PC Gamer News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

«How do I craft a backpack?» is typically the fifth question I ask when starting a new survival game, following «How do I craft an axe?» and «Where can I find water?» and «How do I make a campfire?» and the all-important «What the hell was that noise?» 

One of the last things I did in 2023 was round-up the year's crypto fails, during which I checked-in on an old favourite. In late 2021 mega-influencer Logan Paul, now probably best-known for the PRIME energy drink range and his burgeoning WWE career, began promoting a blockchain project called CryptoZoo, a videogame where players would buy NFT eggs, hatch them into animals, breed them, trade them, and so on.

More Reactive Companions is one of those mods that just makes sense: it takes a huge reserve of background dialogue lines already present in Baldur's Gate 3 but exclusive to origin characters, and repurposes them as companion banter.

ASRock has announced a pair of new ultra-fast LCD gaming monitors for CES, one hitting 520Hz the other 400Hz.

Back in the early access of Baldur's Gate 3, a player by the name of Solfalia wrote a heartfelt thank-you to Larian Studios. His father had been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and it was unlikely that he would be able to play the full game: «This is more than an Early Access for me, it's another adventure I can go on with my old man and make some good memories.»

PC Gamer contributor Noah Smith declared near the end of 2023 that it was another great year for boomer shooters, but he had one request: Can we call them something else now? The answer appears to be a firm no, as «boomer shooter» has now officially taken its place as a tagged genre on Steam.

It's been a long old wait since the (literally) explosive cliffhanger finale that capped off season one of the superb Arcane, and even knowing we're getting season two this year, November still seems a long way off. To keep us going, Riot has seen fit to drop a trailer—though it really is only a tiny crumb of Runeterran sustenance. 

Stonemaier Games has recently announced its new Wingspan-inspired title, Wyrmspan. And most importantly, yes… this dragon themed version of the modern classic will also contain premium coloured eggs, but this time they're speckled. I'm excited.

Looks like Jack Black just can't keep away from those videogame movie adaptations, because he's the latest star to be cast in the live action Minecraft movie.

Title card: The Grand Theft Auto 6 Sunscreen Mystery. Fade in: Interior. A detective's office. Shutters keep the glow of street lamps at bay. A lone figure paces around the room, kicking away cans of empty aerosol sunscreen that spill from an overflowing trash bin. They mutter to themself as they light up a cigarette. On a corkboard we see a map of Miami beach broadwalk, and a diagram charting the course of the Atlantic Coast sun. They're close. They can taste it.

Fanatec has delayed the release of its upcoming ClubSport DD+ racing wheel base due to a slow licensing process at Sony, the company has told customers awaiting the product. Originally expected to arrive with customers in December, the DD+ is now in a limbo until Fanatec can square it away with the console giant.

You wouldn't download a train—but you might conceivably want to repair one. Those worries have led to a massive controversy in Poland, as train manufacturer Newag has come under fire for likely adding DRM-style protection to stop its vehicles from being repaired at competitor facilities.

As the CES techfest thunders towards us with irresistible momentum, Dell has pulled the wraps off its latest XPS laptops and the new 16-inch model looks almost irresistible. It's not an out-and-out gaming laptop. But it is available with an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU and it's also drop dead gorgeous.

World of Warcraft's been on a bit of a roll with its patch cadence this past year. As Heather Newman pointed out earlier this week, Blizzard's seemingly turned a corner with the game—though whether it keeps that momentum going into 2024 and The War Within is another thing entirely. 

Whether you're bravely battling through today's Wordle challenge, or would just like to get to the part where you win already, there's something on this page for you. Take some time mulling over today's clue if you'd like a little direction, or click your way to the January 5 (930) answer—just make sure you enjoy your win.

Ever been idly clicking through the Steam store and something causes you to immediately hit the brakes and add a game to the top of your wishlist? That happened to me today while looking at upcoming city builders. There's just something about an isometric city builder with retro pixel art that immediately appeals to me, so Metropolis 1998 grabbed my attention with just a few screenshots.

30 years after cluttering up PC keyboards with the Windows key, the key responsible for booting you to desktop at the worst possible moment in your Dota 2 match, Microsoft is poised to once again transform our keyboards. 

Ready Player One is a story about desperate people seeking escape from a collapsing society within the confines of a predatory digital world run by ultra-rich oligarchs who will do anything, including committing mass murder, in order to protect their positions of wealth and power. And now a company called Futureverse is teaming up with Warner Bros Discovery and author Ernest Cline to bring that particular Torment Nexus to life with the creation of the Readyverse, which aims to «to bring the promise of the open metaverse depicted in Cline’s Ready Player One novel and the blockbuster film adaptation into a tangible reality.»

Baldur's Gate 3 is a notoriously oversexed videogame, and that's causing headaches for some Xbox Series X-S owners who have found their accounts suspended after their consoles automatically uploaded gameplay clips of, as one redditor put it, «naked camp fun time.»

The Epic Games Store has unveiled one of those «oh crap, what's my Epic account password again?» weekly free games: Eidos Montreal's excellent 2021 adaptation of Guardians of the Galaxy. The promotion started today, and runs through next Wednesday, January 10.

If you were like me, the shutdown of the GOAT superhero MMORPG City of Heroes broke your heart into itty-bitty pieces—it also probably made you happy to see people playing it again when it was revealed that the game code had been salvaged in 2019. 

A lawsuit filed in the Manhattan federal court last week by the New York Times claims that the defendants—Microsoft and OpenAI—have used millions of its articles to train and create its large language models (LLMs) and other products. The Times is seeking damages in realms of billions of dollars, though it doesn't give a specific number.

Ever since it first warped onto the scene, Star Citizen has been infamous for its rapacious monetisation. The game's development seems never-ending but, long before you could play it in any form, Roberts Space Industries would sell you all sorts of space-things: Like this mine-laying ship that cost over $600 before mine-laying was even a feature in the game.

Last month, the MultiVersus rumour mill span itself into a frenzy over some stickers plastered in Belgian McDonalds, which appeared early—like some kind of hallucination you experience when you're severely dehydrated, only the water in this case is a platform fighter most people had a good time with that randomly shut down for months.

This week, I discovered a TikToker deliberately developing the worst game of all time—complete with impossible platforming, unskippable dialogue, and a rocket launcher that has to be reloaded 150 times between each shot. I ended that post anxious that creator Everywhere Nowhere might one day release their abomination into the world for people to actually play. I'm afraid that happened sooner even than I feared. 

Razer's kicking off the new year in style with two world's firsts when it comes to gaming laptops. In a collab with Samsung, its new Blade laptops are going to sport two new panels, a 16-inch 240Hz OLED and an 18-inch 165Hz 4K LCD. The full details of Razer's new 2024 Blade gaming laptop lineup are getting a proper announcement early next week, in line with other manufacturers' embargos.

Square Enix has suspended its housing demolition process in Final Fantasy 14, following an earthquake in the Noto Peninsula of Japan on New Year's Day. The 7.6 magnitude earthquake has left thousands without power or shelter.

CES 2024 is nearly here, and as the Las Vegas event draws ever closer we're starting to see teases of some of the reveals already. This time it's Asus' turn to give us a sneak peak (via Twitter) at what may be on display at its launch event come January 9, and it looks like a fairly hefty refresh of the ZenBook Duo.

This month PC Gamer gets world-exclusive access to Homeworld 3, the groundbreaking new space-based, sci-fi RTS from Blackbird Interactive. In our authoritative cover feature, which saw PC Gamer fly to Blackbird's studio in Vancouver, Canada, we hear directly from the game's developers about the mind-bending new experience the game offers, as well as the studio's dramatic journey in bringing back the famous Homeworld series today. For Homeworld, RTS and sci-fi fans in general, this is a must-read.

I've never really got on with mobas, the exception to the rule being Blizzard's excellent Heroes of the Storm. Inspired by Defense of the Ancients, the Warcraft 3 mod that birthed the entire genre, HotS was released in 2015 to a largely positive reception from critics and players. But despite the game's quality, and years of support from Blizzard, it never managed to reach that critical mass of players.

Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive game, which makes for a wonderful experience filled with unexpected story beats. Unfortunately, this also means there are some bugs that are still kicking about, even after several patches.

Tim Cain's had a storied career—he's mostly known as the co-creator of the Fallout series, which has grown so big it's getting its own dang TV show—but he's also worked on Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, Wildstar, Pillars of Eternity, and The Outer Worlds.

In news that is likely to bring joy to gaming fans and breakfast enthusiasts the world over, the infamous Xbox Series S toaster of rumour and legend has been spotted for sale at Walmart, causing those of you desperate for more gaming themed accessories in your home to rejoice in the streets. Ok, not really. But look, it toasts an Xbox logo into the bread!

PCG has for several years now been keeping tabs on the incredible passion project of programmer James Lambert, a major N64 fan who decided to make a version of Portal for hardware first released in 1996. Lambert has shared various updates over the years about the project, most recently showcasing the game's opening, but things have just got real. Portal 64: The First Slice is now out of beta and free to download.

Throughout 2023, Microsoft routinely issued updates for Windows 11 each month, fixing security problems, adding new features, and borking a few things along the way. But as the latest figures from Statcounter show, Windows 10 users just weren't interested in the newer operating system whatsoever and it remains the OS of choice for two-thirds of all Windows PCs.

The Instagram account shared by miniatures game designer Bryan Ansell and his wife Diane has announced that he died at home with his family on December 30, 2023. He was 68 years old.

The launch of AMD's 8000-series desktop APUs is drawing closer. Motherboard BIOS' are ready, samples are out and about, and that means tis the season to be leaky.

Refresh your daily Wordle game with our tips, give your guesses a sense of direction with the January 4 (929) clue, or turn a near-loss around in an instant by clicking your way to today's answer. However you want to play, we've got something on this page that will help.

The Finals, the newest competitive FPS on the block, has gotten lots of praise for its gunplay and movement, but its carousel of physics objects and dynamic destruction is what truly sets it apart from the pack. Under its sweaty game modes and leaderboard chasing is the spirit and toolset of an immersive sim, and nowhere is that more evident than the recent rise of the Goo Gun.

A report from the Korean Economic Daily says Nexon has been slapped with a fine of ₩11.6 billion ($8.85 million) by Korea's Fair Trade Commission for changing the drop rates of items in MapleStory and Bubble Fighter «multiple times» between the years 2010 and 2021, without telling anyone that the changes had been made.

UK police are investigating the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl in a VR metaverse, in what seems like the first criminal investigation of its kind. The chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, Donna Jones, told the BBC that the complaint was made in 2023 and the inquiry is ongoing.

It's been a long time coming, but the big day is finally here: Daggerfall Unity, the best version of Bethesda's nearly 30-year-old open-world RPG, has now hit version 1.0 and is «considered complete.»

One of the things I really don't get about Starfield is the whole mech situation. Mechs are everywhere. There's a bunch of lore about mechs being used in the Colony Wars that took place decades earlier. There are mechs you can look at in factories and junkyards and museums. There was even a shot of a player walking past a mech shown in one of Starfield's early gameplay trailers, and an animated trailer heavily featured them.

In December, Twitch relaxed its rules to allow for "artistic depictions of nudity" in streams—things like «content that ‘deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region,’»—as long as it was labelled as containing «sexual themes.» Two days later, following «community concern,» it chickened out and walked the changes back: «Moving forward, depictions of real or fictional nudity won't be allowed on Twitch, regardless of the medium,» CEO Dan Clancy said.

On January 1, Valve ended support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, which means that users on those older versions of Microsoft's OS will eventually not be able to use the gaming platform. «We expect the Steam client and games on these older operating systems to continue running for some time without updates after January 1st, 2024, but we are unable to guarantee continued functionality after that date,» Valve wrote in a post on the Steam support site.

Over three decades have passed since Tetris made its debut on the NES in 1989. Since then, a holy grail has lied just out of reach—the «true killscreen». Now, a young prodigy has managed to reach it: after 34 entire years, a flesh-and-blood person has finally beaten Tetris.

There's a new Samsung Odyssey G8 monitor in town. Yup, it's OLED. Nope, it's different from the Odyssey OLED G8 Samsung already sells. This one is a 32-inch 4K beast running at fully 240Hz.

The Chinese Communist Party—who had taken aim at free-to-play monetisation schemes just before the holidays—softened its stance. This was after "nearly $80 billion in market value" bled from Tencent (League of Legends) and NetEase (Diablo: Immortal). 

The War Within arrives this year—promising to finally address Battle for Azeroth's biggest dangling plot thread: the giant bloody sword that's sticking out of the planet. We know this because of some subtle hints from the expansion's cinematic trailer, like when the camera pans to the giant bloody sword. The one that's sticking out of the planet.

Activision-Blizzard's transfer over to the growing empire of Microsoft has been a bit of a drama, to say the least—but it's all over now, its curtains called with the departure of the company's former CEO Bobby Kotick, exiting stage right.

Vizio has agreed to pay out $3 million to settle a 2018 California class action lawsuit that accused the company of misleading consumers over the refresh rates of its TVs. Vizio had been claiming that black frame insertion technology increased the «effective refresh rate» of its TVs from 60Hz to 120Hz.

I haven't played Monster Sniper Season 3—no one has yet, except its creator—but I can already tell you it's the worst game ever made. That's not a value judgement; it's the stated goal of the project.

An image of the much rumoured Intel Core i9 14900KS CPU has emerged, fuelling expectations that Intel will indeed unleash this new 6.2GHz chip at CES on Monday.

Ten years later the fantastic job that Crystal Dynamics' did with its 2013 Tomb Raider reboot has become even more apparent to me. The mature, 18-rated game took the campy, bright and cartoonish Lara Croft of earlier games and, instead, delivered a dark, hyper violent and at times gripping coming of age origin story with a strong female protagonist.

Whatever help you need with today's Wordle, you'll find everything you need and plenty more below. Go grab yourself an easy win with today's answer if you like, ponder the January 3 (928) clue if you're looking for a helping hand, or stick around and take a look at our everyday tips.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Baldur's Gate 3 has claimed the Game of the Year award in the 2023 Steam Awards, along with the crown for Outstanding Story-Rich Game. It probably would have won even more, but the Steam Awards rules limit games to nominations in a maximum of two categories, presumably to avoid any across-the-board ass-kickings.

For a brief period of time earlier today, it looked very much like Ubisoft's open-world heist game Star Wars Outlaws would be out sometime near the end of 2024. The word came by way of a Disney Parks blog post, and while it's not quite a specific date, it's definitely more precise than what we previously knew—that it's expected out sometime in 2024.

After multiple changes to US law that kept it copyrighted for nearly 100 years, 1928 Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie—which contains the first appearances of Mickey and Minnie Mouse—is now in the public domain.

Following a drawn-out legal dispute with original publisher Nacon, Ukrainian studio Frogwares has announced that it is now the one true publisher of the Lovecraft-inspired detective adventure The Sinking City, and that a new version of the game «with all the latest bug fixes and optimizations» is coming soon.

A popular Slay the Spire mod called Downfall was compromised over the holidays, and used to push malware to users via a Steam update. The malware in question is called Epsilon and is used to steal information from infected hardware, and was present in the standalone version of the mod on Steam for around an hour on Christmas Day.

Slay the Princess is one of our favourite unexpected hits from this year. It's a choose-your-own adventure style narrative game about a dutiful mission to (you guessed it) slay a princess.

While AI ethics continues to be the hot-button issue of the moment, and companies and world governments continue to wrangle with the moral implications of a technology that we often struggle to define let alone control, here comes some slightly disheartening news: AI chatbots are already being trained to jailbreak other chatbots, and they seem remarkably good at it.

CES 2024 is nearly upon us and the raft of long awaited products are starting to be teased at a considerable rate. Amongst the expected laptop refreshes and big screen bonanzas, however, there are always some more, shall we say, unusual products that steal the show for many. LG may have set the bar pretty high rather early this year with some reveals from its LG Labs, chief amongst them being a rather stunning looking audio device it's calling the «DukeBox».

After singing its fingers on the hot stove of NFTs, Square Enix has decided to go in for another cheeky touch with AI—as stated by the company's new president Takashi Kiryu in a New Year's letter to his employees.

The description for Steam's «Labor of Love» award reads as follows:

While Dungeons & Dragons' huge OGL stumble didn't quite convert the game's captive audience to the hundreds of other (very good) TTRPGs out there, it's still caused a resurgence of people checking out other games. 

Starfield isn't having the happiest of new years. Bethesda's landmark RPG (one designed to be played for a long time) has «Mostly Negative» recent Steam reviews at the time of writing, with only 29% of reviews scored positive in the last 30 days. Its overall rating is still «Mixed», with 64% positive reviews.

Well, it turns out I wasn't the only person who had a hankering for returning to Monster Hunter: World for the first time in forever this holiday season. The game has seen a resurgence over the last couple of weeks, culminating in a peak concurrent count of 131,964 players on January 1 according to SteamDB. That's the largest number of hunters exploring the New World since October 2020. 

Turn your daily Wordle into a guaranteed win with our help. Give your early guesses some guidance with a fresh clue written just for today's game, find inspiration in our general advice, or go straight for the answer to the January 2 (927) puzzle if you need it.

It may be the start of a new Wordle year, but there's no reason why you can't keep your 2023 win streak going with our tips and tricks. Whether you're hoping for a little nudge towards today's answer or want to see the solution to the January 1 (926) Wordle offered up in a single click, everything you need is right here.

Valve has released their annual Best of Steam 2023, a showcase of what was played most and made the most money broken down into roughly grouped tiers: Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. In a year of absolutely great games, some of these chart-toppers aren't surprises, but dang I'd never have guessed that Half-Life, the 1998 classic, would make the top tier of the most-played Steam Deck games by daily active players.

Highly anticiapted (at least around here) surival shooter Road to Vostok has a brand new demo out. It's a lot like the old public demo, indeed the developer calls it Public Demo 1 Version 3, with one huge caveat: Road to Vostok now runs on the Godot game engine rather than Unity.

An upcoming action RPG sends a condemned criminal into the depths of a forsaken land in order to get loot and save and/or destroy the world. Into the Necrovale is listed as Coming Soon on Steam, but it has a pretty healthy demo that you can try immediately.

Finish your Wordle year with a guaranteed win, however you want to go about it. Keep on scrolling and you'll find general tips for your daily guesses, as well as a clue just for the December 31 (925) game and of course today's Wordle answer if you'd rather cut to the chase. Whatever happens, you're celebrating today.

After a few years of development teases, retro-style RPG Skald: Against the Black Priory has a release window: spring 2024. The party-based RPG has been touted as an example of marrying a retro aesthetic—Commodore 64 era, in this case—with a more modern style of game and interface design.

Skul: The Hero Slayer has sold 2 million copies since release, putting the sidescrolling action roguelike in that top tier of multi-million-selling games. Skul's Dead Cells-esque and Hollow Knight-like action never had a huge single spike in popularity, but has steadily grown in sales since its January 2021 release alongside pretty regular large additions and patches.

Creator Consumer Softproducts is back, folks, with a creatively upsetting and extremely intriguing idea for another hybrid FPS and Immersive Sim: Psycho Patrol R, a game that has you as a mech-piloting cop with some kind of almost-surely-upsetting superpowers.

Need some help with Wordle today? Don't worry if you're on your last row with not enough green letters for comfort, the answer to today's puzzle is right here. You'll also find a great selection of general tips on this page, as well as a clue for the December 30 (924) Wordle if you'd just like a bit of help.

The modernized and remade PC version of tactical shoot 'em up R-Type Tactics 1 and 2 is clearly not coming this year as previously listed. Developer Granzella has announced that R-Type Tactics I — II Cosmos is in fact coming in fall 2024, instead, during a recent livestream.

Factorio's upcoming Space Age expansion and the free Factorio 2.0 update that goes with it means a lot for the factory-building game, especially because the effort on developer Wube Software's part to update many game systems and the underlying code base have made huge changes to what's possible inside Factorio.