Author: admin

There’s a hint for every colour found in today’s Connections puzzle below if you’d like to narrow down the board without someone giving the game away, as well as a full set of answers for the September 22 (#103) challenge if you would.

That was a nice and simple game of Connections—just what I needed after the past few days worth of word-wrangling excitement. I even found each colour in order too, as if to emphasise just how sharp my Connections spotting skills were today. Now then, how long do I have to wait before I can play again…?

NYT Connections hint today: Friday, September 22

Let’s keep you safe from the dreaded “One away…” message. 

🟨🟨🟨🟨

Yellow: These are all sweet, delicious, drinks, and probably laden with cream, ice cream, and toppings too. 

🟩🟩🟩🟩

Green: Anything that is definitely going ahead on a specific time or date could be described in this way. 

🟦🟦🟦🟦

Blue: Think of other movies by the “I see dead people” director. 

&#…

Despite producing one of the best VR headsets around, the Quest 3, Meta’s Reality Labs division just isn’t making any money. Nearly $2 billion of revenue in 2023 was completely swallowed by $18 billion of expenditure, leaving Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of the metaverse facing a loss of $16 billion. And the CEO has said that the losses will continue to worsen for the foreseeable future.

Meta’s virtual reality woes aren’t a surprise, as the company routinely posts financial statements in which the revenues and operating profits (or losses) of each division are laid bare, for all to see. In a report by Yahoo Finance, the reasons for burning through almost $50 billion in four years aren’t about technical development costs or cutting-edge research—the blame is laid squarely on a “lack of a clear vision and mismanagement.”

In March 2014, an almost unthinkable event happened. Facebook, the social media platform that had long passed being cool and hip with the kids, purchased a virtual reality hardware company, Oculus VR, for $2 billion. At that point, Oculus VR had barely just released its first product, the Oculus Rift headset, and the acquisition was felt by some to be…

The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake still stubbornly refuses to become one with the Force. The remake that wouldn’t say die is apparently still going, per a recent chat between Saber boss Matthew Karch and IGN, in which the CEO came out and said—maybe a touch wearily—that the troubled project was still alive.

“It’s clear and it’s obvious that we’re working on this, it’s been in the press numerous times,” said Karch, before adding “What I will say is that the game is alive and well, and we’re dedicated to making sure we exceed consumer expectations.” To be honest, at this point I think exceeding consumer expectations would just mean putting the game out at all.

Karch isn’t wrong about the press thing (I would know). The KOTOR remake fell under a shroud of silence ever since its original devs at Aspyr showed a reportedly disastrous demo to Lucasfilm and Sony execs in July 2022, but news has continued to pour out about it anyway. For instance, we learnt on the down-low that it had probably switched devs from Aspyr to Saber, that it’s probably been delayed again, and that Saber likely kept the project when Embracer sold the studio off i…

One of the benefits of being (at least nominally) in charge of the good ship PC Gamer—there are still a few—is that I get to write about whatever I want. Mostly that means Destiny 2 and Hearthstone, but today it also means the Dune 2 movie, which has released its first trailer. Frankly, I was surprised no other members of the team beat me to it, but judging by the “sorry I just can’t take Timothee Chalamet seriously” and “didn’t all the interesting characters die” messages in Slack, it appears I’ve surrounded myself with heathens who don’t care about the second part of Denis Villeneuve’s icy rendition of one of the all-time pillars of the sci-fi canon.

Anyway: The trailer. There’s sand. There’s Zendaya and my semi-namesake Timmy Chalamet gazing at each other mournfully with eyes blue like justice. There’s more sand. There’s Flo Pugh, shot before she shaved her head, looking absolutely immaculate as Princess Irulan. There’s Austin ‘Elvis’ Butler who has shaved his head (and eyebrows) looking vampiric as Harkonnen asshole Feyd-Rautha (previously played by Sting in David Lynch’s flawed but bonkers version). There is, finally, more sand.

The k…

Starfield is the latest in a long line of games to commit the cardinal but common sin of not making NPCs match the walking speed of the player. It sounds like a minor quibble, but it crops up so often that it’s driving me loopy, resulting in me trotting ahead of NPCs while screaming at them as I completely lose the plot. 

Every single person in the galaxy seems to have had a meeting where they decided to walk just fast enough so that they outpace me when I’m walking, but slow enough so that I end up ahead of them when I’m jogging. Regardless of whether I’m using a mouse and keyboard or a controller, there is no way to match their pace. 

Since a lot of quests require you to follow an NPC, you’ll find yourself stopping and starting constantly as you try to get to your destination. Some (but not all) NPCs will pick up the pace a bit if you run far enough ahead of them, but you’ll still have to wait for them to catch up and, crucially, you won’t actually have a quest marker showing you where they are taking you. 

It’s kinda wild that this issue is still cropping up in 2023. It’s present in Bethesda’s previous games, and the studio is…

Searching for the best Minecraft texture packs to spruce (or birch) up all your new worlds and builds? Consider this your very own double chest spilling over with the finest texture treasures, all precious pixelated gold. We’ve made a digital odyssey to catalogue and acquire all of the very best Minecraft texture packs, all so that no matter what build you’ve got on the brain you’ll have the very finest textures to work with.

Minecraft update: What’s new?
Minecraft skins: New looks
Minecraft mods: Beyond vanilla
Minecraft shaders: Spotlight
Minecraft seeds: Fresh new worlds
Minecraft texture packs: Pixelated
Minecraft servers: Online worlds
Minecraft commands:All cheats

Though technically they’re called resource packs, texture packs remain the easiest and quickest way to give a makeover to your Minecraft style. Better than…

It’s all gotten out of hand. They’ve got concepts playing games now. Specifically, the venerable genre of Twitch Plays—those times when a swarming Twitch chat competes for control over games like Pokémon, and Dark Souls—has evolved to the point that Pi is currently playing Pokémon Sapphire. Actually, it’s been playing it for three years (via GamesRadar).

That’s Pi as in the mathematical constant. The one you probably know as (at least) 3.14 but which goes on, well, forever if you let it. The way it works is this: Every digit between 0 and 9 has been assigned to a button on the Game Boy Advance (some buttons have two digits assigned). The computer then simply proceeds through digits of Pi sequentially and makes the corresponding input. For example: The first three digits—3.14—would correspond to a push of B, then A, then the left D-Pad.

At time of writing, the game had just passed its 86,452,000th digit of Pi. That’s over 25,000 hours of game time since the experiment began on October 16, 2021.

Want to guess where all that effort has gotten it? If you chose ‘not even out of the starting town’ then my friend, you’r…

In Polygon’s recent interview with design director Emil Pagliarulo, it was revealed that Starfield very nearly had a voiced protagonist in the style of Fallout 4’s sole survivor.

When asked whether this choice was a response to the fan reception of that game’s controversial dialogue system—which only gave you the general vibe of what you were committing to words—Pagliarulo responded: “Not directly, but it certainly played into it … in pre-production, the plan was to have a voiced protagonist. We hired an actor, we got the voice, we listened to him and we were like, You know what, this guy is too specific.

“[In Starfield,] you can make every different type of person. We realised that the only way to really do [that] and let the player be the person they want to be was to have an unvoiced protagonist.”

While we’ve obviously known your space explorer would be a silent protagonist since last year, I’m surprised we even came close to Fallout 4 setting a new blueprint for the Bethesda hero. I’ve always preferred knowing exactly what my character’s going to say in a conversation—and having the word “Sarcastic” next to a button prompt doesn’t c…

The Steam Deck is a remarkably powerful piece of hardware, capable of doing all sorts of interesting things. But the Ukrainian military appears to have found one use that I’m pretty sure wasn’t anticipated in any of Valve’s design meetings: As a controller for a remote gun turret.

Photos of the Steam Deck purportedly being used to control a gun turret first turned up in mid-April, shared by TRO Media, but they looked a little suspect: There was nothing to indicate that the Steam Deck in question was being used as part of the weapon, and not just for a spot of Vampire Survivors during a reload. 

More recently, though, video from what appears to be the same event has turned up, and a Steam Deck is clearly being used to control the turret.

The purpose of a remotely-controlled turret is obvious: Get a gun on the front line without exposing the people using it to enemy fire. The auto-translated closed captioning in this separate YouTube video (which also shows the Steam Deck in use as a turret controller, but doesn’t have as clear an angle on it) makes that point explicitly: “It removes a person from the line of fire, makes it possible to provide [fire] support…

The US Supreme Court has ended the legal battle between Apple and Epic, for now at least, by refusing to hear either side’s appeals in their long-running dispute over iOS store policies (as reported by Reuters).

Apple had appealed against a lower court’s ruling which ordered certain changes to iOS policies, while Epic had appealed against the same court’s ruling that iOS policies around distribution and monetisation were not in violation of federal antitrust laws. The Supreme Court justices gave no reason for their decision to deny both appeals.

“The court battle to open iOS to competing stores and payments is lost in the United States,” said Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. “A sad outcome for all developers.

“Now the District Court’s injunction against Apple’s anti-steering rule is in effect, and developers can include in their apps “buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to IAP”.”

While Epic may have lost the war, the ruling about Apple’s anti-steering rule was the one battle it did win: Apple has to let app developers direct users to non-iOS means of paying for conten…

We learned last year about The Store is Closed, a survival game that trapped players inside an “infinite furniture store” that was quite clearly an Ikea in all but name—creator Jacob Shaw even referred to it as “an infinite Ikea game” on Reddit. The similarity was overt enough that Ikea threatened legal action, and so when we ran across Retail Royale on Steam—”a chaotic Battle Royale inside a furniture store where everything is a weapon”—our first thought was that The Store is Closed had rebranded, retooled, and come back as a battle royale game. But no: Somehow, there are now two distinct, large-scale pretend-Ikea games on the market.

Retail Royale has been in early access for a year, and actually got some attention from streamers including xQc and JFJ not long after it went live. It’s been quite well received during that time, too, with more than 3,600 user reviews on Steam giving it a “mostly positive” overall rating. 

It sounds pretty straightforward as battle royales go: 16 players try to kill each other using everything at hand, from guns to axes, rakes, and pieces of furniture. Items can be recycled, and the materials left over used to c…

Improve your daily Wordle guesses with our guides and tips, take a look at a hint for today’s game designed to give you a nudge in the right direction, or skip straight to the best part and read the answer to the April 15 (665) game—however you want to win today’s Wordle, we can help.

The answer to today’s puzzle was an obvious one… eventually. I had all the information I needed quite early on, but this was one of those days where I couldn’t see what I had until I was in danger of running out of guesses. It was frustrating, but at least I got today’s Wordle answer in the end.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Saturday, April 15

If someone was in an extreme and most likely prolonged level of physical or mental pain, today’s word would be a good way to describe their suffering. You’ll need to find two different vowels to solve this one. 

ViewViewViewView

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

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

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If there’s one thing better than playing Wordle, it’s playing Wordle well, which is why I’…

Give yourself a helpful prod in the right direction with today’s Wordle hint, exercise your word-wrangling muscles with our handy guide and tips, or just click straight through to the August 5 (777) answer. However you want to win, we can help.

Four yellows on my second go? That’s got to mean… oh. That actually means I’ve got four yellows on my third too. Today’s Wordle was a case of stubbornly shuffling everything into place, carefully reducing their potentially valid locations down until there was only today’s Wordle answer left. Thank goodness that’s done and dusted. 

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Saturday, August 5

You’ll need to think of scientific words to solve today’s puzzle, specifically those referring to electricity. This electrode can be positive or negative, depending on the circumstances. No, not a cathode. Nope, not a diode either. This is an _____. You’ll need to find three different vowels to win today. 

ViewViewViewView

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

No letters are used twice in today’s puzzle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day&…

You can spend a long time trying to nail down the exact parts required for a full custom loop build. In a way, that’s a part of it. You really come to appreciate the PC you’ve built by the end of the process, as it’s one you’ve created from the ground up. 

But if you’re less sentimental, you might just want someone else to put together a parts list for you. EZ PZ. That’s what EK does with its ‘Loop’ builds, and right now everything on its store is 24% off, which makes such a build that little bit more affordable.

Alright, affordable these builds ain’t, but every little helps when investing in something as expensive as a fully liquid-looped build. You’re looking at spending anything from $1,284 for the cheapest all-inclusive kit to around $2,628 for the so-called “Golden Sample”. Nice name, lovely build.

These kits include all the big bits, such as your CPU and GPU blocks, pump, radiators, and distro plate. Though it also includes the more finicky bits that can be admittedly the worst to track down when planning which ways your loop will go.

There is a degree of losing that ‘custom’ side of the loop here, as you’re stuck with the pre-planned layout ch…

Truly, there are few games that could work me into a lather with a single, context-free image of a new enemy, but Elden Ring is certainly one of them. The official Elden Ring Twitter account casually dropped the new nasty boy⁠—who was not featured in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion’s first trailer⁠—this morning.

“Fearsome foes of unfathomable power await you in the Realm of Shadow,” the tweet reads. Alright, yeah, I think I could have guessed that. The real meat here is in the image: a gold mask-wearing, grey skinned thing with Omen horns, twin round blades (think the Daedric Crescent from Morrowind, I’m not cultured enough to know what the real life counterpart might be), and stark white hair draping down over the mask and through one of its eye holes. The creature appears contorted and bent over, with its head hanging by its feet, like it’s doing yoga or, as PCG contributor Jon Bolding pointed out, maybe looking for a lost contact.

The design is chock full of clues and callbacks to the main game, and from the jump my money’s on this guy being a regular enemy or repeated boss. It feels like a lesser version of the stunning Lion D…

• HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless | $199.99 $169
• Razer BlackShark V2 Pro (Gen1) | $179.99 $99.99

I’ve got a problem. I need a new wireless gaming headset, and the two on top of my list both happen to be on sale, and I’ve stricken with decision paralysis. Amazon has the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless for $169 and the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro for $99.

Both headsets are lightweight, comfortable, and sound absolutely amazing. But deciding between the two is becoming a hard choice. The BlackShark V2 Pro has a better discount at $80 off, but the Cloud Alpha, which is only $30 off, which is lower than MSRP, but not its lowest price ever. 

The Razer BlackShark V2 is probably a better choice for pure sound quality. Hardware Lead Dave James swears by this headset’s design and really loves the physical volume knob on the left ear cup. 

However, one important note is that this is the Gen 1 BlackShark V2 Pro that’s on sale, which is a bit older. Design-wise, not much has changed, but the Gen 2 (which is $200) has a better microphone and slightly improved batte…