Those of you keen to do some horseback riding and duelling in 15th century Bohemia are going to have to wait a wee bit longer. Medieval RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is no longer coming out this year, with its release date pushed back to February 11, 2025. It's still not too far off, though, and to keep us going, Warhorse has given us a taste of what to expect when it does appear.

At a preview event in the town of Kuttenberg, one of the real-world locations in which the game takes place, the studio gave me hands-on time with two slices of Henry's adventure, following the unassuming hero from the beginning of the game and later, in the sequel's second map, as he explores aforementioned town. 

Where the original game kicked off with a glimpse of pastoral life before Henry was uprooted by violence, the sequel wastes no time as it rushes into the action. Bohemia is aflame, and I immediately find myself stuck in a siege as the forces of King Sigismund of Hungary, in his quest to take the throne of Bohemia, try to batter down the walls. Things ain't looking good for the defenders. 

Having already spent countless hours in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, I appreciate being able to get straight into the meat rather than mucking around with character creation systems and tutorials—though some of this stuff is on the horizon, it turns out. For now, though, it's war. Temporarily playing as Father Godwin, an ancillary character from the first game, I rush along the walls kicking and hacking at the soldiers clambering up them, with the din of battle filling my ears. 

I even get to whip out my crossbow and start picking off some more distant foes, snapping to cover as I take aim. It takes a while to reload, but it makes up for the cumbersome setup with its brutal efficiency at killing. It's precise, deadly and surprisingly quiet. Later, a man in medieval cosplay hands me a real crossbow to shoot, which I discover surprisingly matches everything about the experience of using its simulated counterpart. 

My crossbow skills do not save the day, unfortunately. The battle turns, and I find Hans, Henry's noble BFF, looking worse for wear. He then pithily recalls how events conspired to leave him battered and bloody in the courtyard of a falling castle. It's a scene very much in the vein of the *Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame* / Yep, That's Me meme, but also reminds me of Randal from Clerks' frequent complaint of "I'm not even supposed to be here today". Then I'm kicked back in time to a less turbulent day, finally playing as Henry, accompanied by a much less bruised Hans. 

Court jesters 

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, like its predecessor, enjoys a laugh. It is categorically not a comedy, but it has many of the qualities of one—specifically, those of the bawdier variety. There's a strong 'lads getting into scrapes' vibe, so this RPG about a war-torn nation also has a strange amount in common with the likes of The Hangover and Revenge of the Nerds. It's a peculiar juxtaposition that is extremely entertaining when it works, and extremely awkward when it doesn't. 

This is particularly evident during the first half of the demo, where Henry and Hans are on a road trip that goes awry. Tasked with the delivery of a message to a noble who has sided with Sigismund, the pair act more like they're on holiday—sauntering through the absolutely stunning Bohemian countryside—than on an important business trip. They joke and wind each other up, full of good-natured camaraderie, but they're also a bit pervy. 

While camping with their retinue, there's a discussion that serves as a subtle character creation system. We're sharing stories, which let me define my version of Henry, sans menus and point allocations. The conversation is a touch awkward in terms of its writing, but I appreciate the attempt to establish that this is a character who is already fully-formed. Then the conversation turns to Henry's wife, where I get the option to tell all the lads what she's like in bed. It's grim, though thankfully Hans cuts him off before the conversation gets too 'lads lads lads'. You can opt to be more coy here, it's worth noting, but it's a jarring moment, especially since Henry is a pretty sweet fella for the most part. 

After a brief combat tutorial and an introduction to Henry's loveable hound Mutt—introduced in the first game's DLC, he'll eventually lend a hand by tracking, hunting and fighting—the BFFs decide to take a dip in the nearby lake. There's more bants, some dick jokes, and while it's puerile, it's also good fun. The pair's burgeoning friendship was a highlight in the first game, and that remains true here. They're a couple of dumb bros, but I confess I am charmed. Except when I am not. Like when they go full Revenge of the Nerds and decide to spy on some women. 

Instead of going for a swim, the sound of some lassies singing inspires Hans to perv on them while they're washing. Thus begins a stealth section where two men in their underwear try to sneak up on a group of young women out in the woods. It feels more 1980s than 1400s. Before we can complete our pervy quest, though, some soldiers arrive and start cutting down peasants. One of them tries to sexually assault a woman, but is interrupted by Henry yelling.

The life of a woman in the 1400s was pretty terrible, but it's strange how much this 3-4 hour demo presents its female characters as either objects of desire or victims. I'm detailing this one scene specifically because it does both, for the purposes of comedy and shock, but it keeps happening. Older or less overtly attractive women, meanwhile, are presented as sharp-tongued or crone-like. It's not dissecting the role of women in medieval Europe, it's reinforcing stereotypes. The first game did feature some interesting, complex female characters, and hopefully the same will be true here, but how the demo presents them certainly gives me pause.

Everything goes downhill for Henry and Hans from this point on. Mostly naked and unarmed, they flee the soldiers, while their retinue suffers an even worse fate. Henry takes a tumble, bumps his head, and then begins to have visions of his past. These disturbing hallucinations, where he sees his friends and family murdered, serve as a sort of catch up for new players, or those who forgot how the first game began. It's dramatic and at times shocking, but by now it's been on-rails for a while and I'm eager to get into the game proper.

No such luck, unfortunately. There's more sneaking around in the dark, more near misses, and then an extended period where the pair must recuperate under the care of an eccentric older woman living in the forest, where I'm reintroduced to the alchemy system. I go herb-picking and then use our saviour's little lab to create a healing concoction, grinding, mixing and heating it up to produce the right results. It's all extremely tactile, and one of the better RPG crafting diversions, and is now accompanied by blacksmithing, which uses similar principles. 

While Henry and Hans are recovering, let's dig into some more of the RPG systems. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 tries to strike a balance between making you feel like you're playing an established character and starting a new game by making Henry's injuries reduce his skills, though not all the way back to his pre-hero days. You're not entirely useless. 

Knight school

The progression system is dense. First off, you've got your main attributes, like strength, and each of them has a bevy of associated perks waiting for you to unlock. So the strength tree lets you grab the Heracles perk, which makes you sexier the stronger you are, essentially making you more persuasive. Then you've got your secondary stats that are derived from your main ones, which include things like speed and charisma. You've also got skills, like thieving and horseriding, along with combat skills that make you proficient with specific weapons—these also have associated perks and combos. Practice makes perfect, so if you want to level up these skills and stats, you've got to use them. 

The dialogue system, specifically when it comes to persuasion, is similarly dense. When trying to talk people around to your way of thinking, you'll have a bunch of options, like threatening violence or being chivalrous, and stats alone aren't the deciding factor. Who you're talking to matters greatly, as does what you're wearing. I went for the chivalrous approach to deal with a rival knight early in the game, but trying the same tactic with a bandit while being dressed in rags probably wouldn't have had a positive result.  

After some chats and some scuffles, Henry and Hans leave the forest and finally reach their original destination: the castle of a rival lord. But they look terrible and don't actually have the message they were tasked with delivering. A guard pours the contents of a slop bucket on their heads. Now they look terrible and smell like a toilet. This is where Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 finally starts to open up. Quests must be undertaken, work must be done and coin must be earned. There are different routes to getting an audience with the lord, and plenty of trouble to get into. And yes, a lot more laddish bants. 

Despite spending much of this section stuck on the rails and put off by some of the more reductive elements, I found myself largely enjoying this reintroduction to medieval Bohemia. Some of the dialogue needs punching up, and some of the voice acting has a placeholder quality, but Henry and Hans' antics still elicit plenty of laughs, and the hints of the game's rich combat mechanics and complex RPG systems leave me extremely eager to get stuck in. Just as I'm getting to the really good stuff, though, it's time to jump into the second part of the demo. 

Now I'm in Kuttenberg, the game's second map. It's a silver-mining town, and by this point I've got a fat inventory and I'm all decked out in smart clothes that make me feel like the cock of the walk. I've also got some quality armour if I need to get into a scrap. For this section, Warhorse has restricted me to a single quest. Unfortunately, it's perhaps not the best quest to showcase when there's only a limited amount of time to play.

Here's the deal: a master swordsman from Germany wants to open up a school in Kuttenberg, and he's been given permission from the king. But the king is now MiA, the country is at war, and the local council has decided to let a local crew open a swordfighting school instead. I agree to help the German bloke sort this out, and this requires some stealth.

First, though, I explore Kuttenberg. It's a lot more lively than the forest and village I've explored thus far, with an abundance of NPCs living out their extremely regulated lives. Everyone is on a schedule, and sometimes that schedule might not be convenient for you. When I visit an NPC one night to chat, I can't find him in his usual spot. Instead I find him sleeping in his room at the inn, where he's in bed, muttering in his sleep. So, like a totally normal person, I wait. Hovering over his bed. For several hours. Thankfully, you can speed up the process. Morning arrives, and I watch the NPCs get ready for the day ahead. They actually rifle through their possessions to find their clothes and get dressed, because unlike Skyrim people don't sleep fully clothed. What a novelty!  

I've been asked to steal a sword from the rival school, which I will then need to display outside the town hall. This will signal their acceptance of a challenge, and they'll be too embarrassed to back down. Thus begins a lot of sneaking around in the dark and plenty of lockpicking minigames. My first attempt doesn't go very well. I forget to shut the doors behind me, so a guard starts following my route through the building to investigate. I then botch a stealth attack, which would have knocked him out. A proper fight ensues, more people arrive, and to save my own life I start swinging my sword instead of my fists. One of the men I kill runs the school, so I fail the quest. 

My second attempt goes a bit better. I close the doors this time, at least. I do find myself wishing for some feedback, though. It's hard to know if I'm properly hidden or not, and despite being 2am there are a surprising number of people awake in the building searching for intruders. I manage to steal the sword, but I'm not quite sneaky enough, so the rival school's boss knows I'm responsible. This isn't a dealbreaker, thankfully. The tournament goes ahead, despite everyone knowing I'm a naughty boy. Unfortunately, this does mean the other school gets an advantage: they get to wear proper armour, while our squad has to make do with only meagre defences. 

Slugfest 

After all the sneaking around, I'm excited to start causing some legally sanctioned mayhem with a big ol' sword. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has other ideas. Instead, for round one, two NPCs get to fight. "OK," I think to myself, "this will only take a few seconds." Nope! I wish I'd timed it, but it felt like it must have gone on for five minutes. They go for multiple rounds, and while the combat feels great when you're involved, it's deathly dull when you're just watching it. At one point, I look up from my screen and see rows of journalists just waiting around.

Finally it's my turn. Because my opponent is encased in armour, it takes a bit of doing, but I get him down. Compared to the first game, the directional combat feels a bit snappier and I find it much easier to react to my foe, deftly blocking and punishing him with a nasty parry. It maybe relies a bit too much on counterattacking, but it's an undeniably fun bout, seeing me dancing around and constantly looking for an opening. Sadly, it goes by pretty quickly, and then I'm back outside the ring watching NPCs slowly batter each other. 

When it becomes clear I'm not going to be able to finish the quest thanks to the sluggish pace of the brawls (my time with the demo is almost up) I decide to do the honourable thing: disqualify myself by punching the referee right in his dumb face. It's immensely satisfying. 

I leave the demo impressed by its systems but wishing I had more time to go off the prescribed track (and slightly annoyed by NPCs who take too long to fight each other). It's hard to get an impression for a massive open-world RPG otherwise. Broadly, though, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 feels like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 but more. It's larger, confident and extremely tactile, but maintains the first game's novel juxtaposition of historical drama and slapstick silliness. There's a lot to like, but also quite a few things I hope to see improved come launch. 

The Oscars of painting little guys are the Golden Demon awards, handed out by Games Workshop at official miniature painting competitions. The entry guidelines for the 2024 Golden Demon awards contain a note in the FAQ section that wasn't present in the previous year's guidelines. In answer to the question, "Am I allowed to use Artificial Intelligence to generate any part of my entry?" it simply replies, "No."

This is presumably in response to controversy over the winning entry in the Single Miniature: Warhammer 40,000 category in 2023's Golden Demon awards, which was Neil Hollis's piece, Exodite. It was controversial not for the miniature itself, but for the jungle backdrop, which was printed with the assistance of the generative AI tool Midjourney.

In an episode of The Painting Phase on YouTube, Hollis defended his use of AI by pointing out how difficult it was, explaining that he "probably did 200 different prompts to get where I needed to be," and that "formulating it took a very long time." Which doesn't do much to defend his work from the actual criticism, which is that Midjourney uses stolen art. It's one of the AI tools subject to a class action lawsuit filed by artists based on their use of copyrighted art as training material. 

Hollis did bring up the topic during the interview, but only to mention that other generative AI art tools are trained on internal art libraries owned by the software's creators, not to explain why he used Midjourney instead. Replying to the critics who called his winning the award into question, he simply said, "The people that are angry on the internet are a certain type of person, and I think we call them virgins." I suspect it didn't help him win any fans online.

Meanwhile, the court case against Midjourney, which also incorporates claims against Stability AI and DeviantArt, recently reached a milestone with the judge ruling it could continue with some of the claims dismissed, though he allowed both copyright and trademark infringement claims to be made against Midjourney specifically.

Improve your daily Wordle with our general tips, designed to help you make the most of even the trickiest situation. Or if you like the idea of more specific help, take a look at a brand new clue for the August 21 (1159) game instead. Need something more specific than that? Then click your way to today's Wordle answer and enjoy a guaranteed Wednesday win.

This was a real game of extremes for me today. I found nothing on the first row. Nothing at all. But by the third, I'd suddenly got it all. I'm not even sure why today's answer popped into my head, really. Maybe I was just lucky my second guess nudged me in that direction. The good news is you don't have to be lucky—our hints and tips are here to help.

Today's Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, August 21

This organic substance is spread on top of soil to help it retain moisture and improve its overall quality. Leaves and straw, amongst other things, are a common component.  

Is there a double letter in Wordle today? 

No, there is no double letter in today's puzzle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

Playing Wordle well is like achieving a small victory every day—who doesn't like a well-earned winning streak in a game you enjoy? If you're new to the daily word game, or just want a refresher, I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: 

• You want a balanced mix of unique consonants and vowels in your opening word. 
• A solid second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
• The answer could contain letters more than once.

There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by the end of the day. If you're struggling to find the answer or a tactical word for your next guess, there's no harm in coming back to it later on. 

Today's Wordle answer

What is today's Wordle answer?

Here's the word you've been looking for. The answer to the August 21 (1159) Wordle is MULCH.

Previous Wordle answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Knowing previous Wordle solutions can be helpful in eliminating current possibilities. It's unlikely a word will be repeated and you can find inspiration for guesses or starting words that may be eluding you. 

Here are some recent Wordle answers:

• August 20: DELAY
• August 19: METER
• August 18: LANKY
• August 17: STORM
• August 16: BRACE
• August 15: ACORN
• August 14: SHORE
• August 13: NEIGH
• August 12: SKIFF
• August 11: SCONE

Learn more about Wordle 

Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it's your job to work out which five-letter word is hiding by eliminating or confirming the letters it contains.

Starting with a strong word like LEASH—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good place to start. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you've got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second go should compliment the starting word, using another "good" guess to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.  After that, it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). 

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 

Black Myth: Wukong has set the second-highest peak player record in Steam's history, a spectacular launch for the Chinese action RPG that put it at the top of the global top sellers list. It's also a great game: we called it "a mythical action RPG with remarkably bizarre characters and daring boss battles" in our 87% review. That should be the only story for Black Myth: Wukong today, but it's not—what would otherwise be a celebratory launch has been dogged by controversy that studio GameScience seems unwilling to address, including in a recent interview with PC Gamer.

Streamer guidelines for Black Myth leaked before release, revealing a list of "don'ts" that included "feminist propaganda, fetishization, and other content that instigates negative discourse" as well as "content related to China's game industry policies, opinions, news, etc." These restrictions came from co-publisher Hero Games and were not shared with PC Gamer or other press outlets. Of course, streamers and everyone else immediately started talking about the topics they were forbidden from talking about—the Streisand effect never fails.

It's impossible not to see those streamer guidelines as an extension of the crude and sexist comments made by GameScience's founders, as reported in a widely shared IGN report on how the studio's "history of sexism is complicating its journey to the west."

GameScience has largely refrained from interviews (at least with western press) since early in Black Myth's development, but I spoke with a representative of the studio in late July to talk about the making of its adaptation of Journey to the West for PC Gamer magazine. During my interview I asked the representative—who asked to be credited as a member of the studio, rather than by name—if they could address the details in the report.

"We have no comment, we're sorry," Game Science said via a translator. "We're only looking to answer questions related to the game and the gameplay."

It was a frustrating answer, considering we'd spent a good chunk of the interview discussing the studio's growth from a small team to one large enough to take on a AAA singleplayer game, and the GameScience founders' first crack at adapting Journey to the West in a previous MMO. Our conversation wasn't limited to the minutia of gameplay, but the "no comment" was the same GameScience provided to The Guardian during a hands-on preview in July.

Since we'd been discussing the challenges of finding staff for such an ambitious game—that initial wowser of a reveal trailer was partly designed to help recruit new talent—I asked again if the controversy and repeated questions had affected the staff or led to any internal changes within GameScience. The reply, again, was "no comment." 

I don't know if GameScience's leadership simply believe there was nothing wrong with its past sexually suggestive recruitment posters, or think responding will only cause them more issues. Do they still hold opinions like the ones co-founder Yang Qi posted on blogging site Weibo, in 2013, stating games men like and games women like are determined "by biological conditions?"

"When you were holding a heavy machine gun and shooting at governments in your dreams, what the ladies are dreaming about are bags that would make their friends jealous," he wrote, according to IGN's translation.

If GameScience doesn't stand by that sort of past questionable behavior, why not apologize for it with a simple statement about having matured in the years since? Sincere or not, that's an easy out that a thousand celebrities, influencers and business people have used in the past. GameScience has chosen not to take it.

Perhaps there are delicate domestic reasons for GameScience to avoid commenting—a risk of somehow running afoul of the regulatory bodies that tightly control China's videogame market. (One complicating detail, for example, is an alleged photo of Qi flipping the bird to former Chinese president Mao Zedong, as reported on Yahoo! News). But that's pure speculation.

With no explanation, it's hard not to read the silence as a sign that GameScience feels it has nothing to apologize for, and the near-130,000, 96% positive reviews on Steam show there's been seemingly little impact from the studio staying silent. 

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 made an appearance at today's Opening Night Live showcase at Gamescom, revealing a brief gameplay teaser for the upcoming sequel to the middle-ages action RPG. Henry is back, and the world's most plain-faced protagonist seems to have one goal in mind: Relentless swordfights with as many 15th century Bohemians as he can manage.

Henry begins the trailer getting threatened by a crown-wearing jagoff. But it's not long before he escapes to do things that heroes do, like riding a beloved steed across the sunset-splashed Bohemian plains, where everyone has inexplicable British accents and every tree has Medieval Unfortunates hanging from its branches. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to tell that there's a civil war on. That's how visual storytelling works.

Henry passes through some taverns, some muddied streets, some more idyllic fields—all of which look lovely—and finally, after another brief diversion in the hanging zone, we get what we all know Henry came for. It's swords o'clock, and Henry brought enough to share.

The festival of slashing and stabbing is brief. Henry cocks a crossbow at one point, but only as a formality before returning to his favored pastime of striking foes with every weaponizable inch of his longsword.

If you somehow leave the teaser with an unsated hunger for bladecraft, there'll be a longer Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 gameplay showcase dropping tomorrow at 9 AM CEST. I'm sure there'll be plenty more swords being swung.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 releases on February 11, 2025, a short delay from its originally planned 2024 window.

Korean developer Shift Up has now seemingly confirmed that Stellar Blade is coming to PC, saying in its most recent financial report that a PC release is expected soon.

Stellar Blade launched in April 2024 as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, and was quite well received. We didn't review it—that whole PS5 exclusive thing, you know—but GamesRadar called it "a solid 20 to 30 hours of fun," with "stylish and satisfying combat [and] some gorgeous environments," as long as you could put up with some jank and repetition. It also holds an 81 aggregate score on Metacritic, and that's not bad at all.

Shift Up said it was "considering" a PC version of Stellar Blade back in May, and now in August it's apparently decided to go for it. "To continue the excitement of the ‘Stellar Blade’ IP, we are preparing for its release on PC in the near future, and we expect better results on PC than on consoles," the studio said in its Q2 2024 financial report (via Genki_JPN).

The report is Google translated and that always leaves room for inaccuracies or general wonkiness, but in this case it seems definitive: Stellar Blade is coming our way, and soon. The expectation of "better results on PC" is interesting. Shift Up also said in its report that Stellar Blade sold more than one million copies within two months of its PS5 release, but that sales have declined since then, although it's still selling "steadily." Whether the statement means Shift Up thinks Stellar Blade will sell better on PC than it did on PS5 or simply revive flagging sales, isn't clear, but there's clearly interest in the game on our platform of choice and a PC release is bound to generate a meaningful uptick.

The report also touches on Shift Up's next game, currently known as "Project Witches." Unlike Stellar Blade, that one may come to PC right off the hop: "Based on the success of Goddess of Victory: Nike on mobile and PC, and the success of Stellar Blade on consoles, we are planning to release our next game Project Witches as a cross-platform product." Details on Project Witches are expected to be shared publicly sometime in 2025.

I've reached out to Shift Up for confirmation of the planned PC release of Stellar Blade, and will update if I receive a reply.

Civilization 5 was controversial for ditching unit stacking, forcing players to space out their armies on a new hexagonal grid. Civilization 6 got heat for altering the art style, and added a new city district system to mixed reviews. Eight years later, Firaxis hasn't opted to play it safe for Civilization 7: Get ready for some long Reddit threads.

The most fundamental change, and the one I think will be the most controversial, is a revamp of the game structure. Instead of lots of eras—Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, and so on—a game of Civ 7 is divided into just three ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. At the start of each age, you'll be prompted to pick a new civilization, with options that depend on your current civilization and the choices you've made so far. Mongolia might show up in your Exploration age options if you've developed powerful cavalry units, for instance.

This also means that Civ 7's leaders are no longer locked to the civilization they're known for leading. 2K flew me out to the Firaxis office earlier this month, where I spent three hours building the Roman Empire as Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut. 

I explain how that went in my hands-on preview, but I know that Civ fans will also care about all the little changes and additions in Civ 7, so below I've listed absolutely every new thing I noticed during my hands-on session in the Antiquity age. I'm told that some features are exclusive to the other two ages, so I wouldn't have seen them, and even though I've tried to be comprehensive, there's no way I clocked everything that's new or different. Firaxis may also make tweaks before Civ 7 launches on February 11, so consider this a partial and not at all final list of what to expect.

Without further ado, here's (some of) what's new in Civilization 7:

Big structural changes

• Leaders no longer have to match their civilizations; you can pair any leader with any civ at the start of a game
• Games are now divided into three longer ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern
• The Antiquity and Exploration ages climax with Crisis events, which require players to adopt more and more Crisis Policies—negative effects that we'll have to deal with
• You pick a new civilization when you enter a new age. Which civ you can choose depends on your current civ, and your actions during the previous age. This also means that each age has its own selection of civs.
• Leaders aren't necessarily historical heads of state; Benjamin Franklin is a leader, for example
• The standard victory conditions return (culture, science, etc), and now you'll also be encouraged to pursue an achievement in one of these "legacy paths" during the first two ages—for instance, by building lots of World Wonders in the Antiquity age to establish early cultural dominance. 

New feature: towns

• Settlers now found towns instead of cities
• Towns have no production queue: they convert Production directly into Gold
• You can use Gold to purchase units and buildings in towns
• Towns can be turned into cities by spending Gold; the cost increases with the number of cities you already control
• Towns can adopt permanent specializations with bonuses: farming town, mining town, military fort, trade outpost

Changes to cities

• Cities no longer expand onto new tiles automatically. When a city grows, you're prompted to select an adjacent tile for it to annex. (You can still purchase tiles, too.)
• Workers are gone. Improvements like Farms and Mines are added to new tiles automatically.
• City tiles are now classed as "rural" or "urban." Rural tiles contain improvements (Farms, Mines, etc), and become urban districts if you add buildings to them. There are no longer predefined district types; you can place any combination of two buildings in an urban district.
• Some buildings are now classed as "Warehouse" buildings and work differently than in previous games: Granaries, for example, now provide +1 Food per farm improvement (In Civ 6, they provided a flat +1 Food/+2 Housing)
• Walls can now be built in each urban district; to capture a city, an invader must breach all of its fortified districts
• Resources can now be assigned to cities and towns, providing bonuses to them (I didn't play around with this too much, but I like that it makes resources more than just trade items)
• When you enter a new age, old buildings lose their special effects and adjacency bonuses, encouraging you to replace them with new buildings

Changes to units

• When told to fortify, military units actually build a little fortification 
• Scouts can now construct temporary watchtowers to see further
• Units can embark over shallow water by default (I tested this with some early units, not sure if it applies to all units)
• Units no longer gain XP and receive promotions, except for new Commander units

New unit type: Commanders

• Commanders are special military units and are the only units that gain XP and can be promoted
• Commanders provided passive bonuses to nearby units, which is one of their attributes that can be upgraded with promotions
• Units can also be stacked "inside" Commanders and moved as a group, and then unpacked at their destination
• Commanders can issue orders to all nearby units, such as to focus fire on a single enemy—with an attack bonus for using the special command

New feature: Influence

• Influence is a new yield that is spent on all kinds of diplomatic actions
• Influence can be used for positive actions, such as gaining the loyalty of city-states and making agreements with other civs, such as making a military pact which provides a bonus to both civs' units
• Influence can also be used for negative actions, such as sanctioning a civilization, or attempting to infiltrate its military
• In some cases, you can spend Influence to avoid negative effects, for example to stop another leader's relationship with you from worsening

Misc features

• Navigable rivers! Navigable rivers! Navigable rivers!
• There are new narrative events of the kind popularized by other recent strategy games. Example: An artist painted a portrait of me that I found unsettling, and my options were to hang it up (+25 culture), destroy it (+50 gold), or pay to have it redone (+2 culture on the palace, -25 gold).
• Barbarians have been replaced with Independant Powers, which may or may not be hostile, and whose camps can turn into City-States
• Religion and natural disasters are back, as well as other features from Civ 5, Civ 6, and their expansions (I don't have a comprehensive list, and I expect there'll be tweaks to these systems, but I didn't have time to dig into them)
• A fact sheet about the game promises "progression bonuses for your leaders across multiple gameplay sessions"

Multiplayer and launch info

• Civ 7 is releasing on a ton of platforms at launch: Windows (Steam and Epic), Linux (Steam), Mac (Steam), Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
• There will be online multiplayer with PC/console crossplay. The 2K Launcher is being ditched, though you'll need a 2K Account for online multiplayer
• Multiplayer matches can span all three ages, or just one age "so you can enjoy an entire game in a single session"
• On Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, five players are supported in the Antiquity and Exploration ages, and eight players are supported in the Modern age (I'm not sure why this is!)
• The Switch version supports fewer players, four in Antiquity and Exploration, and six in Modern

Against a wall in the lobby of the Firaxis office, there are two objects: An old leather desk chair, and an equally aged PC and CRT monitor in beautiful '90s beige. These obviously aren't just any old bits of retro junk. They're the kinds of relics game history archivists dream of, given how much has been lost over the years to bankruptcies, acquisitions, and carelessness. 

Over 30 years ago, Sid Meier sat in that very chair and used that PC to create 1991's Civilization, the first game in a grand strategy series that's getting its 7th numbered release in February. The computer is a Compaq Deskpro 386 which, according to Firaxis learning and development manager Pete Murray, cost $10,000 when it was purchased. That's somewhere over $23,000 in today's dollars.

It was money well spent given the millions of copies the Civilization series has sold, and it was no lemon, either: Apparently, the old fella still boots.

So, what's inside this bad boy? Firaxis didn't have a full spec list to share, but we have a few details. It would've had 640 KB of useable RAM, because that was an architectural limitation of IBM-like PCs at the time (and the amount Bill Gates famously denies saying "ought to be enough for anybody"). There would've been expanded memory on top of that, and Murray said that the machine contains "16 MB of memory," which seems to be the upper limit for the model. It's unclear how large the hard drive is. The PC also contains a Sound Blaster audio card, which is just the kind of high tech hardware you'd expect in a $10K PC from the early '90s.

With the help of some parts from Ebay and "creative salvage," Firaxis's IT department got the PC to boot as recently as last year.

"The hard drive is nearing the end of its life," said Murray, "but if you fire it up, there's a build of Civilization 1 on there that is just before the release version of Civ, and it is playable on that machine."

As for the leather chair, that was apparently the idea of one of Sid Meier's business partners, Bill Stealey. The first Civilization was not developed and published by Firaxis, which didn't exist yet, but by MicroProse, which Meier founded with Stealey in 1982.

"As I recall, Bill Stealey wanted a cool executive chair and he decided I should have one too—apparently ergonomics was not yet a thing," says Meier, via a description of the objects printed on the wall above them.

Meier left MicroProse and formed Firaxis with two others in 1996. It's common for development artifacts to be lost in that sort of transition, so it's nice to see a bit of PC gaming history in such good condition. 

I also strolled past Meier's closed, but not unused, office on my visit to the Firaxis office earlier this month. The Civilization creator still comes in and works on game prototypes, I'm told—he just happened to be on vacation when I stopped by.

2K Games of course didn't fly a bunch of press to Maryland just to look at Sid's old PC: We were there to play Civilization 7, which you can read all about in my hands-on preview.

Be honest: When you play Civilization, do you dutifully guide your subjects from the dawn of history to the moon landing, or do you get bored sometime around the Renaissance and start over? If you're the dutiful type, you're in the minority: Firaxis has been collecting statistics, and although it wouldn't share specifics, the developer told me it was surprised to discover how few Civilization players had finished a game of Civilization.

In response to this revelation, Firaxis has substantially changed Civilization's structure for the next game, which is out in February. In Civilization 7, you no longer begin in the Ancient era, advancing through and beyond the Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, and Modern eras. There are just three ages in Civilization 7—Antiquity, Discovery, and Modern—and the tech tree has been somewhat simplified.

It might turn out to be the most controversial change since Civilization 5 ditched unit stacking, or since Civilization 6 adopted a cartoonier art style (which has been walked back in Civ 7). But before the word "simplified" causes too much anxiety, I should elaborate: I think the changes are exciting, and Firaxis has also added, tweaked, and expanded. You can now build towns, not just cities. There are powerful new units called Commanders. You'll find navigable rivers for the first time (yes!), so you can have your own Mississippi or Nile. Major features from the Civ 5 and 6 expansion packs are here, such as religion and natural disasters. 

It's still Civilization, a judgment I arrived at after playing for three hours, and that creative director Ed Beach, who was also the lead designer of Civilization 6, expresses in numbers.

"We're very mindful of exactly how much we were changing," Beach said to a group of press, including myself, who were flown to Firaxis's office in early August to try the game. "You've probably heard the Firaxis mantra that 33% of the game stays the same, 33% of it gets updated, and 33% is brand new. We absolutely followed that again."

History in layers

Here's one big change: Despite leading Rome, I played as Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut. Your leader no longer has to match your civilization.

This relates to a key part of the new three-act structure: In the transition to a new age, you'll select a new civilization. Each age has unique civs, and the choices available depend on your leader, but also what you've accomplished so far. If you've amassed a huge stable of powerful cavalry units, for instance, you might be granted the option of swapping to Mongolia for the Exploration age.

Beach's big theme for Civilization 7 is the idea that "history is built in layers." The thought was inspired by London, which began as Roman outpost Londinium before being abandoned, occupied by the conquering Normans, and then transformed by the Industrial Revolution. 

"Now we have a new version of Civilization where I can play a single pathway through history, and I get to be the Romans, I get to be the Normans, and then I get to be Britain," he said.

In the transition to a new age, old buildings lose their special effects and adjacency bonuses, so you'll be encouraged to literally build in layers, replacing the old with the new. The pre-defined districts of Civ 6 have been dropped in favor of general urban districts that the player defines by the buildings they opt to place in them. Cities should be more compact as a result.

Along with sub-goals that break up the journey toward one of Civ's victory conditions, getting to adopt a new culture's architecture, units, and bonuses along the way—an idea you'll also find in 2021 strategy game Humankind—might just tempt me to finally start sticking things out to the end. It's hard to say, though, because Civ's early game remains as compelling as ever, and some of the changes in Civ 7 make it even more exciting.

Settling in

One of those changes has to do with how cities come to be in the first place. Settler units now found towns instead of cities, which are a much more sensible thing to found, I think. Don't get ahead of yourself!

Towns are like cities, but have no production queue. Instead, their productive capacity is converted directly into gold for your coffers. You can add buildings to towns, but only by purchasing them. You can spend gold to transform a town into a proper city, but you don't have to. You can leave your town as a town, and optionally select a permanent specialization, turning it into a mining town, a farming town (which includes a fishing bonus), a trading outpost, or a military fort. Strategic Civ players already specialize their cities; now there's a built-in way to optimize your settlements based on their geographic and political situation.

I like this change a lot, not because I care about min-maxing, but because my love of expansion conflicts with my desire to actually manage 12 cities. In Civ's blissful early game, when I'm making my most creative and consequential decisions, I enjoy sticking cities wherever I think cities should go, sometimes for purely aesthetic reasons. If I see a cute bay with fish, you better believe I'm hitting it with a cute bayside fishing town. But now it can actually be a fishing town.

My overall impression of Civ 7 is that Firaxis has sought to remove low-impact decisions—stuff players always do, or choices they don't take seriously—while emphasizing actually important decisions.

A good example of this trend is the removal of Workers. RIP to the little guys you previously had to send hiking across the countryside to build land improvements like farms and mines. Improvements are now constructed automatically when a new land tile is annexed by a city. However, cities no longer expand into new tiles automatically. You're instead prompted to choose a new tile whenever a city grows. With that new level of control, I developed my capital, Rome, as a very long city, capturing resources on the either side of a river.

Spreading influence

Barbarians are gone, replacing another obvious choice (beat up on the barbarians) with something slightly more complex, if not by much. Replacing those early game foes are Independent Powers, who may or may not be hostile. If they're peaceful, you can spend the new Influence resource to befriend them. If they're allowed to develop, they'll later form a city-state, and getting on their good side is helpful if you want to become their suzerain.

Influence can also be spent to cooperate with or sabotage other nations. It's an all-purpose diplomacy currency, basically, and might be too universal. I could spend it to enthusiastically accept a neighboring country's proposal for an international farmer's market, and also to sanction them or attempt to infiltrate their military.

The system did get me more involved in international relations than I usually am early in a Civ game: I used Influence to befriend an independent power, to make military pacts that increased my unit strength, and to weaken my antagonistic neighbor, Egypt—which by the way was run by Roman emperor Octavian, who traded places with Hatshepsut. 

In command

The AI leaders still behave like kids who are making things up as they go, leaping from negotiations over fruits and vegetables to declarations of war, but I'm not sure more human-like computer players would be a profitable area for Firaxis to invest in. If they behaved like real players, the AI leaders would probably focus all their early-game energy on building cool Wonders and then quit the first time they suffered a significant military loss.

I concluded my session in the middle of a protracted war between Egyptian Rome and Roman Egypt that I refused to end—mainly out of spite, but also because I wanted to play with the new Commander units. They are now the only units that get promotions, which buff their abilities or the abilities of units around them. More interestingly, you can stack multiple units 'inside' a commander, send them to the front line, and then unpack them. Commanders can also issue orders to nearby units, telling them to focus fire on a particular enemy, for instance, which confers bonuses. There's a whiff of XCOM here: I can imagine getting quite attached to a max level general who's overseen my greatest military victories.

As curious as I am about big additions like Commanders and the new three-age structure, I walked away most excited by little tweaks to ancient Civ conventions, like the addition of towns. Even smaller, but also exciting: When you tell a unit to fortify, it actually builds a fortification, and Scouts can now put up little watchtowers to see further—I love that.

But there are also good signs for Firaxis' plan to get more of us to play Civ games till the end. One, I'm curious to experience a Crisis event—I didn't get that far in my session, but I'm told that these events act as climaxes to the first two ages, requiring players to select a series of Crisis policies that negatively affect their civs.

And beyond that, I'll be interested to know just how different the Exploration and Modern ages are from Antiquity. During our brief interview, Beach gave me some hints about what to expect in the Exploration age. It's themed around the part of any Civ game (and of world history) when deep ocean tiles become traversable, and you start to discover what's going on outside of your own continent. Exploring "the distant lands," as they're called in Civ 7, will lead to the discovery of valuable new resources.

The real history of global exploration of course did not involve everyone venturing across the oceans at the same time and on equal footing—some explored, and then they violently exploited the people they found—but Civ isn't meant to be an accurate replay of history. Still, I already know that I want to try to defy Civ 7's structure and themes to, for instance, play an isolationist nation during that second act, engaging with just a few foreign traders from behind my walls. 

That's the plight of a strategy game designer, I guess: Give us a structure, goals, and themes meant to help us progress through the game and take advantage of all its systems, and of course the first thing we want to do is reject them all to see what happens. Another headache to sit alongside Civ 4 designer Soren Johnson's observation that "given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."

Civilization 7 will release on February 11, 2025, and it's coming to Windows, Linux, and Mac at launch (here's its Steam page), as well as Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. 

For more details, I've compiled a big list of Civ 7 changes and new features I saw during my gameplay session, and heard about from Firaxis. The studio has also broadcast a gameplay showcase on Twitch.

At this year's Gamescom event, two forthcoming games heavily feature ray tracing as the means for producing the best possible graphics. Star Wars Outlaws and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle both have graphics features, either exclusively developed by Nvidia or are so demanding that only high-end GeForce RTX cards can really handle it.

Nvidia was the first GPU vendor to bring real-time ray tracing hardware to the gaming masses at another Gamescom in 2018, with its GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards. But since then, AMD and Intel have both followed suit, and all new gaming PCs and consoles are more or less capable of ray tracing. Most PC gamers are well aware that Nvidia's GPUs can do ray tracing faster than the competition but three games show that Nvidia is doing its best to push the technology to new heights—and very much in its favour.

Take the recently launched Black Myth: Wukong. Its graphics are spectacular but to get the very best visuals, you need to enable a setting called Full Ray Tracing. The game runs on Unreal Engine 5 and it uses Lumen ray-traced global illumination by default. However, 'full ray tracing' is a path tracing algorithm.

If you're a hardware enthusiast, you'll already know about path tracing but even if you don't, you may well have already come across it in Cyberpunk 2077 or more recently, a mod for Doom 2. Path tracing is actually a whole bunch of different algorithms but the general idea is that it's a means to let developers push the amount of ray tracing taking place, without utterly tanking the performance. It's still very demanding but the results are super impressive.

At Gamescom 2024, it was announced that the forthcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle game will also have path tracing—sorry, Full Ray Tracing. Now, there's no indication whatsoever that the option will only work on GeForce RTX cards but given how demanding it is, you can be pretty sure that just the likes of the RTX 4080 Super or RTX 4090 will be able to run at a decent frame rate.

Mind you, Black Myth: Wukong runs quite well with path—darn it—Full Ray Tracing enabled on mid-range RTX graphics cards, as long as you keep the resolution down and use lots of upscaling and frame generation. In theory, AMD and Intel GPUs should run it too but my own testing showed that the performance hit is far too big to make it worth using.

And then there's Star Wars Outlaws, which is due for release August 30. That doesn't have Full Path Tracing (I'm going to call it FRT from now on) but it does feature an Nvidia technology: RTX Direct Illumination or RTXDI, for short. 

Now, any GPU that supports DirectX Ray Tracing 1.0 (aka DXR) or better can run this algorithm but, while I'm not allowed to give any specifics, I'll give you just one guess as to which GPU tech runs it the best, in terms of raw speed and lack of bugs.

I personally spend quite a bit of my free time messing about with DXR coding and using Lumen in Unreal Engine 5, so it's clear that I'm somewhat biased when it comes to having an opinion on the use of ray tracing in games. But if more and more games start to feature FRT as being the only way to get the best possible graphics or utilise more of Nvidia's APIs for ray tracing, I am a little worried that the whole thing is slowly becoming a one horse race.

Not that ray tracing is a race, of course, but let's be honest here—the technology is going to be used increasingly more in games, especially the big-budget ones, and consoles are only going to become more capable in this aspect.

The latter is the best counterpoint to Nvidia's dominance in the ray tracing industry as consoles are powered by AMD chips and developers that make games exclusively for that platform only need to think about how RDNA RT units handle it all.

But in the world of PC gaming, it's pretty much RTX all the way, be it hardware or software, right now. That's great news if you're an Nvidia shareholder, less so if you have an Arc or Radeon graphics card.

With regards to AMD's desktop PC graphics cards, it's expected that RNDA 4 will have improved ray tracing units but at the same time, it's looking unlikely that there will be any high-end models sporting these chips.

As for Intel's next-gen Battlemage GPUs—well, with the senior management hell-bent on saving big chunks of money, there's a chance that the hardware is fine but the software support won't be as good.

Don't get me wrong, Nvidia has made some pretty amazing stuff for PC gaming, be it hardware or comprehensive software kits. But I rather hope that hope that game developers just use Black Myth: Wukong as inspiration for what modern graphics can look like, rather than being the best way to implement ray tracing.

Today at Gamescom's Opening Night Live, Nexon revealed a new cinematic and gameplay trailer for The First Berserker: Khazan, an action RPG with soulslike combat set in the universe of the Dungeon & Fighter series. 

The First Berserker: Khazan is a revenge story. Originally a raid enemy in Dungeon Fighter Online, Khazan is reimagined in The First Berserker as a sort of anime Conan. Barbarian-turned-general of the Pell Los empire and slayer of the dragon Hismar, Khazan begins The First Berserker having been betrayed by imperial conspirators after committing the cardinal sin of being too cool and popular. Framed for treason by a jealous emperor, Khazan was banished to the snowy hinterlands. Unfortunately for the Pell Los emperor, snowy hinterlands are the exact kind of place where your vengeful enemies can forge themselves into unkillable videogame protagonists.

Somewhere along the line in his revenge quest, Khazan apparently forges some kind of terrible pact with a "Blade Phantom," which—judging purely from visuals—seems to let him empower his weaponry with his own blood. Or something? Either way, it's a useful skill if you've got a score to settle against an entire empire, and thanks to The First Berserker's really cool, high-detail cel-shaded style, it looks sick.

Developer Neople has really nailed the combat body language for the fantasy berserker. Khazan moves and fights like a human battering ram, stringing together simple, impactful movements with direct brute force. It makes for a fun visual pairing with The First Berserker's seemingly soulslike combat, the pace of which has an almost Bloodborne-style of head-on aggression.

Gamescom is also where The First Berserker: Khazan has its first playable demo. The rest of us will have to wait a couple more months for a chance to try it for ourselves: There'll be a closed technical beta test for The First Berserker: Khazan in October.

The First Berserker: Khazan is set to release sometime in 2025.

Gamescom Opening Night Live closed out with a "just one more thing..." reveal this year, and it turned out to be a big one: the first wholly new game in the Mafia series since 2016. It's set to release in 2025.

Mafia: The Old Country is "a thrilling story set in 1900s Sicily during the origins of the mafia, "said Nick Baynes, president of Take-Two-owned development studio Hangar 13. Baynes didn't get into the details, but said the Old Country is "going back to the roots of what fans love about the Mafia franchise, crafting a deep, linear narrative with that classic mob movie feeling."

Hangar 13 will be showing more of Mafia: The Old Country in December. For now there's not much more to go on, but the YouTube description for the trailer does suggest you'll "uncover the origins of organized crime" this time around. Could that mean becoming the first-ever crime family don? 

"Fight to survive in this dangerous and unforgiving era, with action brought to life by the authentic realism and rich storytelling that the critically acclaimed Mafia series is known for," promises the trailer text. And we sure did love Mafia 2's Empire Bay.

The irony of making an Indiana Jones game in the year 2024 is that, inevitably, you're going to be compared to Tomb Raider and Uncharted, two series that were themselves heavily influenced by the Indiana Jones movies. And for sure there are elements of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's Gamescom presentation—recently shown to press ahead of its appearance to the public on the conference's show floor—that will be familiar to action adventure fans. For instance, yes, there is a puzzle that involves rotating mirrors in order to redirect beams of light.

But there's another—and for me, more interesting—point of reference for The Great Circle. It's found in MachineGames' past, back when its founders were still part of Starbreeze Studios. "We've been going back a little bit into the history of our own," says game director Jerk Gustafsson in a group Q&A. "You play the game in first-person—it's the primary perspective that you play in—but we do combine this with third-person, so very similar to what we did back in the days with the Riddick games and The Darkness game. And also similar to those games, which were the first games we did that really put a lot of focus on character building and the story combined with exploration in gameplay, that is something we pushed really hard here."

That history certainly shines through in the combat, which is primarily melee based. In a one-on-one brawl it's a series of dodges, parries and counter-punches that all come together through animations that look satisfyingly weighty. But as you'll most likely be dealing with a few guards at once, you've got some extra tools at your disposal too. Indy's whip is used both for traversal and combat—in one scene, set outside the Great Sphinx of Giza, he swings into the fray before flinging the whip at a guard to make him stumble before turning to deal with another. After a quick brawl, Indy pulls out his revolver to quickly dispatch the third and final guard.

As with Wolfenstein before it, though, stealth is also an option. In another section, Indy grabs a bottle lying on the ground, throwing it at a distant wall to distract a guard. Picking up a hammer, he then sneaks up to another for an instant takedown. "We want the player to really feel like they can take on different obstacles or challenges in many different ways," says Gustafsson.

"Stealth is definitely part of that—yes, you can also hide bodies—but also … very intensive hand-to-hand fist fights, which we have been putting a lot of effort into. And that combined also with the whip, which adds another element to the game. So overall all of these tools and different styles of gameplay will provide a mix to play around with."

Structurally, I'm also interested in how open The Great Circle's levels will be. I went in expecting a mostly linear affair, but MachineGames is teasing exploration and side missions as a major element of the game. "We do have these more story-driven, linear levels that we mix up with more open areas that really push exploration and that sense of discovery," says Gustafsson. "There's a lot of extra content—or side content—in this game too. We have focused quite a lot to make sure everything you do in the game contributes to this overarching storyline, but these types of areas we have that let you explore and find things on your own is very much optional as well."

It's an intriguing prospect. Typically these matinee inspired action adventures drag you along from cinematic mishap to action set piece, stopping occasionally for a big puzzle or a fight. And to be clear, this also seems to be the case with The Great Circle—it's a formula that works, after all. But the prospect of being set loose in historical locations, given a bit more freedom to step away from the rollercoaster and choose a less deterministic approach is exciting.

The question for me then is how that balance shakes out—how well MachineGames manages to balance its own history with the conventions of a modern action adventure. It's trying to fit a lot in: puzzles, combat, exploration, story, side missions, and even a disguise system to slip past enemies undetected. If it all comes together, though, we could be looking at another classic from a team that—20 years ago—brought us one of the most beloved film tie-in games of all time.

Bethesda dropped a new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at tonight's Opening Night Live showcase at Gamescom, revealing that the anticipated adventure romp will be out on December 9.

Narrated by Troy Baker, who portrays the famous Dr. Jones in the new game, the new trailer showcases the breadth of Indy's adventures in the new game.

"Mysterious artifacts, cunning villains, ancient discoveries, hard hitting action," Baker says in a voice I can only assume in his own. "It's a world of constant danger where you've got to think on your feet to stay alive. The great circle spans the entire globe, from snake filled jungle temples to scorpion riddled desert tombs. Stunning open areas to explore freely, full of secrets for you to discover."

As a renowned archaeologist, Indiana Jones has more tools at his disposal than just his whip and pistol: He'll also make use of a camera and a journal to track his discoveries and the details found in the world around him, which will be "key to solving the ancient puzzles that hold the secrets you're after."

We took a closer look at what MachineGames is doing with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in a new Gamescom preview: It's a very ambitious undertaking, but if all the pieces come together, PC Gamer editor in chief Phil Savage reckons "we could be looking at another classic." 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is available for pre-purchase now on Steam. Springing for the premium or collector's edition of the game will get you into it up to three days early, along with a digital art book, an outfit, and The Order of Giants story DLC. 

Today at Gamescom's Opening Night Live, Capcom brought a new trailer for Monster Hunter Wilds, showing off new monsters, the latest hub area, and the return of well-done steaks.

The trailer begins with hunters discovering a strange flower in the new Scarlet Forest region, leading them to the lair of the Lala Barina—a new temnoceran monster. Pouncing down on the hunters from an overhead web of crimson threads, the Lala Barina is like a massive, vampiric wooly spider. Its front legs are split into trios of raking claws, and it can extend a thorn-like stinger from its rear. When enraged, the Lala Barina's abdomen blooms into a flower-like formation, from which it can scatter paralytic blossoms. Seems like a nightmare; can't wait to fight it myself.

From there, we get our first look at the hub area in Wilds that we'll be returning to between hunts. It's an "interim camp" built around a desert village, shielded from the sun by massive spans of overhanging canvas. I'm pleased to report that there's a kitchen where felyne cooks are preparing food, and I truly cannot wait to see what their cooking cutscene looks like.

As a desert storm descends, we're given our proper introduction to Rey Dau, a lightning-charged flying wyvern that seems to generate the ravaging desert storms we've seen in Wilds previews up to now. Called the region's apex predator, Rey Dau attacks with sweeping strikes of its wings, tail, and bull-like horns, creating lightning strikes where its hits connect. It can also snap the horns surrounding its face together, triggering an explosive lightning blast so intense that it turns the desert sand into glass.

After a montage of hunters battling the collection of new monsters alongside their palico comrades, the trailer closes with a ritual familiar to any seasoned monster hunter: the grilling of a well-done steak, raised triumphantly over the hunter's head. So tasty, indeed.

For more Monster Hunter at Gamescom, Capcom will be Monster Hunter hosting developer livestreams throughout the week. Featuring "live Wilds gameplay, community questions and more," the streams will air at 4 AM PT on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday on Twitch.

Monster Hunter Wilds will release in 2025.

Game designer Peter Molyneux is known for classic series Black & White (a personal fav), Dungeon Keeper, and Fable, but in the 2000s and 2010s, he also became known for making ambitious promises he couldn't keep, becoming the quintessential 'game dev who talks to much.' This narrative climaxed when Molyneux launched a mobile game about clicking on a cube and promised that whoever got to the center would receive a life-changing prize, which turned out not to be life-changing at all.

The spotlight eventually moved on from Molyneux—in 2016, No Man's Sky director Sean Murray became the new favorite games industry overpromiser—and although his mobile games studio continued on, it seemed like Molyneux's legacy as a PC game designer had just about crystallized.

Surprise! He's not done yet: Molyneux appeared on stage with Geoff Keighley at Gamescom Opening Night Live today to announce a new PC and console game, and I feel like I've been transported back to the early 2000s, because, folks, I think it looks pretty darn good. What can I say? The guy makes a great pitch.

The game is called Masters of Albion. It's a god game with all the classic fixings, including a hand cursor you can use to pick up and fling around your little fantasy citizens. You can also inhabit their bodies and fight monsters in third-person action combat, and then pull back out to the overhead view to zap 'em with your god powers (the monsters, but probably also your citizens, if you want).

The most interesting bit of Masters of Albion is what appears to be a very flexible crafting system. At one point in the trailer, the player equips one of their citizens with a sword made of a loaf of bread.

"You can design anything: the food the people eat, the clothes they wear, the weapons they use, the armor they fight with," says Molyneux in the trailer. "There is a strategy behind every creation. I can even feed them rats."

Masters of Albion is being developed by a team of 20, and will release on PC and console. On stage at Opening Night Live, Molyneux chided himself for previously "messing around on mobile."

"What the hell was I doing? I thought to myself: I need to come home to PC and console," he said. "So I've looked at Dungeon Keeper, I've taken some things that I've wanted to explore further with Dungeon Keeper. I've done the same with Black & White. I've done the same with Fable."

Molyneux has funded the game himself—no Kickstarter this time—and the team of 20 includes developers who worked on those classics. "I think my first realization was that I needed to bring the old team back together again," Molyneux said.

If Sean Murray could come back from all the discontent around the launch of No Man's Sky—to the point that fans bought a billboard for him—maybe Molyneux has a redemption story in him, too? (The Kickstarter backers of his last big project might not be so quick to forgive, granted.)

Masters of Albion doesn't have a release date yet, but does have a Steam page.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred will continue a Diablo tradition of letting you recruit a team of mercenaries to help you slash through hell. A shieldbearer, scoundrel, berserker, and a literal demon are teased in the latest trailer that debuted during the Gamescom Opening Night Live stream.

Details on the mercenaries are still fairly sparse, but each of them neatly fits into an archetype that synergizes with Diablo 4's existing classes. The shieldbearer, for example, holds up a magical barrier over a necromancer as they're surrounded by monsters. Some of the mercenary's skills mirror ones players have been using in the game already, like the berserker lady's ability to yank monsters toward her with ropes that look very similar to the barbarians' steel grasp.

I can already see a dozen ways the mercenaries will supplement existing builds. Sorcerers who frequently freeze packs of demons would surely love to have a demon child who can launch a wave of fire toward them as a follow up. And as someone who never plays barbarian, I'll gladly hire a buddy to taunt and whirlwind through enemies for me.

The trailer is too brief to get into what kind of ways we'll be able to customize our mercenaries. In Diablo 3, you could toss them hand-me-down armor and mini skill trees—both features I would hope return in Diablo 4.

Blizzard plans to go into more detail during Gamescom this week, and then we'll have to wait until October 8 to meet them in Vessel of Hatred's campaign.

The team-based hero shooter Marvel Rivals dropped a new trailer at Gamescom's Opening Night Live showcase tonight, revealing two new playable heroes and, more importantly, a release date of December 6.

The new heroes, who will be playable at launch, are Captain America—who honestly I'm a little surprised wasn't included right from the start—and his perennial frenemy, the Winter Soldier. Details on the characters haven't been revealed yet, but we'll no doubt be hearing more about that soon.

The bigger deal, of course, is the release date. Marvel Rivals ran a closed beta test earlier this year that didn't exactly knock our socks off—online editor Fraser Brown called it "aggressively bad," while news writer Elie Gould took a more charitable view, describing it as "pretty agreeable" and also noting that it was still early days for the game.

The obvious hope is that developer NetEase has made the changes and adjustments necessary to improve the experience, and the good news is that it won't cost you anything to find out: One big advantage that Marvel Rivals holds over its obvious competitor Overwatch 2 is that Rivals is completely free to play, with all heroes unlocked at launch.

NetEase also confirmed that future Marvel Rivals beta tests are on the way ahead of the full release—you can sign up to take part at marvelrivals.com.

I've heard of riding outfits and hunting costumes and other such purpose-specific wardrobes of history. But the Victorians have nothing on Infinity Nikki, the open world dress-up adventure game where you'll unlock a floating outfit, gliding outfit (apparently not the same thing), shrinking outfit, fishing outfits, and more. Nikki showed up at Gamescom Opening Night Live today with a new trailer and also just opened registration for its closed beta.

Infinity Nikki is the fifth game in what was formerly a mobile-only series, now coming to PC (and console), as we found out during Sony's State of Play earlier this summer. Today's new trailer was more abstract than that reveal trailer, basically just a fever dream of cats, chickens, and sheep all singing "Nikki" over and over again as stylist Nikki and her cat companion Momo explore Miraland. Fortunately, Infold Games gave a more comprehensible explanation in text form:

"Sink into an immersive world with boundless opportunities including cozy open-world exploration, fun platforming, puzzle-solving, gorgeous style possibilities, and much more brought to life by former The Legend of Zelda director Kentaro Tominaga," Infold Games says. "Solve intricately designed puzzles and ward against dark energy with Nikki’s adventurous spirit. Commune with playful creatures and create specific outfits to fish in the river, catch bugs in the fields, and travel between lands."

I've always been quite keen on games where I can build and decorate, even without goals (Townscaper, Tiny Glade, etc), but I've never been one for open-ended dress-up, so fashion games have always been outside my sphere. But if you throw in some beautiful open world, a bit of exploration, traversal puzzle solving, I am so very in. Infinity Nikki has my extreme attention. 

Now I've not done any deep dives into the lore of the Nikki series but Mollie Taylor did once try to explain Love Nikki to me, which is apparently way darker than I thought this adorable fashion game would be. So I'm quite curious to see if there's a similarly dire story hiding beneath Infinity Nikki's bright surface.

What I hadn't quite clocked from the reveals so far was Nikki's premium currency monetization, though that'll come as less of a surprise to those familiar with the mobile games, I'm sure. You can spot on its official website the pre-registration rewards including multiple currencies that remind me a lot of what I'm now used to seeing in the likes of Genshin Impact and other gacha games. So know that, ahead of time.

Though we've not gotten a release date for Infinity Nikki, it has just opened up registration for its closed beta test (dates to be announced), which will include PC players. You can also find it on the Epic Games Store.

I think the last time I herded a bunch of animals it was for a side-quest in one of the Red Dead Redemption games, and I'm pretty sure I didn't like it. It felt like a slow, irritating chore, dealing with a bunch of dumb, slow animals who took every opportunity to break from the pack and make the job I didn't want to be doing even harder.

But what if they made a whole game out of the herding? And what if the developer was Okomotive, maker of Far: Lone Sails and Far: Changing Tides? And what if the trailer was drop-dead gorgeous? Take a look and tell me you don't want to drive a herd of... of... well, whatever those big monsters are, across a big and mysterious world.

This is a departure for Okomotive, trading in the side-scrolling nature of the Far games for... I don't know what you'd call it when you're going toward the center of the screen instead of sideways across it. Horizon-heading? Middle-moving? Depth-delving?

But you can definitely tell it's still Okomotive. There are environmental puzzles to solve in Herdling while driving your pack of beasts along trails and through the mountains, and while the world looks quite different than the decaying realms of the Far series, there's still the same sort of ominous beauty to it.

"With Herdling we wanted to start a new kind of adventure, not only for the players, but also for us," said Okomotive. "To create the herd of beasts and their mountainous world was an ambitious challenge for us and we enjoyed every step of that journey."

If the trailer got you interested, you can find out more about Herdling at the Panic Games Showcase on August 27.

The first-ever gameplay trailer for the upcoming Batman: Arkham Shadow appeared at Gamescom's Opening Night Live showcase tonight, giving us our first proper look at the upcoming VR take on the adventures of the most therapy-averse billionaire in history.

The new trailer focuses on exploration, dialogue, and of course plenty of fisticuffs, as the world's greatest detective whomps the living hell out of dozens of flunkies and underlings on his way to ensuring that nothing ever really gets better in the bleak, crumbling metropolis of Gotham City. 

"A corrupt system has failed you," the villainous Rat King (at least, I assume that's the Rat King) says at one point. "Are you not angry? Fight back!" The man has a point, right? If your life is an endless swamp of futility and hopelessness, and the best the people in power can offer is a sock in the chops from a guy dressed up like a flying rat, well, I think I'd be a little angry about things too.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Batman: Arkham Shadow developer Camouflaj says it's "reimagined the core Arkham experience for VR," and was particularly inspired by the "intricate and interconnected level design" of Arkham Asylum. The new game is set between the events of Arkham Origins and Arkham Asylum, and will feature Roger Craig Smith—the voice of Batman in Arkham Origins—in the title role, alongside fellow Arkham veterans Troy Baker as Harvey Dent, Tara Strong as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, Mark Rolston as James Gordon, and Martin Jarvis as Alfred Pennyworth.

"Batman: Arkham Shadow will push Meta Quest 3 to its limits, giving players an up-close look at Gotham City and delivering an Arkham experience that will resonate with longtime fans," Meta said in a press blurb. "We’re very excited about this one, and can’t wait to get it in your hands come October."

Of course, most "longtime fans" of the Arkham games won't get much out of this one. Regardless of how good it ultimately proves to be, being a VR game—a Meta Quest 3 exclusive at that—puts it beyond the reach of most gamers. For those packing Meta's latest and greatest VR rig, Batman: Arkham Shadow looks like it might be pretty solid, but after nearly 10 years since the last proper Arkham game, that being Arkham Knight in 2015 (no, I am not counting Suicide Squad here), you can understand why Arkham fans as a whole might be a little disappointed.

A release date for Batman: Arkham Shadow hasn't been set at this point, but it's slated to arrive sometime in October.

Follow the Call of Duty series long enough and you'll recognize exactly the place we're in with Black Ops 6: The game is revealed, we know one major change coming to multiplayer (sprinting in any direction), and now it's time for the campaign. Activision debuted six minutes of campaign gameplay at Gamescom Opening Night Live with a standard CoD dose of stacking up on doorways, shooting at a big armored guy with a minigun, and riding on the back of a vehicle while more shooting happens.

Looks as fun as any Black Ops campaign, and it'd be hard to do any worse than the disaster that was Modern Warfare 3's story, but let's be honest: We're gonna forget all about Adler and his gang of executive branch-approved buds as soon as the Black Ops 6 campaign is over. I can't think of a series for which the singleplayer portion of a game is less consequential. What CoD players spend 99% of their time on, and what we still know little about, is multiplayer. Treyarch's lips are sealed on that front until the CoD Next event later this month.

That's not to say we shouldn't be enthusiastic about another Blops story. Sure, CoD has gotten so used to repeating itself that anyone could've predicted that elevator shaft would somehow blow up as they were hanging from those cables, but I enjoy my yearly check-in with the big-budget FPS campaign. We don't get many of those anymore, and while CoD's stories only seem to be getting shorter with time, the Blops games usually manage one or two genuine surprises, like Cold War's complex Kremlin infiltration mission.

I just don't think we should pretend the Blops 6 campaign matters. People used to say that Activision only makes Call of Duty campaigns so it has a bunch of exciting set pieces to cut trailers with, and I think that feels true now more than ever. Activision has so many coals in the fire with this series—multiplayer, zombies, Warzone, mobile—that there's a sort of unspoken understanding in the community that campaigns are just a fun little appetizer for the real game. When they're good, they set the tone nicely for our next hundred hours of multiplayer. When they're bad, you can't help but wonder if singleplayer CoD should finally throw in the towel.

Black Ops 6 is out October 25, but the full multiplayer reveal and beta kick off at the end of the month: August 30 to September 4.

It's been five years since Grinding Gear Games announced Path of Exile 2—five years that I've spent wondering feverishly when I'll get to reenter the endless grind for build-perfect loot. Now, thanks to a reveal at Gamescom's Opening Night Live earlier today, we finally know when the sequel to the free-to-play Diablo-like will be playable. Path of Exile 2 is entering early access on November 15, 2024.

The trailer accompanying the early access announcement has every aesthetic hallmark you'd hope to see in a Path of Exile follow-up: It's got fleshy horrors. It's got ominous religious overtones. It's got an overzealous figure declaring their intent to "sweep aside this world and build it anew." It's all in there.

We also get a look at a lineup of bosses we'll almost certainly be farming hundreds of times over. A haunting figure wearing a bizarre skull headdress emerges from a pit in an underground tomb. A four-armed, blood-smeared creature brandishes flaming braziers and axes. A looming golem covered in an uncomfortable amount of hands raises a shattered sword. There's even an extremely angry plant.

Finally, we get our latest glimpses of Path of Exile 2 gameplay, showing off exiles fighting bosses solo and in co-op in a variety of detailed environments, from deserts to temple rooftops. There's a lot of PoE 2's new dodge-rolling in there.

It'll be a tough three months of waiting before PoE 2 opens the gates, but hey: It's a good excuse for me to try out the latest PoE season in the meantime.

Bethesda popped up at Gamescom Opening Night Live to reveal that the Rev-8, a vehicle for traversing Starfield's giant planets in bumpy style, is "available tonight" for free. I gotta say I'm getting big Mass Effect Mako vibes from this thing, but in a charming way—it looks bouncy, seemingly has the ability to hover to help you clear large gaps, and yeah, of course it's got a gun on it.

The bigger news, though, is that Starfield's first expansion, Shattered Space, has a release date. As teased at the end of the trailer above, it's out on September 30. You can read more about the surprise patch on Bethesda's website, which includes details on a number of bug fixes and details how to get ahold of your own Rev-8 (okay, it's pretty simple: just talk to your ship technician).

Today's ground vehicle DLC release answers what may be Starfield's most-requested feature. Almost immediately upon release last year, Todd Howard was fielding questions about why there were no vehicles in Starfield to drive around despite its scale. (His answer, that you had a jetpack, didn't quite satisfy). We were disappointed in Starfield's exploration, but Shattered Space may well be a major boon on that front.

When Bethesda shared a look at Shattered Space in June, we learned it's going to explore the House Va’ruun, a "weird space cult" who "believe in an eternal space snake" that our writer Chris Livingston was bummed not to learn more about in the base game. 

While we only get a few teasing seconds of Shattered Space at the end of the Rev-8 trailer above, it's definitely going for a spooky, cosmic horror vibe, including a character who outright looks like a ghost (or maybe whatever the space hologram version of a ghost is). With the Rev-8 parked on a rocky outcropping overlooking some kind of otherworldly base at the end of the trailer, I'd say it's a safe bet that the new vehicle will feature heavily in some of Shattered Space's new campaign missions. We'll find out in just six weeks.

I've been eager to play survival MMO Dune: Awakening since I first saw it back in March. It all looks pretty great so far: the crafting, building, exploring, even the mundane stuff like water gathering and rock breaking looks fun. 

It's even converted a few of us who aren't normally into this kind of thing. Wes doesn't like survival and Josh doesn't like MMOs, but even they're keen to play it. And now we know roughly when we'll get the chance—on PC, at least. 

"Funcom are thrilled to announce that Dune: Awakening, the Open World Survival MMO, will release in early 2025, with the console release planned for a later date," Funcom said today at Gamescom. That's probably not as specific as we'd like, but it's something. The announcement came along with five minutes of new gameplay footage, which you can see below.

The gameplay trailer shows how a rando dumped on Arrakis can become a spice tycoon, building a base, crafting gear and vehicles, and battling other players over spice blows deep in the desert. 

One thing we haven't seen much of yet are knives and swords, something that the Dune fiction is kinda known for. The little we have seen looks mostly like people just whacking each other over the head, rather than the elaborate martial arts we're accustomed to. An MMO probably isn't the environment for a complicated melee system, but I am expecting a little something extra considering the source material.

We'll see more from Dune: Awakening soon: more footage is set to be revealed during Gamescom this week, plus a new Dune: Awakening Direct will take place on August 29.

I'm calling it: 2024 is the year of the mech. We've got Helldivers mechs, farming mechs, and we just got a fresh look at Mecha Break at Gamescom Opening Night Live, showing off the mech-combat action that we first laid eyes on at last year's Game Awards.

The trailer contained, well, a lot of geared-up mechs squaring off and hitting each other, but also showcased classes like snipers, attackers, and defenders.

I'm very curious about this one. After PCG's Ted Litchfield chatted to studio boss Kris Kwok about the game's 60-person battle royale/extraction shooter hybrid mode earlier this year, I've been eager to get my hands on it. Mashing up mech customisation with a big chaotic battle royale thing sounds like precisely the kind of nonsense I can get into.

Unfortunately, I missed my chance on PC. Mecha Break got its first open beta on our platform of choice a few weeks ago, and the studio is currently in the process of bragging about its stats. At the beta's peak, it pulled over 51,000 concurrent players on Steam and another 120,000 via its Chinese launcher. The game has also garnered 2.8 million registrations and features on over a million Steam wishlists, say the devs, probably in case yours isn't one of them.

Alas, if you want hands-on time with Mecha Break in the near future, you'd better hope you got into its upcoming Xbox Closed Beta, which runs from August 25 until August 27. If not, you're stuck waiting until the game's scheduled release in early 2025.

Anyway, this is just the opening salvo for this year's Gamescom shindig. If you want to keep track of all of PCG's coverage, make sure to keep an eye on our site for all the news and previews coming out of Gamescom 2024.

Civilization 7 will launch early next year, on February 11.

The news comes by way of a new trailer, embedded above, which was shown at Gamescom Opening Night Live today. This is the first time we're seeing Civilization 7 gameplay. Critics of Civilization 6's art style, which some players thought was too cartoony, should be pleased, as the saturation has been dropped back to Civ 5 levels. You might also spot a boat going up a river. Finally: navigable rivers!

As exciting as that is, it's hardly the biggest change here: Civilization 7 seriously alters the game's structure, the way cities work, and how we'll wage war. I traveled to Firaxis HQ earlier this month where I got to play Civ 7 for three hours—you'll find everything I learned in my hands-on preview, and I've also broken down all the new stuff I noticed in a big list of bullet points.

Civilization 7 is set to release February 11, 2025, and it's coming to just about everything except phones: Windows, Linux, Mac, Xbox One and Series X/S, PS4 and PS5, and Switch. See the first screenshots below.

Tarsier Studios has announced Reanimal, a co-op adventure horror game that may instill fear in even the biggest of animal lovers—but I might just be projecting. With a spooky trailer shown off at Gamescom Opening Night Live, I guarantee anyone who loved Little Nightmares & Little Nightmares 2 will be excited for what the game has to offer. 

Reanimal Seems to present a visually dark world inhabited by enemies I'm already struggling to describe. In the background of one scene, a long-limbed man with a twisted face (and an iconic big hat we've seen in both Little Nightmares games) is dragging something into the cinema. In another scene, the protagonists are being chased down by a sheep. Except it's not a sheep, because its body seems to extend and it has far more legs than necessary. Basically if you think of something that would've petrified you when you were a kid, there's a chance that Reanimal has brought it to life. Even though we've only had a single look at them, I know playing the game will probably keep me awake for at least one night. 

Although it isn't a part of the Little Nightmares series, Reanimal seems to wear its inspirations on its sleeve. I've spent hours in the world of Little Nightmares, so I'm pretty confident in saying Reanimal draws a lot of its gameplay from the series. From its hauntingly gangly and inhuman enemies, to the thick layer of smog that forces you to question whether or not you really did see a shadow in the distance, there's a lot of similarities that are bound to help make it equally as haunting. 

Fortunately, if you are easily scared when it comes to spindly beings or being chased by possessed animals, you don't have to do it all alone. Reanimal offers co-op to embark on the adventure both online and splitscreen. Players will have to work together to solve the labyrinth of puzzles that await on the hellish island you're trying to escape from. But mostly, I'm excited to have someone to hide behind when one of these not-quite-human beings comes hurtling toward the screen.

Reanimal currently has no release date, but hopefully it isn't long before I have to comprehend what other horrors this game might present. What we've seen is limited, but that hasn't stopped me from already speculating what could possibly emerge from the shadows of the new diabolical world from Tarsier Studios. 

Last year, we wrote about how every new live service shooter starts with its own distinct aesthetic before inevitably succumbing to Cosmetic Uglification, when tie-ins and collaborations result in a game overrun by "a clown show of brands." Impressively, the next game Amazon is publishing, King of Meat, has decided to skip over this painful process by starting with an incomprehensible aesthetic mishmash from day one. 

This is Jackson Pollock: Gamer's Edition, a grab bag of random ideas and systems smashed together in the hopes of reverse-engineering why Roblox prints a million dollars a day. The core setup: a four-player co-op game in which you make your way through short dungeons, smacking braindead enemy mobs with light three-hit weapon combos and solving a few puzzles like "stand on the button" or "pull the lever on that platform" to progress. The theming: a game show, complete with sarcastic announcers commenting on what happens as you go. (The developers describe it as "joyfully unhinged," which mainly means there are some trite jokes about commercialism in this game published by a two trillion-dollar company.)

Because the conceit of the game is, and I quote, "where high fantasy meets the glitz, glamour, and media-infatuation of modern-day celebrity," King of Meat's developers seemingly gave themselves carte blanche to say yes to every possible aesthetic choice. Let's get some wizard stuff in there. Some samurais. Guitar swords. 1990s Chicago Bulls jerseys. Soda machines (remember commercialism!!) and spraypaint. Black hole powers. Exploding rubber duckies. A smelly breath attack. A big horse hoof that comes down from the sky and smashes things. 

Put another way, King of Meat is that Key & Peele Gremlins 2 sketch: "You mean a gremlin with leathery wings just flying around flip-flopping bust through a wall make a perfect bat symbol in the wall get outside get in some wet concrete jump up on a building and just dry in place like a gargoyle gremlin? We are cooking with gas now I love it it's in the movie. Next!"

The crucial distinction is that Gremlins 2 gives off genuine cocaine-fueled gonzo energy, while King of Meat's wackiness is a facade for how derivative everything is underneath the surface.

That may sound crueler than I mean it to be, but my first impression was that King of Meat looked like the parody game that a parody version of Amazon would make in, I don't know, The Boys or something. My feelings did soften once I played it: the combat is fine, serviceable in the way light co-op games often are. As you level up your character you'll unlock some extra combo attacks and character abilities that do meaningfully change what you're capable of, though still within the realm of a simple hack-and-slash. A new downward strike, a charged dash stab, that sort of thing. I'll give King of Meat credit for not basing its entire progression system around gear drops that give you 1% bonuses to your stats.

I did experience a few bugs that slowed down the action—things like enemies getting stuck walking into a wall somewhere halting progress until we killed them, my character's animations breaking after I pressed the wrong combination of buttons, being randomly barred from using one of the two special abilities I equipped prior to a match. They were minor issues I expect will be fixed, but I don't think there's any saving what is fundamentally a game with so little oomph to its combat or stakes.

It's popcorn light, seasoned with a whole shaker's worth of "so random!" humor. Fortnite may be a Cosmetic Uglification superspreader, but underneath the Gokus and Thanoses running around its "metaverse" there's at least a shooter with substantial depth and an even higher skill ceiling with on-the-fly building. The best-case scenario for King of Meat is being the kind of game you and your Discord friends drop into when you don't want to play anything that requires more than 20% of your active attention.

If you're already mostly tuned out, its aesthetic mishmash probably just becomes the same kind of background noise as an ad break on cable TV. Brain calibrated to bare minimum engagement, I think it would be a fine enough game to mash your way through. But there's no compelling hook here to get people on board, which makes me almost certain that King of Meat's big pitch—that players can build and upload their own levels, and all the official levels were made using those very same tools—is doomed from the jump. 

People bought Super Mario Maker because they like Mario, not because they like the abstract idea of making a 2D platformer. Trying to launch a user generated level-based game from ground zero has the same cart-before-horse failure rate of declaring a new FPS an esport before normal people have even decided if they like it or not. I just can't see this one tempting the kiddos away from whatever much wilder stuff they're building in Roblox. For everyone else over the age of 20, you've already seen everything here too many times to find any nourishment in this meat. 

Arc Raiders is finally coming out of the shadows. First announced back in 2021 as a free-to-play co-op shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by dangerous robots, Arc Raiders is the second game from Embark Studios, the Nexon-backed house of ex-DICE devs that also makes The Finals. Arc Raiders was developed in parallel with The Finals, and was once meant to be Embark's debut game, but was delayed as priorities shifted to the free-to-play shooter. We didn't hear anything else about Arc Raiders for a long time, until Embark shared last year that the project had pivoted from a purely PvE co-op shooter to a PvPvE extraction shooter.

Today, Embark reintroduced Arc Raiders to the public at the Gamescom Opening Night Live show, and dropped another major update: Arc Raiders is no longer free-to-play, and will instead have a regular price tag.

In a press briefing held last week, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal discussed Embark's reasoning for the change:

"You may remember that we first intended for Arc Raiders to be a free-to-play game," Grøndal said. "After careful assessment, we decided the premium business model is a great fit for the experience that we're building."

When asked about why the premium model is perfect for Arc Raiders but not, say, The Finals or Nexon's latest hit The First Descendant, Grøndal's response was surprisingly candid.

"For free-to-play games, they need to strike a careful balance between providing engaging content and encouraging players to make purchases," he said. "For Arc Raiders, this shift will allow us to focus more on the engagement, fun, and impact on choices with regards to how the game evolves over time. So we can optimize differently in this game, and give out more rewards as the player progresses, as an example."

I mean, yes, agreed: Free-to-play is nice because it's free to play, but the true cost of entry is a little piece of our souls. To play a live service game in 2024 is to be ferociously hounded by battle pass upgrades, store updates, and general monetization spam at every turn. It's remarkable how much of a major multiplayer game's real estate is now dedicated to ads and shiny levers that make numbers go up and bank balance go down. It's hard to shake the feeling that you're not playing a game as much as you're visiting a digital store that just happens to have a game attached to it.

"Our decision with regards to Arc Raiders specifically doesn't reflect on what our other games are up to. We are trying to do what's best for the game and for the players," he continued. 

What Grøndal is saying in so many words is that Embark believes Arc Raiders is better when it doesn't have to focus on in-game monetization. That's a nice mindset, though I'll have to see it to believe it. He didn't say Arc Raiders wouldn't have microtransactions.

This makes Arc Raiders the latest member of a small club of multiplayer games betting on an upfront buy-in over the turbulent waters of free-to-play. Helldivers 2 charged $40 and became one of the biggest games in the world, and Sony's hero FPS Concord is releasing this week for $40 with zero microtransactions (and zero hype, it seems).

In a press release, Grøndal added: "This shift allows us to focus on what truly matters for this game — creating an engaging, balanced, and replayable action survival experience." Like Sony's batch of service games, Arc Raiders will be $40.

Gameplay reveal

The briefing also included our first decent look at Arc Raiders gameplay. You play as a raider—a resident of an underground city who regularly ventures to the surface to scavenge for supplies. The threats on the surface are twofold: there are AI bots wandering around attacking anything that moves, and other raiders (players) competing for all the loot.

Sounds like a generic extraction shooter setup—a genre that we're in no short supply of at the moment—but Arc Raiders' emphasis on PvE robot fights does stand out. Similar to Hunt: Showdown, I get the sense that the environment will be just as lethal as players, and that careful movement through bot-infested territory is crucial.

We also got a brief look at gunplay. Arc Raiders is a third-person shooter, but you can see a lot of The Finals in there: ballistics are loud and punchy, sound travels far, and grenades have a bouncy quality. What we didn't see was any fancy server-side destruction tech—that one might be a Finals exclusive.

A few other details to note:

• Embark isn't sure what the max lobby size will be yet
• New players can backfill into a session as others extract from the map
• Arc Raiders will have multiple big maps that share a larger region, similar to Escape From Tarkov
• There is some sort of underground base building or customization element to Arc Raiders

Arc Raiders isn't out until sometime in 2025, but Embark is running its first public playtest much sooner: October 24 to 27. You can sign up on the game's Steam page.

Techland announced the next game in the Dying Light series today at Gamescom's Opening Night Live. It's called Dying Light: The Beast, and it takes place about a decade after the original game and before the events of Dying Light 2.

It also brings back Kyle Crane, the main character of the original Dying Light—though he didn't live happily ever after. Speaking to PC Gamer, Dying Light franchise director Tymon Smektala laid out the story that starts with Crane, after being held captive and experimented on for over a decade, escaping and seeking revenge.

"Half-jokingly, you could say that this is basically like the movie Old Boy's premise, but with zombies," Smektala said.

You may remember some buzz back in 2022 around Techland saying Dying Light 2 would take 500 hours to fully complete, and the natural skepticism that came along with that claim. According to Smektala, The Beast doesn't have those kinds of aspirations. 

"It's going to be basically a fully fledged open world adventure in the world of Dying Light, very similar to Dying Light 1 or Dying Light 2, though slightly more compact," Smektala said. "My favorite joke about it is that it is like a double espresso, because it's short, but super powerful, and full of everything that Dying Light does best." Smektala said he expects the main story to take around 10 hours to complete, adding that "it all depends on your gameplay style. There's lots of additional content [and an] environment that's very unique, full of secrets."

As for Crane's beast powers, Smektala didn't want to reveal too much at this stage. Crane will have a new skill tree that will "make Kyle more than just a human," allowing him to "traverse more effectively, jump higher, run faster," is all he was willing to say.

Dying Light: The Beast was originally intended to be DLC for Dying Light 2: Stay Human, but after two years of development Techland decided it was big enough to be its own standalone game. It will be free to owners of Dying Light 2: Stay Human Ultimate Edition.

The new game also won't mean the end of support for Dying Light 2. "We have promised that Dying Light 2 will be supported for five years, and we are sticking to this promise," Smektala said. "We still have some updates planned for this year." 

Techland just announced the next game in the Dying Light series at Gamescom's Opening Night Live. It's called Dying Light: The Beast, and it's set between the events of Dying Light and Dying Light 2: Stay Human. It also marks the return of Kyle Crane, hero of the original game, voiced once more by Roger Craig Smith. 

Even at a quick glance there's a few interesting things to discuss about The Beast. First, it actually began as DLC for Dying Light 2, but grew so big Techland decided to turn it into a standalone game. It's also set in a place called Castor Woods, a "once-bustling tourist destination" that's been overrun by zombies. You're leaving the densely packed city behind and going rural in this one.

"Featuring natural landmarks, small villages and industrial complexes, the setting offers diverse traversal options, whether it's using your parkour skills to gain the upper hand on your enemies or hopping into an abandoned 4x4 to outrun the horrors of the night," Techland said.

The presence of a vehicle and the more rural environment makes me think of The Following, which was an expansion for the original Dying Light that took place outside the traditional urban landscape of skyscrapers and office towers. I thought it turned out pretty well, with driving and exploration providing a refreshing change of pace after the non-stop running, clambering, and climbing of Dying Light. Instead of just kicking and bashing zombies, you could run them over at top speed. That was a thumbs-up from me.

If you're wondering who the titular Beast is, well… it's you. After Dying Light, Crane was subjected to "years of brutal experimentation" on his DNA, leaving him able to "unleash a beast-like power" on the zombie hordes. Dying Light: The Beast will be playable in co-op by up to 4 players, or in this case, 4 beasts.

Originally planned as DLC, two years into its development "its size and scope has changed so much that it evolved into a standalone, self-contained experience," said Techland. "To show appreciation

for the community who patiently waited for the DLC, Techland will be offering Dying Light: The Beast at no extra cost to all owners of the Dying Light 2 Stay Human Ultimate Edition, delivering a full standalone adventure instead of just a DLC." For those who don't own that edition, pricing has not yet been announced, nor has a release date.

We've got a bit more information about Dying Light: The Beast for you, thanks to our exclusive interview with Dying Light franchise director Tymon Smektala.

A new Goat Simulator game is on the way and this time it's a remaster that'll be releasing later this year. We got to see this announcement along with a trailer during Gamescom's Opening Night Live. 

"The greatest simulation game known to man and goat returns with familiar caprine chaos, upgraded graphics and lighting, many intentional features that definitely aren't bugs, and fan-favourite DLC, all in one package," Coffee Stain Publishing says in a press release.

Other than the graphics there aren't a massive amount of changes, something that Coffee Stain pokes fun at in the trailer as it revolves around a prison named Cash Grab Penitentiary. After some generic suit gets led through the remasters ward, past Ralof from Skyrim along with a couple of other characters, we finally come across the goat Pilgor that's somehow broken out of a maximum security holding, just in time for its own remastered game and all the cash that'll come with it. 

However, one difference players will see are reworked mutators. Instead of having to restart the game every time you want to change your look, the remaster will let you choose different "goats" whenever you want with an in-game menu. It's a small change but still a helpful one. Other than that, there's new access to DLCs that were previously exclusive to mobile such as GoatVile, Goat MMO, and Buck to School. These add new maps, characters and a fantasy adventure across unknown lands. But my favourite actually has to be the Payday DLC, because stealing loads of money as a goat is just as hilarious as it sounds. 

None of this is particularly groundbreaking but if you're feeling particularly nostalgic then this Goat Simulator remaster could be some good fun: "Get ready to be transported back to 2014, where times were simpler and everyone just wanted to be a Goat," producer at Coffee Stain Publishing, Joal Rydholm says. 

One of the worst-kept secrets in videogames was finally confirmed tonight at the Opening Night Live showcase at Gamescom: Borderlands 4 is in development, and it's set to arrive in 2025.

No gameplay was revealed in the trailer, or much of anything else really, but that's definitely Borderlands. And while we didn't know the game would be revealed at Opening Night Live, it's not entirely a surprise. Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford said in June, "I don't think I've done a good enough job of hiding the fact that we're working on something … And I think people that love Borderlands are going to be very excited about what we're working on."

The Borderlands 4 Steam page is already live (it's also coming to the Epic Games Store, but isn't listed there yet), and while it doesn't have much to say about the game—"See if you have what it takes to go down in history as a legendary Vault Hunter as you search for secret alien treasure, blasting everything in sight," which is par for the course for Borderlands—you can at least smash it onto your wishlist. 

"The team and I at Gearbox have a lot we’ve wanted to do with Borderlands since we first introduced the looter shooter genre to the world with our original game," Pitchford said. "All of us at Gearbox have massive ambitions for Borderlands 4 and are putting everything we have into making everything we love about Borderlands better than ever before while taking the game to new levels in exciting new directions."

So, there we have it: It's happening! We'll keep our eyes open for details and share more when we have them.

Off-roading sims MudRunner and SnowRunner are poised to get a new sibling in the form of RoadCraft next year, which will once again see you veering off into unfriendly, slippery, boggy terrain with big vehicles. This time, it's to aid in the reconstruction efforts of areas devastated by natural disasters like floods and sandstorms—and that means it's time to play with some heavy machinery. 

The reveal trailer shown off at Gamescom's Opening Night Live gives us a taste of the familiar (like getting stuck in the mud, again) alongside the use of construction vehicles and machinery, like bulldozers and cranes. You'll need to smash through debris, rebuild infrastructure like roads and bridges, reactivate dormant factories and effectively resurrect these ravaged regions through hard graft. 

"We are constantly in search of new and fun types of gameplay experiences that complement our best selling titles such as SnowRunner and MudRunner," says Saber CEO Matthew Karch. "RoadCraft is our first foray into heavy equipment simulation. The game provides the best combination of off-road and construction simulations to create a new experience unlike anything that has preceded it.”

Saber hints at some management and logistics systems, too. You'll need to manage and collect resources and supplies to fuel the reconstruction effort, for instance, and we see some route planning and possible automation in the reveal trailer. Really, though, I just want to get into the driving seat of some of those beefy vehicles. I have a strange, primal urge to flatten things with a steamroller or chew through some fallen trees with those logging machines. 

The trailer mostly focuses on an industrial area hit by a flood, full of mud and trees, but it also teases a more arid biome, presumably one struck by the aforementioned sandstorms, which will no doubt come with distinct terrain challenges and different vehicles. 

RoadCraft is coming in 2025, but expect to see more of it as we get closer to the release date. In the meantime, check out the rest of our coverage of Gamescom 2024. 

In a turn-up for the corporate books, even the infamously cut-throat Disney corporation has realised that it was just being way too shitty to a man suing it over the death of his wife at Disney World. Dr Kanokporn Tangsuan died in 2023 after a severe allergic reaction to food served at a restaurant in Disney World, Florida, despite warning the staff multiple times about her allergies. Her husband Jeffrey Piccolo launched a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney and the restaurant owners later in 2023.

It's here that Disney's lawyers step in, with one of the most truly amoral legal moves you'll ever see. Piccolo's suit includes reference to language used on the Disney website about the restaurant in question. Disney argued to the court that Piccolo could not sue the company over language on the website because, in 2019, he had signed up for a free trial of Disney+, as part of which he had agreed to the terms and conditions.

These terms and conditions, said Disney, included a clause saying users agree to settle any disputes with the company over any of its services via arbitration (a non-public process overseen by a neutral third party). From Disney's court filing: "The arbitration provision covers 'all disputes' including 'disputes involving The Walt Disney Company or its affiliates'".

To add insult to grievous injury, Disney's lawyers further argued that Piccolo had agreed to these terms again: when he bought the tickets through My Disney Experience for the couple's ill-fated trip to Disney World. Just as the finishing touch, Disney argued he had also agreed to these terms on behalf of his wife, whom he listed as a guest.

To be clear, this argument has not been ruled on by the court, and there's every chance that a sane judge would have turned around and told Disney exactly where it could stick the Disney+ terms and conditions. Piccolo's lawyers said the claim "borders on the surreal."

Last week Disney's argument became public and was widely covered across media, with the reaction almost unanimously being one of revulsion. Following the backlash, Disney has now announced it will be withdrawing its demand for arbitration.

"We believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss," said Disney's Josh D'Amaro in a statement to the BBC. "As such, we've decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court."

You probably don't need a high-priced lawyer to tell you this, but Jamie Cartwright told the Beeb he reckons the "adverse publicity" may well have sparked the change in heart. "In attempting to push the claim into a confidential setting on what were very tenuous grounds, it succeeded only in creating the very publicity and attention it likely wanted to avoid," adds Cartwright.

To zoom out for a moment, while Disney's behaviour here has been the absolute pits, it's an argument that courts have been ruling on for years in various guises. When you get down to it, how many people actually read the terms and conditions of anything before agreeing to them? Is there a human being alive who reads all 34 pages of an Activision EULA before playing the new Call of Duty?

But Disney's approach was taking that even further. It was trying to say that, because Piccolo had previously signed up for a completely unrelated Disney product, the terms and conditions associated with that product then applied to his interactions with Disney across all of its services. A company trying to wriggle out of a wrongful death lawsuit with this rationale is just breath-taking, and almost makes you wish it had gone in front of a judge.

Piccolo is suing Disney for a sum in excess of $50,000, as well as damages for suffering, loss of income, and medical and legal costs. Disney argues that, as the restaurant is operated independently, it bears no responsibility. The case will now be heard in court at an unknown date.

The Internet Archive has announced the preservation and release of 53 episodes of The Famous Computer Cafe, a radio show that aired in California from 1983-86 and explored the topic of home computing. The show features industry news, adverts for technology of the time, hardware and software reviews, and interviews with a wide range of computing (and cultural) pioneers.

The show had once been preserved by its original makers on reel-to-reel tapes, but over the years these were apparently scattered and lost. The Internet Archive project to preserve the show began when computer historian Kay Savetz acquired several of these tapes at a property sale, and subsequently launched a crowdfunding campaign to digitally archive and make the show available again.  

"While full of time-capsule descriptions of 1980s technology news, the most exciting aspect of the show has been the variety and uniqueness of the interviews," writes Savetz. "The list of people that the show interviewed is a who’s-who of tech luminaries of the 1980s: computer people, musicians, publishers, philosophers, journalists. Interviews in the recovered recordings include Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, Bill Gates, Atari’s Jack Tramiel, Apple’s Bill Atkinson, and dozens of others."

I adore old technology shows, particularly the thrill of listening to smart people try and puzzle-through where the field is going, alongside the nostalgic thrill of an age when people were asking just what computers were, as well as what they can do.

I listened to the episode of The Famous Computer Cafe where they interview a young Bill Gates. He turns up around ten minutes into the show, just after a review of the Muppet Learning Keyboard, which doesn't have very good key responsiveness and may leave a three-year-old bored. Gates was already semi-famous and fabulously successful at this stage, but computers simply weren't as mainstream news as they are now, and their purpose and potential still had to be explained in simple terms.

Gates is first asked to explain an operating system, which he does by talking about how a computer is made of many components, and needs something to communicate between them: "that basic housekeeping function, what we sometimes call input / output management, is performed by an operating system."

Gates goes on to talk about MS-DOS, before listing various bits of Microsoft software including "one of our most popular programs" Flight Simulator: "It lets you be in a plane flying around [...] we have maps of various cities so you can actually see the Sears tower, or whatever landmarks are in the city you happen to be from." 

The interviewer asks about the Apple Macintosh, which Gates enthuses about as a pioneer for graphical applications: "We think that graphics will be on all machines [...] so we were enthusiastic to develop graphical applications." Gates goes on to wheel out some of his favourite phrases ("A machine on every desktop, a machine in every home") while talking about the future of computing, including his ideas for computers "to aid you" through what at the time Microsoft called "softer software." 

Asked if this means AI, Gates says AI is a "loaded" term. "People think of robots, and they're gonna take over the world [but what I mean] by softer software is the machine recognising what you're trying to do."

This interview took place in November 1984 and, four decades on, it's perhaps not surprising just how right Gates is on almost every topic he addresses, and the absolute conviction with which he talks about where the humble PC is going. Later in the show Gates goes on to talk about MSX, before it moves onto talking to Kazuhiko Nishi, who at the time was spearheading Microsoft's push into Asia, about the Japanese PC market. Near the end of the show there's a brief segment about how new government legislation may affect, get this, working from home on your computer.

The Famous Computer Cafe is a wonderful place to hang out for a while, and the list of interviewees means I've already got several episodes bookmarked for the next few weeks. The 53 shows archived and released do not represent the entirety of the show: these episodes are from the period November 17 1984 through July 12 1985. Other shows on those reel-to-reel tapes are hopefully still out there somewhere, and include interviews with the likes of Ray Bradbury, Robert Moog, Donny Osmond (!), and Gene Roddenberry. So maybe if you have a garage in Los Angeles, give it a clearout.

The story of The Famous Computer Cafe and how this project happened is the subject of a new episode of the Radio Survivor podcast, which interviews co-creator Ellen Fields alongside Kay Savetz.

There is at least one Xbox achievement that you will never have, and the reason is simple: It was custom made for Bethesda creative chief Todd Howard, and nobody can have it except him. But after years of secrecy, thanks to a discovery by achievement tracker site TrueAchievements (via GamesRadar), we can now at least see what it is.

The story begins in 2016, when Howard was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at GDC. During his acceptance speech, which he reminisced about in a blog post he put up after Microsoft announced its acquisition of Bethesda in 2020, he jokingly wondered how many achievement points a Lifetime Achievement Award was worth.

"At the end of the ceremony, some good friends from Microsoft congratulated me and said they’d find out," Howard wrote. "A few months later I was given a code to a game they had created, named after me and locked to my account. When ran, it unlocks a single achievement—'Lifetime - 1000pts.' It still sits in my list when I check, and I smile every time."

That game can actually be seen at Xbox.com, although of course it's not available for purchase or download. But the achievement text had remained secret until TrueAchievement's recent discovery. "Lifetime," as the achievement is known, "Reflects on the amazing craft of Todd Howard and his team in making worlds as real as any on Earth."

I was a little baffled when I first looked at the achievement, because it was still showing as "secret," and without the reported description. This, a TrueAchievements rep helpfully explained, is the nature of the site. By default, the site does not show unlocked achievement descriptions to people who haven't earned them—and since no one but Todd Howard has earned this one, no one but Todd Howard gets to see it. 

To get around this cheevo secrecy layer, go into your account settings (and yes, you'll need a TrueAchievements account to do this) and select "site settings," then enable the "always show unlocked achievement descriptions" setting. And just like that, there it is.

That's a nice gesture, isn't it? The response to the newly-revealed achievement is quite positive, and naturally—because this is the internet—it has inspired a few users to post guides explaining how to unlock the achievement. Some are quite in-depth, such as one from Cpl Kane ZA, which requires facial reconstruction surgery, a time machine, and a possible murder; others, like paramoreRyan's submission, are more to the point: "Be Todd Howard."

Well, we can't all be Todd Howard, but we can acknowledge that if anyone deserves their own custom cheevo, it's probably him. Howard's list of credits is enviable to say the least, beginning with The Terminator: Future Shock in 1995 and running through Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield. He's currently serving as executive producer on the much-anticipated Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and we also maintain hope that he's squeezing some time with The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 in there, too.

If you're looking for a leveling guide for World of Warcraft's new expansion, you're in the right place. Whether you're a zoom-to-max-level MMO player or you like to stop and smell the questing, you can make your journey smoother with a bit of simple preparation.

Early access to epic-edition holders of WoW's next expansion launches on August 22, with full TWW access landing August 26. That's not a lot of time if you're just now jumping back into Azeroth, so this War Within leveling guide offers you tips for a speedy journey to level 80. Or if you're not in a hurry, there's plenty here to help make your journey to max level an easy one.

The War Within: leveling tips for speed

If speeding to level 80 is your priority, these tips will help you out. For more general, but in-depth, leveling advice, jump to the section below.  

• Don't bother killing rares unless they're literally on top of where you're already questing and you see them up. With that said, do make sure they are your level and not level 80. They only give a couple thousand experience in most cases, and can take a while to die. The exception to this are wanted poster quests, which frequently overlap with other quests and respawn very quickly.
• Don't watch cutscenes unless you want to. Unlike some previous expansions, The War Within won't make you wait the full length of the cut scene to pick up the next quest. Skip it, grab the next quest and go. You can always watch them all on your later toons.
• Don't pick up Skyriding glyphs—yet. They exist, but as of this point in the beta, they offer no XP and no Skyriding talents–so ignore those tempting pings until later.
• Don't collect outdoor world treasures. None are specific to leveling, and they don't give XP. Go back for them later.
• Set your hearth in each area. In each zone, you'll get a "tour X town" quest as part of the campaign. Go ahead and hearth with that innkeeper. You won't have to go anywhere that is a further flight until you leave the zone. At the end of the campaign, you'll get a two-way portal between Azj-Kahet and Dornogal, so you can hearth back at the capital again.
• Don't do early-zone quests without completing the campaign. Adventure Mode makes all quests everywhere give full XP; until you've unlocked it, going back to early zones when you are at a higher level means the mobs don't scale to your level and the quests give reduced XP.
• Don't forget to log into your alts to get your next character's rested XP going. Happy leveling!

The War Within leveling guide

Are you prepared?

Any new expansion has an overwhelming amount of two things: junk and quests. You're going to want to make room for both. Empty your bags of off-spec gear, fun/flavor items or crafting materials, and hotbar everything you do carry so you don't have to search through your overly-laden bags for it.

Consider dropping rarely-used things in your Warbank, and do the questline in Tanaris for the remote-access spell, which you should also put on your bars. Don't forget your Grand Expedition Yak or Traveler's Tundra Mammoth vendor mount and your mailbox toy (Katy's Stampwhistle, Ohuna Perch) if you have them, for a quick way to dump things as you go.

That's your bags sorted, now clear out space in your bank and Warband Bank, including the Reagents tab, as a quick place to drop things as you go—you can worry about evaluating the stuff later.

Next, get rid of absolutely every quest you have. Even though the quest limit was increased to 35, you're still going to run out of room very quickly (and likely end up abandoning quests in every zone in Khaz Algar). If you've already done your pre-patch questing in Silithus, you'll pick up the new quest in Dalaran when you log in on launch day/early access day, so go ahead and log out there.

As for add-ons and the like, use what you're using now–if updated properly, it should most likely work fine in The War Within. If you don't plan on reading quests or watching cut scenes, consider mods like AutoTurnin or QuickQuest to speed up accepting quests, turning them in and choosing rewards. 

What to wear 

If you've been keeping yourself up to date in WoW and have near-maxed levels of gear, you're going to absolutely cruise through all of the zones until you hit level 76/77, and you won't get any upgrades worth mentioning. At this moment, tier sets still work until level 80 on beta, so if you have full tier and good gear, you can safely ignore every drop until level 77.

Pick one gear set to level up in and bank everything else; for trinkets, opt for things that do damage or give you continuous, passive stats rather than things that boost you temporarily, since packs die quickly and most of that power will be wasted.

For early levels, speed gear isn't a bad idea (or situational speed trinkets, like the low-level Hunger of the Pack trinket from Halls of Valor, which still works in The War Within beta). For later levels, you'll want to concentrate on power and survivability. If you choose to swap sets, put the set you'll use later at the very top of your bank, and consider changing it when the campaign ends and sends you back to Dornogal, where you'll have bank access.

Finally, if you haven't bothered to collect all the dragon glyphs, do that now. You'll want them when you're leveling, since you can fly immediately in the new zones.

What to take with you 

If you have good gear, then things are going to start living longer around level 76, and by level 78, they will actually hurt you. Prepare by packing basic consumables to boost your power/defensives: flasks (especially versatility for later levels), runes/rockets/weapon buffs, and food. For later levels, try and pick up conjured mage food from a friend or someone in Dornogal, as it'll get you back into the fray quickly if you get hurt. Save any leftover potions of power for this period, and pack a good amount of healing potions, as you won't get many as drops. 

Some items you'll use infrequently, such as invisibility potions and gunshoes (engineering crafted items that grant running speed to anyone and are still functional in TWW beta). Remember to craft extra or buy before the expansion if you need them, since you won't have easy access to crafting tables. These are only really useful when you're stuck at the back of a cave; everywhere else, you're going to use Skyriding. If you decide to have these around, toss them in your Warbank and use the Warband Bank Distance Inhibitor ability to snag them when you need them, so they don't clutter up your bags.

Two extra things you will want to keep in your bags: a cloak to take you back to your capital city in a pinch, and guild banners, both available from guild vendors if you have sufficient reputation. Guild banners provide extra experience in a generous radius, and while they trigger a short mutual cooldown when you use one and they don't stack, they don't share a long cooldown, either. This means you should buy and hotbar all three–uncommon, rare and epic quality–or use an add-on to track them. Drop one anytime you're killing things in a quest or bonus area with lots of mobs. 

Keep campaigning 

You'll need to complete the core campaign quests, which have distinctive icons on the mini map and above questgivers' heads. They're located at the top of your quest log, and must be done linearly through each of the zones in order.

You'll also want to complete at least a few side quests, particularly those that are in the same areas/overlap. (For planning, you might consider using Ennukee's simple leveling site.) I would not advise doing too many side quests as you go unless you're more-weakly geared and need quest rewards to increase your item level. If you complete the campaign, you'll unlock Adventure Mode, which allows you to do any quests anywhere for the same experience. This will give you the freedom to escape any areas that are frustrating/busy, and also unlock world quests for experience, which may overlap with normal quests you'll end up doing.

Bonus areas are worth doing if they overlap with other quests you're already on. In Isle of Dorn, where bonus areas are worth more than the other zones and poof after you hit higher levels, they're worth taking quests in the area specifically to do as you go.

If you do the main campaign quests plus a bonus area or side quest or two, you'll finish Isle of Dorn at 72, The Ringing Deeps at 74, Hallowfall at roughly 75/76 and Azj-Kahet at about 77. The end of the campaign will take you back to to the capital city of Dornogal, which is a convenient stopping point, since that gives you bank access and marks the point when monsters start getting challenging even if you were at a high gear level to start.

Other ways to get XP 

While Delves aren't the best XP, picking up the quest that goes with them (usually in a nearby quest hub) helps for the first run through. If you need better gear for leveling, or if quest areas are super-congested, Delves are a great alternative to quests. Tier 3 Delve gear, the highest that will be available at launch, is roughly equivalent to Normal-difficulty dungeon gear when you hit max level.

Dungeons are also an option if you'd like play with friends and questing is congested, though you're still going to need to complete the campaign at some point to open up full access to zones and world quests. Solo follower dungeons aren't efficient XP, sadly.

The Borderlands movie was bad. Irredeemably bad. So bad that I am currently in the process of filing criminal charges against my editors for making me review it for PC Gamer. I take heart, though: Although my own viewing was scarily packed—prompting fears on my part the movie might be an undeserved success—it's currently in the process of bombing, and has already thrown in the towel and started making the move to streaming.

The reason for that, of course, is that I'm far from the only person who thinks the film was bad. The whole world hates the film, to the point that it sat for a long time at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes before creeping up to its current 10%. The reviews are negative, folks. Negative and numerous. So numerous, in fact, that an enterprising musician by the name of Sad Alex has made a full-on, 3-minute song just from a small sample of them. 

Where to start? First, you have to compliment her creativity. This is probably the first piece of good art the Borderlands movie has been even tangentially responsible for, and it's a fantastic idea all by itself.

Second, it's bizarrely affecting? I'm not the only one welling up, right? Sad Alex sings about all the things you could do instead of watching Borderlands with emotion you usually reserve for singing about the end of a 15-year relationship or the death of a loved one. You could play this over footage of me looking lost and forlorn in a rainstorm and it'd all make perfect sense. I'd be tempted to add it to my Apple Music library if that didn't feel somehow deranged.

Anyway, score one for the Borderlands film: Something positive finally arose from it. You probably could have written a nice song without spending tens of millions of dollars on a dumpster fire of a film, of course, but that's life: You live and learn. 

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 story."

Honestly, for a game that has been in development hell for so long, adding more to it seems like a risky move. Especially when what we saw during January's extended reveal looked so rough. But maybe the last 7 months have seen enough improvements to justify dedicating some of the team to expanding its scope. If that's the case, hopefully we'll be shown more footage of the game in action to prove it. 

This isn't all the extra time will be used for, of course. Certain areas and characters are being adjusted, community feedback will be incorporated and it will give the studio more time to apply another coat of polish. 

The announcement comes during a tumultuous time for publisher Paradox, hot on the heels of Prison Architect 2's indefinite delay, which came just after Life By You's indefinite delay and subsequent cancellation. The difference here is that the delay is accompanied by a new release window—the first half of 2025—and Bloodlines 2 won't be going radio silent. 

"The Chinese Room and Paradox will continue to post frequent updates, including Dev Diaries, deep dives, and more," an accompanying post promises. "We are not going into a quiet period."

Pushing a game out before it is ready, like we saw with Cities: Skylines 2, is never a good thing. More development time is broadly positive. But by next year it will have been a decade since the original developer, Hardsuit Labs, started working with Paradox on the sequel, and it feels like with every additional delay enthusiasm is waning. Hopefully this is all the time Bloodlines 2 needs to live up to the ravenous community's expectations. Fingers and fangs crossed. 

As a writer, words and I basically go hand in hand. It's like bread and butter, or salt and pepper. You don't have one without the other. So, it's not really surprising that Leximan, a magic-based 2D puzzle game that requires you to string together words to cast spells and solve puzzles, piqued my interest. As a lost child in search of some help in a new world, I began my journey with nothing but a book tucked under my arm. What then continued to play out was nothing short of a chaotic adventure embedded with hilarious Undertale-esque dialogue.

However, as excited as I was to start my magical journey, I very quickly learnt that I am not the most responsible of wizards. Each time you interact with a character, you're given a selection of dialogue options which help personalise the experience. As is tradition, I went with the most sarcastic, ridiculous responses available with nothing but self-satisfaction fuelling the decision. However, even though these options were funny to me in the moment, I couldn't help but feel like exiling my character to a shadowy basement after I made too much mess and spawned one too many demons stung a little.

Because of how fun these character interactions were, and how much thought had been put into creating such an eclectic cast, I wanted to make sure I spoke to everyone I possibly could. Usually, in a game littered with characters, I waste no time with small talk. If you aren't going to offer me anything of substance, or you don't look like the type of character to generously gift me a helpful item, there's a high chance I will just walk past you. Not so in Leximan. Even though the character design is simple (after all they are just made up of a few black and white squares on the screen), each one I spoke to had such a personality it felt like a waste to not chat with them. 

The most important character interactions, though, ended with a fight. Luckily, combat is where Leximan shines. Each time you meet a character who isn't super stoked to encounter the chaotic wizard, you'll need to pick letters or halves of words floating around at the bottom of the screen. These are randomised per round, so you won't have a huge variety but it's still fun to play around with. 

Once you've strung together a word from these premeditated letters, you'll be able to cast a spell tied to that word and see how it damages your opponent. Things like fire will have you hurtling fireballs or setting your opponent alight, but you don't exclusively have to cause damage directly. You'll also be able to conjure items like grenades and missiles to do your bidding for you. 

Given how limited the letters and word fragments you're given are, I found it pretty easy to find amusing ways to manipulate them and try to push Leximan to its limits in terms of what I could cast. But despite my desperate efforts at being quick-witted, the team behind the game was always one step ahead. I swear, every word I pulled together—thinking I was hilarious for even trying—already had a result behind it. Even when I frustratedly mashed together letters knowing that it didn't make sense, Leximan was prepared with a patronising message saying something like I tried my best but better luck next time. 

After getting this response one too many times, my drive to keep producing ridiculous responses slowly faded. Eventually, I found myself relying on simpler responses too much. 

I became something of a pyromaniac, casting some form of fireball whenever I could. Or, going so far as casting a battery of magic missiles to quickly put a stop to whatever fight I found myself in. But regardless of how often I was using the same spell, putting them  together by spelling them out myself never lost its charm. Basically, if there's something that Leximan has taught me, I need to learn more words. As a reward, I'll get to cast cool new spells against my enemies. But until then, I won't stray from using the same sequence of fire, and then missiles to oppose whoever is stopping me from becoming the greatest wizard of all time. 

I did not love the new Framework 13 laptop. The latest machine to come from the only company to put repairability and upgradeability at the forefront of its laptop design, sports the new Intel Meteor Lake mainboard, the Core Ultra Series 1. And, honestly, that new Intel chip doesn't really do a whole lot for the Framework 13 as a whole.

Sure, you get better battery life and improved fan noise, but its performance lags behind both the impressive AMD Ryzen version it released last year and the even older Intel 13th Gen model, too. Because of that, I'm going back to the old AMD Framework 13 I've been using since it first landed in the PCG test lab. Well, I say 'lab', but what I really mean is the grubby, tech-strewn corner of the office I call my own, but that's beside the point.

Having said all that, there is one thing I wish the Ryzen Framework had that arrived alongside the new Intel Core Ultra Series 1 version: The new system came with an updated, higher resolution, high refresh rate display.

And, because of the way Framework operates, I don't need to just wish. I can whip out a screwdriver and mercilessly cannibalise the hapless laptop. And it's why I love the Framework 13 and the way this company handles its business.

There is no other laptop manufacturer on the planet where you could have bought a machine three years ago, with four-generation-old hardware inside it, and then it releases a new laptop with a much better screen and you can easily slot that into your effectively ancient device.

I don't know of any other manufacturer that would let you do that, let alone sell the panel on its own marketplace for $269. 

That's the situation here with the Framework 13. I picked up this Ship of Theseus in 2022 with an original Intel 11th Gen CPU inside it. And I could have changed nothing and, still using the same screwdriver which came with that first device, simply removed the improved screen from the new laptop and plopped it into this old one in maybe 10 minutes and have it just work the instant it was powered on.

As it happens, I have actually changed a whole lot of things in this laptop since first getting hold of the Framework 13. I've changed out the mainboard multiple times, settling now with the excellent Ryzen 7 7840U board, swapped memory, Wi-Fi module, and battery. And now I'm definitely going to change over that screen because it's been my one persistent issue with the otherwise excellent laptop.

The older screen has a pretty poor response time and its 60 Hz refresh rate doesn't help dissipate the detail-smear you get when playing games on it. The new 120 Hz screen isn't perfect, but then I've been spoiled by expensive 240 Hz OLED panels recently, and this is still very much an improvement. I would urge any Framework 13 owners to make the upgrade, especially as it's an incredibly simple upgrade to make.

You probably wouldn't think changing over an entire laptop panel would be either quick or straightforward, but I can swap the panel out in literally five minutes. It's a hell of a thing. Just watch...

@pcgamer_mag

♬ Natural Emotions - Muspace Lofi

Valve has made a bold decision with its latest update to Counter-Strike 2, and one that is something of an about-turn on previous attitudes. A client update has announced certain forms of scripting popular in Counter-Strike will now be detected and banned, essentially putting an end to automated inputs that some players use for actions such as jump-throws of grenades and counter-strafing. Yes sir, the tears are delicious.

A good chunk of Counter-Strikers probably don't even realise such tactics existed, but keyboard macros of various types have been around in the game forever. In fact Valve's previous stance was to allow them. But contemporary hardware has increasingly leaned-in to allowing what's called Simultaneous Opposite Cardinal Direction (SOCD) inputs, a name so catchy that hardware manufacturer Razer has dubbed the feature "Snap Tap", and it's been a major controversy across all competitive games.

Here is a full explainer of how SOCD / Snap Tap works, particularly how it relates to counter-strafing in competitive Counter-Strike, and why that might be a problem. The short version, however, is that it makes a core skill of the game (stopping to shoot accurately while moving) trivially easy to execute.

So Valve has come out hard, and said this shit is no longer going to fly. As someone who plays the game normally I'm all in favour of automated assists being banned, and the top-voted comment on the CS2 subreddit goes along similar lines. "Valve has taken a standpoint," says TheZeroStone. "The end of tool assisted gameplay, as someone who doesn’t use any keybinds and have been relying on my natural inconsistencies, I am happy."

Here's the official word from Valve: "Certain types of movement/shooting input automation such as hardware-assisted counter strafing will now be detected on Valve official servers, resulting in a kick from the match." It goes on to list certain input binds that will now be ignored by default, and for good measure adds that the grunt when you jump and throw "can now be heard by other players nearby."

One thing I will note is that the kind of grenade throws this is talking about are pretty high-level. From the Terrorist spawn on Mirage, for example, you can toss a smoke grenade into the window on mid typically occupied by a Counter-Terrorist, completely obscuring their vision and allowing the T side to push at round start. You can still execute that throw. But it's tough, and you're not going to be able to do it without practice: as opposed to pressing one button on your new Razer keyboard. 

And now you understand this meme:

window players after new update be like from r/cs2

As well as the in-game notes on the change, Valve has published a longer blog post about its decision.

"Counter-Strike is constantly evolving," writes Valve. "From art, to maps, to inventive plays, and even player input, the CS community shapes the game.

"Scripting and automating player commands has always been contentious, but over the years some forms of scripting (e.g., jump-throws) have gained acceptance, as they enable plays that wouldn't otherwise be possible. In fact, jump-throws became such an important part of the game that we've done the work to make them reliable without any special scripting or binds (i.e., by jumping and quickly throwing a grenade).

"Developing one's coordination and reaction time has always been key to mastering Counter-Strike. Recently, some hardware features have blurred the line between manual input and automation, so we've decided to draw a clear line on what is or isn't acceptable in Counter-Strike.

"We are no longer going to allow automation (via scripting or hardware) that circumvent these core skills and, moving forward, (and initially--exclusively on Valve Official Servers) players suspected of automating multiple player actions from a single game input may be kicked from their match."

It adds that if you have a keyboard with "Snap Tap" functionality then you'd best disable that feature before playing Counter-Strike 2 again, or your ass is grass and Gabe's bringing the lawnmower. Maybe not those exact words, but you get the picture.

As if all of this wasn't exciting enough, Valve ends by briefly addressing the #1 complaint on every Counter-Strike forum ever in the history of Counter-Strike: cheating. This is a bit of a tricky topic, because Valve through Valve Anti-Cheat is constantly battling cheaters and cheat-makers, and regularly executes large ban waves, but it's a never-ending battle and elements of the playerbase think that Valve does nothing or doesn't care.

The truth is Valve is fighting a war with no end, and one it can't talk about. It can never detail what it's doing to combat cheaters, except in the broadest and vaguest terms, because even the tiniest hint about what it's up to is a potential gift to the cheat-makers. Nevertheless, prepare yourself for some magic words:

"Initial testing of VacNet 3.0 has begun on a limited set of matches."

VAC 3.0 is here, and it's being tested out before being rolled-out to the entire community. What exactly makes this iteration of VAC worthy of that 3.0 designation? I doubt anyone outside of a certain Seattle office building will ever know, but what we do know about VAC 3.0 is it's capable of responding in realtime to player complaints, and making near-instantaneous decisions about kicking players and cancelling matches.

Whether it makes a serious dent in the cheating army remains to be seen, but hey. At least now when someone outshoots you, you know for sure it wasn't Snap Tap.

Friends, we've got a live one. After easily crushing the concurrent player records of both Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong looks like it's cruising into place as one of the biggest Steam launches of all time. With just over 2.1 million concurrent players at time of writing—11 hours after launch—it's got the second-place record for most concurrents on Steam ever, per SteamDB charts.

Until today, the first, second, and third-place record holders for most concurrent players on Steam were PUBG, Palworld, and Counter-Strike 2 (at 3.2 million, 2.1 million, and 1.8 million players respectively). Wukong has totally upended that, knocking PUBG and Palworld off their bronze and silver podium spots and leaving only PUBG's record intact (for now).

What explains its meteoric rise? You can point to plenty of things, of course. The most obvious is that Black Myth: Wukong is a highly anticipated release out of a Chinese development studio. Arousing the interest of the Chinese market—forecasted to be home to 730 million gamers in as little as three years—is a pretty solid way of getting your numbers up at launch.

That's not to belittle Wukong's achievement. It's not just the game's appeal to Chinese audiences that's made it so successful. Our own Tyler Colp had a blast with the game, scoring it 87% in his Black Myth: Wukong review and praising it for hitting "similar highs" to Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. It's a love-in over in the Steam reviews, too: The game has a 96% "Overwhelmingly positive" rating off the back of 64,000 reviews at time of writing.

So it's a (by all accounts) great game that's garnered a huge amount of interest, particularly in a market with a truly gargantuan potential audience. Mystery solved then, eh? I say not. If you ask me, the real lesson of Black Myth: Wukong is that the gamers are absolutely starving for more games about monkeys. A new Ape Escape would absolutely clean up right now.

Or maybe it's the other things. Fine. Either way, PUBG shouldn't rest easy. The million-player gulf between Wukong's current player count and PUBG's all-time record might seem insurmountable, but you could have said the same thing about CS2 and Palworld's records mere hours ago. The line on that graph keeps climbing, and it's anyone's guess as to where and when it'll level off. 

Nvidia has announced it has partnered with MediaTek to produce a scaler chip for gaming monitors, that has the full G-Sync feature set built-in. Rather than having to use a separate G-Sync module, display vendors can now use this single chip to bring Nvidia's variable refresh rate system to more products.

In 2013, Nvidia launched G-Sync, a system that allows monitors to vary the refresh rate so that when the GPU has finished rendering a frame, the display can instantly display it instead of having to wait. In that situation, there's a risk of the frame being swapped during the display process, resulting in a 'tear' across the screen.

VRR also greatly reduces any stuttering induced by differences between the display's refresh rate and a game's frame rate.

G-Sync isn't the only variable refresh rate (VRR) technology though, as DisplayPort 1.2 or newer, and HDMI 2.1 both feature it. AMD also has a VRR system called FreeSync, which is based on the DisplayPort version, though it has been substantially improved since it first appeared in 2015.

FreeSync doesn't require any additional hardware inside the monitor, just that the display has to be able to adjust its refresh rate over a given range (e.g. between 30 Hz and 144 Hz). However, if a monitor manufacturer wants to offer full G-Sync support, it needs to purchase and fit a separate add-in board, with Nvidia's G-Sync chip and a little bit of RAM.

That adds to the bill of materials and since FreeSync is also royalty-free, vendors such as Asus, Acer, Gigabyte, MSI, et al have preferred to go with AMD's system (especially since it works with AMD, Intel, and Nvidia GPUs).

Hence why Nvidia has teamed up with MediaTek to produce a scaler chip, with the full G-Sync feature set built into it, including the latest Pulsar technology—this is a system to reduce motion blur, keeping small details as clear as possible, even when whipping the camera about in a game.

Three vendors—Acer, AOC, and Asus—have already announced some gaming monitors that will use the chip. They're all 27-inch, 1440p gaming monitors with a maximum refresh rate of 360 Hz.

There's no word on how expensive the Predator XB273U F5, Agon Pro AG276QS2, and ROG Swift PG27AQNR will be, or when they will be available to buy, though I should imagine that an announcement will be made soon enough.

The more important question to ask, regardless of the price tag, is "Why should I buy a G-Sync monitor instead of a FreeSync one?" On paper, there's little to separate the two technologies and it comes down to the individual application of each one in a gaming monitor.

A display that supports G-Sync Ultimate will meet a certain level of hardware capabilities, whereas you're not necessarily guaranteed that with a standard FreeSync one. AMD does have FreeSync Premium, with higher specifications and more features than the original FreeSync, though.

While you might think that having a GeForce RTX graphics card requires you to be using a G-Sync gaming monitor, the reality is far from being that specific. Nvidia has a list of monitors that it certifies as having G-Sync Ultimate or standard G-Sync features, or just being G-Sync Compatible (i.e. it's a FreeSync monitor but it will work with Nvidia GPUs).

That said, G-Sync Ultimate monitors do have a very wide VRR range, typically from 1 Hz up to the monitor's maximum refresh rate, whereas G-Sync Compatible displays have a narrower range, e.g. 48 Hz to 144 Hz. With those monitors, if a game's frame rate drops below the lowest value in the VRR range, it might activate blur reduction, LFC (Low Framerate Compensation), or simply double the refresh rate to keep things in the VRR range.

With these new MediaTek G-Sync equipped monitors, you should get the complete G-Sync Ultimate features without the big cost of having to pay for the additional G-Sync module. How all of this pans out in the real world… well, we'll let you know when we get one in for review!

The Pokémon World Championships (or Worlds) kicked off in Hawaii last week, and since then, we've seen the best TCG players in the world duke it out for the top spot. The competition's winners have already been announced, but I think we've found the prize for the most controversial decision. 

One competitor, Ian Robb, sat down opposite Fernando Cifuentes in the masters quarter-finals. After a hard-fought battle, Robb came out on top, so it looked like he would progress to the next stage of the tournament. However, when the next battle began, fans in the audience were confused to see Cifuentes, not Robb, sitting in the challenger's seat. 

It turns out that The Pokémon Company's international global esports and events director, Chris Brown, had to step in between matches after the Championship judges decided to hand out a penalty to Robb. "It was an unsporting conduct penalty," Brown says in a follow-up interview with IGN. "We applied it to the match that had just occurred and the standard penalty for that's a match loss." 

The poor conduct that Brown was referring to seems to be a rude hand gesture that Robb made just after his win against Cifuentes. Blink, and you'll miss it, but just after the handshake, it looks like Robb turns to the crowd (or someone in it) and makes a lewd gesture. 

One fan shared the moment this happened on Twitter: "I thought Ian Robb had acted ungentlemanly, but it seems it was just a masturbation gesture he made at the end of the quarter-finals." 

The disqualification has since caused quite a stir, as fans seem to be split down the middle as to whether or not this gesture deserves disqualification. "Are they stupid? This is not a lewd gesture," one fan says on Twitter. And while this gesture certainly isn't particularly shocking, The Pokémon Company has to be very strict when it comes to enforcing good behaviour. 

Almost half of all the players attending Worlds fall under the junior bracket, which is ages 12 and under, or the senior bracket, which is ages 13-15, and plenty of the audience will be children. Pokémon TCG has a sizable young audience, so it makes sense that The Pokémon Company polices things a bit differently than other esports tournaments. I mean, come on, this isn't Tekken. 

Alongside being strict about conduct, The Pokémon Company is also pretty rigid when it comes to what constitutes match conduct in particular. "Generally, the match is not considered to be over until you've actually signed your match slip… And so that's sort of a key moment," Brown says. So Robb was disqualified as his actions technically still fell under match conduct rules. Despite winning the round, it wasn't over yet—it's finicky and annoying, but them's the rules. 

The Play! Pokémon Standards of Conduct also makes The Pokémon Company's feelings on conduct glaringly obvious: "Players should act with empathy and grace and remember to treat those around them as they would expect to be treated themselves." This sentiment is repeated throughout the document. 

But to be fair, Robb has taken the ruling like a champ. "I'm cheering for [Cifuentes] today,"  Robb says. "After meeting him and his dad, I could tell how much making the cut at Worlds meant. He's a deserving champion." And the tournament is finished now, so there's not much else to do. Worlds concluded last Sunday, with Cifuentes snagging the top spot after beating Seinosuke Shiokawa in the Masters bracket.  

In recent years, the best mini PCs have really bulked up to become modest yet genuinely viable gaming platforms. The Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) in these tiny machines are made for laptops. They comprise a CPU running at a prudent wattage and an Integrated Graphics Processor (iGPU) to handle games and video. 

For years such chips weren't really ideal for gaming, but when AMD launched the Radeon 780M iGPU, it raised the bar. It's the graphics silicon at the heart of the best gaming handhelds and this little beast all but guarantees around 30 fps and better at 1080p, in modern games at medium detail settings. Running indies and older titles, you'll enjoy still higher frame rates. 

Augmenting the iGPU with a discrete laptop GPU is the next step up, and you'll find two such machines in this group test. For its all-round performance, with a discrete RX 7600M XT at its heart, the Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT gets my vote as the best mini PC. Naturally this raises the cost, and there's no question that building your own PC gets you more bang for the same bucks, but this level of compactness can't be matched by going DIY. On the cheaper side, however, the Venus UM970 Pro gets the nod as the best budget mini PC.

If your chief requirements are top frame rates and detail settings beyond 1440p for the lowest outlay, you are better off self-building. But if you're after a tiny, off-the-peg PC with awesome everyday computing power and 1080p to 1440p gaming capabilities, well, you've come to the right place. 

The quick list

The best overall mini PC

Being more than capable of proper 1080p gaming performance and practically anything else you might want to do, the Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT is the best mini PC around. Housed in a compact chassis and mounted in its vertical stand, the AtomMan G7 PT is larger than your average mini pc, but still diminutive in terms of desktop footprint. Chances are, if you're in the market for a mini pc for gaming, then space is a factor, and this wee beasty takes up very little.

LEDs in the right-hand side of the chassis illuminate the logo for the Taiwanese fantasy IP Legend of Ashoka, but if you're not a fan, you can easily dip into the BIOS and turn those LEDs off. With this done, the chassis looks relatively clean, functional and understated in matte black.  

The G7 PT represents a performance-leap from regular mini pcs as it comes with a discrete midrange laptop GPU, in the form of AMD's Radeon RX 7600M XT. With 2048 shader units, 32 CUs, a memory bus of 128 MB, a clock speed of 2,600 MHz and 8 GB of dedicated VRAM, It's a strong 1080p performer. It can run games at 1440p, but be prepared to notch down some graphics settings to keep frame rates smooth. In all honesty, 2560 x 1440 is more the playground of NVIDIA's RTX 4070 Mobile, a costlier and more performant mobile GPU, and one that you'll find in the hyper-expensive Asus ROG NUC 970.

Processing duties are handled by the Ryzen 9 7945HX. Running at a default TDP of just 65 W, it's a bloody monster, featuring 16 cores, 32 execution-threads and a turbo-clock speed of 5.4 GHz. And while it drives games fantastically, it's geared to do way more. Tasks such as video rendering are water off a duck's back to the 7945HX, and it puts many desktop processors to shame. You can even bump the TDP up to 85 W by hitting the turbo button on the G7 PT's front-panel, though you'll feel the benefit of that more in productivity tasks, less so in gaming.

You might think this compelling combo of components would make the G7 PT screeching-hot and noisy, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Minisforum's proprietary Cold Wave cooling tech is fantastic. It tames heat, tightly manages airflow, keeps fan noise to a minimum, and dedicates supplementary cooling to the RAM and M.2 drives.   

When it comes to gaming, 1080p is where the G7 PT shines. You can expect a solid 60+ fps in most modern titles, with detail settings around the ultra mark, and you'll see some games shoot way past 100 fps. We had A Plague Tale: Requiem, set to 1080p Ultra, running at 76 fps. Doom Eternal, at 1080p and Ultra Nightmare settings, blazes along at 172 fps. One feature you shouldn't touch, though, is ray tracing, which slays the frame rate at any resolution; the RX 7600M XT just isn't cut out for it.

But that's a minor quibble. Paired with a quality, high-refresh 1080p monitor, the AtomMan G7 PT is a great machine for the price. Just bear in mind that as a barebones purchase, so you'll need to pick up your own DDR5 RAM, M.2 storage drive and Windows key.   

Read our full Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT review.

The best budget mini PC

When it comes to mini PCs, at PC Gamer we're looking for machines which can run games comfortably at 1080p. The Minisforum Venus UM790 Pro is the best budget mini PC and represents one of the most affordable options to meet this gaming threshold.

The APU at the heart of things is AMD's Ryzen 9 7940HS. It's a fantastic chip, wielding eight cores and 16 threads which can hit a turbo clock speed of 5.2 GHz, and folds the mighty little Radeon 780M into its design. It has since been superseded by the newer Ryzen 9 8945HS, but you won't see a generational shift in performance between the two.

Architecturally these two chips are nigh-on identical, but as a newer chip, the 8945HS drives up the price of machines which carry it. That's a premium which offers marginal performance benefits. The bottom line is that the UM790 Pro offers a better price-performance ratio, so you can be confident you're not losing out by opting for this ever-so-slightly older CPU. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 has recently been launched in laptops, but we've yet to see that chip, with its 890M iGPU being made available in any mini PCs, and they certainly won't come cheap.

The UM790 pro will happily run most modern games past the playable 30 fps+ mark at 1080p and default medium settings, and can go higher with extra detail down-tweaks. Forza Motorsport is smooth at 47 fps, Cyberpunk 2077 sees 48 fps, and Warhammer 3's battles hit around the 42 fps mark. At the same settings in indies and older, less demanding titles, things ramp up most agreeably, with Stray running at a comfortable 45-60 fps, Soulstone Survivors ranging from 45-90 fps, and Doom Eternal seeing 75-95 fps.

While you can pick up the UM790 Pro from Amazon (it's always worth shopping around for the best price), it can be bought direct from Minisforum, and there's a range of price options, from the barebones basic kit to various preloaded configurations of RAM and M.2 storage. We always say go barebones and source the RAM and storage yourself, so figure on adding around 130-150 bucks to the bill for 32GB DDR5-5600 plus a 1TB M.2 drive, and possibly less if you catch some components at sale prices.

Popping the UM790 Pro open to install your parts is easy, though not the most elegant process. Four screws on the underside hold the upper shell to the component-tray, but these are hidden beneath the unit's four glued-on rubber feet. So getting at them involves tugging the feet off and breaking the rubber seal; it's worth putting another dab of glue on them when you put it back together. 

There are two TDP settings in the BIOS which run the APU at different wattages; Balanced runs it at 54 W, while Performance bumps this up to 56 W. The performance difference is negligible in practice, though 56 W does run the chip a little hotter, and the cooling solution a little louder. Not that the latter is a worry though, the UM790 Pro runs cool and quiet, and in Balanced mode, it's totally unobtrusive.

All in all then, a lovely little piece of engineering. If you're looking for an inexpensive yet performant mini PC with a corking iGPU, it's our budget-best pick.

Read our full Minisforum Venus UM790 Pro review.

The best mini PC for gaming

Like the AtomMan G7 PT, the ROG NUC from Asus packs a discrete GPU, which pushes it to the larger end of the scale for a mini pc, but it's the most powerful graphics silicon you'll find in such a small chassis, making the Asus ROG NUC 970 the best mini PC for gaming. Just don't ask how much it costs... We still class these machines as mini pcs, as they're wilfully compact and powered by mobile computing components. The ROG NUC combines some excellent choices in this regard.

Geared towards high-end laptops, the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU offers a mix of efficient, ultra-efficient and performance cores, with the purpose of drawing reduced wattages in times of low demand and ramping them up when games and apps require it to. For gaming though, it's the six multithreading performance cores, which cap out at 5.1 GHz, which we're most interested in. As mobile components go, it offers competitive performance with AMD's APU, and while Intel's own top 14th-gen Core i7 and i9 mobile chips outrun it in terms of core-count and raw speed, they also draw very high wattages and generate a lot of heat. This makes the Core Ultra 9 an altogether more elegant solution for a compact machine such as this.

The ROG NUC 970 pairs this with NVIDIA's RTX 4070 Mobile GPU, which features 4608 shader-units running at a boost clock of 1,695 MHz and has 8 GB dedicated VRAM to play with. While it doesn't share the same vital statistics and grunt as its desktop namesake, it's still a solid GPU, comfortably outperforming the RX 7600M XT in the Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT, pushing the ROG NUC's capabilities into genuine 1440p territory. 

It also handles ray tracing well, and as an RTX 40-series RTX card it benefits from DLSS and Frame Gen, in games which support them. Hitting 76 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p, using the Ray Tracing Ultra preset with DLSS and Frame Gen enabled, ain't to be sniffed at. Neither is a solid average of 72 fps in Helldivers, at 1440p with top detail settings.

It can get a bit blowy under load, but fortunately there are three performance settings in the preinstalled Asus Armory Crate app which raise or lower the TDP and the maximum fan speed. We found that setting it to Silent mode resulted in the loss of only one or two fps, which is a great trade-off for unobtrusive operation.  

The only downside is the RRP. For its asking price of two grand, you can build a system with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, an RTX 4080 Super and all the trimmings, in a small form-factor chassis. This will absolutely demolish games at 1440p and run them comfortably at 4K. In this context, the Asus ROG NUC is objectively not a bargain, or even particularly good value. But if you've money to spare, you're disinclined to self-build, and you want a super-compact machine with solid performance on a 1440p panel, you'll be pleased with what the ROG NUC has to offer. 

Read our full Asus ROG NUC 970 review.

The most compact mini PC

In a marketplace full of dinky PCs, the AX8 Pro from Geekom is the dinkiest. Measuring just  11.1cm x 11.7cm x 3.8cm, and housed in a cool, light-blue aluminium chassis, it's crisp and visually appealing. It also has has a reassuring mass and sense of density about it, which speaks to a weighty cooling solution and closely-packed internal components.

Armed with AMD's Ryzen 9 8945HS, which features 8 cores, 16 threads and a turbo-max of 5.2 GHz, it's a quick and capable machine, and utilises the Radeon 780M for gaming and video tasks. Out of the box, its CPU is set to the highest of the BIOS' three performance modes, which are Silent (51 W TDP),  Normal (59 W TDP) and Performance (65 W TDP).

This is pretty much overdrive for this CPU, giving the AX8 Pro a small edge in frame rates over other Radeon 780M-equipped APUs, but it also sees CPU temperatures sitting in the low-90s Celsius under heavy load. This is still a comfortable distance from its max operating temperature of 100 °C, but to keep it steady, the cooling system has to work hard. This results in a noisier box, though it's the passage of air you hear; there's no high-pitched coil-whine, which is a blessing. Heading into the BIOS and knocking the TDP back to its 59 W Normal mode reduces noise and heat significantly, and it barely affects the machine's gaming performance, so that's our recommendation for day-to-day operation.

It's highly competent with indie games at 1080p and medium settings, and we tested a range of titles including Subnautica (55-75 fps), Stray (52-75 fps), Soulstone Survivors (80-120 fps) and finished up with some good old Doom Eternal (70-80 fps).

It outperforms other 780M-wielding machines by a small amount, and offers a competent and playable experience at 1080p with medium presets in more demanding modern games too. Total War: Warhammer III hits 42 and 33 fps in battle and campaign respectively, while Forza runs at a very smooth 46 fps. Cyberpunk even breaks the half-century with 51 fps. 

In short, it's a great little box, with the emphasis very much on little. The only downside is the price. There's a cheaper version of the AX8 available which drops the M.2 storage from 2TB to 1TB, keeps the same 32GB DDR5-5600, and replaces the Ryzen 9 8945HS with the Ryzen 7 8845HS. This is a very minor downgrade; the chips have with the same core/thread count and iGPU, with the 8845HS' turbo clock speed just 100 MHz slower. The full-fat 8945HS brushes a grand in price. For the same outlay, you can pick up Minisforum's discrete-GPU-packing AtomMan G7 PT barebones. And there's no Barebones option at all for the AX8 Pro. 

If your priority is pure 1080p performance and size is secondary, there are better-performing machines for your needs than this delightful little device. But if you want the smallest, most svelte little square of agile computing, and the aforementioned benchmarks meet your needs, it's an excellent choice. 

Read our full Geekom AX8 Pro review.

The best-looking mini PC

I've never seen a PC elicit so many wide-eyed exclamations of delight. For the Retro Mini AM02, handheld specialist Ayaneo has gone to town on the retro styling, and one glance at its charming exterior is all it takes to make you go “ooh!” 

It's a gunmetal-grey homage to the original Nintendo Entertainment System, complete with a tidy front-flap which conceals USB and headphone ports, and a dinky touchscreen on top. This displays detailed system info and enables you to switch between TDP presets, with the future potential for visual customisation. It adds to the neat looks, and once you have it set up, the whole machine pleases by simply being there.

Its beauty isn't just skin-deep, as the Retro Mini AM02 is built around AMD's Ryzen 7 7840HS, and gets its kicks with the Radeon 780M. This puts it in same 1080p league as competing machines, with one caveat.

While the 7840HS generally runs at TDPs between 35-54 W, Ayaneo limits this to 47 W, which results in a top turbo clock speed of 4.7 GHz, rather than the chip's theoretical maximum of 5.1 GHz. It's no great loss to be fair, and set against similar APUs in other machines, it only drops one or two fps in more demanding and heavyweight games. otherwise it's pretty much identical in performance to other APUs running the Radeon 780M.

What sets it apart from similarly-specced mini PCs is a unique level of out-of-the-box tweakability. The Retro Mini AM02 ships with Ayaspace 2.0 preinstalled, which is the principle interface for Ayaneo's handheld gaming PCs. It runs at Windows boot, bundling all your installed games into an easy-access single library, and offers tons of power and speed customisation options. 

Under Ayaspace's performance tab, you can switch between three power presets which alter the TDP and CPU/GPU clock speeds for different demands. You can also set up your own presets, and there's a ton of BIOS-level tweakers to play with, including the APU's TDP limit, sliders for CPU and iGPU clock speeds, a CPU turbo toggle, a general power-policy setting, and automatic or custom fan-curves for the CPU cooler. With some light tinkering, we had the CPU and iGPU running at their max permissible speeds, with a fan-curve managing heat generation effectively and fairly quietly.

While you can totally use the Retro Mini AM02 as a desktop machine, it's equally at home under the TV, set up as an emulator to run retro games. The gamepad-friendly Ayaspace UI can be set to run fullscreen at boot, so it makes a lot of sense as a console and media centre, although you'll want to keep the output resolution at 1080p for native PC gaming.

With a quality IO selection including HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and plenty of USB ports, the whole kit is well-appointed. And while it can't quite run its APU at full throttle, there's little else to criticise about the Retro Mini AM02, and a lot to love.

Read our full Ayaneo Retro Mini AM02 review.

How we test mini PCs

We have a comprehensive test suite which we put our mini PCs through in order to gauge how effective they are. For a start, we want to know how good they are at gaming—this is PC Gamer, after all. For that we run them through 3DMark Time Spy to get an overall picture of relative performance, but then also through Forza Motorsport, for arcade performance; Total War: Warhammer 3, for balanced CPU and GPU-centric gaming; Homeworld 3, for CPU-focused strategy gaming; and finally Cyberpunk 2077 for the FPS fun-times.

We test those games at 1080p medium settings to give a good idea of how they will perform at the sort of levels that a standard gamer would want to use. For machines which have discrete GPUs inside them, however, we will also test at 1440p and at higher settings to see how far we can push them. We will also test some more PC games, such as Helldivers 2, Dead Space, Plague Tale: Requiem, and Doom Eternal.

We also test the CPU performance, because these machines also need to be good at general productivity tasks, too. So we run them through Blender and Cinebench to get an idea of their rendering performance.

Throughout all of this testing we will measure the temperature and power draw of each unit, and will perform more subjective acoustic testing as well.

Also tested

FAQ

Two US Congressmen have called on the Biden administration to launch an investigation over concerns that networking products made by the widely used TP-Link brand could be used to covertly spy on Americans, or be used for cyber attacks.

Republican Representative John Moolenaar and Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi have formally requested an investigation from the US Department of Commerce citing national security risks. According to a letter posted by the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (via Reuters), "TP-Link’s unusual degree of vulnerabilities and required compliance with PRC law are in and of themselves disconcerting".

TP-Link products are widely used in the US, and can be found inside critical facilities, including US military bases.

Last year, TP-Link routers were used to launch an attack on European foreign affairs organizations. TP-Link firmware was infected with malware, giving attackers the ability to run shell commands, access files and relay communications between devices on the network. TP-Link is not the only manufacturer that can be exploited. Other manufacturers including Cisco and Netgear have also been used to launch attacks from foreign adversaries.

The request for an investigation is just the latest in the US government's actions against Chinese companies, with Huawei and ZTE being forced out of the US market. TikTok is another well known example of a Chinese company facing similar spying concerns.

Most end users are at least somewhat aware of the need to keep devices and PC software updated for security reasons, but there is far less awareness around the potential for router based attacks. I'd place a wager and suggest that a majority of home users have never updated their router's firmware. Now would be a good time to start.