Friskhet

To help mark a full year since Baldur’s Gate 3’s release, Larian has revealed a new “Channel From Hell” on YouTube. Though the studio has not yet uploaded anything, it wrote on X, “The Everything App” that the “community-focused” channel is set to “feature regular and never-seen-before videos which will arrive this summer.”

It’s hard to believe we’re already at the one-year anniversary of Baldur’s Gate 3’s launch, but it was one year ago today that we all loaded into that character creator, made some kind of really hot orc or elf, and then toggled the armor display to reveal Penis D (or some variation on that theme).

And after all that time, the magic hasn’t really worn off. I’ve got almost 300 hours logged and I’m still pondering my next playthrough. Even as Larian commits …

Congratulations—you’re about to win today’s Wordle. Whether you’re hoping to find the answer to the September 6 (809) game served up on a plate, a helpful clue written especially for Wednesday’s Wordle, or you’d just like to read a few general tips, you’ll find all that and more below.

I’m not quite sure how it’s possible to find so many letters and get only one of them in the right order, but there I was, staring at three yellows and just one green. Luckily for me, I noticed that the combination I had could really only be rearranged one way, so finding today’s Wordle answer came quickly.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, September 6

Today’s word is something teeth can do, either literally or metaphorically, when someone or s…

Diablo 4 has a fetch quest in the Scosglen region called Stolen Artifice, in which an NPC named Merryn sends you out from Braestaig to retrieve an item from a thief called Darcel. It’s a runic charm that was being used to help an ailing mother and child recover, until Darcel and his thugs stole it. The jerks.

This is supposed to be a typical sidequest, nothing too major, but players were finding it unusually hard. Instead of having to fight one Darcel, they were encountering dozens of Darcel doppelgangers. Though some managed to figure out which one was the original and kill him to complete the quest, others were forced to retreat and return, sometimes finding that hundreds of Darcels had spawned in their absence.

While some players put forward a theory that the issue was a …

And just like that, a new Steam Deck is here. We’ve been expecting a refresh of Valve’s handheld gaming PC for a little while now, and it’s touting this Steam Deck OLED as “the definitive first generation Steam Deck, it’s the one that we would have shipped if we could have.”

The new Steam Deck OLED comes in a few flavours, most obviously the $549 512GB and $649 1TB trims. That’s largely the same price the original 256GB and 512GB LCD versions retailed for just a few days ago, except now you’re getting an OLED screen and twice the storage capacity for your dollar. And with the 1TB version you get a funky new dual-use case with a Velcro-attached inner shell for those times you just want a thin case to drop in a bag.

Valve is going to keep selling (and supporting) the 256GB Ste…

Though it feels like a blip in the history books, 11 years ago Nintendo released a little console called the Wii U. It had a large controller with a screen in it so you could play through the TV and was positioned to be the successor to the wildly popular Wii. Be it due to the confusing name or lack of 3rd party support the Wii U didn’t take the world by storm. Though its DNA is prominent in the incredibly successful Switch console which took over the Nintendo mantle, and most of the Wii U’s best games just four years later. 

The problem with a console like the Wii U is for those of us who went out and bought them, they’re a bit obscure. This can make for quite a challenge if something goes wrong, or the software just corrupts itself and the console gets bricked. That is, unl…

Twitch streamers are pushing back against the platform’s new “branded content guidelines” that will put tight limits on how advertisements can be run on their channels—and at least one prominent channel is threatening to leave Twitch entirely if the planned changes aren’t dropped.

The new guidelines page starts off with a detailed breakdown of what does and doesn’t qualify as branded content, and when and how promotions and sponsorships need to be disclosed. There’s also a bit about a branded content disclosure too, that “enables you to easily notify your community that your stream includes branded content.”

Things take a turn in the second part of the page, though, where Twitch lays out “permitted and prohibited brand sponsorship formats,” and cuts right to what it’s …

Skull and Bones! Ubisoft’s pirate sim wasn’t great when I tried it: A hodge-podge of not particularly thrilling systems that were anyway obscured by all sorts of live-service stuff. Our Shaun Prescott scored it 68% in his Skull and Bones review, while Tyler Wilde found that it just made him really want to see what was going on in Sea of Thieves. Not glowing recommendations, in general.

And yet, to its credit, Ubisoft keeps trying. In the wake of a free week and the game’s second season, the company has announced that Skull and Bones will finally be making the long voyage over to Steam, where it’ll launch on August 22. The Steam page is live now, in case you’d like to go and marvel at it. 

It probably won’t be enough to turn me into a die-hard Skull and Bones st…

Of all the things I expected to read in my morning feed of tech news, a report from the US White House stating that tech companies and governments need to stop using certain programming languages to combat cybercrime wasn’t top of my list. But that’s exactly what has happened and the document in question, Back to the Building Blocks, lays out the changes required and the reasons behind them.

The first thing that needs to go, according to the report, is the use of memory-unsafe programming languages to create the applications and codebases on which large-scale critical systems are reliant. Languages such as C and C++ are classed as being memory-unsafe as they have no automatic system to manage the use of memory; instead, it’s down to the programmers themselves to prevent problems s…

After months of waiting, Bandai Namco finally revealed its first model kits for Armored Core 6 at the end of March. The first run is set to launch this September, and includes fan-favorite NPC buddy Rusty’s Steel Haze, enemy pilot Raven’s Nightfall, and a weapons pack with the pulse blade, laser rifle, laser drone, and vertical plasma launcher.

I don’t think I ever set a Google Alert for AC6 model kits, because the last time I tried that the search giant would just email me nonsense results instead of crucial intel on the US release of the Platypus Squishmallow Santino my partner required. Despite periodically checking back on the status of AC6’s model kits, I missed the first showcase of the models in a Japanese language stream on March 20. 

In the past, I had a little…

Watch On

After a not-great response to a recent 10-minute IGN First gameplay preview of the upcoming Star Wars: Outlaws, Ubisoft says the August 30 release date is locked in, and the game will not be delayed.

We’ve generally liked what we’ve seen of Star Wars Outlaws so far, with some caveats attached. Staff writer Morgan Park called it out in a June preview for being overly cautious, for instance, saying the game’s real potential lies in its open world, which Ubisoft didn’t showcase during that event.

“What I played were three disconnected missions that showed off three things you’ll be doing a lot of in Outlaws: climbing and shooting, sneaking and shooting, and flying and shooting,” he wrote. “I had fun in all three, though not as much as I imagined.”

Ubisoft may not…

Treat yourself to a quick, stress-free, Wordle win with our help—just scroll or click your way to today’s answer. Or, if that’s all too much too soon, why not spend a little time reading a fresh clue for the February 7 (963) game instead, giving you a bit of help without giving the game away.

Finding three of today’s letters early on put me in a good mood—I just needed to work out where they went. Thankfully that didn’t take up too much time and before long, I found myself staring at a nice neat row of green letters, wondering how long I’d have to wait before I could play Wordle again.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, February 7

Thinking about time will help today, specifically events that only take place once a…

Before releasing Saturday morning cartoon roguelike Mythforce, developer Beamdog made its name remastering BioWare and Black Isle RPGs like the OG Baldur’s Gates. But there was always one that got away: Icewind Dale 2. Though an official remaster remains impossible for reasons I’ll get to, modding group Red Chimera has produced their own take on an Icewind Dale 2 Enhanced Edition.

Back in 2014, Beamdog CEO Trent Oster (formerly of BioWare) claimed that “nightmares abound ” in remastering Icewind Dale 2 on the company’s Infinity Plus engine, and in 2017 he ruled it out entirely. 

Somewhere along the line, in the great morass of Interplay shuttering and the rights shuffling between Atari and Wizards of the Coast, Icewind Dale 2’s source code just slipped away. Maybe it’s …

V Rising emerged from its coffin into early access in May last year and found an audience ravenous for a bit of survival-tinged bloodsucking. Developer Stunlock Studios has now announced that the game has sold over 3 million copies, pretty incredible figures for a PC-only indie title that isn’t even fully released, and thanks to such success the ambitions for the future are high.

Literally. V Rising is far more than Valheim with vampires and, at its beating heart, is your big ol’ gothic castle. The studio recently announced that a major free update is incoming, and the bit that matters is the admittedly dull-sounding multiple castle floors. But this is “by far the most requested feature” for the simple reason that “the vision of a dark silhouette on the cliff-side, tall and…

Let’s get Friday’s Wordle sorted. Give yourself the best start possible with our clue for the July 26 (1133) puzzle, and then use our tips to squeeze every last drop out of your follow-up guesses. Need something a little more direct? That’s exactly what today’s answer is for. Just give it a click, and enjoy your win.

It didn’t take too long to uncover a useful core set of green letters today, the only problem was working out what the heck to do with them. Nothing I tried seemed to fit, and I ended up going through the entire alphabet before I finally found the Wordle answer I’d been looking for.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Friday, July 26

Anything that is completely covered or flooded with something could be called today’s answer…

Fallout’s tagline may be “war never changes”, but don’t tell that to hero modder Quin. War has changed an awful lot in their Fallout world, which is now populated by zombies, dogs, and lickers, as well as being patrolled by the hunkiest version of Chris Redfield and a permanently irate Sheva Alomar. This is Fallout 4, except it’s Resident Evil 5.

Quin’s dedication to Fallout 4 is obvious from their YouTube channel, which has a boatload of videos showcasing various of the game’s mods, but the overall theme is definitely Resident Evil. The modder has produced videos showcasing Fallout 4 modded to resemble various entries in the series, including things like the Tyrant and R.P.D. building from Resident Evil 2, and “Fallout 4 but it’s Resident Evil 4 Remake.”

For w…

Earlier this month, Polish game devs, including several from CD Projekt Red, formed the Polish Gamedev Workers Union (PGWU). This came in the wake of further layoffs at the company in July, to the tune of 9% of its workforce. At the time, CEO Adam Kiciński explained the move as something to help make the teams more “agile and effective”, but agile and effective doesn’t pay the rent.

“This event created a tremendous amount of stress and insecurity,” explains the union’s website, “affecting our mental health and leading to the creation of this union in response. Having a union means having more security, transparency, better protection, and a stronger voice in times of crisis.”

The devs at CD Projekt Red have shed more light on the situation during an interview with IGN, …

In the wake of a controversial release of a single Starfield mission costing $7 as part of the game’s new Creations program, Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard says the studio “hears that feedback” from unhappy players and will “take a look at that and how we deliver content like that” in future releases.

A recent update heralding the release of the Starfield Creation Kit included a new mission that enables players to become bounty hunters for the Trackers Alliance faction, with the promise of future Trackers Alliance missions coming in subsequent updates. But the second Trackers Alliance mission, The Vulture, is only available as a paid add-on costing 700 Starfield Creation Credits—the equivalent of $7, which in reality is $10 because that’s the smallest amount of cred…

Improve your daily Wordle with our tips, here to help you make the most of every guess, every day. Need something more specific? Then take a look at a guided clue for the April 12 (1028) puzzle, or click your way to today’s Wordle answer.

Honestly, I thought something had gone wrong with today’s Wordle in the beginning. Two rows of grey letters? That can’t be right. The next few rows weren’t much better either, although at least by the time I reached the last guess, I had demolished enough of the alphabet to leave today’s answer as the last word standing.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Friday, April 12

Today’s answer is a sort of high-pitched tone used to make an annoying and often unreasonable complaint. This is how a child upset t…

Skull and Bones costs $70, or your local equivalent, and that’s a hefty price tag for something that bears the trappings of a live-service game, including an in-game store, battle pass, seasonal events, and premium currency. But Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot defended the cost in an investors call today, saying the high price is warranted because it’s a “quadruple-A game.”

Guillemot’s statement came in response to a question from an analyst, who suggested that the price point “could presumably limit the size of the player base.”

“You will see that Skull and Bones is a full-fledged game,” Guillemot replied. “It’s a very big game and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. So it’s a really full triple-A, quadruple-A game that will deliver in the lon…

Look, it’s Baldur’s Gate 3, and it’s on sale on Steam for less money than it has been at any point since launch. If you have somehow not checked out the BAFTA Beast, the gaming award show hat trick champion, PC Gamer’s own 2023 Game of the Year and 16-year review high score champion, what are you waiting for, hoss? Baldur’s Gate 4 ain’t coming any time soon, or from the same developers.

Granted, $9 isn’t exactly a huge sale given Steam’s memetic penchant for 50%+ off bonanzas, but given that it’s been less than a year since one of the best RPGs we’ve ever played hit us like a bolt from the blue, a 15% off sale isn’t too shabby.

And Baldur’s Gate 3 is just worth playing at any price: the union of classico hardcore CRPG crunch and reactivity with mega production value…

Three years after debuting for PC on the Epic Games Store, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, a remastered bundle of the first two games in the long-running Tony Hawk series, finally made its way to Steam earlier this month. By and large it’s been well received, but there’s one persistent complaint: A lot of players would really like to see the always-online requirement dropped. Yesterday it finally happened, thanks to the 1.1 patch for Steam, but only partially—very oddly, the offline mode is only available on Steam Deck.

The 1.1 patch notes are very brief:

• Steam Deck users can now play offline. 
• The keyboard overlay now works properly for Steam Deck users.

There was some hope that the Steam Deck offline option would also apply to the standard S…

Upcoming life sim Inzoi launched a demo for its Inzoi Character Studio last night and, surprising no one, Sims fans who’ve been starved for any kind of alternative to the series that’s been uncontested in the space for decades are flocking to it—to the tune of 18,000 concurrent players and rising. Not just for a change of pace either, because Inzoi really is gorgeous.

You can download the Inzoi Character Studio on Steam right now and its demo runs until 9 pm Pacific this Sunday, August 25. Apparently lots of you stayed up later than I did last night to jump in and try it out right at launch because the creations are coming in fast. (Update: I now have some Inzoi Character Studio tips to help you find all its editing options.)

Lots of usual creations ar…

Win your weekend Wordle with ease: now you’re here, you’re only a quick click away from today’s answer. Win today’s game however you like: we’ve got handy tips if you’d like some general advice, as well as a clue for the April 20 (1036) puzzle if you need it.

It took a while for me to find today’s Wordle answer, but it was such a satisfying game I honestly didn’t mind. I eventually reached the point where I’d shuffled my yellow letters around so much there was only one place left for them to go, and seeing them all turn green meant I’d finally slotted everything neatly into place.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, April 20

Clear, coherent, and easily understood—these are the defining traits of today’s answer. This word …

Windows 10 still utterly dominates the desktop PC operating system market, despite Windows 11 having been around for 2 years now. And there’s not much sign of this changing any time soon.

We all love a nice bunch of statistics to pour over and pick apart, but right now Microsoft must be looking at these figures on StatCounter (via TechSpot) and be absolutely hating them. Why? Because they suggest people, as individuals and as a business, really aren’t into Windows 11 at all.

With the numbers now updated for September 2023, we can see the global uptake of Microsoft’s latest operating system has been stagnant since April 2023, and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that this will change.

Not only that, but the market share paints a dismal picture: 71% for Win10, jus…

Three years after announcing it as “an all-new perspective” on its long-running Division series, Ubisoft has quietly pulled the plug on The Division: Heartland, saying it has decided to focus its efforts on other games instead.

Details were scant when The Division: Heartland was first announced beyond that it would be a free-to-play “standalone game that doesn’t require previous experience with the series.” We got a closer look in 2023, when it was showcased as an extraction shooter with survival elements, set in a small town in middle America. Ubisoft said at the time that developer Red Storm was “taking a test-and-learn approach to building this game,” with player feedback from ongoing closed beta tests guiding development.

We never got a chance to try The Division: …

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently in something of a crisis, as Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has failed in multiple attempts to be elected speaker of the house. This is an internal Republican spat but the effect has been to paralyse the government and leave the House unable to actually do anything. Or as the BBC puts it: Three days. Eleven votes. Still no US House speaker.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats are getting a bit sick of this, but Representative Jared Huffmann of California apparently decided to express his distaste through an echo of World of Warcraft’s most famous meme. During the latest vote to determine the next speaker, Huffmann voted for the Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, and he did so by shouting “Haaaakkkkeeeemmmm Jeffriiiieeess!”

The delivery is…

Almost a year after launch V Rising remains in early access, and is planning to celebrate its anniversary in the most electrifying of ways: Sod it, thought someone at Stunlock Studios, let’s add Frankenstein’s monster to our Dracula game. The Secrets of Gloomrot expansion is set in “a land twisted by the tortured ambitions of a scientific genius”, hello Victor, who in this incarnation has a legion of followers and a civilisation built around his works and “the pursuit of evolution”.

You know what that means: As the teaser shows, lots of electricity, lots of bodyparts jammed together, and a big old monster at the end of it. This is needless to say not going to be the most sophisticated take on Mary Shelley’s creation, but sometimes that’s fine and, c’mon,  Frankenstein’s monst…

For good or ill, artificial intelligence is here to stay. That’s actually underselling it because the AI industry is booming. Just ask Nvidia. Industries across the world are spending billions looking at ways to integrate AI models into their businesses. But while AI has the potential to boost productivity, accelerate innovation and become a useful tool for end users, global policy has yet to catch up to meet increasing concerns. 

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has released a report following a review of Foundation Models (FMs). It outlines a series of principles that it hopes will lead to measures that protect consumers, and foster healthy competition and responsible AI development.

The seven key guiding principles outlined in the report are accountabil…

Give your daily Wordle game an extra helping hand with our general tips and tricks, or maybe you need a focused nudge towards a win with today’s clue. You could even cut a path directly to the best bit and win in a click with the answer to the August 10 (1148) game. Whatever your Wordle goals, we’ve got something here for you.

Four yellow letters on my second go? Impressive. Four yellow letters on my third? Frustrating. But at least after that there was nowhere left to go apart from today’s Wordle answer—nothing beats seeing a full row of greens after a little bit of a word-fight.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, August 10

This is a generic word referring to a doctor or someone trained in the same field. This term is o…

Larian founder Swen Vincke is reading our Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam reviews, but if he hasn’t read all of them, it’s nothing personal: Even at a pace of five seconds per review, it would take the armor-clad CEO a month without breaks to get through every one of them. There are now over 500,000 reviews for Baldur’s Gate 3 on Steam.

“Half a million is a real big number,” Vincke wrote on X this week after hitting the milestone. “I wish we could get all of you in one place, shake your hands and chat about the adventure you had. But in the absence of that, reading these reviews has been pure joy.”

Technically, Baldur’s Gate 3 passed the 500K Steam user reviews milestone before this week. In its reviews tallies, Steam doesn’t include reviews from users who didn’t purchase the game dir…

Update: Looks like Ubisoft’s given up trying to keep this one quiet. In a post on Twitter, the company threw in the towel and admitted it has a 20th anniversary remaster of BG&E on the way, with more info to come in early 2024. The company also said that the build that went out to Ubisoft+ subscribers as part of this leak “is not indicative of the final game,” so there’s some hope for those of us put off by those dodgy screenshots making the rounds.

Original story: For years, Ubisoft has had one, single job: Not releasing Beyond Good and Evil games. To its credit, it’s done the work with aplomb for a good long while now. Sure, sometimes we’ll get some fanciful BG&E 2 trailer, a LinkedIn bio will change, or Joseph Gordon-Levitt will app…

Most Warcraft fans expected an expansion announcement for the massively multiplayer RPG at last weekend’s BlizzCon 2023. But to hear Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas tell it, Blizzard Entertainment’s bold decision to debut the next three expansions at once made even its own leaders nervous.

“There were definitely a few like, wait, we’re really showing all the logos? We’re going to tell them all of that? What do you mean, Chris?” said Hazzikostas, referring to executive creative director Chris Metzen’s opening-ceremony debut of the expansions, which are expected to fully roll out by 2030. “You’re going to say where it’s going to be?”

The three expansions will be part of a single story arc, The Worldsoul Saga, which is expected to tie …

Whether you need all the Wordle help you can get or just need a helpful pointer after an unexpected moment of bad luck, you’re sure to find all the advice you need right here. Learn how to make every guess count with our tips and guides, find some direction with our daily clue, and if you just need the May 5 (685) Wordle answer delivered on a plate, you’ll find that here too.

This Wordle has got to be the first normal one I’ve encountered all week. I had no high mountains to climb or deep valleys to smooth out, just a gentle, even game where yellows turned into greens in a reasonable amount of time. Those greens were followed by more greens until I reached today’s Wordle answer with a few goes to spare. Thank goodness.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint …

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Call of Duty is trying out something new with DMZ, and the reaction is all over the place. It’s a server wipe of faction tiers (i.e. completed missions) and players’ inventories, which is fairly common in this style of RPG-lite shooter but new to Call of Duty.

The official announcement kind of buries this under the news that new missions will be arriving in season two and optimistically calls the wipe “a refresh of your current Faction mission progress and an inventory (Contraband and Keys) reset.” This comes alongside a major rebalancing of the mode’s AI and an acknowledgement that the difficulty curve of the faction missions “was too aggressive for many players” and is being smoothed-out.

But it’s the progress wipe that’s caught the attention. There is nothing to st…