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Some people took up gardening in the first months of the pandemic. Others learned to cook, built Lego sets, or got buff. My pandemic fixation was SnowRunner, the sequel to off-road trucking sim MudRunners that’s essentially Death Stranding with killer mud deformation tech. It’s a challenging, gorgeous, and surprisingly tranquil driving game that we wholeheartedly recommend, but my eyes are now firmly fixed on the next entry announced yesterday at Geoff Keighley’s Opening Night Live stream—Expeditions: A MudRunner Game.

Were this just another off-road delivery sim I’d only be a little excited, but Expeditions appears to leave the log-hauling behind to focus on what I considered the best aspect of SnowRunner: scouting. The Expeditions announcement trailer and Steam page sugges…

Nvidia’s game streaming service GeForce Now is getting access to heaps of RTX 4080 graphics cards. That means plenty of frames on a wide range of platforms, up to 240Hz, all without breaking the bank for one of these high-end cards to call your own.

The new RTX 4080 ‘Superpod’ for GeForce Now will be rolled out to data centres starting late January, with the roll out happening across different locations globally as the year goes on. If you’re lucky enough to receive the first wave of RTX 4080 GPUs, you can gain access to the ray tracing power of the Ada Lovelace architecture and DLSS 3 on your devices via the cloud.

DLSS 3 could definitely make a big difference to the streaming experience, ideally helping keep CPU utilisation low to allow these server pods to deliver higher …

Game designer Andrew Gower, who created the legendary, still-active RuneScape MMO with his brother Paul in the early 2000s, has just unveiled a new MMO, and it’s releasing this year.

Brighter Shores has been in development for 10 years, according to Gower’s studio, Fen Research. It aims to provide “a relaxing respite from daily life,” casting players first as town guards in a “cozy” fantasy world—but not so cozy that the whole game is about snoozing next to a portcullis. Players’ concerns will quickly reach “far beyond the town walls.”

Fen Research promises some twists on MMO staples. The character classes are new—”Cryoknight, Hammermage, or Guardian”—and without going into details, the studio says it seeks to minimize “the ‘grindy’ gameplay often found in …

Diablo 4’s magnificent stallions may be more powerful than ever, but the game itself is in a tough spot. It’s always had its disgruntled players, but the blow done to its reputation by the almost universally reviled pre-season 1 patch has seriously soured the mood in the game’s community. Although Blizzard apologised for the update’s disastrous launch, it didn’t totally backpedal on it, and the mood in spaces like the game’s subreddit—once a hive of hype— is still bitter.

Other studios are paying attention. In a chat with IGN, developers on long-running Diablo-like Path of Exile gave their take on Diablo 4’s rocky season 1 launch, offering Blizzard their sympathy while emphasising that their own fans shouldn’t worry: Grinding Gear is taking a different tack with Path o…

This year’s CitizenCon was a two-day event and apparently the biggest show Cloud Imperium Games has put on for its cautionary tale about scope creep in MMO form. It wasn’t all engine demos and new ships for Star Citizen, however, with Cloud Imperium’s singleplayer game, Squadron 42, finally ready to be shown again.

“We are excited to announce that Squadron 42 is now feature-complete!” Cloud Imperium said. “As we move into the polishing phase, we’re fully focused on optimizing and fine-tuning all aspects of the gameplay experience to deliver an unprecedented cinematic adventure. To celebrate this milestone, we have gathered our core development leadership from around the globe to share what this means.”

The 26.5-minute video that accompanied the announcement features Cloud Im…

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 struggle…

Alright, quick show of hands: How many of us have started up approximately 30,000 games of Skyrim determined that—this time for real—you’re not just going to end up maxing out sneak, archery, and annihilating all your enemies from afar? All of us? All of us.

Now, put your hands down if every single one of those attempts eventually ended with you, hunched over in a cave’s dank corner, cackling as you loose dragonbone potshots at your foes for 3x damage? All of us? All of us.

Well no more, my friends, because Skyrim Special Edition’s still-thriving modding scene has delivered us from our own temptations in the form of Stealth Archer Killer, a mod from, uh, SpongeBobHentaiSimulator that offers a simple yet permanent solution to the problem of stealth archer…

Our general tips will help make your daily Wordle just that little bit easier, offering some useful everyday guidance for your guess. And if you’re after something more direct, you’ll find that here too. Everything from a fresh clue for the May 23 (1069) game to today’s Wordle answer is waiting below.

I really didn’t think I was going to make it today. I ended up with two grey slots to fix with my final guess, and not a great deal to go on. Pressure on, the remaining letters checked over once more for luck, and then… victory. Thank goodness. Maybe we could reach that point a little higher up tomorrow’s board, Wordle?

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Thursday, May 23

Today’s answer describes a sound, a soft sort of “hiss” as som…

There’s a hint for today’s Wordle ready and waiting for you just below if you need a bit of inspiration, but would still like to solve the daily puzzle at your own pace. Alongside that, you’ll also find some general tips that will help squeeze the most out of every guess. And if you need more than inspiration, the answer to the February 11 (967) Wordle is just a click away.

One missing letter really managed to stick a spanner in the works today. I was on track for a Wordle win in three… then a win in four… then I just wanted to win at all. I’m glad I was able to pull it back before the end—and I’m glad you don’t have to go through that at all (unless you want to, anyway).

Wordle today: A hint

Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, February…

Forget digital art, give me that real-world, touchable, sniffable stuff. In fact, forget oils and pencils, give me a few tubes of coloured thermal paste and an Intel chip and let me go to town. 

Oh… Cooler Master’s already done it? Of course they have. For reasons probably known only to the manufacturer, Cooler Master has decided to paint a “happy little landscape” on what looks like an Intel 13th or 14th Gen chip using its multicoloured Cryofuze 5 Prism thermal paste. 

First, the Cryofuze 5 paste is slopped onto a pallet and and mixed together. Then, the unknown artist goes to town. Once finished, the artwork is proudly displayed atop the CPU, which is seated in a Gigabyte Aorus Z790 motherboard.

Impressive and seemingly pointless, yes, but it makes f…

You know what’s relevant and exciting in the year of our lord 2024? The third Ultima game from 1983. OK, not really, and I leave drawing a line from Ultima 3: Exodus to the CRPGs of today as an exercise for the reader, but it really is fascinating to look back at nonetheless. 

This is the game Richard Garriott led the design of after leaving Sierra On-Line (who had published Ultima 2, a deeply weird RPG about time travel and stealing airplanes). Though it’s still chipping away at the rock surrounding the same basic idea of overland travel and dungeon-crawling, Ultima 3 was the first in the series to include a full party of adventurers and combat that’s actually kind of interesting.

YouTuber Majuular has done fine work in this series combining historical documentary with…

Make every Wordle a winner with our daily selection of hints and tips designed to give you as much or as little help as you want to see. Need the February 1 (592) answer in a flash? No problem. Just scroll down, or click the link to the side for the answer to today’s Wordle.

The instant the first letter of the first guess turned green, I was sure I was in for a quick win. What actually turned up in the guesses afterwards were more greys than I hope I ever see again, and I was only saved by a lucky yellow right at the end.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, February 1

Today’s answer means to tell someone off, to berate or criticise them for something they’ve done. A parent may _____ a child for drawing on the walls, for example. There’s just…

Need some help with Wordle today? Don’t worry if you’re on your last row with not enough green letters for comfort, the answer to today’s puzzle is right here. You’ll also find a great selection of general tips on this page, as well as a clue for the December 30 (924) Wordle if you’d just like a bit of help.

I was in danger of overcomplicating today’s Wordle, wasting time and precious guesses searching for something that wasn’t there and that I didn’t need in any case. Somehow I managed to catch myself before I got too far into the letter-weeds this time, although it’s annoying to know I could’ve reached today’s answer a little earlier if I hadn’t been so eager to give my keyboard a workout.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, Decembe…

A Tennessee man who leaked 45 minutes of Starfield gameplay earlier this week, and was selling copies of the game online more than a week before its release date, has been arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and possession of stolen property.

The sordid tale began on August 22 when, according to Kotaku, a low-quality clip of Starfield gameplay was posted to YouTube. It was quickly taken down following a copyright claim, but as usual, bounced around on other places for a while: Redditors chased the clip on increasingly obscure hosting sites, while a 60-second chunk on Imgur, which for the moment is still up, has racked up more than 1.2 million views over two days. The quality isn’t great, but people clearly want to see it.

The leaker, who used the alias memphian…

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chip is one of the more intriguing prospects for the PC over the next 12 months. Now Arm’s head honcho has revealed that there will be more PC-optimised CPUs incoming over the next few years.

One immediately intriguing option for a new entrant into the Arm CPU for PC market could be Nvidia. But hold that thought, we’ll come back to it.

Speaking to investors (via the Register), Arm CEO Rene Haas predicted that further players will follow in Qualcomm’s footsteps in offering Arm-based chips expressly designed for the PC. 

“Everything I’m hearing says that there are going to be multiple suppliers to serve that market over the next 12 to 36 months,” Haas reckons. Anyone wanting to make such a chip must have a licensing arrangement with Arm…

Need some help with Wordle today? Some days those yellows just don’t want to settle in, or they don’t until it’s too late. That’s where our daily Wordle help comes in. Keep on scrolling and you’ll find all sorts of tips for today’s game, as well as a helpful clue written just for the October 5 (838) puzzle, and the answer in plain text if you need it.

Wow, that was a slippery Wordle. I thought I had the answer every time—every available letter carefully considered, every possibility covered—only to find myself slightly less wrong than I was before. There was no doubt today’s winning word would turn up in time, but it always seemed closer in the moment than it actually was.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Thursday, October 5

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