Month: September 2024

Asus, the big tease, has been hinting all over about the upcoming ROG Ally, the company’s own Steam Deck rival. While there’s no official release date as yet, Asus has taken to Twitter to let us know “it may be sooner than you expect.” Alongside this little stir, rumours are now coming thick and fast around a leak that potentially nails which GPU this powerful little handheld gaming device’s custom SoC is going to be built around.

As we previously reported, the now totally real ROG Ally looks like a serious contender to the Steam Deck, with the rumour mill placing the processor as a custom AMD SoC built on TSMC’s 4nm process node. That’s according to reports from Dave2D, who also talks of it housing a Zen 4 CPU and an RDNA 3 GPU behind that 1080p screen. 

By way of comparison, the Deck’s Aerith APU sports Zen 2 and RDNA 2 hardware in its 7nm semi-custom APU. In order to hit the 120Hz refresh rate of the Ally’s 7-inch panel, some serious handheld power is going to be needed, however it turns out.

With VideoCards fronting a shipping manifest leak, we’re now of the impression the ROG Ally will be coming with a semi-custom variant of the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U APU,…

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One of Taiwan’s leading financial news media, UDN, is claiming that Nvidia is heavily reducing the production of its high-end RTX 40-series graphics chips in preparation for the launch of the Blackwell-powered RTX 50 range. However, the reduction is claimed to be so large, by as much as 50%, that prices for RTX 4070, 4080, and 4090 graphics cards will almost certainly increase.

Designing and developing new GPUs costs billions of dollars, so when a new generation of processors is only a few months away, companies like Nvidia will ease off on producing last-gen products, to ensure retailers’ inventories aren’t full of cheap, old stock. It’s been that way for as long as there have been PC graphics cards, so the report from Taiwan’s UDN (via TweakTown) claiming that high-end RTX 40 series GPU production is being scaled back isn’t exactly headline news.

However, in this instance, UDN is claiming that the reduction of AD102, AD103, and AD104 chip manufacturing could be 30% or as high as 50%. If it’s the latter, it will have a notable impact on RTX graphics cards currently in stock.

While the RTX 4070 and RTX 4080 didn’t sell very well at launch in April 2023 and Nove…

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I admit it: I kind of thought, given that the original Resident Evil 4 has been reissued more times than the Bible and the Little Red Book combined, that enthusiasm for its full-blown remake might have been at a low ebb. Well, shows what I know. Capcom just announced that the RE4 remake has topped 7 million sales a little under a year post-release.

Not only that, but the Resident Evil series as a whole has sold over 154 million games since it first emerged from a gross flesh chrysalis back in 1996, which means you could give a copy to the entire population of Russia and still have almost eight million left in reserve. Congratulations to Resident Evil on becoming the eighth largest nation on Earth.

Capcom attributes this success to “continuous support from the passionate fan base across the globe” and says it’s the publisher’s “flagship game series.” I suppose that’s the kind of thing you have to write in a press release, but it’d be good if one day a game company swerved on us and attributed its success to the Mandate of Heaven or an industrial quantity of psilocybin.

Anyway, those sales—both RE4’s and Resident Evil’s more generally—aren’t broken do…

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I hadn’t heard of En Garde, which started as a 2018 student game, until it showed up at today’s Future Games Show, but I’m very on board for the French “swashbuckling action game.”

En Garde sees legendary swashbuckler Adalia de Volador swashbuckle her way through the minions of the tyrannical Count Duke with her sword, and more importantly in my opinion, a lot of comedy prop combat. I’m most immediately reminded of Chivalry 2 and Sifu, but I’m getting fond memories from the whole physics fighting game family tree, back to Power Stone.

There’s an En Garde demo on Steam now, which of course I immediately installed. It’s fun, and it isn’t easy when engaging multiple enemies. 

Tapping one button attacks, so that’s simple, but there’s no block button to hold down when you’re being swung back at: You can either parry by pressing a button when a prompt appears, or dodge, and some attacks must be dodged rather than parried. The parry and dodge windows are generous, but I started getting mixed up when I had two or three guards crowded around me. To make fights manageable, enemies are easily stunned by kicking boxes and other objects at them, and ne…

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Ten years later the fantastic job that Crystal Dynamics’ did with its 2013 Tomb Raider reboot has become even more apparent to me. The mature, 18-rated game took the campy, bright and cartoonish Lara Croft of earlier games and, instead, delivered a dark, hyper violent and at times gripping coming of age origin story with a strong female protagonist.

View Tomb Raider on Steam 

Yes, there’s absolutely no doubting that this game, as well as its sequels Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, owed a lot to the excellent Uncharted series of games, but Crystal Dynamics delivered an action adventure platformer with a markedly different tone, protagonist and cast of supporting characters. It was a hit.

Fast forward and that hit Tomb Raider reboot is now $2.99/£2.49 at Steam, and after picking it up myself, I thought I would bring it to the PC Gamer community’s attention, as I think it’s a great PC gaming experience to get stuck into in the January gaming doldrums. You can check out the full details of the game below.

If you’re a big fan of Tomb Raider already, I’d also suggest checking out the se…

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Three months after bringing the action RPG Wayfinder back to Steam, developer Airship Syndicate has laid off 16 more employees but says it remains “committed to delivering the Wayfinder roadmap.”

“In light of the difficult challenges facing our industry, we’ve had to make the tough decision to let go of some incredibly talented Airship team members, including 12 full-time employees and four contractors,” CEO Joe Madureira and president Ryan Stefanelli said in a joint message posted on LinkedIn (via Game Developer).

“Earlier this year during a studio restructuring we both took pay cuts that are still in place today. In addition, we are both contributing personal funds to help Airship continue operating with our remaining staff.”

Wayfinder looked promising but struggled with server woes when it launched in August 2023, and ran into further trouble when original publisher Digital Extremes axed its publishing division a few months later. That led to a first round of layoffs in January 2024 and the pay cuts referenced in today’s message, and in April of this year sales were halted so developers could focus on a major rework of the game.

That rework was deliv…

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A Fred Durst New Vegas companion who speaks only in Limp Bizkit sound clips⁠—alright, so far, so NexusMods. But what about a Limp Bizkit New Vegas mod that was thought lost forever since 2016 or so? Thanks to Twitter user UsagiCola (and brought to a wider audience by Elder Scrolls YouTuber Micky D), the Fred Durst mod is no longer lost media.

Aside from a vestigial Reddit post, the YouTube video “My Fred Durst Mod for Fallout: NV (**LORE FRIENDLY**)” remained the only evidence of New Vegas Fred Durst’s passing. Initially released in 2015, it seems that within a year or so the mod was already wiped from the New Vegas Nexus. “Yo wtf did this get taken down” opined commenter lindraw approximately seven years ago. “I think it did, sorry :(” replied mod author lb8068. “I recently reformatted my computer so I doubt I have any of the files left over here.”

That would have been the end of New Vegas Fred Durst, after all, what is one lost shitpost mod in an ocean made up entirely of shitpost mods? It is the New Vegas Fred Durst mod’s miraculous rediscovery that truly elevates it. The achievement seems fairly anticlimactic, however. “Anyone following me because of …

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Win today’s Wordle at your own pace and in your own way with our help. Take a look at our tips if you’d like to refresh your daily guesses, or have a peek at today’s clue if you’d like a bit of a push. Running out of time, patience, or letters? No problem. The answer to the May 31 (1077) game is right here.

I had a fantastic smattering of greens in place, I’d ruled out plenty of letters—I knew exactly what today’s Wordle answer was. Or so I thought. Not that? Then it must be… ah, no, not that either. I finally found today’s answer on the very last row, but I was really chewing my nails by the end.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Friday, May 31

The word you need to find today would be considered the opposite of order. Everything’s in disarray, nobody knows what’s going on, and it’s all descended into a huge, confused mess.  

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Is there a double letter in Wordle today? 

There are no double letters in today’s Wordle.

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, bu…

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Helldivers 2 players were served another switcheraroo today as Super Earth declared that the Terminid Control System is a failure. Instead of controlling the population of the Terminids as planned, the towers previously activated by players in March have actually caused an explosion in bug population.

“The Terminid control system has failed. Meridia has turned into a supercolony,” the official Super Earth communique reads. “Termicide may be causing faster reproduction. The TCS must be deactivated immediately.”

The great undoing of the TCS is playing out in a new mission type that’s live now on the border planets of Erata Prime, Fenrir III, and Turing. New “Deactivate” missions, noted by their TCS tower icons, return divers to the TCS facilities we previously defended, except this time they’re all sorts of messed up. The towers have been completely consumed by bug nests. The manmade scaffolding and staircases that once guided players to each battery tower are now buried under a thick caking of black goo. The result is one of the nastiest, most elaborate super nests we’ve yet seen in Helldivers 2.

The objective is twofold: deactivate the battery towers powering t…

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While X continues to spiral in relevancy, its owner Elon Musk spent the holidays grinding Diablo 4’s hardest dungeon and even teamed up with its most popular streamers for some help.

“Christmas Eve I spent 17 hours on Diablo,” Musk said while guesting on Diablo streamer Wudijo’s stream a few weeks ago. Musk was too embarrassed to say what all that grinding amounted to in regards to his seasonal glyph level, but he assured Wudijo that it was high enough to survive tier 24 (of 25) of the Abattoir of Zir dungeon. “I don’t have any excuses except myself.”

For some context: Musk is playing a poison shred Druid, one of the weakest builds for clearing out all the enemies and bosses packed into the early tiers of the Abattoir of Zir. To reach tiers above 20, you need to spend hours and hours grinding the lower ones to gain enough power from the Tears of Blood glyph to beat the dungeon’s strict 10-minute timer. He must’ve spent many 17-hour days playing Diablo 4—or talked other players into letting him leech XP—to have a glyph strong enough to do tier 24.

Musk doesn’t have anything particularly interesting to say about Diablo 4 other than that he’s playing i…

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In light of reports that excessive SoC voltage has been linked to damage suffered by certain Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, motherboard manufacturers are pushing out BIOS updates and explanations, hoping to contain the fallout. Gigabyte released a statement, saying its motherboards are compliant with AMD’s 1.3V recommended limit (at least with the latest beta BIOS updates anyway). 

In the statement, Gigabyte says: “Users can use HWiNFO software to accurately monitor the CPU internal SOC Voltage (SVI3 interface), which is indicated as ‘CPU VDDCR_SOC Voltage (SVI3 TFN)’ in HWiNFO. This value is reported by the internal sensor of the CPU to show the true voltage. Gigabyte uses HWiNFO to monitor the SOC Voltage on AM5 motherboards and it is under 1.3V, which is officially confirmed by AMD.”

Gigabyte released a video on YouTube as shown above. It shows the all important HWINFO SVI3 readout is under 1.3V at all times, while readouts with a voltage probe showed spikes of up to 1.35V. That’s well over the 1.3V safe limit stated by AMD.

The implication is that the SoC voltage read points on Gigabyte boards are not reading the SoC voltage actually being delivered to the CP…

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Warhammer 40,000: Darktide released in a bashed-up state thanks to performance issues, an unfinished crafting system, a not-so-great cash shop, and wonky progression. The game clawed its way back into the good will of its players, though, especially since its recent talent tree overhaul, its recent reviews “Very Positive” on Steam at the time of writing. Fatshark is starting as it means to go on: announcing a two-part free update to celebrate its one year anniversary that’ll send you to the Carnival. No, really.

Announced Friday last week, The Traitor Curse will be released in two parts. The first arrives this month, while the second half will drop “before the winter holidays.” According to the announcement, here’s what’s promised for the first slice:

  • New Cinematic: Learn about the motivations of the Moebian 6th and discover The Carnival, a new disreputable zone promising transgressive distractions and entertainment.
  • New Zone & Mission: Strike at the heart of the Moebian 6th operations and fend off hordes of enemies in Mercantile located in The Carnival.
  • Inspect…
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RPG fans out there are really getting their fill this year, and it looks like 2023 might be going out with a bang. The release date trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader has just dropped, and—barring any unexpected delays—we’ll be getting our hands on Owlcat Games’ latest RPG on December 7.

With the huge success of Baldur’s Gate 3 (an RPG with turn-based combat, based on one of the most popular tabletop roleplaying games in the world), Rogue Trader (an RPG with turn-based combat, based on one of the most popular wargames in the world) might grab the attention of a few more people than it would have if released earlier.

Speaking with Polygon, Alexander Mishulin, creative director at Owlcat, pointed out that “Baldur’s Gate 3’s success is very encouraging” and that Larian is “renewing a lot of passion” for RPGs. With the undeniable impact of other RPGs as well this year like Starfield and Diablo 4, Rogue Trader is in a good position to reach further than just the current Warhammer fanbase.

Creating a devastatingly powerful group of deviants and engaging them in tactical combat is just the “in” thing right now, and I’m here for it. Thou…

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The Steam Deck has been a huge hit for Valve, opening up the world to PC gaming on a portable console style PC. They’re great little machines that make wonderful travelling companions. Whether you’re headed to a bar or 2,500 ft above the surface of the Earth, the Steam Deck is ready to go. That is, unless you wanted to play some Ubisoft titles.

A new update for the Ubisoft Connect launcher completely stuffed launching Steam games on Linux platforms. According to GamingOnLinux, trying to launch any Ubi titles on desktop Linux or Steam Deck resulted in an unrecoverable error popup from Ubisoft Connect. From there all you could do is click OK and accept you’re not getting on for that Division raid tonight.

Thankfully now there is a bit of a fix, using Proton Experimental. This is the testing version of Proton, the compatibility layer that allows Linux to run Steam games made for Windows. Here you get access to some upcoming features before they’re necessarily stable. 

First, Proton developers implemented a fix into the downloadable “bleeding-edge” beta for Proton Experimental, and now Valve has released a Proton Experimental fix that does not require opting i…

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Keep your Wordle win streak going with our vast range of help. Take a look at our guides and tips, created to make every guess just that little bit better, read a clue written especially for today’s solution, and if you’ve run out of goes and just need someone to tell you the answer to the April 19 (669) game then don’t worry, today’s Wordle solution is waiting just below.

I didn’t have a lot to go on after my second guess had finished flipping over—just one yellow and one green—but they proved just how much you can do with not a lot. The green was exactly where it needed to be, and the yellow just happened to be the sort of letter that had to go there, which formed a natural pair with a letter I hadn’t tried yet. With those three letters fuzzily locked in, today’s Wordle answer just sort of appeared out of thin air. 

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, April 19

Today’s answer is another word for a heavy, blunt strike producing a dull thud-like sound. This word can also be used when suffering from a headache with similar symptoms. There’s only one vowel to find today.  

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Is there a…

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Update 1/7/24: In the days following this story, Wizards of the Coast acknowledged that the Magic: The Gathering promo image was indeed made using AI tools. You can read our latest story on the controversy and its aftermath.

Original Story: In December, Wizards of the Coast committed to not using AI art in Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, saying it requires its artists, writers, and other creative contributors “to refrain from using AI generative tools” to create its products. Despite that, MtG fans are accusing the company of using AI to create the backdrop for a promotional image of new cards—something WotC flatly denies.

Wizards shared the image on Twitter on January 4, writing, “It’s positively shocking how good these lands look in retro frame.” And frankly, I think it does look pretty good: The Edison bulbs, the old-timey pressure gauge, the out-of-focus books and pipes and stuff on the walls in the background—there’s definitely a vibe going on, and I dig it.

An awful lot of other people feel differently, though. Almost as soon as the image was posted, people began questioning whether AI was used …

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