I hate it when, partway through a fantasy series, the characters start skipping back and forth between locations that used to take three episodes and multiple frostbitten limbs to bridge. Game of Thrones, The Rings of Power, they all do it. And I get it, because I too cannot resist the temptation of fast travel. We already did the ‘it’s hard to get from this place to that place’ subplot. Why do it again?
It damages the illusion a little though, doesn’t it? The more the rules of the world are bent, the less weight the whole story seems to have. Some people hated the long boat rides in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I loved ’em. I used to try to walk across all of EverQuest with low level characters for fun. But like fantasy authors who don’t want to describe the same gusty mountain pass for the third time, when I get the option to fast travel in most games, I take it. How can I resist?
One modder has a solution, or at least a sort of nicotine gum for habitual fast-trave…
Hogwarts Legacy currently has no way for your witch or wizard to swap their talents around, or reset them. Once you’ve made a decision to invest in one of the game’s talent trees, you’re stuck with it.
But tucked away in the game’s files is a bit of code that reads: “RPG_PotionAbility_TalentReset.” This potion causes the “RPGTriggerEffect_TalentReset” and is located under the “TalentReset” folder, according to EIPGaming. The potion even has a sparkly purple texture file associated with it. It isn’t used for anything in the game though, and seems to be either cut content or potentially a developer tool.
The only way to reset your talents in Hogwarts Legacy is to install a mod. Over on NexusMods, you have two choices: the HWL Talent Reset Tool or the Talent Reset Potion mod. The HWL Talent Reset Tool is command line-based and the Talent Reset Potion adds a potion you can buy from J. Pippin’s potion shop in Hogsmeade.
Hogwarts Legacy isn’t a particularly hard game, bu…
An increase in Destiny 2 error code encounters earlier this week was caused by DDoS attacks, says developer Bungie. The attacks caused some players to be unable to log in or stay connected, and got worse over September 18 and 19—by the evening of the 19th many couldn’t play at all.
A DDoS attack uses a network of devices, usually commanded by malware, to overwhelm a server with phony requests, inhibiting its ability to serve actual users. Bungie says it doesn’t usually openly acknowledge attacks like this “for general game security reasons,” but the proximity to a hotfix and patch compelled it to speak out in this instance.
“While we typically don’t confirm these types of attacks and do not plan to in the future for general game security reasons, we believe it’s the right thing to do for our players to communicate the added pressure to our systems given recent circumstances,” the studio said in a post.
It was otherwise a pretty funny weekend for Destiny 2 due…
The Finals got its first ever limited-time mode today in patch 1.5.0, continuing developer Embark’s uncommon strategy of surprise content drops untethered from a public roadmap. The mode is Solo Bank It, a new take on normal Bank It that trades four teams of three for one big 12-player free-for-all.
When some people see “limited-time mode” they might envision a flashy new map or wildly different rules, but this isn’t that. Embark is framing Solo Bank It as an “experimental twist” that it wants your feedback on. Let that lower your expectations here a bit. This is just bog standard Bank It with a minor rules tweak. It feels kinda thrown together, probably because it is—The Finals players have been begging Embark to add some sort of solo-friendly mode since launch, and this the first crack at one. My early impressions? It’s not very good.
Yes, it’s great that The Finals has a mode where solo players aren’t at a major disadvantage. It should’ve had one from the …
Safe to say TSMC’s upcoming 3nm node is critical for PC gaming. It’s what we’re all relying on for the next round of yet more powerful graphics cards late next year. The good news is that it’s back on track after a bit of a wobble.
TSMC’s latest 3nm tech relies on complex multi-patterned Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and was originally due to go into volume manufacturing in the second half of last year. In the event, that didn’t happen until right at the end of 2022 in December.
Okay, the immediate impact of that delay on PC gaming was slim to none. The most obvious casualty was Apple’s plans for its iPhone and new Apple-silicon Macs. The iPhone 14 Pro had to stick with 5nm for its new A16 SoC, which was only a very minor step on the A15 for that reason.
The new M2 series of Mac chips has been a disappointingly modest upgrade over the M1 family, again very likely due to the delay in the 3nm node.
But it was a slightly worrying time for the PC as incre…
One of the things I love most in this world is silly, impractically designed PC gaming products that look cool. The Megalodon Console 64 keyboard fits the bill by looking like the result of a torrid love affair between the Nintendo Switch Lite and an RGB mechanical keyboard.
This $198 mechanical keyboard has an offset thumbstick and knob combo that look like Nintendo Switch Joycons and four buttons on the left that make it look like a d-pad. There are two smaller knobs on each keyboard end and a tiny little LCD on the top right.
However, it doesn’t seem like the Console 64 is meant to be used as a hybrid keyboard/controller though I’m curious to see what use case someone can come up with with all the knobs and joysticks. I can definitely see a photo or video editor getting creative with this thing.
The Console 64 comes with that classic Nintendo Switch Red/Blue color scheme as well as white, soy, yellow, and pink. You should note that the keyboard doesn’t com…
Most years, I log on to work over the Black Friday weekend with the intention of discussing the best deal I’ve bought. This time I’ve had my eye on extra storage, with a Lexar 4TB SSD (-19% off at $187) making it all the way through checkout. However, I cancelled once I remembered that the Alienware R10 it was destined for, which I bought a couple of Black Fridays ago (and honestly have regretted due to the hassle it’s caused) only has one NVMe slot. I don’t have the brainspace to futz around with an adapter or migrating my data on the current drive, particularly as the case is such a pig to deal with that I hast actually drawn blood. So instead, let’s talk mini-fridges, and why they’re one of the best upgrades you can make to your PC gaming setup.
I had wanted a mini-fridge for years, but my fiancée resisted on the not unreasonable basis that we shared a fairly cramped office that was already full of electronics. As the WFH era wore on, and we moved to a slightl…
Before we get into it, let’s clarify the moral of this story right up top: When another human being approaches you with a terrible idea, one that is certain to bring them suffering and regret, encourage them. It’ll probably be really funny.
That’s all there is to take from the tale of DementedEnjoyer (spotted by GamesRadar), an Elden Ring challenge runner who amassed a fortune of 10 million runes over many days before losing it all to cruel fate (and fall damage). Why? Why not?
The player had originally spent “nearly an entire day” grinding 4 million runes at level 8 “for no specific reason” before asking the Elden Ring subreddit what they should do with their loot. The website had plenty of recommendations—including blowing it all on borderline-worthless glass shards from Patches—but DementedEnjoyer eventually settled on a combo of the two top-voted recommendations: A bow-only build and beating the rest of the game “without spending those runes or losi…
If you grew up in the 2000s like myself, you’ll have ploughed through countless Flash games during school hours. The Impossible Quiz, Henry Stickman, Line Rider—all games that kept me and my friends entertained instead of, y’know, doing school work. It’s any wonder that those computers didn’t start blocking Flash websites sooner.
But there was one series of Flash games that I’d play even outside of school hours. The Papa Louie games have a huge place in my heart and that of my friends. The time management sim asks you to juggle various orders from ever-more demanding customers and took me across all kinds of cuisines: Papa’s Burgeria, Papa’s Pizzeria, Papa’s Taco Mia, you get the gist. They sort of died on PC when Flash met its demise, migrating over to mobile. Until now.
Papa’s Freezeria, the ice cream-themed game in Flipline Studio’s long-running series, now has a permanent home on Steam. Turns out Flipline was teasing its arrival for a few weeks, though I …
I like a game that chucks me into the thick of it with minimal preamble: Just beat me up! I’ll learn! Klei’s new co-op brawler is one of those: You can handwave the NPC welcoming committee who tries to explain the controls and just start swinging a hammer at forest monsters within seconds. My kind of game.
I’ve only played about an hour of Rotwood, which released on Steam in early access today, but for $11 (even less right now since it’s on sale), I’d already recommend it to my friends. They’ve invested as much in lesser games just to have something new to play in co-op, and I’ve even been enjoying Rotwood as a solo game.
Rotwood’s roguelite structure is typical of contemporary games: In the first biome, you hop between 2.5D forest glades, bashing away at the enemies in each before moving on to the next, which might contain more enemies, a shopkeeper, or a surprise. After clearing a room, you’re sometimes rewarded with a new power. These are minor bonuses at first—…
The launch of Nvidia’s next-generation graphics cards is a long way off, perhaps as much as two years away. There’s a lot of time for Nvidia to chop and change whatever GPU ends up powering the hypothetically named RTX 50-series. The rumor mill never stops, though.
The latest nugget of info to surface comes from Kopite7kimi, a usually reliable source of Nvidia information. They speculate that the flagship Nvidia RTX 50 card, presumably named the RTX 5090, will have a 512-bit memory bus. That’s something we can all appreciate given we had cards with 512-bit buses going back well over a decade.
Electrical complexities and manufacturing expenses are often cited as reasons to adopt a narrower bus, but if a card like the RTX 4090 at $1,599 doesn’t justify a 512-bit bus, what will? Following that line of thinking makes me shudder at the thought of what an RTX 5090 will cost.
In the case of modern GPUs, ever increasing GDDR6 and GDDR6X speeds have lessened the need for a …
Grinding Gear Games is warning followers to change their passwords after a post containing a phishing link appeared briefly on the Path of Exile page on Steam.
“Earlier today, a malicious news post containing a phishing link went up on the Path of Exile Steam page from a compromised account,” the studio wrote in a message posted to Steam and Twitter. “The post was taken down quickly, but if you followed the link or suspect your account may also be compromised, please take immediate action to secure your account.”
Phishing, simply put, is a type of scam that uses fake links in emails or websites to entice people to share personal or sensitive information, or install malware onto their PCs. It’s a very common form of “social engineering,” to use the polite term for it, and often easy to pick out: If you’ve ever received a poorly-spelled email warning that your mailbox is full and telling you to “click here to increase storage space,” you know what I’m talking about.
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It’s been a while since we last heard anything from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League—it was April, in fact, when Warner Bros. announced that the planned 2023 release had been pushed to February 2, 2024. But if you check your calendar you’ll note that date is now less than three months away, and so it is that Warner and developer Rocksteady are cranking up the hype machine with the first “Suicide Squad Insider” video, which takes a closer look at the game’s story, “traversal mechanics,” and the new game world of Metropolis.
Metropolis is big, weighing in at twice the size of Gotham City in Rocksteady’s previous game, Batman: Arkham Knight. To get around, the members of the squad bust into the Hall of Justice and jack some super-hardware that enables them to swing, fly, or run at super-speeds, granting them different but essentially equivalent methods of movement: Deadshot gets a jetpack, for instance, while Harley Quinn makes use of Batman’s grapple and glider.
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