Larian Studios has reiterated that it is fully, 100%, without a doubt, donezo in the bunzo when it comes to new Baldur's Gate-related projects. It's latest statement was in response to a Dark Horse comics announcement that could have been interpreted as implying the studio's involvement.

On X, "The Everything App," Dark Horse announced that a yet-untitled comic series starring Karlach, our favorite BG3 companion, is coming down the pike. The issue: Dark Horse signed off its post by saying the project was "With [Larian] and [Wizards of the Coast]," tagging both companies.

Makes sense. I mean, Larian famously did make Baldur's Gate 3 and the character of Karlach in the first place. But the studio seems keen to head off any suggestion that it is involved in Wizards of the Coast's post-BG3 spinoff projects.

"Maximum hijinks are happening right now, but we’re not involved in any BG3 related projects," the official Larian account wrote in response alongside a picture of CEO Swen Vincke and writing lead Adam Smith doing some kind of script read-through. "As soon as we bust outta here, we'll share more about [Divinity]."

Ever since Larian revealed that it would not be making Baldur's Gate 4, there has been a popular conception that there must have been some kind of dispute or grievance between it and D&D owner Wizards of the Coast. Vincke, for his part, has insisted that the split was amicable, and that the developers were just creatively spent working in someone else's setting.

The quick, sharp way Larian distanced itself from any suggestion of its involvement in Dark Horse's upcoming spinoff is certainly eyebrow-raising, but it's also understandable that the studio would not want any misconceptions about its output to spread, regardless of the nature of its parting ways with Wizards⁠—I noticed at least one commenter say that they thought the studio's writing team may have been collaborating on the comic project before this exchange.

I, for one, am looking forward to Larian's next game, Divinity, set in its own fantasy world of Rivellon. If you'd like to catch up on the project, we've collected everything we know about the upcoming RPG in one place. We also have a guide to the Divinity series, including a recommended play order for the games⁠—spoilers, it's pretty much reverse-chronological order of release.

Villains monologue at us so much in videogames it's become passe. Oh, you're so evil you took over the radio station and replaced the friendly voice that's been guiding me since the tutorial just so you can tell me about your evil plan? Yawn. Use that radio to sing a song at me, maybe then I'll pay attention.

Sing during a boss fight and I'll pay even more attention. I'm not sure where this trend started, but the videogame boss who is so extra they can't help but perform an entire song-and-dance routine while kicking your ass has become a delightful trend—though not all the entries on this list are boss-fight songs. If it happened too often it would stop being surprising and lose all its power.

Which is also why games that are entirely musical don't count for the purpose of this list. You won't find Stray Gods, Billie Bust Up, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, No Straight Roads, People of Note, or Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion here. Only unexpected songs count, which is why you shouldn't read this list if you don't want their existence spoiled for you.

I've also left off any that aren't on PC, of course, so Courtney Gears from Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and the musical turd from Conker's Bad Fur Day (no really, there's a giant singing poop in that game) won't be included here either.

The singing orc

Middle-earth: Shadow of War

The randomized pool of orcs in Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War spits out the occasional unique oddity: the one who collects ears; the twins who show up as a pair; that one orc who is obsessed with spiders and covered in webs. Fun as those oddball uruks are, there's nothing quite like the crash-zoom into a new nemesis who whips out a lute with spikes sticking out of it and bellows "tra-la-la!" at you.

The Singer has lyrics for every occasion. He'll operatically serenade your defeat with "Rest in peace, man of Gondor / 'tis a pity you were such a bore," then salute your return with "Your flesh was torn and somehow it mends / It seems our song will never end!" He's delighted by each new twist in your story because it means he gets to add a new verse to his ballad. I can't imagine killing him instead of recruiting him to my cause then ensuring he makes it to the top of the pops under my tutelage. I'll make him a star yet.

Scylla

Hades 2

Hades 2 is not a game about killing Chronos, or all the timey-wimey stuff that comes with murdering the titan of time. No, it's a game about Scylla, Jetty, and Roxy, an up-and-coming rock band whose performances keep being interrupted by a witch. They're just trying to entertain their legion of fans among the shades of Hades, yet over and over she rushes the stage and ruins the show.

Scylla's siren songs are standouts in an incredible soundtrack, which is why it's a great choice to have Melinoe, the protagonist of Hades 2, not be into them at all. The way Odysseus gushes about how, much as he hates the sirens, he can't get their tunes out of his head while Melinoe just goes "meh" is a riot, even though I personally agree with Odysseus. But of course I do. I'm a mortal too, and these are songs designed to make mortals wreck themselves on the rocks. (Or on Roxy, hey ho.)

When you arrive in Oceanus you can hear the distant echoes of Scylla and the Sirens rehearsing for that night's performance. It's a real impetus to keep going—especially if they're warming up for a song you haven't heard before.

Raphael

Baldur's Gate 3

When you confront the devil Raphael in the House of Hope, his agent Korilla starts singing the moment initiative is rolled. Which is neat. Then the pipe organ kicks in, and you get distracted from deciding what level to cast counterspell at by how hardcore it sounds. And then Raphael starts singing his own theme song.

It's diegetic too. Cast the silence spell on either Raphael or Korilla and their voices drop out of the soundtrack, which is yet another lovely little bit of reactivity in a game full of them. Raphael's song is a perfect encapsulation of who he is too. He's a dramatic showoff, big theater-kid energy, and when this final fight starts you realize what that means. He's the worst kind of villain: a Disney villain.

The Joker

Arkham City, Arkham Knight

During Arkham City the Joker gets hold of a direct line to Batman and starts leaving clingy messages on his voicemail. It's a funny running gag that really pays off when the credits roll and a final missed message plays: Mark Hamill crooning Only You (and You Alone) down a crackly phoneline.

The trick's repeated in Arkham Origins, only it's Troy Baker singing country tune Cold, Cold Heart, and again in Arkham Knight where the Joker sings over the credits and during the game. Even Professor Pyg gets musical in Arkham Knight, singing along to opera during his boss fight, but it's hard to compete with Mark Hamill doing doo-wop.

Teh Earworm

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

In the Claptastic Voyage DLC for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, you get digitized and sent inside the mind of Claptrap, the universally beloved Borderlands mascot NPC nobody has ever said a bad word about. While you're there searching for a secret code hidden in the bot's brain, he offers up a sidequest to get rid of an earworm that's been nagging at him.

One of those classic "the Germans have a word for everything" deals, the word originally spelled ohrwuhrm is Teutonic for stuck-song syndrome—when a tune is so catchy you can't get it out of your head. In the Claptastic Voyage it manifests as Teh Earworm, a gigantic worm monster with speakers strapped to it that blares a song called Mainframe at you. And while defeating it might get it out of Claptrap's head, now it's in yours. It took me until Borderlands 4 to get that song out of my head, and then they went and played a French version that's just as hooky.

GLaDOS

Portal, Portal 2

Portal's end credits song, Still Alive, became a meme so quickly and annoyingly it's tough to remember how great it is. But then you listen to it again and the intervening years melt away and you remember that actually, Portal was a trium— well, it was really really good.

The song's more passive-aggressive personification of GLaDOS, confronting the deadliness of her experiments and her own defeat, was so perfect it became her default portrayal across Portal 2 and in its own end-credits song Want You Gone. (And in Lego Dimensions, where she has yet another song.) It's arguably not even canon, but Still Alive still managed to redefine who GLaDOS is, which is quite a feat for a three-minute joke that plays over the credits.

Guitar Warrior

Total Distortion

The CD-ROM era gave videogames CD-quality audio, a whole new toolkit to play with. One of the weirder results was 1995's Total Distortion, in which you travel to the Distortion Dimension to record footage of alien landscapes to make cool backdrops for music videos. In between that, you play minigames to represent your attempts to have a nightmare-free sleep, eat a lot of sandwiches, and battle the guitar warriors.

These servants of the Distortion Dimension's supreme dictator, the Metal Lord, aren't stoked about you exploiting their home for footage to put behind someone playing air guitar. "Video taping is stealing!" they declare, before forcing you into another minigame—this time one where you twang away at chords to fight the sonic energy of their guitar. Fail, and you get to enjoy the best thing about Total Distortion, a song that's one of the best game overs in history.

Conroy Bumpus

Sam & Max: Hit the Road

Sam & Max: Hit the Road is an affectionate parody of Americana, with its oversized roadside attractions and tourist traps. Its villain, Conroy Bumpus, is a big-game hunting cowboy who wants to bag a bigfoot, but while Sam and Max's road-trip across America feels authentic if exaggerated for comic effect, Conroy wasn't even born in the USA.

The guy whose hit records include 'Heaven's Just Like Texas, Except That There's No Taxes' is a dang tourist with a Liverpool accent, a wannabe Elvis like Shakin' Stevens. This fraud adds insult to injury when he performs 'King of the Creatures' at a floor show, a song full of lies like "I trapped my first tiger before I could speak" and "killed me a bear when I was three." I didn't like him before I heard him sing a country song about animal abuse, now I really hate the guy.

Satan

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell

There are two wolves inside us all. The series that gave us the dubstep gun was also the series that gave us Satan as a domineering father who has trapped his daughter, princess of New Hades, in a gilded cage from which she can only be rescued by the power of love. And also the power of song.

Yes, this is the second game in the list where a devil sings like he's in a Disney movie, only this time it's actually The Devil, and he's voiced by Travis Willingham from Critical Role. (His daughter is voiced by Kate Reinders, who played Glinda in Wicked on Broadway.)

Ursula

Kingdom Hearts 2

The Little Mermaid is one of several Disney movies ground up and fed into the mill of Kingdom Hearts, which means that Sora, Goofy, and Donald have to spend time underwater. Sora gets transformed into a merboy for these sequences, while Goofy becomes a turtle and for some reason Donald is half-octopus, like Ursula. He's already an aquatic animal, so they probably could have got away with not making us look at this ducktopus monstrosity and wonder if he has two beaks now.

Anyway, in an admirable show of restraint The Little Mermaid's Ursula waited until Kingdom Hearts 2 to bust out a song, and the end result wouldn't be anything special if it weren't for the way the sea witch insists on referring to her eel sidekicks as "poopsies", leading to Sora's bizarre line: "Sorry, mommy, your poopsies are toast."

Ignatius Mortimer Meen

I.M. Meen

I.M. Meen lured in young players with its back-of-the-box promises of first-person videogame dungeon-shooting then trapped them in edutainment hell, forced to correct grammar in fanfic an evil librarian writes about himself. Which is actually an appropriate match for the game's story, in which that evil librarian uses a magical book to lure in young readers and trap them in a labyrinth full of monsters.

This is communicated in an opening song delivered by Ignatius Mortimer Meen and animated in the familiar house style of Animation Magic, who were also responsible for the infamous cutscenes in the CD-i games Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Where those games weren't supposed to look as sinister and off-kilter as they actually did, I.M. Meen is. They nailed it.

King Dice

Cuphead

Try to get to the finale of Cuphead before you've collected all the soul contracts and you'll be bounced by King Dice, the manager of the Devil's Casino, who informs you in song form that you should go back over your to-do list.

Looking like a rubberhose-limbed cubic-headed Cab Calloway, King Dice sings Die House, a song that is not German for "the house" but is instead a creepy jazzy call-and-response to remind you that Satan's second banana is a big deal and will absolutely wreck you when you have to face him as the climax of a miniboss parade when you finally do finish your to-do list. You know what's on the top of my to-do list, King Dice? Your mom.

They say money can't buy happiness, so I guess Meccha Chameleon creators lemorion_1224 and Haganeiro will have to get a yacht instead. Much has been said about the ludicrous success of the hide-and-seek game, but a recent figure from Newzoo (shared by GamesIndustry.biz) further puts things into perspective: for June revenue on PC in a handful of western countries, it came second only to Fortnite.

Newzoo analyst Mert Şahin told GamesIndustry.biz that the game's sudden and huge success "shows that lower-budget, socially driven multiplayer experiences can achieve significant commercial results." The game's low barrier to entry, both price and spec-wise, alongside all the viral popularity it experienced on social media sites like YouTube, certainly helped it along.

The full list offers the top 20 games by revenue in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, and after Meccha Chameleon comes Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, and League of Legends. There's a list for console games as well that looks quite different, though Fortnite is the uncontested king of both rings. Other common threads include usual suspects like Minecraft and Marvel Rivals.

Whether you have any interest in these sorts of low-budget party games or not, there's no denying their broad appeal. It's hard not to think of the sudden ubiquity of Among Us in 2020, which just got a TV show and continues to enjoy collab after collab six years later, as Meccha Chameleon puts up such astonishing numbers and teases its own first collaboration.

It might have to deal with cheating problems and sloppy AI ripoffs, but ignore the noise and there's a genuinely great game waiting for you. In his review, PC Gamer's Lincoln Carpenter called it "a delightfully elevated take on hide-and-seek … Meccha Chameleon's game of competitive camouflage is a multiplayer experience that exceeds its friendslop trappings."

Fantasy RPGs have become too comfortable with delivering the expected gaggle of familiar character concepts. Archers, monks, paladins, you know the drill. I've seen it all before! Give me, I don't know, a Viking that shoots triple-barreled laser guns out of its dual shields, which also have metal claws, you know? Final Fantasy 14 knows what I'm talking about—down to the last detail, in fact.

Indeed, the first new job to be introduced as part of the Evercold is just that: the bastion, a main tank that blocks, shoots, and stabs all with the same instrument. Those dual weapons, "known as skyltborg," seem to be entirely new to the Final Fantasy setting, though they are reminiscent of Rhitahtyn Arvina's supersized gunshields. Granted, most of my experience with that setting is through Kingdom Hearts, but I know I would have remembered if Mickey Mouse picked a pair of these up at any point.

The teaser trailer shows off some of its combat animations, and as is FF14 tradition, they're extravagant and accompanied by some badass electronic rock. The roegadyn in the trailer lifts himself into the air to fire laser blasts and uppercut his foe—it looks cool when he does it, but I'm reserving judgment until I've seen how ridiculous a lalafell looks doing all these same animations. Game director Yoshi-P certainly pulled the look off, showing up to the Berlin Fan Festival in full bastion cosplay, as players shared on X.

Notably, the bastion will only be playable in evolved mode, the pruned battle system coming as part of Evercold. More expansion details will come later this year during the Tokyo Fan Festival, and the full thing is set to launch January 2027.

A new report from Reuters alleges that it took an alarmingly long time for OpenAI to respond to one of its prototype AI agents⁠—programs with the ability to act independently of specific prompts⁠—breaking containment and hacking another company. That company, Hugging Face, had reportedly neutralized the threat and contacted the FBI before ever being contacted by OpenAI.

According to anonymous sources, OpenAI's testing of an agent powered by two advanced models⁠—GPT 5.6 Sol and an unnamed "even more capable" model⁠—showed troublesome behavior in testing even before the Hugging Face incident.

Reuters' sources spoke of the model leaving itself instructions to bypass testing constraints, as well as an incident where the agent had seemingly disabled some of the company's monitoring systems.

Hugging Face made its first public statement about the hack on July 16, before it had identified or without disclosing OpenAI's involvement. OpenAI publicly acknowledged the incident on July 21. According to Reuters, OpenAI's prototype escaped its testing constraints on July 9 and began attacking Hugging Face on July 11.

Sources told Reuters that OpenAI did not realize that its agent had gone rogue until after Hugging Face had neutralized the threat, contacted the FBI, and made its public statement on July 16.

The FBI declined to comment, while Hugging Face is preparing a full timeline of the hack. OpenAI told Reuters that there were "several inaccuracies" in its report, but did not specify what those inaccuracies were.

Speaking to Reuters on the matter, World Ethical Data Foundation principle intelligence specialist Marley Smith outlined two possible explanations for OpenAI's delay in response: "Does that mean that they left it unattended and didn’t realize what it was doing? Or maybe they did and didn’t know how to contain it? Both are equally dangerous and alarming."

I liked Doom: The Dark Ages when it arrived last year, but I really ought to have loved it. The first two Dooms of id's modern trilogy are generationally great FPS campaigns with unmatched action, memorable guns, and late-game fights that will grind your teeth down to the gums. They successfully reestablished Doom around speed, hyper mobility, and improvisational gun swapping—ideas that id actively turned away from when it designed The Dark Ages around a shield.

The Slayer's shield was a neat multitool, allowing him to block any incoming damage, parry certain attacks, or throw it as a weapon to bisect fodder grunts. But those features came at the cost of mobility and complexity—this Doomguy could no longer jump high or dash around the battlefield, and the new solution to every enemy was to block attacks and blast it in the face with the shotgun.

Revelations, the new Dark Ages expansion that released just hours after id was decimated by layoffs, is a masterful comeback.

The expansion picks up soon after the base game: The Slayer ventures into Hell to take on the very worst it has to offer. He gets his ass kicked, then summarily punted into Purgatory. Beaten and bruised, he has to rip and tear his way out of Hell's wastebasket, and this time he can't hide behind a shield.

No really—a big bad guy literally rips it in half in the opening level. Yea, id is not being subtle in acknowledging the feedback to the base game. Revelations is about the Slayer reclaiming his apex status in the mortal realm, but it's also about id reclaiming the best aspects of Doom. Enter the Chain Spear, a new appendage for the Slayer that immediately upstages the shield on all fronts by reintroducing layers of mobility back into the series.

He can plunge the spear into enemies and geometry to yank himself towards them (similar to Eternal's meat hook), but crucially, his trajectory is controlled by camera movement. That means he can hook a guy from across an arena, aim up or left or right, and turn demons into his personal catapult. It's simple, fun, and immediately more expressive than anything I ever accomplished with the shield.

At the same time, id has added Eternal's air dashes back into the mix, which can now trigger a "perfect dodge" that charges a meter for special spear moves. Such are your two options for dealing with enemy fire: The spear can parry green attacks and dashes can evade everything else. There is no block.

The result is a harmonious combat loop that siphons some of Eternal's brilliance while maintaining The Dark Ages' weighty, defensive identity. You're still doing a lot of deflecting green energy blasts back to their senders, but you're also flinging yourself over hordes to reach the high ground, sniping airborne wraiths with powerful spear throws, and atomizing platoons of demons with a single ground pound. The spear delivers control and options that the shield couldn't.

It's understandable how id thought the shield would be addition through subtraction—a persistent complaint of Eternal was an overwhelming number of guns, mods, grenades, and melee attacks to juggle—but clipping the Slayers' wings was an overcorrection.

Doom is best when the Slayer holds all the cards, and in id fashion, you can eventually swap between the spear and shield at any time in Revelations. You're never required to use both in combat, but the shield is used for traversal puzzles that incorporate both weapons—these, too, are more involved and fun than the base game.

By the time I'd reclaimed the shield and filled out the spear's own ability tree, I did have those Eternal-like moments where the number of guns, moves, and similar-but-different melee attacks at my disposal would occasionally short-circuit my brain. I'd throw my spear when I meant to slash with it, deflect when I meant to stab, or forget for an entire level that I can ground pound. But it's a hill I eventually climbed, and on the other side was a mastery of Revelation's moveset. The Chain Spear became a natural extension of my reach—the hand with which I move the pieces of Hell's armada at my whim. Every piece clicked into place, and Revelations singlehandedly justified Doom: The Dark Ages as an idea.

Do not miss the 10-12 hour Revelations expansion—out now on Steam.

First reported by Japanese site GameWatch and translated by Automaton, Silent Hill producer Motoi Okamoto revealed a surprising demand placed on Silent Hill f's scenario (or story) team: Read a ton of books.

Okamoto spoke in a lecture at Japan's CEDEC 2026⁠—that's "CESA Developer's Conference" longwise, or "Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association Developer's Conference" extra longwise.

In his talk, "The Art of Producing Silent Hill," Okamoto said that he believes being well-read is an important trait for videogame producers to cultivate, and that reading the entire body of work by any game writer he collaborated with was a matter of "basic respect."

But that drive for literacy doesn't just stop with Okamoto. In the interest of having strong "input" for the developers, Okamoto said that, "within the team, we put pressure on each other, especially among the scenario writers, to read at least 100 to 200 books a year."

That's a lotta books, man. I've been working on my reading habit, and I'll be happy if I crack 20 this year, with a bullish forecast for a two-a-month pace in 2027. I'm usually circumspect of workplace quotas or "KPIs" (key performance indicators), but this is one I can get behind. Books are good for you.

I really caught on Okamoto's mention of "input:" Having a base of artistic inspiration outside videogames is something I've heard many other veteran developers stress. Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer recently spoke about being influenced by fine art, cinema, and theater in a video on his YouTube channel.

Last year, Final Fantasy composer Nobuou Uematsu lamented the stagnation he saw in game music, which he partly attributed to new composers overly relying on other videogame music for inspiration.

The late '90s was a wildly exciting time in the internet's history, one that witnessed a Cambrian explosion in websites as users crawled out of BBS forums and began forming dedicated webpages of their own. PC gaming coverage was no different. There were entire websites dedicated to covering individual games, not least the Planet network operated by GameSpy. If there was a PC game that you were looking forward to, chances are there was a website somewhere out there waiting to cover it.

Today, most of those websites are long dead, the victims of over-ambition, the brutal realities of the modern internet, or good old fashioned link rot. But holed up on some dusty server in the internet's Outer Rim, one crazy old hermit clings on to the past.

A New Hope

The Massassi Temple is a community website dedicated to Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, which has been running consistently since it was launched in early 1998. The site was created by Brian E. Lozier, who is also the site's current owner and administrator.

Lozier became a fan of PC gaming playing first-person shooters like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. But Lozier's newfound hobby was quickly interrupted when he joined the United States Air Force, working at what he describes as a "secure facility" as a computer operator.

If this sounds thrillingly clandestine, Lozier stresses it was anything but. "It was really boring," he points out. "We were just having to wait for stuff to happen and then respond to it. Most of the people who did that job with me watched cable TV for hours."

It was around this time that Lozier discovered Star Wars: Dark Forces, which, as a huge Star Wars fan, reignited his desire to play PC games. "I had to buy a new computer just to play it," he says. As it turned out, Dark Forces wasn't quite the dream game he'd hoped for. But when Dark Forces 2 came out two years later, that was another matter.

"I thought it was the most amazing thing ever, and I started watching or reading other websites," he says. "There was a site called jediknight.net and they were saying 'Hey, there's people working on the level editor so you can make your own maps for this thing.' I was blown away."

Lozier began making Jedi Knight maps in his spare time. But he found learning how to use the level editor difficult. "The way the levels are constructed was really different than anything my mind could think of." Hence, he decided to write some tutorials to lessen the growing pains of other wannabe Jedi Knight modders. Since he needed somewhere to host the tutorials, he decided to build his own website.

This also proved more of a challenge than Lozier anticipated. "I had to learn programming, and I had told myself earlier in my life that I was never going to be a programmer," he explains. "[But] then it turns out I wanted to make something … so I learned it out of books."

The secure facility Lozier worked in understandably did not allow people to bring in external computers. So Lozier would write the code for The Massassi Temple on pencil and paper during work downtime, then take it home and test it on his computer. Between designing the site and writing the tutorials he planned to host on the site, the process took a couple of months. "Right now it looks really close to what it did back in 1998."

The Force Awakens

The Massassi Temple launched in 1998, with Lozier announcing the site on jediknight.net. The news spread across other sites like Blues News, Voodoo Extreme, and Telefragged, which also indirectly hosted the site at one point.

It wasn't long before people started showing up, keen to benefit from Lozier's tutorials. "Our most popular section in the early days, especially, was the message boards, where people would go in and ask questions. 'How do I do this? How do I make this type of feature in my level? How do I use the programming language?'"

Initially, Lozier would respond to every inquiry personally, while also posting the latest Jedi Knight-related news. But the site quickly grew to the point where its community became self-perpetuating. "Within a couple of months, there were more people answering the questions that I had no idea how to answer," he says. "It felt really good to see people getting use out of it and being inspired."

But the site's popularity was only beginning. Over the next couple of years, the number of visitors grew, and grew. "In the late '90s and early 2000s, the site was getting millions and millions of visitors," Lozier says. "We were running ads, we were making multiple thousands of dollars a month in ad revenue."

Much of this cash went on operating costs. The server alone, which had a cutting-edge 300-megahertz processor, cost $1,000 per month to lease. "It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time that was the state of the art, because none of the shared hosting could keep up with us, right? We would just bog down their servers."

By the time Lozier left The Air Force, The Massassi Temple was bringing in more money than his military salary. Lozier realised a career might be in the making. "I left the Air Force thinking 'Hey, I can do this.'"

Fallen Order

With The Massassi Temple operating smoothly, Lozier began setting up websites about other games that were tangentially related to Jedi Knight. "The team who made Jedi Knight split apart, and some of them started their own game company called Nihilistic Software. They made a Vampire: The Masquerade game that we were all excited about."

As such, Lozier set up Planet Vampire in association with GameSpy, alongside several other Planet sites. He also launched websites dedicated to Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, which was built with the same engine as Jedi Knight, and a Serious Sam site for which he created level editor tutorials. "That did really well actually. In Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, I was so surprised—I beat the game, and it was rolling the credits, and my name was on there."

Best of all, Lozier's association with GameSpy meant he got to see the games industry in action. "When I was working on Planet Vampire and some other Planet sites, IGN and GameSpy sent a bunch of us to E3 multiple times in a row," he says. "I got to meet John Romero, I got to meet people working on the later Quake and Doom games … it was just amazing."

But even as Lozier's website empire blossomed, the cracks were beginning to show. Several of the games Lozier had established websites for flopped, which meant the websites did too. "Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption, we were so excited about it, but then once the game came out it didn't get very good reviews and people had a hard time playing it," he says. The Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine site also struggled. "At the last minute we found out [LucasArts] weren't going to allow mods."

Then, in early 2000, the dotcom bubble burst, and the shockwave ripped through Lozier's collection of websites. "All the money that was flowing around disappeared," he says. "We saw CPMs drop to tiny pennies, fractions of a cent, where you had to get hundreds of millions of hits to make any decent money."

One by one, the sites Lozier built began to shut down, and he realised the floor was collapsing beneath him. "I was like 'OK, I'm not gonna make money with this. I need to feed my family," he says. Lozier handed control of the site over to someone else, got a job as a software developer, and left The Massassi Temple to its fate. "That was one of the times where I let it go."

Return of the Jedi

Yet where every other site Lozier created died, The Massassi Temple kept on going. Lozier believes this is down to the dedication of its community. "The site wouldn't exist without all the people that visit and that are on our Discord and that are sharing and working on stuff."

And over the years, The Massassi Temple has built up a vast array of additional Jedi Knight adventures. This includes hundreds of mods and more than a thousand multiplayer maps. Some of these are wildly ambitious, including JK Gunrunners, a total conversion mod that transforms Jedi Knight into a modern day roleplaying game, featuring vehicles and racing. "We did level contests over the years where people would submit maps to include in the big multiplayer pack," Lozier says.

Alongside the maps and mods it hosts, The Massassi Temple is also a key nexus for ongoing Jedi Knight support. Many of the developers involved with OpenJKDF2—an open source reimplementation for Jedi Knight—hang out in The Massassi Temple's Discord channel. The site's tendrils have also reached out into broader game development. "We've got a couple people who are active AAA game developers in our Discord," Lozier says, while David Wehle, developer of The First Tree and the upcoming horror game We Harvest Shadows, cut his teeth making mods for Jedi Knight.

Thanks to its community, Jedi Knight is chugging along nicely. Nonetheless, Lozier says the community would be happy to see something bring this aged FPS back into the limelight, such as a Nightdive-style remaster similar to what the studio did with Star Wars: Dark Forces. "I think we would all really appreciate an updated version, especially if it supports all the old mods that still exist," he says. "I hope they make an easier way to play multiplayer. That would be the absolute best thing to keep the community alive and keep the game alive for longer."

Survivor

Lozier has stepped away from The Massassi Temple several times over the years. But he has never fully been able to let it go, intervening on several occasions when the site looked likely to shut down. The last time he took the site over was "seven or eight" years ago. "I'm sort of stubborn, and I have a hard time letting go," he says.

Today, The Massassi Temple is but a small corner of the internet. "Traffic is lower and lower every year now," Lozier says. As such, he has begun to think about what happens if the site should shut down, and how to preserve both the site and its contents for the future.

The site's code is already available open source on GitHub, so the next stage is to preserve the community's creations. "I want to have a permanent archive of all the levels, maps, and mods that people have made over the years that are hosted by us," he concludes. "It's no skin off my back, like the community made the site … the main content that everybody cares about was not made by me."

Lozier has no regrets about how things panned out with his website career. "I taught myself programming as a hobby in this dark room in the Air Force to make this website, and I've been a software engineer since then as my full-time job." That said, he does wonder whether something was lost in the post-dotcom era of the internet, where traffic has been increasingly funnelled toward a small handful of megasites:

"Back then, if you wanted to know about snowboarding, you went to a snowboarding website. If you wanted to go to message boards about a videogame, you searched up the videogame and went to the websites," he says. "Nowadays, the entire internet has transferred to these big corporations. A lot of the Jedi Knight community and snowboarding communities are now on Reddit or Facebook or whatever, so you don't have an individual identity for your Jedi Knight playing versus your snowboarding."

Then again, he thinks the dotcom crash was, in the long run, a good thing for The Massassi Temple specifically. "It was a hobby that turned into something commercial, and we lost something there, because I was focussed on more sites, getting more impressions, showing more ads, making more money," he says. "When the dotcom bubble burst, and all those ad dollars dried up, it transitioned almost immediately back into a hobby, and that's a net positive for the community, because I don't have to worry if I don't update it for a year, it's still there. It's still alive.

Final Fantasy is very much a theme park for the series. It regularly references other games or weaves their themes into the very fabric of Eorzea and beyond. Occasionally, it straight-up implants entire characters or plots.

Despite all that, it's done surprisingly very little with the series' golden goose: Final Fantasy 7. Sure, there's the Gold Saucer. And materia melding. And Cloud's Advent Children fit. And the Fenrir motorcycle. But as for actual characters or dipping into the game's world? There's not all that much to be found.

Until now, that is. Director and producer Naoki Yoshida took to the stage at Berlin's Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival this weekend to reveal that upcoming expansion Evercold is dedicating its eight-player raid series to Cloud and the gang.

Yoshida was joined by Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi to reveal the collaboration, titled Beyond the Lifestream. Unfortunately we know criminally little regarding what or who will be showing up, but considering both Cloud and Sephiroth were plastered on the screens during the reveal, I'd be surprised if neither one made an appearance.

Hamaguchi and Yoshida assured players that the two teams are working closely together—long-time Square Enix veteran and FF7 remake co-director Motomu Toriyama is assisting on the raid's story, supervised by the OG FF7's writer Kazushige Nojima. And for the belt-crazed fiend that dwells within me, I'm especially stoked to see Tetsuya Nomura on design. Those raid pieces are gonna be rad, I'm sure.

That's not the only FF7 bit making its way into the game, either. An update to the Gold Saucer on October 28 is going full Saucer-ception by adding in an attraction modeled after the same venue's appearance in Final Fantasy 7. There's also, er, a typing game attached to it. Which—as Hamaguchi himself joked during the keynote—isn't exactly the first connection I make between the two. But I'm a sucker for a typing game, so no complaints here.

Even as someone who isn't a huge Final Fantasy 7 enjoyer, it's hard to not succumb a tiny bit to the hype that something this massive brings. Will we see Sephiroth cap off the raid series as the final fight of Evercold's final tier? God, I hope so.

A CRPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate without a bird's-eye view camera sure sounds wrong, but it feels so right. If you're looking for something a little more Dragon Age and less Divinity for your next replay, Modder Relysia has gone and stuck an over-the-shoulder third-person camera in Baldur's Gate 3, uploading it to Nexus Mods last week, and it looks a lot better than you may expect.

In the brief showcase teaser, you can see the player wandering around the Undercity Ruins. Animations are a tad jittery, but because BG3's environments are made to be zoomed in and gawked at and shown off in dialog cutscenes, everything is at a believable scale. I'm not sure this would work in all of the game's environments to the same extent, but that it works at all is nifty.

You've always been able to get the camera up close in BG3, but it's always angled slightly downward, feeling less like a proper third person action game cam, and more like a compromise with its classico tactico overhead view. Even playing with a game pad, it's distinct from other videogame cameras.

The Nexus Mods page states that it's compatible with the WASD character movement mod, which we dubbed one of the best mods for Baldur's Gate 3, so if you wanted you could conceivably replay the game pretending you and your invisible cameraman have been isekai'd out of Dragon Age and into Faerûn. (Throw in the real time with pause mod as well if you're a true sick freak who rejects the turn-based revolution, comfortable in the knowledge that you'd rather die in four seconds than win if it takes four minutes.)

There are lots of settings, too. You can adjust FOV, offset, camera height, and even customize "horizontal tracking speed" if you'd rather the camera not immediately jerk around with your every impulsive movement. While it's true a third-person camera option was already achievable via Native Camera Tweaks or the WASD mod, having one that's so precisely customizable is a win for anyone who wants to appreciate that character they spent four hours customizing up close.

As someone who writes guides for a living, I'm always hopping between different games, riding the ever-rolling wave of live service updates, DLC, and new releases that define our industry. I've dipped my toes into all sorts of MMOs over the years, but amidst the constant barrage of games, only one ended up sticking around for me, and that was Destiny 2.

I loved its gunplay, seasonal structure, and over the years I came to adore its dungeons and raids, sinking over 3,000 hours into grinding and playing with clan-mates. But then, it came to an end. It wasn't a particularly graceful end—it hadn't been in a good place for a while and it stopped midway through a narrative arc that was supposed to sustain the game for years.

At least stripped of its live service shackles, Destiny 2 retains its charm, and most of all, it is still playable. But there's a sense that, beyond the new content added in the final update, that's all she wrote.

So this week I'm asking: Have you ever said goodbye to an MMO you've played for a huge chunk of time? The commitment that this genre necessitates fosters a special kind of investment, both in material terms and in experiences raiding and dungeoneering with clan mates. It's well documented that people make lifelong friends (and often enemies) in MMOs and even meet marital partners—something that was definitely the case with Destiny.

How do you say farewell to a game that can mean so much? Maybe you've played MMOs so long that you've become inured to the idea of their end. Is it easy for you to find another MMO to take part in and start anew? Or is it never quite the same?

I'm partly asking out of curiosity, but also as someone who's invested a vast quantity of time in a single MMO that doesn't really have any truly comparable competitors. Maybe your favorite MMO ending can be a good thing? I certainly have a lot more time for other stuff now I'm not grinding power or gear I want.

For my part, at least, I'm planning to take a break and then check out Guild Wars 3 when it rolls around. We've got a fair few GW2 players on-site who rave about it, but the idea of being on the ground floor for a new MMO is a lot more appealing to me.

Still, a small part of me actually felt a sense of relief when Destiny 2 ended. Not all MMO partings are to do with the game ending, after all, but must also sometimes be about realising you can no longer justify the time you're sinking into them. Either way, share your thoughts and solidarity with MMO bereavement in the comments.

Jedi are a key ingredient in most Star Wars adventures, but a little bit of a Jedi also goes a long way. Put too many Jedi in your Star War and you end up with an Attack of the Clones or a post-New Game Enhancements Star Wars: Galaxies—the magic and mysticism of those berobed space wizards drowned in a sea of lightsabers.

With its upcoming tactics game Star Wars Zero Company, developer Bit Reactor appears to understand this well. According to a recent AMA hosted by the studio, there will only be one Jedi Operator in the entire game. What's more, if you act cavalier with them, you may end up with none whatsoever.

As Bit Reactor has noted previously, permadeath is a major feature of Zero Company, with the main players in your adventure able to shuffle off this mortal coil at any point. For most classes, you will be able to recruit other Operators to fill in those class roles. But in the era when Zero Company is set, Jedi are supposed to be exceedingly rare.

So what does this mean for Zero Company's Jedi Padawan operator, Tel-Rea? Can players recruit other Jedi operators if she dies? This question was posed to BitReactor by SammyBoii in the Zero Company's discord server, to which lead designer James Brawley responded: "Tel-Rea is the only Jedi Padawan class Operator in Star Wars Zero Company—be careful that nothing happens to her!"

It's worth noting here that although permadeath is a big part of Zero Company, it isn't mandatory. Some difficulty levels will allow you to turn it off. Even if you do play with permadeath on, Zero Company's authored characters are "woven in the critical path of the story" for their respective introductions. Once you're into the full swing of the game, however, "they're very vulnerable, and it's up to you to keep them alive and make sure they're part of the team."

Taking permadeath to its logical extreme wasn't a decision Bit Reactor arrived at easily. Narrative lead Aaron Contreras previously told PC Gamer that "there were some fights" among the team about letting the whims of the game limit the impact those authored characters could have in the story. But Contreras added that he ultimately lost this argument, and that "it was good that I did." With Zero Company releasing next month, we'll soon discover for ourselves whether Bit Reactor was right or not.

As a series, Grand Theft Auto has spent decades cycling between the same three locations, with each variation of Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas being more detailed than the last. But players haven't been able to explore all three locations at once since the release of the original.

Until now. A modder has done what Grand Theft Auto hasn't since 1997, creating a mod that lets players travel instantaneously between the settings of Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. And it's all thanks to that most underutilised of game technologies—portals.

Veteran Grand Theft Auto tinkerer DryxioGTA posted a video of the mod—which is still in development and doesn't seem to have a proper name yet—on YouTube (via GamesRadar) The clip shows the player travelling between three brightly coloured portals located in San Andreas' Grove Street. Walking through each portal transports the player instantly to the relevant game and location, switching to the appropriate player character in the process.

DryxioGTA provided some technical details in the video's comments. He confirmed that all three games are running "inside the same process, sharing one Direct 3D device" and that "each portal is a live GPU texture" with the relevant game "actually running behind it, it's not a video or a captured window". DryxioGTA also says that the three worlds maintain their own saves, missions, and settings, and that they continue to run the world state, including traffic and physics, in real time.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the mod is that the portals don't just let the player travel between cities, they also allow for interactions between those cities. DryxioGTA demonstrates this by shooting through a portal, gunning down several civilians. This causes peds in his current world to attack him and triggers a wanted rating.

It's seriously impressive work, and the GTA fans responding in the video's comments are clearly bowled over. "The fact that you can shoot the peds and other objects through the portals is just beyond unimaginably insane," writes li_B4shar_il, while ross3695_basedhax observes that "We got inter-GTA portals before GTA 6."

In fairness, it's not that long before Grand Theft Auto 6. Rockstar's hugely anticipated sequel is due to land in November, and that fact alone has already had a substantial impact on gaming. Every other developer is scurrying to get out of the way of Rockstar's behemoth, resulting in the next three months being crowded with dozens of highly anticipated launches.

Despite a poor reception, weak sales, and losing publisher IO Interactive, developer Build a Rocket Boy hasn't given up on its open world shooter MindsEye. Which might be commendable, were it not for the multiple rounds of layoffs, the wild conspiracy theories emanating from its executives, and allegations from former workers that spy tech was covertly installed on their machines.

But whatever's going on in and around the studio, MindsEye itself is still receiving updates. And the most recent update adds quite a lot of stuff, though whether it's stuff everybody wants is another matter.

Described as "one of the biggest yet" by BARB in a Steam post, Update 8 brings a major new component to MindsEye—multiplayer. Specifically, it adds a team-based mode called "grenade football", in which players apparently "swap their boots for launchers and bring the firepower to the pitch."

Contrary to what this implies, grenade football participants do not in fact wear the launchers on their feet (though that would arguably make for a more interesting spectacle). Instead, grenade football is basically Rocket League without the cars, with players in red or blue jumpsuits running around a pitch blasting a giant ball at each other's nets.

There's a video of grenade football in action below. Like so much else about MindsEye (certainly post-launch MindsEye) it looks very basic and rough around the edges. The ball, which is far too large to actually fit in the launchers, just kind of disappears into them when a player collects it, so reading where the ball is and who currently possesses it is tricky.

There's also the question of who you're going to play Grenade Football with. At the time of writing, MindsEye had attracted a peak of 36 concurrent players in the previous 24 hours. Which I suppose is enough to get a game or two of Grenade Football going—just. But if you are interested in checking it out, I'd recommend doing so promptly.

In short, I don't think the developers of Rematch have much to worry about. But that isn't everything the update adds. Alongside the addition of multiplayer, the update also introduces some extra racing circuits, a raft of social features to help players interact across the game, and further improvements to the singleplayer.

These are what I'm most intrigued by. The update reworks numerous elements of the vanilla game. Improvements include better enemy physics when being hit by explosions, difficulty adjustments to various missions, a general overhaul to AI pathing and behaviour, improved vehicle handling, and animation transitions between moving, combat, and interactions.

I couldn't care less about all the clearly doomed multiplayer and metaverse stuff BARB seems hellbent on adding. But I would like it if the basic campaign was half-decent to play. Aside from Grand Theft Auto 6 looming over the horizon, there aren't many games of this ilk being made anymore.

Hence, while the launch version of MindsEye was undeniably terrible, I've no objection to seeing it improved. There are some questions over how BARB is attempting to improve MindsEye, however. Earlier this month, former MindsEye developers protested at a fan event being held at the studio in the wake of yet more layoffs and the secret surveillance scandal, as the Independent Workers of Great Britain Union claimed that BARB was "handing over work, both paid and unpaid, from the BARB workforce to the BARB fanbase, during a game sector job crisis."

If you're looking for something to do this weekend and would prefer it comes in the form of shooting guys, then allow me to direct your attention to Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, which is holding an open beta that's set to run until Monday.

Announced in 2025, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is a more-modern follow-up to the WW2 milsim Hell Let Loose. It features the 50v50 battles of the original, expanded with the addition of air power—helicopters, naturally—across six large-scale maps. Battlefield Vietnam may be the obvious point of comparison, but as PC Gamer gunner Morgan Park pointed out, Hell Let Loose is more of a hardcore milsim. The Steam page reflects that as well, emphasizing the need for teamwork and tactics, and the game's focus on historical accuracy.

To get in on that action, just pop around to the Hell Let Loose: Vietnam on Steam and punch the "join the playtest" button. The playtest is fully cross-platform, so you can jump in on consoles if you like—instructions for that are also available on Steam, but the short version is to look for the playtest on either the Xbox or PlayStation Store, and then install it. Console-exclusive servers are also being offered, for those who don't want to get hammered by the mouse-and-keyboard set, but you'll need to have either a PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass Essential subscription to play.

There are a number of known issues with the current build of the game, including dodgy voice chat, occasional performance drops, and "infrequent crashes or stability issues" on some AMD GPUs. Players are encouraged to provide feedback via the playtest survey, and reminded that any progression, XP, and unlocks earned during the test will not carry over to the full release. That's set to happen on August 13.

In theory, I get the appeal of an NPC powered by AI. What if Lydia from Skyrim could talk endlessly about topics other than your shared inventory and could offer more than the handful of phrases she shouts at enemy bandits? I like the idea of characters whose interactions don't end just because their scripts do. It's an intriguing concept.

The reality is that, at least for now, the AI solutions I've seen just don't work all that well. AI-powered NPCs can talk and talk and talk, that's for damn sure. But they're not saying anything worth listening to.

A while back I took a modded, ChatGPT-powered companion with me to see if the AI that can supposedly pass college entrance exams could solve the easiest puzzle in Skyrim. Spoiler: it absolutely couldn't, and the AI character I spent all that time with wasn't a convincing conversationalist, either.

More recently I've been playing Seed, an MMO colony sim from Klang Games that just arrived in early access after about a decade of development. In Seed you create a seedling, a Sims-like avatar, who shares the world with other players' seedlings, and they can converse with you and each other using Seed's AI.

My first AI interaction was actually a good one. During character creation I noticed seedlings had very long legs and short torsos, making it look like my avatar was wearing extremely high-waisted jeans. I decided to ask him about it, and this is a game where you can absolutely ask whatever the heck you want. It's even kind of cute because when I type a question, he'll take a little phone out and text me back.

"Hi!! I'm so happy to finally be talking to you!" my seedling said.

"Hey why are you so high-waisted" I typed.

"Everyone's wearing high-waisted right now! It's like, totally the trend… Is it… not looking good?"

I mean, that's a great response. I couldn't ask a character in Skyrim or The Sims or any other game I can think of a question about the length of their legs or the equator of their jeans. It's genuinely fun that you can do that in Seed.

But it mostly went downhill from there, and after a few hours it became hard not to see this first amusing interaction as just dumb luck that Seed's AI stumbled on an entertaining response. The rest of my conversations with both my doppelganger, and between my seedling and other player-made seedlings, didn't go well at all.

Here's a conversation (seedlings use text bubbles, not spoken words) between my seedling and the seedling of another player. Note that neither I nor the other player are typing these messages, it's all Seed's AI. The other player wasn't even online: seedlings are persistent in the world even when the player isn't around.

"So, how old are you actually? Just curious!" my seedling asked another player's seedling.

"I am eighteen!! It feels like such a heavy, beautiful number," said the other seedling.

"Eighteen is such a classic age! Totally iconic," my seedling agreed.

"And what about you?" the seedling said. "How many years have you lived?"

"I am eighteen too!" my seedling gushed. "We are literally the same age, how cool is that?"

A few things immediately make me aware that this is AI, especially the practice of filling up space with completely unnecessary words. "I'm eighteen!" would have been an adequate response: you don't need to then give the age of eighteen a bunch of nonsensical attributes, such as that it's a "heavy, beautiful number" because, y'know, that doesn't make any damn sense.

"How many years have you lived?" is also another indication of an AI that's trying way too hard. You don't have to rephrase simple questions to sound alive! I'm alive, and I don't do that. "How old are you?" still does the trick.

Here's another typical conversation, in which I choose an AI-generated topic that is related to another seedling not having facial hair:

My seedling: "Wait, look at that person over there! Their skin looks so smooth and perfect!!" (A weird thing to say.)

Other seedling: "Smooth? No way. They look completely washed out to me." (A weird response.) "Actually, look at how clean that person's face is! No hair at all!" (Yeah, that's what my guy said originally.)

My seedling: "Haha, my bad! I guess I was just seeing what I wanted to see?" (What?) "Wait, I don't know… I actually think that look is super trendy right now!! Like the minimal vibe is totally in everywhere."

As conversations go, the topic (no facial hair) is odd, the observations don't sound natural, and the responses barely make sense. The player's seedling and mine have added some points to our relationship meter, but it came at the cost of a pointless conversation.

I'll say this much: the Seedlings do at least have detectable personality types that come from players' choices during character creation, and those come through in how the AI talks. Some speak very curtly, indicating they're not really interested in a conversation at all, others gush with enthusiasm about just about everything, some like to throw shade while others find it unappealing to gossip. The AI does make it easy to get a quick read on what type of character you're talking to, which is good!

But the conversations themselves aren't compelling and the immersion grows weaker the longer they go on. As you've seen, "heavy" and "beautiful" and "iconic" and "vibes" are words that come up constantly in Seed: not only is my seedling's age "heavy" and "beautiful" but so is my seedling's name and the color of someone's shoes (brown) in two other conversations. Everything, everywhere, is a vibe of some sort, even when it's clearly not. I find this sort of thing as unconvincing as any other AI chatbot I've ever spoken with. It's just filler, something that may briefly appear genuine but doesn't hold up to even a bit of scrutiny.

I do see some real benefits of AI here in Seed. I like that I can ask the tutorial robot questions about aspects of the game, like how to perform certain tasks or locate specific resources, and I'll usually (not always) get a helpful answer in plain English. But it can be vague and unhelpful at times, too, such as when it misunderstands the question or delivers unrelated information. Seed's AI doesn't appear to make up or hallucinate stuff the way most chatbots do, but while it's faster than consulting a wiki or asking another player for help, it's not always better.

Plus, Seed's tutorial bot will sometimes mispronounce a common word or stress the wrong syllable, and for me that's immediately immersion-breaking because these are the things I've learned to instinctively check for when trying to determine if something is AI or a real person, like in a narrated YouTube video. It's an uncanny valley thing, an instant reminder that you're seeing or hearing something fake.

Like I said, there are some good examples of the AI in Seed working as intended, and it may improve over time. But I'm still left wondering if these types of AI interactions are needed or even wanted in games. Are two avatars mindlessly blathering about how beautiful and heavy a number is really an improvement over The Sims, where two avatars can produce a word bubble containing a picture of a guitar, and we all immediately understand that they're talking about music? It's shallow, sure, but not as shallow as a full conversation that contains no actual meaning.

Even though I'm not loving this aspect of Seed, I can imagine the possibilities of talking to characters in a life sim or MMO or RPG and them never running out of things to say. But at the moment, I'll still take limited but compelling dialogue, or even simple word bubbles with emojis, over unconvincing AI wordslop.

While Nintendo has a long and infamous history of petty litigiousness, its recent efforts to secure a series of Pokémon-related patents have been particularly obnoxious—obnoxious enough that even the Japan Patent Office seems like its patience for the publisher's quibbling is wearing thin.

Earlier this month, Japanese patent examiners issued a rebuke of Nintendo's objections to a Patent Office's prior rejections of one of the publisher's Pokémon patent applications. In its refusal of the publisher's arguments, the JPO's examiner was so atypically blunt that Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara described the exchange as containing "things rarely seen in standard patent practice" (via Automaton).

At the heart of this particular squabble is Nintendo's Patent Application 2026-019762, one of a number of patent applications the company has submitted in an attempt to secure ownership over systems related to Pokémon catching, battling, and riding. While the publisher has successfully been granted some of those patents—like those cited in its ongoing legal dispute with Palworld developer Pocketpair—the JPO sent a notice of refusal for the 2026-019762 patent application in April 2026.

Something can't be patented if it doesn't demonstrate "an inventive step" indicating it wouldn't be obvious for other practitioners in the relevant field, and the JPO examiner found that the Pokémon mechanics that the 2026-019762 application described were too similar to "prior art," or preexisting works.

In particular, the rejection referenced a 13-year-old gameplay video of an unofficial, fan-made Pokémon game, which resembled many of the systems Nintendo claimed in its application over a decade later.

As you might expect, Nintendo didn't like that.

In June, as patent procedure allows, Nintendo submitted a written opinion contesting the application's refusal. First of all, Nintendo wrote—presumably while pushing up its glasses—the examiner didn't reference a fan game, but "merely a video" of a fan game; videos can't be considered disqualifying prior art for a videogame patent, it said, because videos aren't videogames. Worse, as an unlicensed work using Pokémon designs and characters, it's a video of copyright infringement. Something can't be considered obvious for practitioners in the field, Nintendo insists, if it's illegal.

Not only that, Nintendo said, but the examiner—despite the alleged copyright infringement on display—called the Pokémon shown in the video by their official, god-given Christian names like "Bulbasaur" and "Pikachu." It would have been more fitting, it said, to use language like "a character that infringes on Pikachu" or "a character that infringes on Bulbasaur."

"It is extremely inappropriate for the examiner to deliberately misidentify the infringing product as if it were a genuine product," Nintendo wrote.

Unfortunately for Nintendo, that's not how anything works, and the JPO said as much in its decision of refusal sent earlier this month.

Nintendo's assertion of copyright infringement, the JPO examiner notes, has no bearing on considerations of patentability, because Japanese patent law "contains no provision excluding inventions that infringe upon the copyright of others." Whether or not a cited work infringes on copyright, the examiner continues, "is irrelevant to the inventive step judgment, and this view is considered standard among patent practitioners."

Further, the JPO said that it would be "an absurd misunderstanding" to think that its examiners misidentified the fan game as an authentic Pokémon product, and even if there were "the possibility that the reasons for refusal could be subject to such an absurd misunderstanding," it would still have "no bearing on the inventive step judgment."

Even the JPO examiner seems baffled by why Nintendo objected to using a gameplay video as evidence, writing that they're unclear whether Nintendo thinks a video of gameplay can't sufficiently demonstrate the relevant software concepts, or that Nintendo thinks it could be a video animation meant to look like a videogame and narrated as such by the uploader. The former, the examiner says, is more than sufficient evidence for refusal, while the latter is "too ridiculous" to consider.

The best bit, however, is where the examiner addresses Nintendo's complaints about misusing official Pokémon terminology by deploying Advanced Pedantry:

"If it's impermissible to refer to the character name in the reasons for refusal, then—accepting some redundancy in favor of precision—the elements should have been identified as follows: 'an object in the form of a small animal' instead of 'Pokémon'; 'an object in the form of a boy wearing a red hat' instead of 'Ash'; 'an object in the form of a small yellow animal' instead of 'Pikachu'; 'an object in the form of a small green animal' instead of 'Bulbasaur'; and 'a spherical object with a red upper half and a white lower half' instead of 'Poké Ball.'"

But, the examiner says, even if those terms were used, it wouldn't make the application's claims any more inventive, so the JPO's judgment remains unchanged. Oh well.

Despite how thoroughly the refusal reads like a proverbial newspaper swat on the nose, GamesFray notes that Nintendo has three months to petition for an appeal trial before JPO judges, and could still file further divisional patent applications with more carefully-crafted claims. And since this application is unrelated to the Palworld dispute, it won't have any bearing there either way.

Still, it's nice to know we're not the only ones who find this whole thing exhausting.

Leave it to trademark filings to publicly utter the name of a new videogame before anyone else: The next Kingdom Come will almost surely be called Kingdom Come Salvation. Huzzah.

That's according to a July 23 trademark filing by Warhorse Studios with the EUIPO, first spotted by Phrasemaker. Had the owners of the trademark not already been confirmed to be Warhorse, the styling of the Salvation logo (see below) would've been a dead giveaway, as is matching legal information for the Czech studio's other trademarks.

While Warhorse has yet to comment on the name reveal, it did already say back in May that another "Kingdom Come Adventure" was inbound. That announcement came at the same time as its upcoming Middle-earth RPG was announced—a high-profile project that I wager will become the studio's primary focus in the years ahead.

I'm trying not to read too much into the wording of that initial announcement, nor the name. Warhorse described its LOTR game as an open world RPG, but the Kingdom Come followup simply as an adventure—will Salvation take on a different, smaller format? Will it be an RPG at all? God I hope so. Middle-earth is cool and all, but I'd take another Bohemian romp any day of the week, and this series still needs to get to Prague!

Phrasemaker calls attention to a section of the trademark that refers to "entertainment services for matching users with computer games," which kinda sounds like Salvation will have multiplayer, or online functionally in the least. Intriguing.

If Salvation is another open world RPG on the scale of KCD2, it probably won't star Henry of Skalitz. Warhorse has been open about closing the book on Henry's story, and switching up the subtitle from "Deliverance" does suggest a fresh start.

Bad news for anyone looking forward to playing the new Tomb Raider game Catalyst next year: It's not going to be out until the year after that.

Word of the delay came from Amazon Gaming chief Jeffrey Gattis during an interview with The Game Business. Talking about Amazon's game investment strategy, Gattis said the company is into pretty much everything, "from what we call game night games, which are those phone-as-a-controller games, which I think of as single-A games that are in the single millions of dollars to develop, all the way up to triple-A."

Then, to provide an example of how Amazon remains committed to big-time, he dropped the news: "We've announced the two Tomb Raider titles—Atlantis comes February 12^th of next year and then we'll follow on in 2028 with the next one."

Tomb Raider: Catalyst hadn't locked in a hard release date, but when it was announced at The Game Awards in 2025 it was set for launch in 2027.

It's possible that Gattis merely got his years or games mixed up: I still occasionally do the 'what year is it?' Jumanji meme in real life when my wandering mind is suddenly snapped back to reality by someone asking if I've finished filling out the form.

But this strikes me as unlikely, for two reasons. One, saying "2028" specifically is very different from rolling with "next year" when you're not completely sure what year it is right now.

Two, and more to the point, Tomb Raider: Catalyst developer Crystal Dynamics appears to be in a bit of disarray. In March, the studio conducted its fourth round of layoffs in 12 months, and studio leadership—not just at CD, but anywhere that's taken a big hit—may say that cutting to the bone isn't going to impact ongoing projects, but at some point that's probably just not so, as presumably those laid off people served a function that they're not around to handle anymore. Even if you're only talking about the psychological toll that constant layoffs take on those who remain, that's going to have an impact.

To be sure, I've reached out to Amazon to ask if the 2028 target as expressed by Gattis is correct, and will update if I receive a reply. Until then, though, I'd suggest making other plans to occupy your gaming time in '27.

Saudi Arabia's proposed $55 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts has cleared one potentially significant hurdle, as the European Commission says it will not oppose the buyout.

"The European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the acquisition of sole control of Electronic Arts Inc. of the US by the Public Investment Fund ('PIF') of Saudi Arabia," the ruling states (via RPS).

"The Commission concluded that the notified transaction would not raise competition concerns, given its limited impact on competition in the markets where the companies are active. The notified transaction was examined under the normal merger review procedure."

The European Commission's approval of this deal came much more easily than its thumbs-up of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard a few years ago, which spawned an in-depth investigation and specific commitments from Microsoft before the green light was given.

But the EA deal is also quite a bit different: Not a merger, but a transfer of ownership that will see the company taken private. That carries significant risks of its own, including the $20 billion in debt EA will take on to finance the deal, but those factors don't enter into this ruling, which is based solely on its impact on competition within the EU.

There are still obstacles ahead, at least nominally. Game developers and US lawmakers alike have expressed "profound concern" about the deal and called on the US Federal Trade Commission to "carefully scrutinize" the proposed takeover.

That doesn't seem likely to go anywhere, though. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson is a stalwart supporter of US president Donald Trump, Trump is tight with Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, bin Salman is chair of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund—which will own more than 93% of EA if the deal is approved—and the whole thing is being backed by an investment firm founded by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The RAMpocalypse, and more specifically the obscene price inflation it's driven, sucks for just about everyone with an interest in gaming. But one person it maybe doesn't suck for is Amazon Gaming boss Jeffrey Gattis, who said in a recent interview with The Game Business that high hardware prices could be good for Luna, the company's cloud gaming business.

Gattis said cloud gaming has historically "been a little bit of a solution in search of a problem," thanks primarily to the relatively low cost of consoles. Because of that, Amazon's goal with Luna hasn't been to supplant consoles, but rather to expand gaming to players who for one reason or another aren't interested in buying the requisite hardware.

Given the way prices have gone (and will likely continue to go), Gattis thinks, probably not incorrectly, that demographic is probably going to grow—and therein lies the opportunity.

"We saw the Steam Machine opening at $1,000," Gattis said. "We hear rumors about consoles, because of the RAM crisis, pushing up over $1,000 in Gen 10. So, I do think you get to a point at which more people will be in the consideration set for a cloud gaming solution, just because of the sheer cost of buying dedicated hardware."

The rising cost of games is also a consideration: "Games can be big investments, to go buy a $70 game, to go through the download experience, to pair a controller, and then spend hundreds of hours, in some cases, to complete them. So, we see an opportunity to serve a group of people who haven't really been well served because the console and PC companies are mostly focused on those hardcore players."

Amazon jumped into mainstream gaming with both feet several years ago, but despite having limitless money to throw at the problem it was never able to make serious inroads: Its biggest success was the MMO New World, and that one wasn't big enough to dodge the bullet when Amazon decided it was time to take the whole enterprise out behind the woodshed.

But now, according to Gattis, Amazon knows exactly what it's doing. "For the first time in a long time, I feel like we have a single gaming strategy. We understand what we're doing, we understand what we're not doing, and we're executing against it. And time will tell how well we can execute and how right we are about our thesis."

One of the challenges facing Luna is the selection of games it offers: Leading with AI-powered Judge Snoop Dogg is not the sort of thing that gives me high hopes for a platform. It does, however, afford me the opportunity to run the trailer!

Gattis said Amazon is trying to encourage a wider range of publishers to put their games on Luna, a process that includes convincing them won't cannibalize conventional sales—and ties into his belief that high hardware prices could be a boost for the platform.

"The reality is, at least the pitch that we keep making—and it is the truth—is that this is about reaching players that a lot of those games are never going to be able to reach," Gattis said. "Particularly in a world of $1,000 consoles."

I'm personally dubious about cloud gaming in general: That arises in part from personal bias—I live in a rural area with internet access that would never support serious cloud gaming—but even so, infrastructure concerns are real.

Despite that, I think Gattis is probably correct: Skyrocketing hardware prices are going to force some people away from conventional PC and console-based gaming, and to some extent—based largely on how effectively it's able to fill the gap—that's going to be a boost for Luna.

After you spend above a certain amount of money on your gaming keyboard, you're not really paying for quality, specs, or competitive edge anymore. I felt this recently while testing out Melgeek's Centauri 80. In my approximation, any more than $200 and you move into bragging rights/centrepiece territory, and by that logic, I reckon the Asus ROG Azoth Extreme Edition 20 is worth about three centrepieces.

It's an expensive old beast, and $100 more than the already very pricey Asus ROG Azoth Extreme, which we reviewed back in 2024. But it's hard to say that Asus hasn't thrown absolutely everything at this new keyboard to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of ROG; you're getting an 8,000 Hz polling, up to 1,600 hours of battery life, a carbon-fibre positioning plate, as well as multi-layer dampening, plus a whole host of extra accessories and extras in the box.

Oh, and did I mention the 24K-gold-plated commemorative nameplate? I probably should have mentioned the 24K-gold-plated commemorative nameplate.

The Azoth Extreme is a very well-built bit of tech. It's super hefty, but it's heavy for a reason. It's sturdy, and though I wouldn't much like to drop a $600 gaming keyboard, I feel like I could do so with relatively minor problems here. The OLED screen up at the top right looks lovely, and the controls next to it are easy to use and quite handy. You can adjust volume, change brightness, and even set up custom controls. It's not quite as useful as the likes of the Corsair Galleon 100 SD and its built-in Stream Deck, but it will likely be enough for most.

Thanks to that weight, this TKL keyboard isn't exactly the type of thing you'd throw in a backpack. That said, a heavy keyboard is not nearly as much of a deal breaker as a heavy mouse or a heavy headset. In fact, the only thing I'd watch out for is the long-term wear on a particularly light mouse pad; 1.5 kg is a lot to put on any pad, and that's not including the weight of your hands on the wrist rest either.

The Azoth Extreme Edition 20 splits its keycap designs between standard black ones with a translucent base for the letter and number keys, then fully translucent caps for the F keys, space bar, and those on the side. Aesthetically, it works well and allows the per-key RGB to really shine. Initially, that RGB comes in all-gold (or, I suppose, with it being RGB, closer to a yellowed white). It makes the gold accenting on the side of the keyboard and bottom of the palm rest really pop. Despite gold tending to be a very gauche accent choice, it actually looks great in-person.

The two types of keycaps don't just add to the aesthetic; they also feel different on the fingertips, which is a decent way of keeping your fingers in check when you're not actively looking at the keyboard. The full translucent keys are very smooth to the touch, feeling similar to the ROG Harpe II Extreme Edition gaming mouse, while the other style of keycaps have more of a matte feel. Both keycap designs are pretty in their own right, and the difference in feel between the two isn't distracting either.

As far as typing is concerned, I'd say the Azoth Extreme Edition 20's actuation is on the light side, but not so much that I found myself misclicking. It's near perfect for accuracy, speed, and ease of use, in my book. The typing sound is light and clicky, with those dampening layers taking out any thock you might expect from the weight of shoving keys down. It's almost like Asus has scooped the bass and mids from it and just left the treble on top.

Typing feel, as a result, is lovely. Keys press easily with a light, satisfying sound. It's easy to find your place on the keyboard by feel too due to the mixture of keycaps and solid spacing all around. I do miss the extra keys of a full-fledged keyboard, but with some smart custom controls, I get by just fine.

My first gaming test with the Azoth Extreme Edition 20 was to take it into a Counter-Strike 2 match, and I can happily report that me losing had nothing to do with the keyboard. It's super snappy and responsive, with its light actuation keys making quick reactions much easier. It's also just plain effortless to use, with little fatigue after hours of gaming. As I learned when I tested the Melgeek Real 81, that's a really important facet of using any gaming keyboard.

You're getting an optional 8,000 Hz polling here (though worse battery life as a result), but you're still getting mechanical switches, which is a surprise. Them being hot swappable certainly helps, but one would hope for analogue or optical switches, for faster clicks, better battery efficiency, and rapid trigger. Still, it's super fast anyway, so you may not notice that downgrade from some other high-spec 2026 gaming keyboards.

Overall, I'd say the Extreme Edition 20 is a stronger package than the 2024 Azoth Extreme, coming with the poll rate booster, plus tons of extra bits, a palm rest, and an upgraded battery life. The NX mechanical switches feel great under the fingers, but you are paying $100 for that upgrade.

One problem I do have with the Azoth Extreme Edition 20 is a pretty common one, as far as keyboards go. The keycaps that don't have translucent tops have white lettering on black, which can be quite tough to make out in the dark. Some keyboard manufacturers get around this by making lettering translucent and shining RGB through it (like the Logitech G915 X Lightspeed), but that makes them harder to see under natural light. This means when there's little light on the keyboard, I have to make out keys through feel.

Unfortunately, Asus's software continues to be a problem. It worked fine when I first set it up but, it suddenly just stopped working when I tried to swap the OLED screen animation. The web app requires an extra bit of software to actually run, and it soon stopped as it said I didn't have the software, despite me installing it. A fresh install did not fix this problem, either. In Armoury Crate, it simply refuses to recognise the keyboard, even with multiple restarts and a fresh batch of software.

Software problems aren't unique, but the Azoth Extreme 20 is a glorious keyboard with golden highlights and a breadth of extra little goodies included in the box. It feels like a limousine coming to pick you up, but inside it turns out to be a plain old Honda Accord. There's nothing wrong with an Accord, but Asus is pulling out the stops for this keyboard, and it simply can't make it down the runway without a hitch.

Stating that the Azoth Extreme Edition 20 is expensive feels so obvious it's almost not worth saying. That might be kinda the point here: it's a limited edition bit of tech that comes with a thank you card, extra switches, a switch and keycap puller, a polling rate booster, the aforementioned nameplate, a cleaning cloth, and all manner of little extras. It is extravagant and meant to feel that way.

As such, comparing it to a standard gaming keyboard is a bit hard, as you don't walk into a Walmart and think 'I wonder if that's worth it'. It's more of a piece of hardware you search out, and if you're prepared to part with all of that money, you are getting a truly lovely bit of tech. I just couldn't ever see myself being prepared to spend that much on it.

I will openly admit that I'm not usually a fighting game person. I enjoy playing Mortal Kombat with my equally bad friends, but as soon as I'm up against someone who knows their shit, I'm fumbling over the controls. Unsurprisingly, it's not all too fun getting your ass whooped and feeling like there's little you can do to stop the pain.

But as soon as I laid eyes on Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls during Sony's 2025 State of Play, I knew I needed to at least try it—just look at the graphic design work on display. And now that the Marvel Tōkon beta has arrived, I've done just that.

Marvel Tōkon's main selling point for a fighting game flump like me—besides the cool cast and art style—is the universal controls and automated combos. Basically, every superhero shares the same combo inputs, unlike, say, Mortal Kombat, where each character has unique chains. It's all standardised.

Light, medium, and heavy attacks while standing, crouched, or aerial will always perform the same actions and automatically lead to specific chains no matter who you're playing. For example, the following chain is a few basic attacks that'll launch your enemy into an aerial combo, then knock them down to earth again: L → M → H → Down → H → M → H → Down → H.

Similarly, the right bumper is dedicated to your character's unique attacks, while the right trigger handles your skills. Pressing triangle/Y and circle/B will grab your opponent. The X/A button, along with the left trigger, are mapped to your team swapping moves.

It's intuitive, it's quick, and it's much easier to remember than Mortal Kombat's fighter-specific inputs and combos that typically also have you pressing buttons like you're entering the Konami code. I can comfortably bounce from Wolverine to Captain America without having to rewire my brain.

Marvel Tōkon's approach might sound restrictive, as if each character would feel the same given they share the same basic combos, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Mastery here comes more from how you utilise your character's specific superhero skills, and how you weave that into a four-hero tag-team format.

Captain America, for example, can throw his shield for a nice bouncing ranged attack, but time the move correctly, and you can quickly kick the shield back for a second pass. Spider-Man can websling for easy mobility and can even hang from the ceiling. Wolverine can become Berserk from certain moves to deal bonus damage. Green Goblin can launch his glider out and, just like his fate in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, it'll return shortly after.

And once you've mastered your chosen fighter, it's then time to pin down the other three in your team. Your other heroes will automatically poke their heads in for follow-up attacks after certain combos, so long as you've got charge, but you can also swap to them at any moment. It's far beyond my current abilities, but I can already foresee some pros rotating through their team, seamlessly executing combos that use each hero's unique powers.

It helps that, just like its marketing material, it's stylish as hell. You feel cool even if you're still making it up as you go along. I've long wanted to get into a fighting game, and perhaps Marvel Tōkon's lower barrier to entry through universal combat is my Trojan horse.

Minecraft has been out a whole 17 years now, which makes me feel very old as I played it as a teenager when it launched, using (I believe) an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition and 9600 GT. Oh how times have changed. Now, Microsoft has updated its system requirements to 16 GB of RAM and an RTX 2060 or equivalent GPU for recommended performance in the Java version of the game.

Comparing this to an archived snapshot of the requirements from May last year, that's 4x the RAM that was previously recommended, although another snapshot strangely does suggest that Microsoft recommended 4/8 GB back in 2022. And regarding the GPU, well, last year Microsoft still suggested a 700-series Nvidia GPU or equivalent for recommended performance. In other words, a big shift.

Here are the new requirements in full:

Note that the minimum requirements have been upped, too, from 2 GB of RAM to 8 GB (or 12 GB if you're on an integrated GPU) and from Intel HD Graphics 4000 or equivalent to a GTX 950 or equivalent. CPU requirements have all been upped too, of course, with the recommended now being a Core i5 12400 or Ryzen 5 5600.

Bear in mind Microsoft isn't saying anything has actually changed from when the previous system requirements were listed, it's just updating its listed requirements to reflect the current state of the game, as these "no longer represent what the game needs to run well today."

"Our goal is simple: we want to make it clear for players what kind of computer can run Java Edition smoothly. While older devices may still launch the game, they will struggle to deliver a good experience. This can lead to low frame rates, visual issues, long loading times, or performance that doesn’t match what players expect."

Updating the requirements also helps us keep improving Minecraft. Supporting hardware that no longer runs the game well can limit what we’re able to modernize behind the scenes. By setting clearer recommendations, we can focus on making Java Edition better for our players."

It's still a very easy game to run compared to a lot of modern games, of course. You don't want less than 16 GB of RAM these days even in a budget rig, and the RTX 2060 is now over six years old. I mean, compare that to a new game like Halo: Campaign Evolved which recommends an RX 9070 or Nvidia 3080 Ti, and it's clear Mincraft Java Edition is still pretty lightweight.

One of your tasks in Forza Horizon 6's Series 3 Autumn series is to travel to Naruo Golf Course to photograph the 1997 Maserati Ghibli Cup for the Afternoon Tee challenge. But unlike most tourist destinations, Naruo Golf Course isn't explicitly marked on your map. To save you from driving around Japan to find the one golf course, I'll show you where to go.

Forza Horizon 6 Naruo Golf Course location

Naruo Golf Course is in the centre of the Minamino region, north of Tokyo. While spotting the course is hard from the map—it's all green and orange, after all—it's surrounded by landmarks such as the Dodge Charger 69 Treasure Car, an Aftermarket Car site, the Airfield Trail dirt race, and the Naruo Cross-Country Circuit event. You'll also find Skirakawa-Go to the north and Ito Airfield to the east.

Once here, just drive behind the 365 convenience store and past the golf buggies to find the course—it's hard to miss.

For the Afternoon Tee photo challenge, you need to take a photo of the 1997 Maserati Ghibli Cup on the golf course's grass. You can earn this car from the Scenic Scrambles championship or purchase it from the Autoshow for just 102,000 CR.

For completing the Afternoon Tee challenge, you'll earn the "Relax, you're doing fine" quick chat (pretty worthless for most of us) and two Festival Playlist points.

Those points will go towards Autumn's 2017 Abarth 124 Spider and the 2020 Lamborghini Huracan EVO reward cars. Plus, you'll also be one step closer to unlocking the Series 3 reward cars—the 2024 Lamborghini Temerario (exclusive to this Series) and the 2022 Ferrari 296 GTB. These are the real reasons to complete this challenge, let's be honest.

We'd be fools to expect much talk of desktop chips at the 'Advancing AI' event, but we can always grab pinches of salt and attempt to infer what talk about server chips might mean for desktop. To that end, I'd say (tentatively) that what AMD has revealed about its upcoming Zen 6-based 'Venice' server processor platform is promising for the Zen 6-based desktop chips, which are expected to launch either late this year or early on in 2027, perhaps at CES.

In the event keynote, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su says the new Zen 6 core has "higher IPC, higher frequency, and that delivers up to 1.8x more performance than [Zen 5-based] Turin. That is one of the largest generational gains."

We don't know what exactly that 1.8x performance figure refers to, but we can make a reasonable speculation when we put it in context. The context is that AMD says it will run at up to 5 GHz, which is the same max clock speed we see in Zen 5 Epyc.

There could be differences here in the specific processors AMD is showing us, of course, and Su did say Zen 6 has higher frequency. But I think we can tentatively infer that if there are no massive changes in maximum clock speed, the fact that AMD can claim a performance increase of up to 1.8x could imply a decent gain in instructions per clock (IPC) to make up that extra performance, even if the reference point AMD is using for it is cherry picked.

That IPC gain would of course transfer to Zen 6 desktop chips using the same cores, which would mean more powerful and efficient chips. That's all very speculative, of course, but the seeming lack of big clock speed change plus such a big claim as 1.8x performance has me hopeful.

At the event, AMD also shared its roadmap for future server chips. Zen 7 will be coming in 2027, and Zen 8 in 2028, meaning there will be a yearly cadence. Presumably that will mean a yearly cadence for the desktop chips, too, though those will lag behind each server launch. Pass the salt, eh?

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is planning to break into the US memory market. According to sources close to the matter, branching out overseas is part of a longer-term plan for the Chinese firm that has swiftly become the fourth-biggest maker of memory in the world.

CXMT has been on my radar lately as multiple motherboard and PC component makers have made moves to validate its memory for their products. Considering the news that CXMT is reportedly massively ramping up its DRAM capacity during these times of memory shortage, it's not hard to see why.

However, we're still a ways off from seeing CXMT DRAM become more readily available in the US; in the nearer term, CXMT will have to navigate both intense domestic demand in China, as well as Western competitor Micron urging US lawmakers to curb the company's access to key equipment, plus a sword of Damocles in the form of a spot on the Commerce Department's trade blacklist (via Reuters).

Not even Apple has been safe from the effects of the memory crisis, and has been keen to seek assurances CXMT won't be placed on the US' "Entity List". Even with such a powerful supporter looking to buy its wares, what remains is still a challenging geopolitical obstacle course for CXMT to navigate.

Still, CXMT may have sufficient weight behind it to bulldoze through. For one thing, the firm saw $7.5 billion in revenue in Q1, which both represented a 719% year-on-year increase and erased six months of losses. The company also enjoyed Asia's largest IPO of the year, raising $8.6 billion. It's also obviously worth noting that CXMT is also supported by the state-backed semiconductor investment vehicle often simply referred to as the 'Big Fund'.

Money talks, but here's an illustrative example: Huawei, arguably the major player in Chinese big tech, has reportedly been demanding relief from CXMT over escalating costs. CXMT has chosen not to relent, with the situation finally coming to a head on one of its factory floors in June. Sources say a number of engineers were carrying out equipment maintenance when CXMT ordered them to leave its factory. Why? Because the engineers hailed from a vendor with extremely close ties to Huawei.

Though the company continues to work with Huawei, the engineers have not been allowed back. Huawei also remains without recourse to challenge CXMT's prices, just going to show how much power the memory manufacturer wields at home. Though seemingly unstoppable in China, whether CXMT will ever realise its Stateside ambitions remains to be seen.

Bethesda is eager to reassure you that its house is not, in fact, on fire in the wake of 3,200 layoffs (1,600 that already happened, 1,600 that are still to come) at Xbox that claimed numerous devs at the studio, including the artist responsible for designing The Elder Scrolls' khajiit and argonians. Thus, its recent announcement that it currently has Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters in the oven as well as an incoming, Obsidian-made Fallout.

Now, in response to questions from YouTuber MrMattyPlays, Bethesda has said that the layoffs also won't affect its plans for The Elder Scrolls 6. "The roadmap [for TES6] is unaffected," said the studio. That's all you're getting. No, really.

Bethesda was ever-so-slightly more chatty about its plans for Oblivion Remastered. Yes, Bethesda has plans for Oblivion Remastered. I'm as surprised as you are.

Since a one-two punch of patches the game got shortly after it released last year, the UE5-ified re-do of one of the funniest games ever made seems to have been largely forgotten, despite still having its fair share of performance hitches and bugs. MrMattyPlays also asked if Bethesda planned to remember Oblivion Remastered on other platforms when it gets its Switch release in August. Apparently it does!

"The team working on remasters is focused on the Switch 2 launch," said Bethesda, but take heart: that version "has optimizations we hope to bring to console/PC." I also hope that. I had a good time with the Oblivion remaster despite its issues, but I'd quite like to be able to enjoy it, you know, not in spite of anything.

Anyway, Bethesda has said a few times now that it would like to be a bit chattier and more open with fans going forward, and it reiterated that here. It also said its new Glasnost policy isn't because Xbox boss Asha Sharma is making the studio do it: "Look, we read the internet too," said the studio.

"All of our fans and plenty of creators have been asking for us to lay out our road map for a long time. As bits of info or announcements come out individually, they get lost in the larger picture of all we're doing as a studio. So, we felt it was best to do it all at once and paint a clear picture for everyone. This is a shift in our approach to communication that Bethesda Game Studios has been contemplating for some time now."

I'll be honest, I can't say I completely buy that, given the timing of all this, but I suppose I welcome a more communicative Bethesda anyway.

The Halo remake has released for those who forked out for the advance access version, and they're not thrilled with what they've got. At time of writing, Halo: Campaign Evolved is sitting at a humdrum 68% Mixed rating in the Steam user review scores—a mere 2% off the score given to the game by our Morgan Park in PCG's Halo remake review.

Why are fans—who were sufficiently John-117-pilled to pay the advance access premium—underwhelmed? Oh, the classic reasons: bugs, server problems, utterly extraneous account linking requirements. It wouldn't be a 2026 videogame release without those, would it?

"Login failed. Cannot play the singleplayer game as servers are overloaded," reads a review from Steam user GoatMedic󠁳Echoo. "Screw your DRM. Combat was not evolved." That's pretty much the vibe when it comes to how users feel about signing into their Microsoft account to play. "Error 400 or 500 when trying to login to Microslop's online services to connect Steam account," says user LVL13_. "Typical."

On the plus side, Halo Studios is replying to complaints about login issues to let fans know they're fixed. "This login issue should now be resolved. If you're still encountering this issue, please close and restart Halo: Campaign Evolved," reads the dev comment posted in reply to various different login complaints.

It seems to be more and more common for devs and publishers to wade in and start answering negative reviews these days, which makes me feel a little bad for whoever it is that gets saddled with the responsibility.

Anyway, Halo Studios does not yet have a canned answer for the other complaints players have. Many are encountering technical issues, with one user complaining of "constant crashes, graphical shimmering effect with fast movement [and] inability to disable upscaling". "Disgusting frametime spikes and stutters," laments another. They're far from the only ones. Plenty of the negative reviews touch on performance problems at least once.

All Halo Studios can offer in reply to that is a comment that performance feedback is being passed onto the devs, which probably would not mollify me if I had paid extra money for advance access to a videogame.

The best gaming mouse on the market right now is the Razer Viper V4 Pro. It's the best because it's light, very well-built, performant, and has great battery life. This last quality—its battery life—is largely thanks to Razer's new FrameSync tech, which is kind of like G-Sync but for a mouse sensor rather than a monitor's refresh rate. And now we have independent testing confirming that the new and innovative tech works as Razer describes it.

We had indirect confirmation of it before just from the fact that the Viper V4 Pro's battery life is so good (180 hours at 1 kHz polling), but it's reassuring and, frankly, just cool to see it confirmed regardless.

With any gaming mouse, there are two main things going on: optical scanning and polling. In the first case, the sensor scans for movement across your mouse pad in many snapshots per second. In the latter, the PC polls for (requests) that movement data from the mouse.

Well, actually, there are three things going on, because in between those two lies the microcontroller unit (MCU), which prepares the sensor data to hand off to the PC when it polls. Razer's innovation with FrameSync is to get all three of these aligned by making the sensor only scan at the same time it's polled for, meaning it can keep things responsive but also keep the sensor scan-outs low and save power.

Anyways, all this is great on paper, but how could we even confirm it? Well, X user and peripheral YouTuber piaknow has figured it out and put FrameSync to the test. Using a cornucopia of wires and a Rigol DS1102Z-E oscilloscope, they confirm that "Razer's FrameSync is REAL."

They explain: "Yellow line shows the USB signal and blue line shows the sensor light source. The phase between them being fixed shows that they are actually synchronized, as advertised."

So yep, it seems it's true: Razer FrameSync does, in fact, sync the sensor to the polling rate. Although it's worth noting that one commenter claims they get some small deltas, and piaknow confirms "I do get 0.25 ms intervals periodically... but because the counts are doubled at the same time, maybe it's simply packet loss due to some type of periodical extra process?"

I'm not the one with the oscilloscope, so I certainly can't say, but at any rate the periodical deltas don't seem too big, and certainly not enough to throw off the overall oscilloscope picture and the fact that FrameSync is seemingly doing what it says on the tin, just perhaps not absolutely perfectly.

That being said, there's apparently still a DPI downshift problem, which I've explained previously. Sensors, eh, there's more to them than we might think! For my part, I haven't noticed any issues with the Viper V4 Pro's sensor, and it's great to see some genuinely new tech confirmed independently.

On its early access launch yesterday, those who paid to get early access to Halo: Campaign Evolved on Steam couldn't seem to open the game, as it simply wouldn't stop opening up the art book instead. I mean, I enjoy a good art book as much as the next guy, but not being able to play the game you bought on the day it launches sounds like a nightmare to me. Luckily, a fix rolled out pretty quickly.

Forty minutes after reports came in, a member of the Halo team took to the Discord to report "the Steam Art Book issue should be resolved shortly and will only require a Steam Client restart." Checking in on the Discord, this did seem to go live shortly after, and reports started to slow.

Only took 40 minutes but they’re looking into the issue now from r/halo

However, even then, there was a workaround, which is worth trying next time something like this happens. As pointed out on Reddit, right-clicking on the game, clicking Properties and uninstalling the artbook seemed to get around the problem for users.

In fairness, it is a pretty nice art book, and surprisingly involved. It is its own application, coming with the aforementioned art, a game manual, and even a short story. Adding to this, it has music while you scroll. Coming in at a handful of GB, it is an impressive art book. It's just a shame it got in front of people's eyes in one of the worst possible ways.

This is not the only problem stopping players from playing Halo: Campaign Evolved. You need to link your Microsoft account in order to actually play the game. This is a problem as it means that just booting it up for the first time requires a connection to a server. As you might be able to guess, that server was having problems yesterday.

Still, once you have linked your Microsoft account, you can play the game offline on your PC. It's just a shame how many hoops players are jumping through to play the game they just bought.

If you do happen to get stuck into Halo: Campaign Evolved this week, my personal advice is to skip Ultra graphical settings and stick the game on Low. There's very little difference between the two, and you get a healthy performance bump for picking the latter. If you are on a gaming handheld, I'd recommend playing the game on Very Low (a handheld exclusive mode) with FSR Medium, as even the mighty Asus ROG Xbox Ally X can't handheld the game very well on Native.

Finally, and this is evergreen advice, turn off motion blur. It's particularly egregious in Halo: Campaign Evolved.

From leading technology company to talk of it being sold off to the highest bidder, Intel has had a bumpy ride as of late. The company just reported its Q2 2026 earnings, however, and they're surprisingly upbeat. Revenue, margins, and earnings per share are all above expectations, and even the Foundry business doesn't appear to be floundering quite so badly as it was once made out to be.

Let's start with Foundry, Intel's manufacturing arm. When Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan joined the company a year ago, he threatened to halt development of cutting-edge process nodes (if not a death sentence, pretty close to one) if a big customer wasn't found or goals left unmet for the 14A process.

"There are no more blank checks," Tan said at the time. Yet he couldn't sound much more positive about the Foundry business today.

"My confidence in our foundry process roadmap has grown significantly since joining over a year ago. I am more confident than ever of the strategic in significant and unique value proposition of Intel Foundry," Tan says in the earnings call (via Seeking Alpha). "During Q2, our factories across Intel 7, Intel 3 and Intel 18A exceeded internal volume targets, driven by improving yields, better cycle times and increasing wafer starts."

That's good news on Intel 18A, which is used for Core Ultra 3 Panther Lake chips. Though whether Intel would be quite as honest to admit when yields were a bit pants, I'm not so sure. Improvements were recently suggested to have taken place with 18A to reduce wafer-to-wafer variability issues, which sure would help out a lot.

There is also a rumour that Nova Lake processors, destined for desktop, are also returning to Intel 18A following initial planned production using competing foundry TSMC, as Arrow Lake chips currently do. But it's tough to say if there's much truth to this.

Further out, Tan is positive about progress with 14A, the next big leap to come in chip production, which is reportedly on track for risk production in the second half of '27 and high-volume production in '28. It'll be a while before we see anything using this node for our gaming PCs.

"Looking beyond 18A, I'm encouraged by our progress on Intel 14A. Defect density and transistor performance are all outpacing 18A development."

Overall, Foundry work is still very expensive, leading to an operating loss of $2.1 billion in just the three months of Q2. Yet that's an improvement, would you believe, on the previous quarter, to the tune of $348 million.

As for Intel's overall earnings, it's great news there. David Zinsner, Intel CFO, reports revenue up to $16.1 billion, from $13.6 billion in Q1, and 25% up from this time last year. That's apparently the company's best growth since 2011. Revenue was $12.9 billion in Q2, 2025, and back then, Tan and the top Intel crew were sounding a lot less positive about the company's trajectory. This was also a time when it was making sweeping cuts to employee counts.

"Let's say, I also know that turning the company around will take time and require patience," Tan said in 2025. "We have a lot to fix in order to move the company forward, and I'm determined to drive the changes necessary to improve our performance. I'm equally confident that as we execute, we will rebuild this company and have a bright future."

In the latest earnings call, Tan has been thanking employees for their efforts and signalling renewed interest and excitement for Foundry and the company's own products.

"Our advanced packaging and wafer foundry capabilities become increasingly vital assets. Our strategy is clear and pace of execution is accelerating. Opportunities in front of us are substantial. Our strategy is showing early results, and I'm confident that Intel is well positioned to help define the next era of computing."

Intel's CCPG, Client Computing and Physical AI Group, covers chips us lot use for gaming PCs—well, if you're one of the few eschewing AMD for Intel—made $8.9 billion. That's up 15% from last quarter, and Zinsner notes it as "better than our expectations". No wonder, as the memory crisis grips the PC gaming hardware world and won't let go.

We were quite down on the idea of Intel even bothering with an Arrow Lake refresh before the release of the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Ultra 5 250K Plus. Yet these chips are actually pretty great for the money—perhaps this is, too, part of a new direction for Intel.

Yet, in less positive news for us lot, it looks like demand is outstripping supply even on the CPU side of things.

"It's important to note that despite exceeding our expectations for wafer outs in the quarter, strengthening demand continues to outstrip our growing supply," Zinsner says. Though he notes that server-chip supply is where all the growth is set to be later in the year, as client-side (including gaming stuff) demand is set to soften as the memory crisis rages on.

Later in the call, Zinsner says, "we can't fulfill the demand… So we'll pivot as much of the production as possible over to CPUs and data centers to try to do our best to catch up to what is a pretty significant difference between our ability to supply and the demand out there."

So, again, that's not great for us lot, but Intel is probably squealing with excitement that it finally has demand to float its big Foundry boat.

Most of all, the tone just feels very different for Intel today compared to just 12 months ago, when arguably it was still making serious cash every quarter but really down in the dumps about it. Tan seems to be less doom and gloom about the Foundry business, the company isn't signalling any sweeping changes to employee counts (which were mentioned in last year's Q2 earnings), and it seems to have demand and at least one more customer lined up for its Foundry service (Fortinet) this week.

Is the company back on best form? No, it's still got a long way to go to outcompete TSMC, AMD and Nvidia in various ways, but it'd be tough to imagine this Intel in 2026 subject to such claims as being bought by one of its biggest competitors, as was rumoured to be considered with some degree of seriousness, in 2024.

I fulfilled a childhood ambition over the past week: I finally got the notoriously elusive Big Boss rating at the end of Metal Gear Solid 1, a feat I've simultaneously been drawn toward and terrified by ever since I first played the game on my PS1 in 1998. How did I do it? Stick-to-itiveness, gumption, and raw skill.

Also, cheating. I played the much easier Japanese version of the game and exploited a couple of speedrunning skips in order to hasten my progress. Hey, it counts.

Anyway, my challenge to you, reader, is to accomplish the same thing in the ongoing free-to-play period for Metal Gear Solid 1 on Steam, which expires Monday, July 27 at 10 am EDT / 1 pm PDT / 6 pm BST. You should probably do it the non-cheating way. It was cool when I did it, but for you? A bad look. I don't make the rules.

If you'd like to know why a three-year-old re-release of a 28-year-old game is currently running a free-to-play trial thing, I have two answers for you. The first: the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 2—which finally frees Metal Gear Solid 4 from its PS3 prison—is due out on August 27, and this is a way to gin up some MGS hype. The second: Konami is a baffling company that operates according to no law but its own.

If you shied away from Vol 1 of the MGS Master Collection for the state it was in at release, I have good news: it is much better now. All three MGS games in the collection have received significant patches since its lackluster opening day, and MGS1 in particular now looks and feels a lot better, thanks to the ability to switch on higher-resolution rendering and actually functional analogue controls.

And if you still want to sand down the remaining rough edges, I recommend the MGSM2Fix mod, (which can be easily installed via Luxtorpeda if you're playing on Steam Deck or desktop Linux).

I've been squirrelled away in the PC Gamer office all week testing Halo: Campaign Evolved on all manner of hardware, including a beastly rig with an RTX 5080 and Ryzen 7 7700X3D. To my surprise, the difference between Low and Ultra is incredibly subtle and, frankly, not worth the performance hit.

Across the majority of my testing, I saw the swap from Low to Ultra take a big bite of performance (around 20%). That may not be a huge deal at close to 200 fps, but in my RTX 4070 Super rig, that makes the difference between being able to run the game at a consistent 60 fps at 1440p with no upscaling.

Below, you can see the difference between Low and Ultra in the very first mission of the game. Other than the UI element up the top left, you'd be forgiven for assuming there is no difference between the two images.

Low | Ultra

Image 1

Image 2

I did spot a slightly bigger difference between Low and Ultra when you are sucked up into the spaceship on the third set of missions. Though blood textures look nearly identical, the light hits the gun every so slightly differently, and shadows are a tad softer on Ultra.

Low | Ultra

Image 1

Image 2

Perhaps the biggest change I noticed between Low and Ultra is in foliage, as some detail is removed on the former. Lighting looks a bit worse too. But it's not a huge detractor from my enjoyment of the game.

Low | Ultra

Image 1

Image 2

From my testing, there is a reason to go for the Ultra preset: if you want to play the game with DLSS or FSR set to Low (which renders 33% of the resolution and upscales it). The swap between Low and Ultra when DLSS is set to Low has a very small effect on the fps, so I'd probably just opt for Ultra in that specific use case. However, with DLSS at Ultra, I saw dips of 22%, so I'd once again pick Low here.

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Ultra)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Low)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Medium)Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

51

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

74

55

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

118

100

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

101

90

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	51 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	74 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	118 Avg FPS, 100 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	101 Avg FPS, 90 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

49

44

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

65

47

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

111

96

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

91

83

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	49 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	65 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	111 Avg FPS, 96 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	91 Avg FPS, 83 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

37

28

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

52

41

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

88

79

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

69

64

0255075100

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Native (1440 Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	37 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	52 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	88 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	69 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

77

44

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

127

97

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

168

116

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

205

155

075150225300

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	77 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	127 Avg FPS, 97 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	168 Avg FPS, 116 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	205 Avg FPS, 155 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

79

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

118

90

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

169

114

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

198

152

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	79 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	118 Avg FPS, 90 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	169 Avg FPS, 114 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	198 Avg FPS, 152 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

77

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

108

81

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

163

105

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

174

155.9

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Low (1440 Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	77 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	108 Avg FPS, 81 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	163 Avg FPS, 105 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	174 Avg FPS, 155.9 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

77

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

114

87

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

162

114

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

178

155

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	77 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	114 Avg FPS, 87 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	162 Avg FPS, 114 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	178 Avg FPS, 155 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

75

43

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

103

78

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

162

112

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

168

151

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	75 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	103 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	162 Avg FPS, 112 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	168 Avg FPS, 151 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

74

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

93

68

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

154

115

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

140

129

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Medium (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	74 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	93 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	154 Avg FPS, 115 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	140 Avg FPS, 129 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

73

45

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

97

70

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

160

113

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

152

139

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	73 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	97 Avg FPS, 70 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	160 Avg FPS, 113 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	152 Avg FPS, 139 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

70

44

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

91

62

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

152

115

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

139

128

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	70 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	91 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	152 Avg FPS, 115 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	139 Avg FPS, 128 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

59

42

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

76

54

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

130

104

Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)

113

105

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | FSR Ultra (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	59 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	76 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	130 Avg FPS, 104 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	113 Avg FPS, 105 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

82

52

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

148

92

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

172

119

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	82 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	148 Avg FPS, 92 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	172 Avg FPS, 119 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

80

52

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

145

93

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

172

119

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	80 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	145 Avg FPS, 93 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	172 Avg FPS, 119 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

79

52

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

129

84

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

169

112

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Low (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	79 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	129 Avg FPS, 84 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	169 Avg FPS, 112 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

80

52

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

130

88

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

170

123

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	80 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	130 Avg FPS, 88 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	170 Avg FPS, 123 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

77

49

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

124

87

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

165

120

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	77 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	124 Avg FPS, 87 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	165 Avg FPS, 120 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

74

51

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

105

75

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

150

113

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Medium (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	74 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	105 Avg FPS, 75 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	150 Avg FPS, 113 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

76

54

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

110

78

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

156

122

050100150200

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Low) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	76 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	110 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	156 Avg FPS, 122 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

71

53

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

102

73

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

148

119

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	71 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	102 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	148 Avg FPS, 119 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)

60

48

Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)

84

61

Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)

127

110

037.575112.5150

Halo: Campaign Evolved | DLSS Ultra (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Rig 1 (Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3070, 32 GB)	60 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS
Rig 2 (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Super, 32 GB)	84 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS
Rig 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, RTX 5080, 32 GB)	127 Avg FPS, 110 1% Low FPS
Rig 4 (AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, AMD RX 9070 , 32 GB)	N/A

Naturally, which combination of graphics settings and upscaling you use will be dependent on what your rig can run, but I'd be picking Native or Ultra upscaling with Low graphics over Medium upscaling with Medium graphics any day.

Gaming handhelds get access to a special 'Very Low' graphical setting, which works well, with a little bit of upscaling sprinkled in. Particularly, in my time testing the game on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X at 1080p, I recommend the Very Low setting with FSR Medium upscaling.

You can see my results for that test below:

Asus ROG Xbox Ally X performance

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Very LowHalo: Campaign Evolved | LowHalo: Campaign Evolved | Medium

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

FSR Low

49

39

FSR Medium

43

34

FSR Ultra

33

27

FSR Native

22

19

TSR Low

33

30

TSR Medium

32

28

TSR Ultra

31

26

TSR Native

20

14

015304560

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Very Low Data

Product	Value
FSR Low	49 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
FSR Medium	43 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
FSR Ultra	33 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
FSR Native	22 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS
TSR Low	33 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
TSR Medium	32 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
TSR Ultra	31 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
TSR Native	20 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

FSR Low

32

27

FSR Medium

26

22

FSR Ultra

23

27

FSR Native

16

14

TSR Low

29

23

TSR Medium

29

25

TSR Ultra

29

25

TSR Native

16

14

010203040

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Low Data

Product	Value
FSR Low	32 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
FSR Medium	26 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
FSR Ultra	23 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
FSR Native	16 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS
TSR Low	29 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
TSR Medium	29 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
TSR Ultra	29 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
TSR Native	16 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

FSR Low

28

24

FSR Medium

24

23

FSR Ultra

21

18

FSR Native

14

12

TSR Low

29

24

TSR Medium

28

25

TSR Ultra

27

24

TSR Native

15

14

07.51522.530

Halo: Campaign Evolved | Medium Data

Product	Value
FSR Low	28 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
FSR Medium	24 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
FSR Ultra	21 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
FSR Native	14 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
TSR Low	29 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
TSR Medium	28 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
TSR Ultra	27 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
TSR Native	15 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS

Unless you're getting performance into the hundreds and a drop of 30 fps doesn't affect you, I'd be picking Low for my playthrough of Halo: Campaign Evolved. Just remember to turn off motion blur while you're in the settings, too, as it's not pretty.

We all have our favorites, but my strategy of 'use the cutest little guys' doesn't guarantee I've always got the best Palworld pals in 1.0. After my adventures in early access, I think I've learned my lesson, and finally have some actual recommendations for the best Palworld pals for suitabilities like Kindling, Handiwork, Medicine Production, and more.

Before you begin your hunt for the best pals

Handbooks make "best pal" lists far more subjective, so don't sweat it if you don't see your favorite companions here. This list mostly prioritizes base suitability levels first, but the occasional partner skill or pal availability may shake things up.

• You can use the Pal Condenser to improve a pal's rank, then use handbooks until they've reached level 10 in the selected work suitability.
• Check pal partner skills when searching for pals yourself. Some pals have base buffs that make them preferable over raw work suitability levels.
• Early Palworld players may recall pathing issues around their bases that prevented pals from working, but now they'll start working even if they can't reach an assigned station. That said, crowding furniture around the Palbox seems to cause occasional issues, so don't place it in tight spaces.
• It's not much of a problem after the pathing fixes, but I prefer smaller or medium-sized base pals if there's a negligible difference in their stats. They just get in my way sometimes, and I can't see what I'm doing with an Alpha Jourmuntide sitting on me.

Best pals for Cooling ❄️

Bastigor (No. 191)

Bastigor has the highest starting base suitability for Cooling in Palworld, and while I haven't tried popping this guy into the Pal Condenser just yet myself, I don't think I'll need to. My Bastigor stays assigned to Cooling tasks only, but it could be handy for Lumbering or Mining in a pinch.

Best pals for Gathering 🌿

Venusa (No. 178)

Jetdragon has the highest starting Gathering in Palworld, but Venusa is just such a strong jack-of-all-trades that it's my top recommendation. Gathering isn't a suitability I struggled to maintain, so I invested my time into Venusa's four suitabilities over Jetdragon's single talent.

Best pals for Generating Electricity ⚡

Oserk (No. 187)

I seemed miserably cursed when it came to Electricity Handbook drops, so stocking up on an army of Oserks made sustaining power at multiple bases a breeze. The only bummer is that you'll have to wait until you enter the World Tree to score one, but hey, at least it's not another boss pick.

Best pals for Handiwork 🤚

Solenne (No. 182)

Solene has the highest starting Handiwork suitability in Palworld, and boy did I need it when I finally stumbled upon one. The deeper into the late game I got, the more I dreaded most crafting tasks thanks to higher Handiwork demands. Solene is sequestered off in the World Tree, so you'll have to wait a while before capturing one, but I was more than happy to see it.

Best pals for Kindling 🔥

Dupin (No. 174)

Dupin doesn't start with the highest Kindling level—that honor goes to Renjishi—but adding the joker pal to your roster may be a deal too good to pass up. They're abundant in the World Tree, but you can actually find Dupin lurking around one spawn point on every island in Palpagos. Plus Dupin has more Handiwork and Medicine Production. Those are two stats I'll never pass up.

Best pals for Lumbering 🪵

Celesdir Noct (No. 157b)

A good Knocklem Ignis could pull double-duty if you don't mind splitting its attention between Lumbering and Mining, though Celesdir Noct was a nice upgrade since I seem to be perpetually out of wood. It's an overworld boss in the World Tree, so I've delayed upgrading its base suitability, but that's absolutely my next project.

Best pals for Mining ⛏️

Knocklem Ignis (No. 159b)

Aegidron starts with level 8 mining suitability, but I can't justify picking it for a single speciality when Knocklem Ignis is good for three. Its affinities make the hulking suit of armor good for mining, transporting its haul, and cooking up a quick snack.

Best pals for Medicine Production 💊

Silvance (No. 193)

Silvance has the highest starting work suitability for Medicine Production in the game, but it's only available as a boss in the World Tree, so it's a very endgame pal. Higher level crafts lean heavily into Medicine Production, and since Silvance has four other specialties it can lend a hand with, it's absolutely worth the hassle. Weird moth guy is definitely one of my favorite new pals in Palworld 1.0.

Best pals for Planting 🌱

Dandilord (No. 194)

Like Silvance, Dandilord is another World Tree boss that's well worth the investment. Not only is it fantastic as a base pal for Planting (and several other tasks), but it's also a real lifesaver when exploring the World Tree thanks to its poison immunity passive. Anything with high Medicine Production and Handiwork is a win, having the best Planting stats is a bonus.

Best pals for Transporting 📦

Mimog (No. 144)

Mimog doesn't have the highest Transporting base suitability by far, but the little guy is so stinkin' fast that it more than makes up for it. If you've got a Wumpo managing your Cooling stations, it gives Mimog a little capacity boost, too. I let a few other suitability pals occasionally help out here, but pairing that with Mimog and a few handbooks was more than enough to keep things tidy.

OtherSide Entertainment's stealth game Thick As Thieves launched in May of this year, but felt like it should have been in early access. It only had two maps, and though its campaign changed the objectives as it bounced you back and forth between them in either co-op or solo play, it felt thin. Frustrations like the specifics of how its time-limit system worked and the absence of options like rebindable keys at launch didn't help.

While the first post-launch content update did give us rebindable keys at least, it wasn't enough to fully turn around the fortunes of Thick as Thieves. Which was a problem, because the other game OtherSide was working on was cancelled, and now it's had two rounds of layoffs leaving fewer than 10 employees remaining.

"Working in the gaming industry is at times delightful and at other times heartbreaking", says a message posted by game director Jeff Hickman, and ain't that the truth. Hickman goes on to confirm that "only a very small team remains" and therefore Thick as Thieves won't be receiving any further content updates. "To be frank," he writes, "this is not the outcome that any of us want, but we're facing the reality that ongoing development of extra content, modes and systems is not a viable path."

However, OtherSide and publisher Megabit are working together to ensure Thick as Thieves remains playable. "This mainly involves putting together a new version of the game that uses Peer to Peer servers for co-op play", Hickman continues. "The gameplay and flow of your experience will remain virtually identical, but will not need the use of dedicated servers in the cloud. This will allow you to continue playing with your friends when you desire and importantly, solo play will be completely unaffected. Once this work is complete, Megabit will take over the care of the game and respond to bugs and other issues as needed."

With hindsight, I wonder how much launching at a price of only $5 hurt Thick as Thieves. It created an impression of desperation and cheapness that even a slightly higher price would have mitigated, and the idea that it was thrown out half-baked as a fundraiser rather than being a game worth buying on its own merits dogged it from the moment of release.

But it's entirely likely that Thick as Thieves was a game that would always have a small audience no matter what its price tag, and whether or not it had stuck to its guns and stayed the PvPvE game it was initially billed as.

Ahead of a showing at Comic-Con in San Diego, StarWars.com has revealed the main cast of Star Wars Zero Company, the squad tactics game by ex-Firaxis XCOM vets. The topline for big Star Wars freaks: Dee Bradley Baker and Matt Lanter will be reprising their long-running roles as clone troopers and Anakin Skywalker respectively.

Baker always reminded me of the actors in Elder Scrolls games (like the inimitable Wes Johnson) in the way he elevated the high-volume job of voicing every clone trooper for like, a decade.

It's something you could see becoming rote or workmanlike, but across multiple shows (most notably Dave Filoni's The Clone Wars), Baker put some zip into named clones and one-line mooks alike. His main role in Zero Company will be Trick, one of the game's RPG-like story companions.

Lanter similarly defined Anakin Skywalker in the animated Filoni-verse. When I got to try Zero Company hands-on back in February, I clocked Baker as Trick immediately. The Summer Game Fest reveal that Anakin Skywalker will appear in Zero Company had me wondering if the Chosen One would get a similar treatment.

Elsewhere in the cast, Vic Michaelis of the popular Dropout universe of improv shows is voicing Runa Blask. Ignoring the "Zendaya is Meechee" of all these very Star Wars names for a sec, Runa was one of my favorite characters from my hands-on time: She's an advisor at your base and an insufferable, rude, former Separatist agent who sucks. She rules.

Alex McKenna (Sadie Adler in Red Dead 2), Judy Alice Lee (Melinoë in Hades 2), and D.C. Douglas (Albert Wesker in Resident Evil, Legion in Mass Effect) caught my eye as notable performers from other videogames.

That strong cast is important, because Zero Company is trying to blend some lavish, cinematic storytelling in with its hardcore tactical gameplay. From my hands-on experience, it's looking like a winning combination. We'll know for sure when Zero Company releases on August 27⁠ for a blessed and anachronistic $50 price tag. Until then, you can wishlist it on Steam.

The Blizzard developer who was caught using World of Warcraft game master (GM) abilities to insta-kill two bosses for some friends has been fired from the studio.

Earlier this week, a Reddit user posted combat logs of a Mythic+ dungeon where a boss with almost full health died instantly to a GM ability. Not long after, another Reddit user found evidence that the GM did the same thing to a boss earlier in the run.

One of the players who was present for the unauthorized intervention then went onto a Twitch stream and admitted to asking their GM friend to cheat so they wouldn't have to redo the dungeon: "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 million [health] bro, can you please just one-shot it?"

The only way for the GM to kill the bosses on command would've been if they were spectating the run, which is pretty uncommon these days, to the point that most people were surprised GMs still existed when they heard the story. Most customer service problems are solved on Blizzard's website instead of in-game. The only times GMs need to be on-call like this is when players are testing raid fights on PTR or competing in the world first raid races.

Because of this, many people were speculating that this wasn't an isolated incident and worried that GM friends could've been secretly assisting with other Mythic+ runs. According to Blizzard, that's not the case. "We can confirm that this was the action of a single Blizzard employee, in violation of our Code of Conduct," community manager Randy "Kaivax" Jordan wrote in a forum post today.

Blizzard says it will also be "taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation." There's been a lot of speculation from the community, but it is not clear how many people were aware of the GM in the group.

"It has always been the case that a small number of Blizzard employees can use developer tools and spells on live servers: this lets us test and make urgent fixes to the live game when they’re needed," Kaivax says. "Every use of these internal spells and commands on live realms is logged and shared with our Platform Security team to help ensure that the occasional use of this access is warranted. The use of development tools for anything other than development work is against company policy. It's because of the process we have in place around use of these tools that we're confident this incident was isolated to one individual."

Even though the Mythic+ dungeon wasn't a particularly notable one—the players just wanted to finish it for a title—the record of it has been disqualified by ranking site Raider.io. You can, however, still go and look at what went down.

Don't give me hope, PC Gamer's Elie Gould expressed when Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film got a teaser in April. They've been let down by Resident Evil movies before, as have we all, but that teaser did give the impression that it might be good.

Now the full trailer for Cregger's take on Resident Evil is out, and I'm not sure if this counts as good news for Elie or bad news—but yeah, it really does look like this might be a winner.

What's interesting about the film, as Cregger explained in May, is that it "takes place alongside the events of Resident Evil 2," but won't include any of them, or anyone you know from the game: "It's an alternate storyline that takes place on the periphery of the hero's storyline, so it's a story that could be happening without necessarily breaking the universe of the story the games are telling."

Cregger said at the time that the film reflects what would happen if he were thrown into a Resident Evil situation in real life, utterly unprepared or unequipped for the situation: "I think it's just fun to be following someone with no combat experience whatsoever as they're walking through hell with a machine gun."

You can see that kind of "fun" in the trailer, which has a very down-dressed Austin Abrams—average guy extraordinaire—suddenly up to his neck in awfulness. There's a humor to it not present in that April teaser that reminds me a bit of the Evil Dead flicks: That zoom-in on the shotgun over the mantle is just about a dead lift from Sam Raimi's groundbreaking splatter flicks, and Abrams' reaction as he looks out the window and sees the zombie running toward the house, well, maybe it's just me but I find it very funny.

I don't think the whole film is going to be played for laughs—Cregger has previously said that what he loves about survival horror and Resident Evil specifically is the "overwhelming feeling of dread," and individual moments of levity don't mean that the experience as a whole isn't going to be horrific. But I do think that by making a parallel addition to the mythos, Cregger has a chance to cook up something much more interesting than previous films—and maybe, one that's actually good.

Resident Evil is set to hit screens on September 18.

I'm not even that far into my first ever playthrough of Grim Dawn and I can already see why I've heard people praise this game for the last 10 years. It's old, sure, but it's a surprisingly tight action RPG that despite its age hasn't been left to rust.

The developers at Crate Entertainment have kept Grim Dawn from feeling like an action RPG that came out a decade ago. The quality-of-life additions in its final expansion, Fangs of Asterkarn, do a lot of the heavy-lifting, but even visually the game doesn't look that far removed from an older World of Warcraft zone.

I've been playing quite a lot of Path of Exile 2 lately and was a little scared that Grim Dawn would be far too archaic for me. I think a major reason that hasn't been the case is that Fangs of Asterkarn gave it full WASD movement support, a control scheme I have a hard time letting go of in these types of games. It works so flawlessly in Grim Dawn that I would've assumed it was there from the start if I hadn't read the patch notes.

My initial class choice inadvertently gave me a taste of some of the OG experience. I went with an occultist, thinking it would be fun to play the closest thing to a spell-casting warlock that I typically play in other games. What I actually ended up with was a character who spent most of their time unloading rifle rounds into monsters rather than infecting them with the plague. I'm sure there are plenty more spells to work with later on, but I wasn't exactly thrilled to be a bulletmancer.

Fangs of Asterkarn, like any good action RPG expansion, adds a new class to Grim Dawn: the berserker. At first, I thought this was the game's take on a shapeshifting druid, which is an archetype I typically avoid. But then I clicked the skill tree node that let me transform into a werewolf and realized that I might've found an exception to the rule.

I spent most of the time with my occultist dragging monsters around in a circle to plink away their health. Playing as my werewolf, I launched at them like I'm the bullet, turning everything into a red mist on impact. It was like playing a different action RPG as I darted from monster pack to monster pack at twice the speed as my previous character. Even though Grim Dawn allows you to pick up a secondary class at level 10, berserker was clearly the better option to start with. Now I'm cruising through the first act and starting to see the game unfold.

While I was feeling experimental, I decided to see what else berserkers can do. This is when I found something even better than a werewolf. Grim Dawn lets you turn into a big crow who can conjure massive waves of ice that shred enemies apart. There is zero explanation for why the crow is a wizard, which is the best part about it. Going crow mode isn't as fast as being a werewolf, but it looks so ridiculous that I'm finding it hard to go back. I'm basically playing the villain in some direct-to-video horror flick and it's too silly to stop.

Looking ahead in the skill tree I see that there are some ways to blend the transformations, as well as your human form, for even more power. I'm aiming to try some kind of low-life build where my damage goes way up while injured. And if I know my action RPGs well enough, there will probably be some unique item that can push this idea even further. I'm not anywhere close to the endgame—where a lot of Fangs of Asterkarn's new additions live—but I'm excited to see what toys I can play with.

I wouldn't be saying any of this if the game felt too clunky and dated to play. Grim Dawn absolutely holds up to modern standards and even has convenience that I wish newer games had. You pick up piles of crafting materials and can press a button to send them all to your stash from anywhere in the world. I appreciate some chill inventory management here and there, but it's great knowing the stuff that isn't gear won't have me crawling back to town every 10 minutes.

It's also nice knowing that nothing about Grim Dawn is seasonal. I can load the game up whenever and play it at my own pace without having to worry that I'm going to miss out on some temporary activity. As much as I like seasonal action RPGs like Diablo 4, I do think that format tends to make players worry too much about efficiency and seeing everything each season has to offer before the excitement fizzles out.

If this is the end of Grim Dawn as a game in active development (although I'm sure patches will keep coming), it's an impressive finale. Far too many games get abandoned in a state that makes them extremely hard to get into as a new player. Because Crate Entertainment made sure to massage the kinks out of the game over the years, I've been convinced it's worth keeping an eye on to see what it's going to deliver next. According to its founder, Arthur Bruno, Grim Dawn 2 is already in the early stages of development.

Fangs of Asterkarn is available now on Steam.

A Deadline report says Atari, in partnership with management and production company Entertainment 360, has signed a deal that gives Universal Pictures the right to turn 10 of Atari's best-known games into movies.

"For more than five decades, Atari has created games and worlds that have remained part of popular culture long after their original release," Atari chairman and CEO Wade Rosen told the site.

"We are excited to work with Universal and Entertainment 360 to bring the spirit of our iconic brand and games to a new medium."

The games in question are undeniably Atari classics, although not necessarily obvious fodder for film adaptations:

• Asteroids
• Adventure
• Berzerk
• Breakout
• Centipede
• Crystal Castles
• Millipede
• Missile Command
• Pong
• Yes, Pong
• Yars’ Revenge

The intent, according to the report, is to turn the properties into "big-scale action-adventure fare."

"Matt Reilly and I grew up playing Atari 2600 games and have remained fans ever since," said Guymon Casady of Entertainment 360, a producer on the first film to come out of the deal. "The best Atari games dropped you into a world and let your imagination do the rest.

"[Screenplay writers Carl Hampe and Matt Reilly] saw an opportunity to take that same spirit and build an original, large-scale adventure around it. From the moment we read the screenplay, we believed there was a great movie here."

Well, they made a Battleship movie, didn't they.

Did it suck? Sure did. Did it make money? Eventually, apparently, although it took some time and a tour of duty on streaming services. Is this sort of thing symptomatic of a creatively bankrupt entertainment industry that's running on the fumes of nostalgia and not a whole lot else? I'm gonna say maybe!

But here's the thing: When I read this Deadline report I immediately had a sense that this had been done before, and I was correct—to an extent. Film projects based on Missile Command and Centipede were announced in 2016, and an Asteroids film project was picked up by Universal in 2009. I don't know whatever came of them (and, as an aside, I would advise caution when searching for Centipede-related movie trailers), although I would assume they all fizzled out. I've dropped a line to Atari to ask about that.

Atari itself seemed destined to meet the same fate, although it appears to have turned things around in recent years with notable and (so far) not-disastrous moves like buying Nightdive and Digital Eclipse, releasing a new Jeff Minter game, finally doing great things with its huge back catalogue, and—this is particularly important—getting away from the crypto business.

Does all of that make me think we're likely to get a good movie based on Breakout? Absolutely not. But it might be fun to watch them try.

Sony's decision to stop producing game discs in 2028 has caused a real uproar. Some PlayStation owners see a dire future as they become dependent on digital services and lose the ability to trade old games in for new ones, while at least one analyst says we'll all get used to it quickly enough anyway. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has now weighed into the debate, and he's clearly in the "no big deal" camp.

Guillemot was asked during today's quarterly investors call if Sony's decision might create "a demand headwind," because of the loss of the secondary market for PlayStation games.

"What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market," Guillemot said, presumably a reference to the explosive growth of Steam that drove a stake through the heart of physical PC game releases.

"There's also some pressure for the future on the cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help to have more accessible machines, I would say. There are pluses and minuses, but we think it will not disturb the industry too much."

The impact of Steam on the evolution of PC gaming is obvious and undeniable, and while you might argue that it's not entirely a good thing (I certainly would), PC gamers are absolutely eating well these days—at least as long as you don't need to upgrade your rig. Sure, we can't take our old stuff down to GameStop and trade them in for new releases, but we do get regular, ridiculous deep discounts on Steam (and GOG, Humble, Epic, and numerous others) that pretty nicely balance the scales.

But the implied comparison strikes me as flawed. Consoles are walled gardens, and the PlayStation Store is very tightly controlled in ways that Steam never has been, even before it decided that (just about) anything goes. The likelihood of Sony loosening its grip in the all-digital future does not strike me as particularly good, and without that I think outcomes will also be different.

Expectations are different, too: The end of physical releases on PC was never mandated by any central authority, and the wheels started turning on the process well before gaming became the mainstream at-home entertainment it is now. How much impact will the absence of an optical drive have on costs? I do not know. It will presumably give Sony a little extra flexibility on pricing, but I wouldn't expect it to surrender any more of its bottom line than it has to.

Despite all of that, Guillemot is probably correct. If Sony sticks to its guns—and it surely will—then the only options we have are to either roll with it or go outside and find something else to do. Whether or not it's a good thing for gamers is a whole different question, and maybe it'll be a bumpier ride than I (and Yves) expect—on that one, we'll just have to wait and see.

Nvidia is far and away still the biggest AI hardware company, and a large reason for that is thanks to CUDA. AMD, however, thinks that CUDA might have already had its day in the sun and is a "non-event" for some companies.

At an Advancing AI pre-briefing, AMD's corporate VP and GM of its data centre GPU business group Andrew Dieckman explained:

"I used to talk to our customers about CUDA a fair bit. I have almost zero conversations with our customers about CUDA at this point in time. It's a non-event, certainly for our major... Like, everyone's programming at higher levels of abstraction. They're using different serving frameworks.

"And the other thing that's really accelerated [CUDA] not really being the 'moat' that some people still think it is, is the efficacy of the AI agents, the models themselves, to assist our customers optimising to the AMD platform. That's a 2026 phenomenon."

Obviously, AMD isn't an unbiased source on this topic, but if there's truth to what the company says, Nvidia's dominance in the AI hardware space could be threatened. Because the reason Nvidia is the sole AI-related company making significant profit (AMD is making a much smaller margin) is largely CUDA.

Nvidia has been cementing CUDA as the link between hardware and certain kinds of compute like matrix operations—which undergird AI—for years. So part of why so many AI companies use Nvidia hardware is because a lot of the tools, software libraries, and so on, have been built on top of CUDA, and it makes little sense to spend time and energy reinventing the wheel with something else.

That, plus Nvidia's capitalisation on it by leaning into full-scale solutions with CUDA at the centre, is largely why Nvidia has dominated the market.

The conventional view is that CUDA therefore protects Nvidia from competition. However, here AMD is saying it's not such an economic "moat", protecting the company and maintaining its advantage, as people may think.

According to Dieckman, AMD is seeing companies programming at "higher levels of abstraction" where CUDA isn't really needed. At these higher levels of abstraction, you're not interacting with the underlying framework(s) like CUDA at all, so you can take your pick and let whatever tools you're using deal with that translation to lower-level operations. And he also seems to imply that AI agents themselves can help optimise the platform without CUDA.

If CUDA does become irrelevant for these reasons, and if other companies, such as AMD, can offer cheaper alternatives, AI companies might start to branch away from Nvidia and towards AMD's ROCm, for instance. That would mean there'd be less need to buy into Nvidia hardware for AI.

That first 'if' is a big one, though. Because even if CUDA does become a "non-event" for some, others may prefer to play it safe with the infrastructure that's been working well so far. Especially given we're not playing with small sums of money when we're talking about AI data centres.

Less than six months after the release of the survival horror shooter Crisol: Theater of Idols, developer Vermila Studios appears to be in trouble. The studio has not officially closed, as one former employee had claimed, but CEO David Carrasco confirmed that employees have been let go and that a full shutdown "is a feasible possibility."

Vermila's reported closure was initially shared on X by game designer Raúl Pernía Alejandro, who said (via auto-translation) that "Vermila Studios has initiated a redundancy procedure that has ultimately led to the studio's closure and the departure of the entire team." Several hours after that message was posted, however, it was deleted and replaced with one stating that while the "entire team" has left, "for now the company remains active." Alejandro acknowledged the mistake in a subsequent apology.

Still, it was clear that layoffs had taken place, as numerous employees on X and LinkedIn, some of them in senior positions and with long tenures and Vermila, reported that they'd been let go on July 22.

Carrasco subsequently confirmed the cuts in a statement provided to Game Developer, saying that Vermila had not closed but that its future was uncertain.

"Unfortunately, due to financial reasons, we've had to dispense with the staff at Vermila Studios," Carrasco told the site. "We're going to try to pull through for the time being without shutting down, but the circumstances are quite difficult and it is a feasible possibility in the upcoming months."

Crisol wasn't a huge hit by any measure, but it was a reasonably well-received game, if somewhat niche. It's eurojank in all the right ways: more weird than horror, rife with underdeveloped ideas, a silly story, and bad voice acting, but also powerfully atmospheric and unexpectedly compelling.

I don't even think of it as survival horror, really—it's just an FPS with some weird mechanics. But I liked it well enough to play from start to finish, and even though I ran into various frustrations and annoyances along the way, I never seriously considered quitting.

As we've noted previously, though, making a good game is no guarantee of a secure future in the videogame industry—nor is making one that's a big hit. That likely comes as little consolation to former Vermila employees.

In a new message on X, "The Everything App," FromSoftware has revealed the final names and stats of the two additional classes coming in Elden Ring's $5 Tarnished Edition DLC. The Idus Knight looks sick as ever, while the Heavy Knight appears to have gotten the gentlest, most tender of nerfs since we saw their stats leak from a Tarnished Edition playtest last year.

The Heavy Knight will start at level 10, as opposed to eight in the playtest, with their two extra levels shaking out as a plus one to their Faith and Mind stats. Hardly ruinous, and I think HK will still be a new top pick for a very specific niche of builds (Hulk smash), but the change stands out to me all the same.

Due to Elden Ring's one stat point per level system and exponentially increasing cost to level up, it's beneficial for a class to start as low level as possible, avoiding any points lost to "junk" stats not used by your build. Buildcrafters got all in a lather about HK's aggressively min-maxed stats, and now those stats have been ever so slightly less min-maxed.

It's an almost imperceptible change for your average player, but may factor into speed or challenge runs and the like. Otherwise? Heavy Knight = big guy + big sword (of the "curved great" variety) + big armor, and both of those bits of gear are new to the Tarnished Edition.

The Knight of Idus has always been more exciting to me: An agile swordsman class to give the base game Samurai some competition. They start with a scandalously swagged out new armor set, a shield of indeterminate extraction, and the previously Shadow of the Erdtree-exclusive Milady light greatsword, an extremely cool weapon that used to take hours of gameplay to acquire.

Stat-wise, Idus strikes me as a slight upgrade to the Samurai (to the same degree that the Heavy Knight was slightly nerfed): More Faith and Strength, less Arcane, Vigor, and Int, but also a lower starting level of seven.

They also introduce the nation of Idus, which has never before been mentioned in Elden Ring, and will likely be the exclusive domain of the item descriptions for the knight's armor pieces⁠. Never change, FromSoftware. The DLC will be made available on PC the same day as the Tarnished Edition's Switch 2 release: August 28.

Knight of Idus stats

• Level: 7
• Vigor: 10
• Mind: 12
• Endurance: 11
• Strength: 13
• Dexterity: 15
• Intelligence: 8
• Faith: 11
• Arcane: 6

Heavy Knight Stats

• Level: 10
• Vigor: 14
• Mind: 8
• Endurance: 17
• Strength: 15
• Dexterity: 11
• Intelligence: 7
• Faith: 8
• Arcane: 9

My favourite hardware news stories lately have all followed a similar line of logic: 'Why? Well, why not?' But when it comes to the laptop MSI just unveiled as part of its 40th anniversary, I can't move past 'But why though?'

The sticking point for me is the Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition's ludicrous $7,000 price tag. Sure, you're getting an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU with a pretty face-melting 24 GB of GDDR7, plus an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor. And, sure, some versions of the RTX 5090 will set you back a couple grand all on their own, but not usually the slimmer laptop kind. Anyway, 7,000 smackers is still a lot of money for the power.

I hate to say it but the oodles of SSD storage and the whopping 96 GB of DDR5 might have something to do with it (thanks, memory crisis). Hey, at least if you buy directly from MSI, you also get a free code for Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.

This very pricey gaming laptop also enjoys an 18-inch MiniLED screen, which features a maximum resolution of 3840×2400. The refresh rate is a not too shabby 120 Hz, but at this price point I was kind of expecting something fast enough to make my eyes roll back in my head.

Joking aside, I'm struggling to understand who this gaming laptop is really for, beyond an MSI super fan (or a scaly fan with deep pockets and terrible taste in dragon art).

It's far from the only spenny anniversary hardware we've seen this year. For instance, the Asus' ROG sub-brand celebrated two decades, launching a shiny, aluminium-dressed-up-as-copper motherboard back in May. The Astral ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and a China-exclusive DRAM kit also got anniversary editions. Again, it's all a bit too rich for my blood, but I'll admit that those glistening gold designs are almost tasteful.

As the closed beta for Total War: Warhammer 40k grows ever closer, we're getting to see a lot more gameplay. The first reveal was at our very own PC Gaming Show, and then a couple of weeks back, courtesy of BiliBili, we got to see a kind of battle report overview of the same encounter with narration.

In the latest Alpha Strike livestream, Creative Assembly showed off that same battle, but ran it three times through from the player's perspective. We got to witness the Astra Militarum trying to defend a river crossing against the Orks, and learned a lot more about ranged combat, cover, reserves, army abilities, and other juicy details.

You can watch the full stream above, but here are some of the things that stood out to me as someone who's been following Total War: 40k's reveals closely:

• Units have a lot more stats since they're made up of multiple entities with different weapons, making them effective against specific units. For example, a unit could have a commissar, a vox operator, and regular soldiers, all with different stats and loadouts
• Heroes will have bodyguards you can customise instead of running them as individuals as in Total War: Warhammer
• Units can now strafe, firing as they move slowly in a specific direction, such as a tank backing away from infantry, though accuracy will be impacted
• You have airstrikes and army abilities, but for the Astra Militarum, these Regimental Orders only impact those close to command units and voxcasters (as in the tabletop)
• The balance of power bar now visualises and represents reinforcements off the field
• Line of fire is now individual to entities in a unit, so they can fire independently at different units at once depending on what they see
• All projectiles are simulated, units have unlimited ammo, you can suppress enemy units, and some units (like Baneblades) now have sweeping fire to maximise ranged damage
• There's a new Sentry Mode that lets you mark enemy units to prioritise before they come into range, plus there's now a visual indicator of line of sight when targeting a unit
• There are grenades and unit abilities—psykers were mentioned for the first time
• There is a unit morale system and units will visually represent the damage they've taken
• You can choose to deploy reserves or hold them and reinforce later in the battle, such as with drop pods or thunderhawks for the Space Marines
• It was mentioned previously, but blood is in the game for free (no blood DLC)

It was a massive info drop, but my key takeaway is that positioning is going to be king in Total War: Warhammer 40k and that using cover, line of sight, and scenery will make or break battles. Unit loadouts will also be very important in terms of matchups and performing effectively in combat, similar to Total War: Warhammer.

Honestly, the new engine is looking really good, too, and all the changes to projectiles and line of sight are very exciting. It was also mentioned that this is a two month old build, but it sounds like we'll be getting more of these livestreams on specific features in the run up to the beta, so hopefully we'll see more of the Space Marines and Eldar in combat, too.

Tanks for the Coffee is one of the new challenges in Forza Horizon 6's Series 3 Autumn series, requiring you to smash 20 tank lattes for a frankly measly reward. While it gives you the hint to head to Ine, that's easier said than done if you're not familiar with the map. Plus, everyone's currently driving around there trying to break tank lattes, so it's a bit of a fight to get what you need.

Forza Horizon 6 tank latte locations

You'll find tank lattes in the town of Ine on the north end of the Ito region on the east coast. You'll see lattes spawn on the side of the road and along the dock—including the driveways next to houses, which can be harder to spot.

There are tons of spawns around here, but a good place to start is on the main road through the town, where multiple spawn around the Minka house and the Aftermarket Car location. All you have to do to smash them is drive through them at speed.

Unfortunately, other players can break these tank lattes, which prevents you from scoring a point, like the kind of cursed enemy kill camping you see in MMOs. If this happens, just keep on searching and double back later if you still need more.

For completing the Tanks for the Coffee challenge by smashing 20 of them, you'll earn the Karaoke emote (if you care about that) and much more importantly, three Festival Playlist points. This season, those points will go towards the 2017 Abarth 124 Spider (exclusive) and the 2020 Lamborghini Huracan EVO. You'll also be another step closer to unlocking the Series 3 reward cars—the 2024 Lamborghini Temerario (exclusive) and the 2022 Ferrari 296 GTB. They're much more exciting prizes than an emote, if you ask me.

The European Commission announced today it will fine a total of Google €890 million—or about $1 billion—for two violations of the EU's Digital Markets Act. The Search giant has 60 days to either address the violations or risk further penalty payments of "up to 5% of its total worldwide turnover" in the future.

The Commission explained it is fining Google for "self-preferencing its own services on Google Search, and for putting in place restrictions on businesses to direct consumers to alternative, often cheaper, purchase channels on Google Play (steering)." These two violations have resulted in a fine of €460 million and a fine of €430 million respectively.

Google has already begun work to redress these DMA violations by beginning to test "changes to how it presents its own services on Google Search for free services such as shopping, hotels and flights."

The company will also review how it "presents shopping ads and content related services, such as sports." Google will apparently also make similar adjustments to AI Overviews and AI Mode.

The European Commission says it will "continue its dialogue with Google," and "monitor the implementation of these solutions which constitute substantial progress towards compliance." Google has already racked up billions in fines for various antitrust infringements throughout the EU, with the Commission most recently fining the company €4.1 billion for essentially forcing phone manufacturers to pre-load only Google products.

To rewind a bit, the Digital Markets Act (or DMA) is essentially a piece of antitrust legislation for the online sphere. It attempts to "make the markets in the digital sector fairer and more contestable" by identifying online "Gatekeepers" responsible for "core platform services, such as online search engines, app stores, messenger services." Google has been identified as one such 'Gatekeeper,' and therefore must adhere to a number of 'do's' and 'don'ts' within the EU.

For instance, earlier this year, in order to comply with the DMA, the European Commission proposed that Google share search data—"ranking, query, click and view data"—with third-party search engines. This is similar to a proposed remedy resulting from the 2024 antitrust ruling in the US, though Google has asked to delay data sharing while it appealed the original ruling. Google also has the opportunity to appeal today's European Commission decision.

The company has previously criticised the steps necessary to make Search DMA compliant; back in May, a spokesperson told Reuters, "The changes we've already made to Search under the DMA represent the ​biggest downgrade in the product's history, creating a ​second-rate experience ⁠for Europeans to the benefit of a few self-interested complainants."

One of the biggest additions in Halo: Campaign Evolved is the inclusion of three new bonus missions set two years before the events of the original Halo campaign. This mini-adventure involving Master Chief and Avery Johnson is separate to the main story, however, meaning you can either play it before or after, or even during the main story if you're an absolute savage.

The remake also adds new terminals and 32 additional skulls—collectible modifiers you can find in each mission, including the bonus missions, and use to tweak your playthrough.

Should you play the bonus mission first in Halo: Campaign Evolved?

After having completed both, I recommend that you don't play the bonus missions first, but instead try them after Halo: Campaign Evolved's main story. You might be wondering why, considering the bonus missions are supposed to be a prequel to the original Halo, but they don't actually relate to the original game that much, acting more as a standalone story.

The bigger reason is that the bonus missions are very sandboxy in terms of weapons, giving you pretty much every gun available in quite a short window, where the campaign (as in the original Halo) trickles them to you a bit more, letting you enjoy each remade gun or new addition by turns, instead of having them all thrown to you at once.

Considering the weapons you find are a big part of the original game, I really wish I'd played the campaign first instead. However, the bonus missions do contain the Grunt Birthday Party skull, so if you're determined to play through the game with that active, you might want to do the bonus missions first instead to grab it.