Despite any misgivings one might have about Microsoft’s latest few consoles, the quality of its Xbox controller is undeniable. This only got better when the Core edition launched, complete with textured grips, different triggers, a new D-Pad and that snazzy capture button. Though I might be a keyboard and mouse kind of person when I boot up Steam, I made sure to whip out the gamepad when playing and replaying Yakuza—as one should. 

If you have yet to take on Yakuza or have been playing it the wrong way, Xbox’s pretty fantastic controller is just 2(two) cents above its lowest-ever price at Amazon—coming in at just under $44. 

From the intricate and precise combos of a fighter, to the uncut majesty of Lawn Mowing Simulator, some games just feel better on a controller. In Yakuza’s case, minigames and its combat system are designed specifically for controllers so there’s just something off about using a keyboard. 

Luckily, if you’ve …

In the past few years projectors have come ahead by leaps and bounds. Previously a cinema staple, great for an immersive movie-watching experience, if not a particularly crisp one, they haven’t been great for gaming. But with modern projectors often spitting out high-resolution images with decent frame rates and relatively low latencies, they’re becoming a much more viable option for gaming. 

Samsung has clearly noticed this, with the refreshed version of The Freestyle projector making some changes with games in mind. The Freestyle 2023 adds Samsung’s Gaming Hub, an inbuilt app that gives you native access to game-streaming services. Xbox Cloud gaming is the big one, but the hub also supports Nvidia GeForce Now among other services.

This is perfect for a portable little guy like The Freestyle, which boasts a 1920 x 1080 resolution for up to about 100-inch displays. Assuming the specs are largely the same as the original, you’re also only looking at HDR as opposed to…

September 24, 2024: We updated the weapons list based on the big buffs made in patch 1.001.100. The weapons which have changed tier are the R-36 Eruptor, CB-9 Exploding Crossbow, and the AR-23P Liberator Penetrator.

Puzzling out the best Helldivers 2 weapons is a trial-and-error process. While you have Stratagems that’ll let you call down heavy weapons, there are also lots of primaries to pick from when sorting your character’s loadout. As you progress through the game and gather Medals, you’ll be able to unlock even more guns in the Warbond, including assault rifles, shotguns, and even energy weapons.

Some of these are really good, and some of them, well, they’re not worth the effort or the Medals it’ll cost you to claim them. Here I’ve laid out my rankings for the best weapons in Helldivers 2. Since there are now also seven premium war bonds in the g…

The phenomenon known as Skibidi Toilet is a little hard to explain. At a glance, it’s a meme where a man’s head pops out of a toilet and spins around as he sings “skibidi dop dop dop yes yes, skibidi double-u reeh reeh.” 

You can stop reading here if that’s quite enough for you. If I could have stopped there myself, believe me, I would have.

Plunge a bit deeper and you’ll discover that singing toilet man is just the beginning of a (currently) 76-part machinima series on the DaFuq!?Boom! YouTube channel. The series depicts a war between toilets with human heads—the very Skibidi Toilets themselves—and our planet’s defenders, humanoids with cameras and other electronics for heads. Animator Alexey Gerasimov, known as Boom, uses Source Filmmaker to create the series—if that singing head looks familiar, it’s the Male_07 character model from Half-Life 2 (also used in some webcomic by some guy about a million years ago). G-Man (here known as G-Toilet) and …

Good news. TSMC has a pair of 2nm fabs under construction and expects to start banging out chips made on the new node in volume next year. That’s important, because if we want faster graphics cards, we need more advanced silicon. The problem is how expensive that 2nm silicon might be.

Those first two 2nm fabs producing silicon on what TSMC calls its N2 node are both in Taiwan, where TMSC focusses for its most cutting-edge chip production. 

“Our N2 technology development is progressing well with device performance and yield on track or ahead of plan. N2 is on track for volume production in 2025 with a ramp profile similar to N3,” says C. C. Wei, TSMC’s CEO (via Anandtech).

Wei also says that a version of TSMC’s N2 node will implement a similar backside power routing solution that Intel is touting for its 20A silicon, due next year in the Arrow Lake family of CPUs.

“As part of our N2 technology platform, we also developed the N2 with backside power rail so…

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

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

Lots of usual creations are showing up: celebrity faces, recreations of standard Sims characters, and of course the Shreks. Modders always have Thomas the Tank Engine and character creators always have Shrek.

The easy th…

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The long-running saga of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2’s development is going to continue for a while longer, it turns out. The unlucky RPG was expected out this year—after several delays, being temporarily shelved and getting a new developer—but The Chinese Room and Paradox have decided to push the release date back until 2025. 

In a video published today, creative director Alex Skidmore and Paradox’s deputy CEO Mattias Lilja shared an update on the game’s development, trying to assure prospective players that things were going well, but that it would need more time in the oven. 

“Our team at The Chinese Room will make the most of the time, to polish and ensure quality,” Skidmore says, “while several of the team members will be ready earlier, allowing them to work on things we might not have had time for but are really passionate about. For example we can now add more endings to the game, allowing it to be a more personal st…

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Piranha Bytes, creators of the Gothic, Risen, and Elex series, was recently closed by parent company Embracer. That’s a shame, but there’s still one studio out there carrying the torch for ambitiously janky mid-budget European RPGs, and that’s Spiders.

The French studio responsible for games like Steelrising, The Technomancer, Bound By Flame, and Mars: War Logs is currently developing a sequel to its 2019 RPG Greedfall, which was set in an 18th century-esque colonial fantasy world and was basically a Eurojank version of a BioWare game. Greedfall 2: The Dying World has just announced it will be coming out in early access on September 24.

Greedfall 2 is actually a prequel, beginning three years before the original game. This time, rather than playing a diplomat who stands apart from the setting’s factions, you’ll be playing a native of Teer Fradee who is torn from their home and transplanted to the war-torn and plague-ravaged lands of Gacane.

One complaint a…

The Augmentation Evoker came to World of Warcraft with patch 10.1.5 last week, bringing a whole new type of DPS to the game. For the uninitiated, this new spec works by buffing party members to bump their damage numbers rather than melting faces itself. It’s comparable to the Dancer from Final Fantasy 14 or the Bard from Dungeons & Dragons—basically, when an Augmentation Evoker’s in the group, everyone does better.

So obviously they’ve been getting kicked out of groups for no reason. A reddit thread on the World of Warcraft subreddit emerged with a compilation of screenshots from the Wyrmrest Temple discord, community server for Evokers. Typing “!augdps” in the augmentation channel will have Carlygos, the server’s friendly bot, drop an ever-evolving montage of people missing the point:

WoWhead confirms that as it stands, popular damage meter addons aren’t properly tracking the Evoker’s contributions to their group. Despite Blizzard’s mission statement that they…

Looking for some weekend Wordle help? There’s a hint for today’s puzzle waiting just below, ready to offer a clear path through the grey letter fog. Need something a little more direct on the weekend? You’ve got it. The answer to the December 23 (917) Wordle is only a quick click away.

A win in three quick guesses on a Saturday morning? I love it. Just a nice case of almost being right, almost being right in a slightly more accurate way, and then sitting back as today’s Wordle answer revealed itself. What more could I ask for? Other than for tomorrow’s puzzle to turn up a little earlier than usual so I can play again, that is.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, December 23

Today’s answer refers to a sort of slant, angle, or gradient. A surface of some sort—a hillside, or the path leading down it—going from a higher point to a lower one, for example. 

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Is there a double letter in Wordl…

Quickly blaze a path to a magnificent Wordle win with today’s answer—it’s only a quick click away, after all. Or, if you’d rather take your time, feel free to spend a while pondering our helpful clue for the January 14 (939) puzzle. Whatever helps you win your daily game: the way you want to win it, is fine by us.

I was able to quickly rule out a lot of letters early on today, which is another way of saying “I had two rows that were almost entirely grey and had a little panic about it”. This soon turned out to be a pretty helpful situation, with today’s Wordle answer revealing itself with just a few more careful guesses.

Wordle today: A hint

Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, January 14

The answer today is used when someone is performing (or has performed) an action, or they’ve caused something to happen (think “Is this your _____?”). There are two different vowels to find today. 

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Is there a double letter in Wo…

Microsoft president Brad Smith is not a happy bunny. Yesterday the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, in a move that took almost everyone by surprise, blocked Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. It’s a decision that could scupper the entire deal, though no-one’s yet sure of the ramifications. And so Smith is on the warpath about what a boneheaded, plain wrong, backwards-ass move the CMA has made.

“We’re of course very disappointed about the CMA’s decision but more than that, unfortunately, I think it’s bad for Britain,” Smith told BBC World News. “The strong message the CMA has sent is not just to surprise everyone who fully expected this acquisition to be approved, but to send a message that I think will discourage innovation and investment in the United Kingdom, and I think in that sense the impact of this decision is far broader than on Microsoft or on this acquisition alone.”

Ominous enough, but Smith was just getting wa…