Month: September 2024

Watch On

And lo on the 23rd day of the seventh month of the year of our Zuck, verily did Meta release a new open source AI model, all 405 billion parameter’s worth. Known as Llama 3.1, it is apparently the largest such open source model yet and so Meta’s main man Mark Zuckerberg has taken to various YouTube channels to promote its technological and social munificence. Oh, and to speculate on a future of AI that’s predictably icky, plus complain about his competitors, mainly Apple.

Speaking to Youtube channels Rowan Cheung and Bloomberg Originals, yesterday, El Zuck explained that Llama 3.1 is, “by far the most sophisticated open model that anyone has put out. It’s competitive with some of the leading closed models and in some areas is even ahead.”

Zuckerberg also emphasised how important he sees the open-source character of Llama 3.1, in contrast to closed-source models like ChatGPT. “Open source is a really important ingredient to having a positive AI future,” quoth Zuckerberg, explaining that, “open source is an important part of how we make sure this benefits everyone and isn’t something that’s locked into a handful of big companies.”

You mean, a bit like ho…

The ’90s were weird, man. Nowadays our celebrity game devs leave the beef and drama to streamers, but things could get heated back in the day. One of PC Gamer’s very own “Game Gods” from the class of 2000, Cliff Bleszinski, recently dished a little on that heady time in an interview with IGN, particularly on how hard the former Epic developer was gunning for id and Ion Storm co-founder John Romero.

“I saw Romero as my enemy,” Bleszinski said flatly of the Doom co-creator, recalling a jealousy of id’s success and Romero’s “rock and roll” persona: “‘I’m going to take that guy down’. It goes back to, again, the whole ‘I had nothing and I wanted it, you had everything and you flaunted it.’ So we were gunning to try and defeat [Quake].”

At the time, Bleszinski was a game design wunderkind at Tim Sweeny’s Epic MegaGames (bring the old name back if you ask me). Bleszinski cut his teeth on the likes of Dare to Dream and Jazz Jackrabbit, but it was with the release of Unreal in 1998 that Epic and the artist formerly known as CliffyB stepped up as a major competitor to id and Ion Storm.

Bleszinski described Unreal as being deliberately “counter-programmed” to id…

If you have a need for speed, Newegg is offering a 27-inch 1080p Acer gaming monitor with a refresh rate of 280Hz for just $200 until the end of the day. This deal slashes $170 off its usual $370 price tag for a no-frills 1080p gaming monitor.

It’s the best cheap gaming monitor deal you’ll see this week, assuming you are okay with missing out on some premium features in favor of a fast, bright 400-nit panel for competitive gaming. 

The Acer Nitro XV271Z boasts a blazing-fast 280Hz refresh rate (overclocked) and a 0.5ms response time (also overclocked) on an IPS panel, making it ideal for competitive games like Valorant or CS:GO.

At $200, this monitor offers great value, especially if you’re looking to pair it is a great price for this sort of monitor, especially if you want to pair it with one of the best gaming laptops or assemble an AMD Radeon RX-powered budget gaming PC.

While the price is appealing, the Nitro monitor has a rather plain appearance with little to no pizazz, except for the red accent on the base of the desktop stand. However, if you prioritize smooth and speedy gameplay, the design may not be a deal-breaker for competitive gamers. A…

Diablo 4 is all about the grind, which in game parlance is known as the Seasonal Journey: Completing various objectives to advance your character through multiple chapters that collectively tell the tale of the season. The first season, Season of the Malignant, is now underway, and a clever redditor named Gumby785 has figured out a way to save a big chunk of time along the way.

As explained by Wowhead, the third chapter of the current seven-chapter season requires players to obtain 10 caches from the Tree of Whispers, a process that understandably takes some time to get done—you don’t want players blowing through this stuff in mere seconds, after all. Or do you?

Well, no, you don’t, but it turns out that for this particular quest, you absolutely can. All you need to complete the objective is a single cache from the Tree of Whispers: Just pick it up, put it down, pick it up again, put it back down again, and repeat 10 times until the goal is complete.

It’s surely a bug, but according to Reddit, the trick was still working as of 22 minutes ago. I would expect it to be corrected fairly soon, although frankly I think Blizzard could earn some gamer go…

For FPS lovers like myself, it’s a great time this week to be a PC gamer. That’s because the Steam FPS Fest, an event that looks to promote great shooters with free demos and discounts, is taking place.

From exceptional AAA experiences to interesting new boomer shooters, and onto FPS hybrid experiences that introduce roguelike, RPG or immersive SIM elements, there are loads of incredible FPS games playable right now.

And, what’s even better is that, if you play the free demo of a game and really like it, then you can pick up the full game during the Steam FPS Fest with a sizeable discount. Here are 10 free playable FPS demos I think it’s worth checking out right now.

There are plenty more demos to experience in the 2024 Steam FPS Fest. So if you like the look of some of these games then I’d advise heading on over to Steam sometime this week (the Steam FPS Fest runs until April 22), and scoping out what’s on offer.

…

Good news, folks, Geralt is bound for your coffee table. So says Restoration Games, publishers of card and miniatures game Unmatched, who announced today that it’s partnering with CD Projekt Red to bring a bunch of Witcher-themed stuff into the game over the course of two new sets. 

Unmatched works by pitting two, ah, unmatched opponents—say Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a T-Rex, or Dr Jekyll and Robin Hood—against one another. At the beginning of a game, players choose their heroes and corresponding decks as well as a battlefield to wage war on. The new Witcher expansion adds new decks and battlefields to the game.

Called “Steel and Silver,” and “Realms Fall,” each Witcher-themed set adds “three playable hero decks and two unique battlefields,” to Unmatched’s lineup. You’ll be able to play Geralt, naturally, but Restoration also teases that you’ll be able to “lead Ciri to her destiny as the Lady of Space and Time, quaff a Tawny Owl potion, and race across the battlements of Kaer Morhen to stalk your foe.”

By my reckoning, that leaves four heroes still unknown. Yennefer, Triss, and Dandelion seem likely (though the latter maybe…

Humble launched the Black Game Developer Fund in 2020 with a pledge of $1 million per year toward projects from Black indie devs, and the program has since funded over 30 games. BGDF funding doesn’t guarantee that Humble will go on to publish the game itself, but the company did ink a deal with upcoming BGDF-funded game Protodroid DeLTA, and now it’s done the same with a second game.

Breeze in the Clouds, a game about a corgi who winds up on an adventure in a “weather world,” will also be published by Humble, the company announced during its 2023 Humble Showcase. 

The weather world is inhabited by weather-related characters, naturally, and its villains are pollution-themed troublemakers. Our hero, Breeze, combos the crap out of pollution—just like Captain Planet preached—with weather magic like a cloud mallet and a tornado attack.

By far the best thing about the new trailer, though, is that Breeze goes “arf” each time he lands a strike. Aw.

The combat looks pretty serious, though. “We wanted Breeze to feel like a very free-formey, combo-centric game,” says creator SrBilyon Harris, “So Breeze is able to do these cool, weather-based attacks…

Killsquad studio Novarama has revealed its new project, a multiplayer FPS set in the Second World War. It’s called United 1944, and promises to blend shooter action with strategy and crafting.

The gameplay in the reveal trailer up above looks pretty straightforward as these things go—gunfire, explosions, ruined buildings, and rousing music—but a more detailed explanation of how the game works reveals that there’s more going on. Each map in United 1944 has two HQ buildings, one for each team of 16 players, where players will spawn; from there, they’ll fan out across the map in search of “secret documents.” Finding and delivering those documents to HQ will allow players to craft “outpost kits” that will enable teams to capture and control points on the map.

But you’re not going to be capturing or controlling much of anything without guns, and this is where United 1944 starts to diverge from most other such shooters: You begin the game “literally with nothing,” and must craft your weapons from scavenged resources. 

You’ll also have to be careful about how you use those weapons, because apparently you are not the world’s greatest gunsmith and the f…

Great news, VR fans. Valve has just released SteamVR 2.0 in beta. This is the software that powers the entire virtual reality experience on Steam, from hooking up to hardware to the interface you use to whizz around virtual worlds, and it just got a ton more features.

“Today we are shipping SteamVR 2.0 in beta,” a Steam representative says. “We see this as the first major step toward our goal of bringing all of what’s new on the Steam platform into VR.”

Today’s beta release adds Steam Chat and Voice Chat, an improved Steam store with VR front and centre, and an updated keyboard. It also adds “most of” the current features from Steam and Steam Deck. That’s potentially pretty big, as since the launch of the Steam Deck, we’ve seen both Steam Deck and Steam receive heaps of improvements, most notably to big picture mode.

Beyond today’s updates, Valve has said this is only the beginning of SteamVR 2.0’s journey, noting that it’ll have “more to share in the coming weeks and months.” Once it’s collected feedback and had a “chance to iron out the kinks”, we’ll likely see a full release so everyone can give it a go. 

Everyone with a VR headset, that is.

Make every game of Wordle a winner with our help. Just keep on scrolling and you’ll soon run into our fantastic range of hints and tips for the internet’s favourite daily word game, as well as a clue written just for today’s puzzle. And of course, the answer to the November 28 (892) Wordle is just a click away too.

Today’s game was a quick and easy one for me: I only had two letters left to put in place before I was even halfway down the board, and I found those on my first attempt. Don’t worry if Wordle doesn’t flow quite as smoothly for you this Tuesday morning—that’s what I’m here for.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Tuesday, November 28

A lengthy study might begin by outlining the _____ of the project, making readers aware of the extent of its research and coverage. Someone might _____ out a room, looking around for someone or something. Equipment used to look at other objects in detail, such as distant stars, might use today’s answer as a suffix. 

ViewViewViewView

Is there a double letter in Wordle today? 

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

Wordle help: 3 tips for b…

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Thermometers are peaking, birds are chirping, and the air outside is hot and thick. You know what that means, folks, a new season (of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) is here, and it’s bringing all sorts of changes (to the maps and gameplay of the hit Activision-published FPS) with it. Bad news, though: If you’ve got dreams of completing Modern Warfare 2’s season 4 battle pass, you’ve got about two fewer weeks than you had last season to do it. Chop chop.

MW2’s season 4 patch dropped yesterday, introducing, well, too much to go through bit-by-bit. I’ll link the full notes below, but the stuff that leaps out at me is the new maps, new operators, and the changes to the game’s extraction shooter DMZ mode. Oh, and the fact that this season will only last 48 days, a big drop from the 63 days in season 3. That does mean you’ll get to the new content in the mid-season update (and the next season) a little sooner, but you’ll have to scurry if you wanna unlock everything in the battle pass.

So, new maps. MW2 season 4 adds Vondel—a vaguely Dutch mish-mash of bridges and waterways—to the game’s line-up of battlegrounds. It’s a “medium-sized map” that you’ll be able t…

Steam’s latest hardware survey has been released. The key trends for December 2023 show that Windows 11 is inching towards parity with Windows 10, gamers are gradually shifting towards higher core count CPUs, and the share of systems with 8GB or less of RAM continues to shrink.

Although the wider market has not fallen in love with Windows 11, with just 26% of the desktop market share compared to the dominant Windows 10 at 67%, the picture is a little different for gamers.

In December’s Steam survey, Windows 11 made up ground, with 44% of surveyed users on Windows 11 compared to 51% on Windows 10. That’s a 4% swing compared to the previous month. With Windows 12 reportedly set to launch later in the year, Windows 10’s dominance should continue to erode over the course of 2024.

Data on the number of physical CPUs tends to be variable and Intel systems with e-cores make for some odd configurations, but it is interesting to see the number of users with eight-cores growing in popularity, now taking up over 20% of the overall share. 

Systems with six-cores or less are still dominant but it’s clear there is a shift away from dual and quad-core …

Update 1/7/24: In the days following this story, Wizards of the Coast acknowledged that the Magic: The Gathering promo image was indeed made using AI tools. You can read our latest story on the controversy and its aftermath.

Original Story: In December, Wizards of the Coast committed to not using AI art in Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, saying it requires its artists, writers, and other creative contributors “to refrain from using AI generative tools” to create its products. Despite that, MtG fans are accusing the company of using AI to create the backdrop for a promotional image of new cards—something WotC flatly denies.

Wizards shared the image on Twitter on January 4, writing, “It’s positively shocking how good these lands look in retro frame.” And frankly, I think it does look pretty good: The Edison bulbs, the old-timey pressure gauge, the out-of-focus books and pipes and stuff on the walls in the background—there’s definitely a vibe going on, and I dig it.

An awful lot of other people feel differently, though. Almost as soon as the image was posted, people began questioning whether AI was used …

Good news! I’ve found something for you to do this September. Like, all of it. The entire month. What’s that? You already had plans? That’s a shame. You’ll just have to drop them. After all, you’ve got 650+ hours of RPG to play.

You will if you pick up the ongoing Beamdog and Owlcat: RPG Masters Bundle over at Humble, anyway. For $35 (£27), you can pick up eight meaty RPGs and a bunch of DLC in a bundle consisting of:

• Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (plus its season passes)
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker Enhanced Plus edition (plus its season pass)
• Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition: Complete Adventures
• Baldur’s Gate 2 Enhanced Edition
• Baldur’s Gate 1 Enhanced Edition
• Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition
• Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

For $15 (£11.60), you can get all that without Rogue Trader, which might be the move. The game has its defenders, but our own Jody Macgregor scored it 59% in his Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader review, critiquing its bugginess and messy rules. Still, it’s had a fair few patches since then and currently sits at a 77% “Mostly positiv…