get inside the Fortnite Cuddle Team Leader head Image 1 of 2 You can find Ballers inside the Rave Cave (Image credit: Epic)Image 2 of 2 The zipline is located on the north side of the head (Image credit: Epic) First-off, locating the Cuddle Team Leader head is pretty easy; it's a giant pink bear after all. If you select the week 14 quest for emoting inside the head, you'll also get a map marker that points you in the right direction. There are a few different methods to find your way into that bear's brain, but one of the best—and most fun—is the Screwballer. This rollercoaster runs all the way around the Rave Cave before arriving at the Cuddle Team Leader's head. You can either run along the tracks, which is perhaps better since you can jump onto them higher up, or you can grab a Baller vehicle from inside the Rave Cave itself. These sphere-icles let you ride along the tracks with ease. If you want to get straight to the point and trust your aim, you can glide from the Battle Bus when you drop and land on the Cuddle Team Leader head. There are a variety of entrances, including on top, so you can easily get inside. Even if you miss, you'll be in a good position to jump on the tracks and run the last bit, though watch out for falling through them. Finally, there is a Zipline on the north side of the Cuddle Team Leader head that you can attach onto and it'll zoom you right up inside. Once there, use any Emote for five seconds and you'll get that 15,000 XP. View the full article

The best graphics cards might not be the best for much longer, but on the plus side they are finally available at or around their MSRP. There are even a few that are not under MSRP, though these are usually the cards most likely to be replaced by something bigger and more performant in the near-future. That said, whether you're after a frame-munching behemoth, or perhaps a slightly more wallet-friendly, budget graphics card, you're much more likely to find it in stock now. When it comes to the best graphics card for PC gaming, you're going to want one that's capable of beating the rest with silky-smooth frame rates at the highest graphics settings, even at more expansive resolutions. It should offer great value for money and be easy to find on the digital shelves. The latter hasn't been a thing for GPUs recently, but someone up there's hit the reset button, and things are finally returning to normal. GPUs are in a great place right now. Both Nvidia and AMD have been squaring off for the crown, and that's likely to continue with the incoming next generation from both parties. Then there's Intel with its Arc Alchemist graphics card, though these haven't really arrived in earnest and barely compete with Nvidia and AMD's most entry-level cards. It's important to note that the next generation of GPUs is coming soon. These GPUs are likely to offer a darn sight more performance for less, though the more budget-conscious GPUs like the RTX 3060 or RX 6600 XT aren't likely to be replaced by shiny new cards immediately. If you're after something a little more high-powered, however, maybe wait a minute before splashing out on a GPU. Best graphics card (Image credit: Future) 1. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 10GB The best graphics card for PC gaming right now CUDA cores: 8,704 | Base clock: 1,440MHz | Boost clock: 1,710MHz | TFLOPs: 29.76 | Memory: 10GB GDDR6X | Memory clock: 19GT/s | Memory bandwidth: 760GB/s Incredible gen-on-gen performanceMakes 2080 Ti look mid-rangeRay tracing no longer a sacrificeAt launch it was one of the best deals in PC gaming historyNeeds a beefy PSUIn high demandThere is a better 12GB model (though it is too expensive) The RTX 3080 delivers the best performance per dollar for a high-end gaming PC. For a little while longer at least. And we're only talking about the 10GB one. At its original MSRP. There's also the 12GB RTX 3080, though that is even more expensive still. I know, that is a lot of things to consider when buying a high-end GPU right now and that's largely because we're on the verge of a new GPU generation, following in the wake of a GPU shortage. Though if you do pick up the RTX 3080 today it is a huge generational performance boost over the previous RTX 20-series. That's impressive when put up against either the RTX 2080 or 2080 Super, but when you consider that this nominally $699 card can not just match but massively outperform the $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti, it really hits home. The thing which really stands out from our testing is the difference it makes to ray-tracing performance. The first generation of ray tracing-capable cards required such a huge frame rate sacrifice that most people shied away from turning it on, but that's no longer the case with this generation. When you can now get ray-traced performance that exceeds the frame rates you'd get out of the top card of the RTX 20-series when running without it, you know that this is a whole different beast. And hey, the RTX 3080 can actually run Crysis. The RTX 3080 represents a huge generational performance boost over the previous RTX 20-series. Nvidia has managed this by adding a whole load more CUDA cores to the mix in this 8nm GPU and updated Tensor Cores (for extra DLSS goodness) and second-gen RT Cores to make with the ray-traced pretties. The performance uplift you get over the previous generation is huge and pretty much unprecedented. Maybe we've become used to more iterative generational deltas, especially considering the slight difference between the GTX 1080 Ti and RTX 2080, for example. But we're going to continue beating the Ti drum because it bears repeating—the fact the $699 RTX 3080 absolutely smashes the $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti is still staggering. The RTX 3080 may need a fair chunk more power, though—you'll want at least an 850W PSU. If there was one bit of advice for buying a GeForce RTX 3080 it would be that it's worth trying to get your hands on the Founders Edition if at all possible. Pick your expletive, because the RTX 3080 Founders Edition is ****ing great. Far from just being the reference version of the 'flagship' Ampere graphics card, because of that cooler and redesigned PCB, it is the ultimate expression of the RTX 3080. And if you end up with another version of this fine-'donkey' GPU then I'm afraid you're likely to feel a little hard done by. Chances are you're going to have to make do. The Founders Edition cards are not produced in the same volumes as the third-party versions from the likes of Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Palit, and Colorful, to name but a few. Nvidia has gone big with the RTX 3080, and the result is an outstanding gaming card that sets a new benchmark for both high-end 4K gaming performance and for ray tracing. As I said at the top, it's the 10GB model we love more for its blend of performance and price, but the 12GB model is still a viable option. Just that much less affordable. Read our full Nvidia RTX 3080 review (10GB Founders Edition). (Image credit: Future) 2. AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT AMD's RDNA 2 architecture at its best RDNA cores: 4,608 | Base clock: 1,825MHz | Boost clock: 2,250MHz | TFLOPs: 20.74 | Memory: 16GB GDDR6 | Memory clock: 16GT/s | Memory bandwidth: 512GB/s 4K excellenceCheaper than an RTX 3080Moderate ray tracing performanceSlower than the 3080 at 4K As a red team alternative to Nvidia's high-end graphics cards, there have been few finer than the RX 6800 XT. A highly competitive card that comes so close to its rival, with a nominal performance differential to the RTX 3080, is truly an enthusiast card worth consideration for any PC gamer with 4K in their sights. The RX 6800 XT was the first of AMD's RDNA 2 GPUs to enter the fray, and while we've had plenty of other cards since, this is the one that shines brighter than most and makes the most sense financially. At least it does if you consider its MSRP, and with AMD's GPUs returning to reasonable price levels quicker than Nvidia's, this could actually give the red team the edge in the short term. We're big fans of what AMD has managed to accomplish with the RX 6800 XT. A key battleground for Nvidia and AMD this generation has been on the memory front—covering both bandwidth and capacity. The RX 6800 XT comes with 16GB of GDDR6 across a 256-bit bus for a total bandwidth of 512GB/s. That means AMD has Nvidia's 10GB RTX 3080 on the ropes in terms of capacity but falls slightly behind in raw bandwidth to the RTX 3080's 760GB/s. AMD has an ace up its sleeve in throughput terms in the form of its Infinity Cache, which bolsters the card's 'effective bandwidth' considerably. Some 1,664GB/s, by AMD's making—a 3.25x improvement over the RX 6800 XT's raw bandwidth. In gaming terms, it means you're looking at similar performance, despite the very different underlying technologies. It's a tough call between the RX 6800 XT and the RTX 3080, but the latter pips AMD to the post with the final touches à la RTX. The RX 6800 XT is $50 cheaper, delivers high 4K performance, and a hefty VRAM increase over the RTX 3080. However, it's easy to argue that an extra $50 dropped on the RTX 3080 is money well spent: a small price to pay for greater 4K performance, much-improved ray tracing, and DLSS. All are available today and with years of developer support in the bank. That said, AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution has gained considerable momentum among developers and offers solid upscaling that's worth enabling in supported games. The introduction of FSR 2.0 in Deathloop offers a tantalising glimpse of what the future holds too. The RX 6800 XT leaves AMD in an incredibly strong position going forward, delivering what is required to get the entire industry to take notice, and with a strong proposition to offer gamers instantly at launch. And it's no surprise to hear the cooperation between Zen and RDNA engineers had a part to play in all this, too. All of which is to say that AMD has evolved on what was already a promising architecture in RDNA and delivered it in a fantastic graphics card in the RX 6800 XT. And not the least bit impressive in just how swiftly it has achieved near performance parity with Nvidia. There's still some way to go to claw back market share from the green team, but step one on RTG's to-do list (build a high-end GPU) can be confidently checked off with the release of the RX 6800 XT. We're big fans of what AMD has managed to accomplish with the RX 6800 XT, a return to form for the Radeon Technology Group that injects some much-needed competition into the GPU market and offers a worthy red team alternative for any high-end gaming PC build. Read our full AMD RX 6800 XT review. (Image credit: Future) 3. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti More affordable Ampere CUDA cores: 4,864 | Base clock: 1,410MHz | Boost clock: 1,665MHz | TFLOPs: 16.20 | Memory: 8GB GDDR6 | Memory clock: 14GT/s | Memory bandwidth: 448GB/s Finally! Something a little more affordable2080 Super performanceUnder $400Chunkier GPU than RTX 3060Not quite good enough for 4K in all instances8GB VRAM is less than AMD offers The best value Ampere to date, the RTX 3060 Ti is very closely related to the RTX 3070. Both utilize the same GA104 GPU (the RTX 3060 Ti has fewer SMs enabled), with the same 8GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus. While 17% less capable in core count than its pricier sibling, the RTX 3060 Ti makes up for it with some judicious GPU Boost frequencies. That partially explains why the RTX 3060 Ti can be within 17% to just single digits off the pace of the RTX 3070, despite operating at a silicon disadvantage. Not bad for a $399 card (if you can find it for that price). The RTX 3060 Ti delivers gaming performance that's rather stupendous. If you haven't already done the maths: At $399, the RTX 3060 Ti is 20% cheaper than the RTX 3070, so performance per dollar is on the up with the diminutive graphics card. That's why we love it so; it's a great GPU for the full stack of resolutions and has decent ray tracing capability to boot, courtesy of second-generation RT Cores. The RTX 3060 Ti delivers gaming performance that's rather stupendous when you look at generational gains over even the RTX 20-series—next to the GTX 10-series, it's quite frightening, actually. There's exceptional 1080p and 1440p performance in a tiny package here, the likes of which would've set you back something close to twice as much cash a couple of years ago. And that's pretty great. This card is even capable of dabbling with high-fidelity 4K gaming, although you're going to have to massage some graphics settings in order to really crack a solid 60fps in more demanding games. And that's often just in terms of average framerates, to keep your GPU above 60fps requires a lot of tinkering. That can sometimes take the fun out of 4K gaming in the first place. It's a much smoother affair at 1440p, and at 1080p you can pretty much max everything out and just go. The Nvidia extras can help here too—DLSS, Reflex, and even Nvidia Broadcast all add to the overall experience. There's a solid base of genuinely great features behind RTX and the Nvidia package that's only been improved upon with Ampere, none more so than the ray-tracing performance for that matter. If the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 are out of reach, the RTX 3060 Ti certainly makes for a decent stand-in. Perhaps the most impressive demonstration of what this card has achieved is seeing how it stacks up to the 20-series generation: It topples the RTX 2080 Super in nearly every test. Read our full Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti review (Founders Edition). (Image credit: Future) 4. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Finally, a reason for every 10-series gamer to upgrade CUDA cores: 5,888 | Base clock: 1,500MHz | Boost clock: 1,725MHz | TFLOPs: 20.37 | Memory: 8GB GDDR6 | Memory clock: 14GT/s | Memory bandwidth: 448GB/s Turing-topping frame ratesRelatively low powerThis FE card is smolOften seen priced much higher than an RTX 3060 Ti, especially in pre-built PCs Perhaps the only high-end Ampere that's anything close to reasonably affordable, the RTX 3070 is also impressive for its ability to match the top-string Turing graphics card, the RTX 2080 Ti, for less than half of its price tag. Sure, it's not exactly a cheap graphics card, but the RTX 3070 is bringing ultra-enthusiast gaming performance down into a far more palatable price point. And it's also making high-end ray tracing and 4K gaming relevant to a much wider sector of the audience too. At $499, it's still a significant sum by any means—we're talking next-gen console equivalent pricing here—but it's hardly an exorbitant sum when compared to PC gaming's top graphics silicon today. In return, you're gifted a 4K-capable graphics card that doesn't require too much fiddling to reach playable, if not high, framerates. And it'll absolutely smash it at 1440p, no question about that. The RTX 3070 Founders Edition is still sporting the 12-pin power connector of the RTX 3080, and therefore it comes with a single 8-pin to 12-pin adapter in the packaging. Nvidia has once more delivered a super-compact PCB with this FE card, however, which makes the whole shroud far smaller than the RTX 3080. This is the Ampere card which represents a genuine performance upgrade for the vast majority of us, at a price that we can almost swallow. Despite coming with two front-loaded fans the spinner at the tail of the card is there to amplify the airflow across the heatpipes and that does seem to aid the cooling performance of this smart little GPU. The RTX 3070 also offers up Nvidia's reliable driver stack, the GeForce Experience app, ShadowPlay's recording, and the new Broadcast suite, the impressive Reflex latency-spiking setup, and the latent potential of RTX IO bringing the next-gen consoles' most potent feature to the PC. And of course, you have ray tracing and the ever-improving DLSS enhancements. That's a lot to add onto the impressive raw performance that the RTX 3070 offers, and it does make a difference to a lot of people. Nvidia's xx70 series of cards is often the real sweet spot for PC gamers, and the RTX 3070 is ever that. This is the Ampere card which represents a genuine performance upgrade for the vast majority of us, at a price that we can almost swallow. For all those people who sat on their GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti cards throughout the RTX 20-series, now really is the time to upgrade. Read our full Nvidia RTX 3070 review (Founders Edition). Best CPU for gaming | Best DDR4 RAM | Best gaming motherboards Best SSD for gaming | Best gaming laptop | Best gaming monitors (Image credit: Future) 5. AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT If you've money to burn RDNA cores: 5,120 | Base clock: 1,825MHz | Boost clock: 2,250MHz | TFLOPs: 23.04 | Memory: 16GB GDDR6 | Memory clock: 16GT/s | Memory bandwidth: 512GB/s Occasional RTX 3090 performance…...but cheaper!Can lag behind RTX 3080 at timesMediocre ray tracing performance The RTX 3090 may have sat unchallenged at the top rungs of graphics performance at launch, but it wouldn't be long until AMD rustled together a challenger in the RX 6900 XT, or 'Big Navi.' The RX 6900 XT hopes to knock Ampere's finest from its perch on high and send it spiralling back down to Earth. And it gets kind of close, too, with 4K performance a little off the pace of the RTX 3090—and all for one-third off the asking price. For that reason, it's simply the better buy for any PC gamer without any ulterior motives of the pro-creator variety. But there's a reason it's not number one in our graphics card guide today, and that's simply due to the fact it's not that much better than an RTX 3080, and sometimes not at all. It's another $300 on top of the RTX 3080's recommended price tag, and you'd hope for higher performance in both rasterized and ray tracing workloads. Yet, inevitably its ray-tracing acceleration lags behind the competition. For raw gaming alone, the RX 6900 XT is a cheaper alternative to the RTX 3090. Even within AMD's line-up, there's no pressing argument to pick this up over more-affordable offerings. With a $350 price premium over the RX 6800 XT, the RX 6900 XT offers little return on your sizeable investment—the RX 6900 XT is 53% more expensive than the RX 6800 XT yet offers just 5.25% more performance in games. That's why it's strange that AMD is making a point of the RX 6900 XT being a card built for 'gaming first'. Even Nvidia didn't make that mistake, billing the RTX 3090 as a pro-creator card with a substantial increase in memory capacity over the second-run gaming card below to help justify the cost. It's far more difficult to justify the cost of the RX 6900 XT, sharing as many qualities with far cheaper cards as it does and with the slight performance gain it's able to deliver from its few upgrades. While I'm a big fan of RDNA 2 and the leaps AMD RTG has made to get it to compete at this level in a short period of time are impressive, the RX 6900 XT is simply not its finest form. It's not the easiest card to recommend for the vast majority of gamers, even those that have their sights set on the high-end. For most, the RTX 3080 is still the card to beat. But the RX 6900 XT does come with assurances that the RTX 3080 can't make, such as its 16GB of GDDR6 memory, which is a whole 6GB greater than the 10GB of (faster) GDDR6X memory on the green team card. With that in mind, for raw gaming alone, the RX 6900 XT is a cheaper alternative to the RTX 3090. AMD has since released the RX 6950 XT to compete mano a mano with Nvidia's more recent RTX 3090 Ti. Both of these cards are extreme in performance, and price: demanding well over $1,000. The RX 6900 XT is generally slipping to MSRP or less at the moment, however, and that's why we prefer it as the high-end option today. Read our full AMD RX 6900 XT review. (Image credit: Future) 6. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti The new king of GeForce gaming CUDA cores: 10,240 | Base clock: 1,365MHz | Boost clock: 1,665MHz | TFLOPs: 34.10 | Memory: 12GB GDDR6X | Memory clock: 19GT/s | Memory bandwidth: 912.4GB/s Superb 4K performanceNearly an RTX 3090 for less cashExcellent ray tracing capabilityA lot pricier than the RTX 3080Power hungry at 350WRuns pretty hot The RTX 3080 Ti isn't the mightiest GeForce graphics card that Nvidia makes. That accolade originally went to the RTX 3090, by a hair, and was more recently claimed by the RTX 3090 Ti. Though when all is said and benchmarked, it is the uber high-end RTX 3080 Ti that we'd recommend to any PC gamer looking to go all out on their next build. The arrival of the Ampere generation did a lot to diminish the awkwardness or fiddly nature of 4K gaming, but the RTX 3080 Ti truly squashes it. Setting up for high performance 4K gaming remains a pricey investment, but you needn't be as cautious as we once had to be on a game-by-game basis. You can relatively comfortably set your game to high or ultra settings and get comfortable, even high, frame rates at 4K. With performance close to the RTX 3090 at 4K, the RTX 3080 Ti is as much a gaming graphics card as its progenitor. The last thing you want when gaming at 4K is to turn down graphics quality settings, and with the RTX 3080 Ti you shouldn't have to nearly as much as we've come to expect at 3840 x 2160. The RTX 3080 Ti tends to fall a little behind the RTX 3090, although it appears the more expensive card only sees marginal benefit for an increase in core counts and memory—the RTX 3080 Ti is only single percentage points off the pace. With performance close to the RTX 3090 at 4K, the RTX 3080 Ti is as much a gaming graphics card as its progenitor. With a vast bounty of CUDA Cores and speedy GDDR6X memory, this card demolishes any game you can throw at it with relative ease. It's also more than capable of real-time ray tracing, courtesy of 80 RT Cores. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti remains an impressively powerful graphics card despite some inflexibility ingrained in the price—it will see some save a few pennies on ultra-high-end gaming PC builds and still claim top performance. The Ampere architecture is excellent, and stuffing more of it under that unassuming black and (polished) grey shroud simply makes for a great gaming chip. It does, then, achieve what it set out to do: break the back of just about any game, API, or graphics-intensive task, even at 4K, and do so in a way that appeals directly to gamers' sensibilities. Though it's not quite the high-end price-to-performance champion the RTX 3080 is, the RTX 3080 Ti FE is in small part a better buy than an RTX 3090 FE. The reason we don't rate this card higher up in our list of the best graphics cards, however, is down to its price. Launching at $1,200, it's only a stone's throw away from the $1,499 RTX 3090. Massively inflated pricing, or lack of stock, notwithstanding. Read our full Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti review (Founders Edition). (Image credit: Future) 7. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 12GB Nvidia's shot at a more affordable Ampere GPU CUDA cores: 3,584 | Base clock: 1,320MHz | Boost clock: 1,777MHz | TFLOPs: 12.74 | Memory: 12GB GDDR6 | Memory clock: 15GT/s | Memory bandwidth: 360GB/s Ready for 60fps at 1440p or greaterDecent gen-on-gen performance improvementMore readily available to purchase in pre-built PCsNot always massively faster than an RTX 2060RTX 3060 Ti is a better buy at $399 The decision to load the RTX 3060 with 12GB of GDDR6 memory appeared a strange one at first, and in many ways it still is. It's more memory than the RTX 3080, after all, albeit slower stuff, and it tops out the RTX 3060 Ti too. However, the RTX 3060 wields it well, managing to dispatch the RTX 2060 by a large margin in most games, and by enough of a gap in the rest to make it worthwhile. The RTX 3060 is a fine upgrade for a 10-series or older card, especially if at close to the MSRP. And we're not going to turn our noses up at 12GB of VRAM when 6GB is the likely alternative. Perhaps the most newsworthy shake-up for the Nvidia RTX 3060 came with the announcement of a hash rate limiter, which was designed to keep the card from operating at its full capability while mining Ethereum, the crypto of choice for GPU mining. Nvidia hoped that'd sway miners towards its new CMP line-up, built from off-cut GPUs not fit for gaming consumption, while supposedly leaving more GeForce cards for gamers. It didn't stop the card from selling out of course. With a decent generation-on-generation improvement and plenty of speed at 1080p and 1440p, the RTX 3060 12GB is a graphics card easily argued for. It's also nominally cheaper than the RTX 2060 was on launch day, though it's not so easy to find it as a discrete number nowadays. That said, this card often crops up within pre-built gaming PCs, and for a decent price all-inclusive too. The RTX 3060 Ti remains the mid-range champion. The Nvidia RTX 3060 strays a little too far from the pack of high-end Ampere to have the same impact generation on generation. But in that same breath, it must be said that the RTX 3060 is a fine upgrade for a 10-series or older card, especially if at close to the MSRP, and one that will likely see you confidently through the next few years of major game releases. Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 12GB review (Zotac Twin Edge). (Image credit: Future) 8. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 The best sub-$300 graphics card, in theory CUDA cores: 2,560 | Base clock: 1,552MHz | Boost clock: 1,777MHz | TFLOPs: 9.098 | Memory: 8GB GDDR6 | Memory clock: 14GT/s | Memory bandwidth: 224GB/s DLSS and ray tracing supportWay faster than an RX 6500 XTShould be at least RTX 2060 performanceLong term stock and pricing unknowable There is no graphics card under $300 that we would recommend bar the GeForce RTX 3050. Though it didn't take much to defeat AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT. The RTX 3050 is still a difficult GPU to recommend heartily, however, as it's neither readily available nor as cheap as it should be. The RTX 3050 is a much smaller GPU than the RTX 3060 12GB, and like any good PC gamer, we would recommend the larger chip. That said, if you can't stretch your budget any further, the RTX 3050 will deliver GTX 1660 Ti performance with the benefit of DLSS. As the basis of a prebuilt gaming PC, the RTX 3050 is the better option of what's out there on a tight budget. That means you're getting a graphics card that can handle 1080p at decent settings most of the time, although some titles will push you well below the 60fps goal many of us aim for. And while this may be the most affordable Nvidia graphics card of this generation, it's still a hefty chunk of cash when you can't just whack everything on full and enjoy your game of choice the way it was meant to be played. There's also support for ray tracing with the RTX 3050, though its weak-heart innards aren't going to stand for much of that. Where we wanted at least RTX 2060 performance, we ended up with GTX 1660 Ti frame rates with a little RTX frosting on top. Sure, that's tasty where it sticks, but is another example of a card designed and priced within the limits of a pandemic and a GPU shortage, rather than showing off Nvidia's silicon wizardry to its fullest. As the basis of a prebuilt gaming PC, the RTX 3050 is the better option of what's out there on a tight budget. That said, you can find really good RTX 3060 12GB PC deals fairly regularly, and with a little patience, you may be able to grab a much more capable graphics card. Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 review (Gigabyte Eagle). GPU benchmarks Every new GPU generation offers new features and possibilities. But rasterized rendering is still the most important metric for general gaming performance across the PC gaming world. Sure, Nvidia GPUs might well be better at the ray tracing benchmarks they more or less instigated, but when it comes to standard gaming performance AMD's latest line up can certainly keep pace. It's also worth noting that the previous generation of graphics cards do still have something to offer, with something like the GTX 1650 Super able to outpace a more modern RTX 3050 in most benchmarks. We're not saying you should buy an older card in 2022, but it's worth knowing where your current GPU stacks up, or just knowing the lie of the land. But there is also the fact there will be gaming rigs on sale with older graphics cards over the next few days, and if they're cheap enough they may still be worth a punt as a cheap entry into PC gaming. We've benchmarked all the latest GPUs of this generation, and have tracked their performance against the previous generation in terms of 3DMark Time Spy Extreme scores. Where we don't have the referential numbers for an older card we have used the average index score from the UL database. These figures track alongside an aggregated 1440p frame rate score from across our suite of benchmarks. (Image credit: Future) Graphics card FAQ How do I get a GPU in the the graphics card shortage?Prices are starting to drop down to normal levels, with stock levels returning in full force. The issue that remains is finding a graphics card without a massive markup, as we don't believe you should be overpaying for a GPU today, not with the next generation around the corner. Which is better GTX or RTX?The older GTX prefix is now used to denote older Nvidia graphics cards which don't have the extra AI and ray tracing silicon that the RTX-level cards do. This RTX prefix was introduced three years ago with the RTX 20-series, and highlights which cards have GPUs which sport both the Tensor Cores and RT Cores necessary for real-time ray tracing and Deep Learning Super Sampling. Is ray tracing only for RTX cards?The RTX prefix is only used to denote cards which house Nvidia GPUs with dedicated ray tracing hardware, but they are still using the same DirectX Raytracing API Microsoft has created, and which is used by AMD's RDNA 2 GPUs. These AMD GPUs are able to suport real-time ray tracing, though with a higher performance impact than on Nvidia's GPUs. Intel's upcoming Xe-HPG GPUs, with the Alchemist graphics cards first to use them, will also support ray tracing using Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing API when they launch early next year, too. Is SLI or CrossFire still a thing?If you're looking for maximum performance, you used to run two cards in SLI or CrossFire. However, it's become increasingly common for major games to ignore multi-GPU users completely. That includes all DXR games. There's also the fact that fewer of the next-gen cards actually support the linking of two cards. On the Nvidia side, only the $1,500 RTX 3090 comes with NVLink connections, only for creative apps. So, no. It's not a thing. Do I need a 4K capable graphics card?The obvious answer is: Only if you have a 4K gaming monitor. But there are other things to consider here, such as what kinds of games do you play? If frame rates are absolutely king for you, and you're into ultra-competitive shooters, then you want to be aiming for super high fps figures. And, right now, you're better placed to do that at either 1440p or 1080p resolutions. That said, the more games, such as CoD: Warzone that incorporates DLSS, the more Nvidia cards will be capable of making a close approximation of 4K visuals on your 4K monitor, but at higher frame rates. What's a Founders Edition graphics card?The Founders Edition cards are simply Nvidia's in-house designs for its graphics cards, as opposed to those designed by its partners. These are usually reference cards, meaning they run at stock clocks. Briefly, for the RTX 20-series, Nvidia decided to offer Founders Editions with factory overclocks. These had made it a little difficult to compare cards, as Founders Edition cards give us a baseline for performance, but Nvidia has since returned to producing them as reference again. View the full article

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that, following an initial investigation, it is prepared to open an in-depth 'Phase 2' enquiry into Microsoft's $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard. The CMA is the UK's anti-trust regulator, responsible for maintaining the competitive integrity of the markets, and could be a significant hurdle for the acquisition if its concerns are not addressed. The opening of the second stage of the investigation is not a done deal: the CMA may decide not to proceed if Microsoft and Activision Blizzard provide sufficient undertakings before the deadline of September 8. An undertaking is a legally binding agreement wherein Microsoft could choose to say to the CMA, for example, "Call of Duty will be available on PlayStation for the next 30 years." That's the kind of thing that the CMA is thinking about. In a press release accompanying the full report the organisation says it is concerned that the deal "could harm rivals, including recent and future entrants into gaming, by refusing them access to Activision Blizzard games or providing access on much worse terms." Another concern is adding Activision Blizzard to Microsoft's broader gaming ecosystem, meaning that incorporating its wide range of titles into, say, Game Pass or a streaming offer could be unfair to any smaller competitors. The CMA reckons this has the potential to "damage competition in the nascent market for cloud gaming services." Microsoft and Activision Blizzard now have a short window in which to address the issues raised, and if they don't satisfy the regulator the deal will be referred for a Phase 2 investigation. This involves assembling an independent expert panel to probe the issues identified in the initial report. The panel will have statutory powers to gather internal documents and any other information it may want. "Following our Phase 1 investigation, we are concerned that Microsoft could use its control over popular games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft post-merger to harm rivals, including recent and future rivals in multi-game subscription services and cloud gaming," said Sorcha O’Carroll, senior director of mergers at the CMA. "If our current concerns are not addressed, we plan to explore this deal in an in-depth Phase 2 investigation to reach a decision that works in the interests of UK gamers and businesses." (Image credit: Davis Ramos (Getty)) The CMA's summary of phase one of the decision gives a brief overview of the videogames market as it exists in the UK, drawing distinctions primarily between the type of games prevalent on consoles and PC as opposed to mobile. It does go in-depth on the exclusivity issue, and Microsoft's recent acquisition of Zenimax comes up as a bit of a red flag: in particular, the fact that Bethesda's Starfield is not going to be on PlayStation. Analysing the potential for Microsoft "using ABK’s content to foreclose rivals", the CMA goes on to note that "Microsoft has followed this approach in several past acquisitions of gaming studios, where it made future game releases from those studios exclusive in consoles to Xbox (such as the upcoming Starfield and, based on Microsoft’s public statements, Elder Scrolls VI from Bethesda, a studio Microsoft acquired as part of its USD 7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax in 2021)." The CMA is especially concerned about the deal's impact on Sony, which it believes to be the closest competitor to Microsoft in terms of content, target audience, and console offerings. It notes drily that Nintendo focuses more on innovative ways of playing "and does not currently offer any Call of Duty games on the Nintendo Switch." Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick addressed the CMA's decision in an open letter to the company's employees and investors: "As we said from the outset, this is a long process. With the number of government approvals required, we still believe the deal is most likely to close in Microsoft’s fiscal year ending June of next year. We are fortunate to have already received approvals from a couple of countries, and the process with all of the regulators is generally moving along as we expected," writes Kotick. "This week we heard from the United Kingdom, where we have more employees than anywhere except North America. We have entered the second phase of our review there, and we will continue to fully cooperate with the regulators there, and everywhere approvals are required." Microsoft's Phil Spencer also had an open letter ready to go, which of course addressed the Call of Duty issue upfront: "We will pursue a principled path," writes Spencer. "We’ve heard that this deal might take franchises like Call of Duty away from the places where people currently play them. That’s why, as we’ve said before, we are committed to making the same version of Call of Duty available on PlayStation on the same day the game launches elsewhere." "We will continue to engage with regulators with a spirit of transparency and openness as they review this acquisition. We respect and welcome the hard questions that are being asked. The gaming industry today is robust and dynamic. Industry leaders, including Tencent and Sony, continue to expand their deep and extensive libraries of games as well as other entertainment brands and franchises, which are enjoyed by players everywhere." That's an interesting reminder that, even should this acquisition go through, Microsoft still won't be as big as Tencent. But it doesn't seem like this decision has Microsoft or Activision Blizzard unduly worried. The CMA is being more aggressive than one would perhaps expect, but the areas it's identified can be (and are already being) addressed by the suits. If Microsoft has to put a promise about Call of Duty in writing to get this deal through, then it will certainly do so. The CMA will announce next week whether the Phase 2 investigation will proceed, or whether it's been given sufficient assurances about its concerns. Activision Blizzard's shareholders have long since approved the deal, but due to its sheer size it's attracting regulatory attention worldwide. The US Federal Trade Commission is among those looking into it, though for what it's worth, we spoke to a lawyer who generally leaned towards the deal eventually being waved through. View the full article

I'll always have a soft spot for Cities: Skylines. Seven years after its initial release it still stands as one of the most comprehensive city builders of all time. And while I'm still enamoured with its endless detailing, horky borky intersections, and traffic flow brainbusters, it's about time Colossal Order brought us a Cities: Skylines sequel. Every year I go through a rotation of my favourite games; when I get the urge to manage traffic and lay pipes under the roads (right where they belong), Cities: Skylines always pushes itself back into my life, for better or worse. With Colossal Order's recent announcement of the Plazas & Promenades DLC, I've been hearing the distant chirp once again. "Start a new city," it seems to whisper from the annals of my Steam library. What can I say? I like the feeling of defacing a fresh map, rather than ruining my previous creations with feverish addendums each time a new DLC rocks up. But even with all $250 worth of Cities DLC sitting at my fingertips (not obsessed, just enthusiastic), I'm getting antsy for something new. Something no DLC or workshop item can deliver, however brightly coloured or pedestrian-focussed. Starting the same game over and over will only amuse me for so long—and I only discovered the game about three years ago. I can only imagine how the Cities: Skylines veterans feel. For the longest time, we've been convinced Cities had scared off all the other urban city builders. But with deep and comprehensive indie games like Urbek City Builder taking stage now, Cities is starting to look a little drab. There's just so much potential here for a new game; a better game, one with less annoying sound samples on a two second loop when you zoom in. Think about what the devs could do with what they've learned from making Cities: Skylines, the incredible features they could integrate that their dedicated modding community has so lovingly designed. A proper traffic management system, anarchy from the get-go, the ability to rezone, or swap normal roads for bridges wherever I damn well please. Is it so much to ask? (Image credit: Paradox) Packing all these features up under a whole new aesthetic would be the dream, but even if Colossal Order brought us something collated, and optimised it enough that it won't eat through 32GB of RAM on loading, it would make my year. I understand that a Cities: Skylines sequel might draw a lot of traffic away from the current mods and their Patreon links, but it'll also present modders with a new and exciting challenge to undertake in their spare time. Anyway, after seven years surely enough is enough. You can't expect games to stay the same forever. Isn't that what Cities: Skylines is all about? Adapt, evolve, expand… respect the topography? Alright so my metaphors may not be hitting, but it can't just be me having this urge for a new king of all the city builders. View the full article

Survival game Conan Exiles arrived in early access in 2017 with a mix of crafting, base building, brutal multiplayer PvP, and perhaps most notably an endowment slider and full genital physics. Since then the survival sandbox has continued to draw thousands of players with floppy dongs and bouncy ballbags to clash with each other in the harsh world of Conan's Hyborian Age. That world is about to change. Age of Sorcery is the biggest free update to hit Conan Exiles since it left early access in 2018, and it's just gone live. The patch will allow players to finally become the natural rival of the barbarian: the magic-user. New powers will let players summon demons and undead minions, perform ritual blood sacrifices on captives, conjure lightning strikes, turn day into night, and even become invisible. There's also a new feature that's both a little cool and a little funny: the ability to travel through the air by hanging onto the ankles of giant demon bats. I'm not sure exactly why I find that amusing as a means of transport. I think it's the fact that when you're dangling from something, rather than riding something, it makes it seem a little less than fearsome. Even if that thing is a giant demon bat. Magic comes with a cost, however. As in another survival game, Outward, if you want to practice magic you'll have to sacrifice a portion of your maximum health and stamina. The more magic you want to wield, the less hearty and barbaric and more gaunt and withered you'll have to become. Makes sense, really. Along with the update, Conan Exiles is getting a battle pass. The pass will consist strictly of cosmetic items, which include not just armor and weapons but building pieces and mounts. Funcom has designed the pass to ensure no real advantage is given to players who claim the items, and "any weapons or armor you see in the Battle Pass rewards will give you the recipe to craft it, not the weapon itself, and will have a base game equivalent in terms of stats." "There are also no experience boosts or anything that gives you an advantage in PvP," says Funcom. (Image credit: Funcom) All the changes in Age of Sorcery, especially a revamped attributes and perks system, makes me think this will be a good time to start an entirely new character from scratch. Plus, it'll give you the chance to fiddle with those genital customization sliders again, if need be. If you're interested in trying out Conan Exiles for the first time, you can do it this week at no cost. From now until September 8, Conan Exiles is free to play. You'll find it here on Steam. View the full article

Since launch, DDR5 has been an incredibly expensive part of the PC building puzzle, but AMD believes we could see pricing drop considerably compared with DDR4 into next year and "potentially cross over as we get into the middle of next year," says David McAfee. AMD announced its new Ryzen 7000-series processors this week, with a whole new AM5 platform built to support both PCIe 5.0 and DDR5. Like most new technology recently, the new memory kits have either been impossible to find, or are hugely expensive, far more so than the established DDR4 modules. Intel was the first to offer support for the latest memory standard with its Alder Lake CPUs, but built in backwards compatibility with DDR4 in order to still be able to offer a more affordable way into the platform. That was necessary given the prohibitive pricing, and lack of stock of DDR5 memory modules around Intel's last launch. AMD, however, isn't giving itself a way out of DDR5 support with its AM5 platform, and is going all-in right from the outset. A year down the line from Intel's Alder Lake launch and that decision's making more sense. For one it means AMD doesn't have to waste resources providing compatibility for an outgoing hardware specification, but also pricing and availability have changed a lot in the past three months or so. AMD isn't relying on the work Intel has done with its XMP features for DDR5, either. It has been working with memory manufacturers to create a new open standard for overclocking memory profiles, called EXPO. "It's clear that DDR5 is the right choice today," says McAfee at the Ryzen 7000 announcement event in Austin, "and one that is built for the future as the technology continues to mature over time. "And we know that Ryzen enthusiasts love to overclock their memory, to ensure they're getting the fastest data rates and the lowest memory latencies to maximise game performance. And that's why the AM5 platform is also being introduced with AMD EXPO technology for extended profiles for overclocking." (Image credit: AMD) At launch there will be around 15 different EXPO kits available that will be completely compatible with the new AMD platform. And if anyone remembers what a nightmare it was getting the original Ryzen to run with different DDR4 memory kits, that will be a welcome start for AM5. EXPO will allow for one-click overclocking from the JEDEC standard of DDR5-5200 all the way up to DDR5-6400. And AMD is already seeing up to 11% higher gaming frame rates from flipping on that EXPO BIOS switch. AM5 motherboards will, however, continue to support Intel's own XMP standard in the same way that the long-lived AM4 platform has been. "We will support out-of-the-box overclocking with XMP memory kits as well," explains McAfee. "I expect it will be a little bit better tuned on EXPO DIMM kits than it is XMP profile kits, but certainly those Expo kits are optimised to work on the AMD AM5 platform." Moar RAM (Image credit: Future)Best DDR5 RAM: the latest and greatest Best DDR4 RAM: affordable and fast But that will count for little if those high-end DDR5 memory kits continue to be so extravagantly priced as they have been. "What we expect to see even in the remainder of this calendar year," says McAfee, "is more aggressive movement from the memory partners to accelerate pricing declines, get DDR5 pricing closer to DDR4 pricing. And, I think as we go into 2023, we'll see that gap narrow even further, potentially crossover as we get into the middle of next year." The pricing crossover event will be an important one for DDR5, effectively making it the de facto standard for PC RAM. AMD's prediction of mid-2023 is, however, still going to be a guess, however educated, and the actual timing of this pricing inflection point may well end up being much later into 2023. View the full article

Valve has been pretty candid about their plans for the Steam Deck, especially around the device's recent release in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The company even produced a neat little booklet to formally introduce itself in new territories where Valve isn't a (specific kind of) household name, filled with tidbits and goodies about the Deck's development and future. Well, that trend is set to continue, because in a recent interview with Famitsu Weekly, Valve designer Greg Coomer let slip a bit of the company's thinking when it comes to new Steam Decks. Most surprisingly, he indicated that one possibility for a "next generation" Steam Deck was that it "might even become a streaming machine," presumably taking advantage of the Steam Link technology that Valve has already poured a lot of time into. It makes sense. During the interview, Coomer identified plenty of parts of the Steam Decks that could be up for revision, but he says that battery life is at the top of Valve's list of things to improve. A Deck that lets some other machine—whether it's your own PC or a Valve server—do the hard work of rendering your game would probably hammer its battery quite a bit less than the version we have today. You'd hope that such a device would also be able to cut down on the stuff it needs stuffed inside it, potentially making it a bit smaller, too. But if you're as streaming-averse as I am, you shouldn't fear. It's unlikely that a hypothetical future streaming Steam Deck would be your only option. Valve has a tendency to talk about the Steam Deck as a "category" of devices, rather than a single, console-like machine that gets iterated on every few years (though they will be improving the current version too). So while the company might one day put out something with a Steam Deck logo on it that plays games by streaming them, it'll probably be accompanied by all sorts of other peculiar handheld PC gaming boxes, one of which will hopefully meet your needs. Thanks, VideoGamesChronicle. View the full article