PC Gamer News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

Win Wordle today in record time with our help—just click your way straight to the answer and then spend the rest of your day basking in the warm glow of a job well done. Alternatively, you might prefer to take a look at the clue written for the December 19 (913) puzzle instead, if you'd like a little direction without completely giving the game away.

Now that The Finals has been out over a week and lots of people are still playing, its burgeoning community is grappling with a question that we all ask of our preferred shooters at some point: is it too sweaty, and is it skill-based matchmaking's fault?

Remember the guy with the balls so big he sued Amazon and JRR Tolkien's grandson, claiming they infringed on his Lord of the Rings fanfic with the Rings of Power TV series? In a shocking turn of events that no one (except literally everyone) saw coming, he lost badly and now owes the Tolkien estate $134,000 in legal fees.

Unforetold: Witchstone was maybe the biggest surprise for me at our PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted showcase. The Spearhead Games CRPG almost evokes Larian's first Divinity: Original Sin game in its presentation, but instead of pursuing cinematic RPG production values, Witchstone is like an alternate evolutionary path emphasizing the construction of an open-ended, RPG sandbox.

We've all had frustrating experiences in multiplayer games. Heck, it's not that unusual for the worst of them to upset you in real life for a brief spell, and perhaps inspire some intemperate messages or uncivil voice chat. But for one Diablo 2 player, KrimzontheRed, the insult dealt by a bunch of gankers in the game's hardcore mode was simply too much. They wanted revenge and, even in hell, that is a dish best served cold.

2023 is almost at an end, and if you find yourself wondering what you've done with yourself over the past 365 days, the Steam Year in Review is here to fill you in with a rundown of the games you played, the achievements you earned, and other bits of gaming-related trivia.

Miklos Daniel Brody, a cloud engineer formerly employed at a bank, has been sentenced to two years in prison for «a network intrusion and for making false statements to a government agency» following a secret service investigation. Seemingly angered by his employer taking disciplinary action against him, Brody kept his work laptop under false pretences after being fired, and used his network access to damage his former employer's internal IT systems.

Zhanjiang Xinjuneng Technology, a firm specialising in high-performance mobile workstations, has decided that you can fit anything in a laptop if you put your mind to it. Cue the Yunguai REV-9, sporting a 64 core AMD EPYC server CPU, a GeForce RTX 4080, a 17.5 inch 2K screen, and a custom liquid cooling system. You'll probably never want it on your actual lap but who cares when it has such a cool Nostromo-from-Alien vibe to it.

Armored Core 6 just joined this year's surprising avalanche of quality-of-life updates and out-of-the-blue patches: like Baldur's Gate 3 adding a whole new epilogue and difficulty mode, or Cyberpunk 2077 finally making good on its promises of a working public transport system. 

Picking a favourite Baldur's Gate 3 character is a bit like picking your favourite limb, but there's little question that the best villain in Baldur's Gate 3 is Raphael. The smooth-talking trickster cambion is as charming and charismatic as he is utterly, incontrovertibly evil, such that you kind of want to do what he asks of you even though it's clearly the worst idea ever.

As the prevalence of AI continues to dominate the headlines, it looks like no industry is immune from adopting some version of the technology into its vision for the future. In this case however, AI isn't just in the news, it's the one reading it to you. Courtesy of Ars Technica, new startup Channel 1 has shown off a proof-of-concept video demonstrating AI avatars as news presenters, and the results are both genuinely impressive and a headfirst plunge into the depths of uncanny valley.

Max Payne and Alan Wake voice actor James McCaffrey has died after a battle with cancer, according to a TMZ report. He was 65.

Alan Wake 2 certainly isn't afraid to be weird, whether it's letting you change the layout of a level at the press of a button, or suddenly turning into a full-blown musical. Making a game so wilfully out there must be a nerve-wracking experience, however, as you've got no idea whether your kooky ideas are going to land with the audience. Yet according to Alan Wake 2's creative director Sam Lake, Remedy's belief in the game was boosted during development by a film that is equally weird and brilliant.

When I played Baldur's Gate 3 back in the autumn, I decided to roll with a Dark Urge Paladin, and it was such a fascinating experience that I wrote a whole article about it. But to give you the notes, combining a class that's sworn to abide by justice with a character who just flippin' loves murder creates an incredible internal conflict, leading to a character arc which, for me, felt like the closest you could come to a canonical playthrough of BG3.

In addition to our main Game of the Year Awards 2023, each member of the PC Gamer team is shining a spotlight on a game they loved this year. We'll post new personal picks, alongside our main awards, throughout the rest of the month.

Researchers at the University of California and Intel have developed a complex algorithm that leverages AI and some clever routines to extrapolate new frames, with claims of lower input latency than current frame generation methods, all while retaining good image quality. There's no indication that Intel is planning to implement the system for its Arc GPUs just yet but if the work is continued, we'll probably have some Intel-powered frame generation in the near future.

It's been a rough year for the games industry. An estimated 9,000 people have been laid off in the industry this year, affecting employees at companies like Embracer Group, Epic Games, Amazon Games, Ubisoft, Activision, Bungie, Frontier, Codemasters, BioWare, Paradox, and many more. We've also seen the shuttering of numerous studios, including Volition, Free Radical, and Shadow Gambit creators Mimimi Games. Layoffs have also affected companies adjacent to video games, like Hasbro, which laid of 1,100 people two weeks before Christmas.

AI has some concerning implications for our tech-driven future—but, like a lot of concerning new advances in technology, it's also being used for memes. Like Plankton from Spongebob sing Maneskin's Beggin' with shocking conviction.

The cast of Baldur's Gate 3 has evolved over the game's Early Access period and beyond—Wyll in particular had a whole rewrite between the game's conception and its full release. Whether it's whole storylines shifting or just toning down Gale's accidental thirstiness, finding the core of a character in a story this large is bound to be complicated.

There's a hint for today's Wordle right here and ready to help if you need it, as well as a great selection of general tips that will improve every game. If you're really stuck, don't forget the answer to the December 18 (912) Wordle is on this page and ready to go if you need it too. Don't worry, you're going to win.

When a game has multiple endings, that can cause problems for post-ending DLC. Do you canonize one ending, which risks alienating players who chose a different one? Make the story vague enough that it could follow on from any of the endings, which can mean tying yourself into narrative knots? Rewrite the ending and provide a whole new one, like Fallout 3 did with Broken Steel?

There is an entire universe of beats out there on YouTube, low-fi or otherwise, that you can relax/study to, but I'm a big fan of «videogame ambience» videos. It's not just a soundtrack rip, but long cuts of actual in game footage with all the other assorted sights and sounds adding to the experience.

Dyson Sphere Program is one of the best factory-building games out there, and it has picked up a lot of interesting features during its trek through early access development—but now the biggest game-changer of the planned features has hit. Rise of the Dark Fog, the update that adds an interplanetary menace to your game, has arrived.

Broadly speaking, when you play Magic: The Gathering via its digital incarnation in Arena, you choose a format to decide whether you want to play with just new cards (Standard), a mix of new and old cards (Historic), or a mix of new and old cards but none older than the popular Return to Ravnica block (Explorer). There are other formats like Brawl, which lets you add more players, or Alchemy, which includes digital-only cards, but if you want to play a traditional one-on-one game of constructed Magic in Arena just like you would at the table, those are the three formats you pick from.

Mimimi's swan song was supposed to be the two DLCs it released earlier this month for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew—Yuki's Wish and Zagan's Ritual. But the studio dedicated to stealth tactics games has one last parting gift before closing its doors altogether.

So you're a scientist who works in one of those science-fictional giant underground research facilities—your Black Mesa, SCP Foundation, The Loop, what have you—and the day arrives where the big science catastrophe goes down and everyone's dying left and right and there's a horrible cascade of alternate dimensions and weird aliens pouring in. That's the setup for Abiotic Factor, an upcoming solo to six-player survival game that you can playtest for free, right now, via Steam.

First reported by the New York Times, a major chapter in Activision Blizzard's reckoning over an alleged internal culture of misogyny and harassment has ended. The California Civil Rights Department (formerly the Department of Fair Employment and Housing) has settled with Activision Blizzard for $54 million, dropping its sexual harassment suit.

Each new season of fantasy football parody Blood Bowl 3 promises a new Blood Pass and a new team that can either be unlocked by paying for said Blood Pass or earning your way up to the top of its free tier. The first season's team, the Lizardmen, were given away for free, while the subsequent teams—the Underworld Denizens and now the Shambling Undead—will cost you either time or money.

Looking for inspiration for Wordle today? Improve your daily game in an instant with our help. On this page you'll find all the tips needed to make the most out of every guess, as well as a handy clue for the December 17 (911) Wordle, and of course today's answer if you need to turn your game around in an instant.

In my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, not long after making it to the city that makes up the massive RPG's final act, one of the villains kidnapped Lae'zel. And while I didn't put off rescuing her for too long, I also didn't rush it. Don't look at me like that, this was in-character—I was playing Shadowheart.

Long time RPG developer Tim Cain (Fallout, The Outer Worlds, Troika Games) has revealed another surprising fact about the Fallout series via his excellent YouTube channel. The games are known for their open-ended RPG gameplay and allowing player freedom, but according to Cain, one of their hallmarks, the so-called pacifist run where you don't directly kill enemies, was originally an accident.

I really should know better than to lose my gourd over a game before it even has a gameplay trailer, but the first peeks we've gotten of Arkane's Blade adaptation already have me excited. In addition to the brief teaser at The Game Awards, Arkane Lyon art director Sebastien Mitton recently shared three pieces of concept art for the upcoming action game.

It's been a while since I dove headfirst into a milsim, but Offworld Industries' bid to revitalize its WW2 spinoff of Squad makes me want to clear my calendar. Post Scriptum (2018) has been fully acquired by publisher and Squad developer Offworld Industries, who's slapped on a new label that better reflects what you're getting: Squad, but set in 1944.

Fortnite (a game which by all accounts probably doesn't need the help) could come to Steam, but on one condition: the platform does away with its 30% cut.

Hideki Kamiya—director of Bayonetta and Okami, co-founder of PlatinumGames, "unemployed man," and guy who has you blocked on Twitter—is making the rounds again, and this time he's ready to spill the beans. Sort of. In a recent chat with IGN, the legendary developer shed some light on his departure from Platinum in October, telling the world that he just didn't like the way the company was going.

In Diablo 4's hardest dungeon, you have 10 minutes and one life to kill the hardest enemies in the game. A little over a week after its launch, a Chinese player named Xingluoah was able to conquer the final and most brutal tier of the Abattoir of Zir using a newly discovered exploit, a perfected build, and the wrong pair of pants.

Though Owlcat Games just released the Warhammer 40k CRPG Rogue Trader, it's still been hard at work updating its previous game, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. The game's just started a free weekend lasting until December 17th, while it will also be on sale for 75% off until the 21st.

With AMD dominating the handheld PC market, thanks to the Ryzen 7 7840U APU, it was only a matter of time before somebody decided to give Intel a try. That someone just so happens to be OneXPlayer, a brand that has a pretty decent track record with handhelds, such as the great OneXFly. It's just announced the X1, part of a new line up called the OneXPlorer series, with Intel's new Meteor Lake-powered Core Ultra chip handling all of the duties.

If you were hoping that Baldur's Gate 3's arrival on Xbox would herald its inclusion on Game Pass for prospective console and PC players, it looks like you're out of luck. Larian's impressive RPG will continue to only be available if you're willing to shell out—but I promise you it's worth it. In my Baldur's Gate 3 review, I gave it one of our highest ever scores of 97%. 

The 2023 Steam Award nominations are out, meaning it's time to cast your ballots for your favorite games across categories ranging from Game of the Year to Best Game You Suck At.

In the history of videogames, there are few botches more infamous than that of Godus. Envisioned as a god game in the style of Molyneux's earlier work on the groundbreaking Populous, it was also intended to be the home of the winner of Curiosity, the game about smashing away pieces of a cube to reach the mysterious prize inside—a prize that turned out to be godhood in Godus.

Keep on scrolling to find a hint for today's Wordle, as well as a selection of helpful tips you can use in your general daily puzzle-ing. Need something a little more to the point? You've got it. The answer to the December 16 (910) game is only a quick click away.

We gave everyone a gentle nudge at the start of December to remind them that the clock on the Bluetooth upgrade option for the Stadia controller was ticking down: Google had given Stadia owners until the end of 2023 to convert their controllers to wireless functionality, or be stuck with wires forever. But someone, somewhere, decided the deadline was too tight, because now that deadline has been pushed to the end of 2024.

Last month Path of Exile 2 was selected as the #9 Most Wanted game in PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted. The sequel to the long-running ARPG Path of Exile is coming soon, and with work on Path of Exile 2 now well underway, we flew to New Zealand to talk to developers at Grinding Gear Games about how they're approaching a game that needs to be firmly rooted in the original while offering both new players and veterans something fresh and different.

Twitch has taken back a rule change it made just two days ago. After seeing what some streamers did with the freedom to stream «artistic depictions of nudity,» the site said it «went too far.»

AMD has announced its FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3) development kit of upscaling and frame generation tools has been added to GPUOpen and GitHub, almost nine months after launching the technology. This means anyone can view the source code for the routines, experiment with it to see how it works and implement the features into their games and applications.

It's ten days to Christmas, and you know what that means: It's time for the world's most famous jolly, bearded man to draw up naughty and nice lists, handing out rewards to the latter and pitiless justice to the former. That's right, Gabe Newell is sticking it to Dota 2 cheats once again.

Say what you like about Lawrence Sullivan, also known as the Florida Joker, but you have to admire his tenacity. After calling Rockstar out for a character in the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer who bore a resemblance to his own viral mugshot and demanding "a mil or two" in recompense, he's now upped the stakes even more, dying his hair purple and donning a prison jumpsuit in order to highlight the similarity between himself and Rockstar's character and demanding an «extra million dollars» too.

In World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the Night Elves have ended its latest story patch with a new home: Bel'ameth. In case you've been out of the loop for a while and don't know why Teldrassil is gone: Sylvanas blew it up. Former PC Gamer writer Steven Messner documented The Burning of Teldrassil back when it happened in 2018, writing that it was «easily the most controversial moment in World of Warcraft's history.»

According to a report from cyberdaily.au, Insomniac Games, the studio behind the Spider-Man and Ratchet & Clank games, has been hacked by a ransomware group. The group, who call themselves Rhysida, provided proof that included a screenshot of Insomniac's upcoming Wolverine game as well as character art for various Marvel-owned characters.

You'll find all the help you need to solve today's Wordle your way right here. Go straight for today's answer if you're short on time, luck, or patience, or spend a little while considering the December 15 (909) clue if you'd like to find a little direction. However you want to win, we can help.

Way back in 2018 when CollegeHumor was still a thing it launched subscription service Dropout with a bunch of shows, the highlight being Dimension 20. A live-play tabletop RPG series, Dimension 20 presented an extremely watchable version of Dungeons & Dragons with gorgeous miniature scenery, a cast of comedians who had varying degrees of roleplay experience, and episodes that weren't three-plus hours long (they average about 90 minutes, but that changes from season to season). It also launched with a killer concept for its first arc: teenage students in a high school for adventurers.

The Last of Us Online has been cancelled after more than three years in development. Naughty Dog made the announcement today, arguing that the ambitious project would require the studio to pivot entirely to post-launch support (read: a live service future) rather than their raison d'etre: big budget singleplayer narrative adventures.

The Total War: Warhammer series has a tradition of excellent DLC, whether it adds new armies like Curse of the Vampire Coast, expands existing ones like The Warden & The Paunch, or offers an entirely new campaign mode like the free Mortal Empires and Immortal Empires add-ons. The recent Shadows of Change DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3 was not so well-received, however, being sold for the same price as one of the full army-adding expansions while offering value closer to that of a faction-expanding one.

It looks like more Embracer studios have been hit with layoffs. 3D Realms founder Scott Miller (via GamesIndustry), who doesn't work at the current incarnation of the studio but runs reborn indie publisher Apogee Entertainment, said on Twitter that «a lot of people, including core devs» at 3D Realms and Slipgate Ironworks have been put out of work.

The Crew is being taken off the streets: Ubisoft announced today that sales of its online racing game have been halted on all storefronts, and it will no longer be playable on any platform after March 31, 2024.

Hideo Kojima revealed today that film and television production company A24, whose previous projects include Midsommar and Everything Everywhere All At Once, is collaborating with Kojima Productions on the Death Stranding film project.

Way back in August, a Baldur's Gate 3 player managed to one-shot the final boss of Act 2 by using a mace that deals damage based on how much gold the target has, doing so by reverse-pickpocketing 15,000 sword coast smackeroons into Ketheric Thorm's pocket.

To me, the Steam Workshop has always seemed like a neglected aspect of everyone's default PC game launcher. It's useful for installing a couple of must-haves, but it doesn't hold a candle to more full-fledged software like Mod Organizer 2 or the Vortex Mod Manager. The fact you can't adjust your load order—meaning you can't ensure that certain mods are loaded before other mods that depend on them—pretty much makes the system useless for managing big mod lists all by itself.

One of the glorious things about being a PC owner is the fact that the only limits to what you do with your gaming machine are your imagination and size of your bank balance. Some may desire to turn the simple box into an explosion of light and colour, whereas others may hark for something more refined and understated. One Reddit user is very much in the latter camp and decided to create a wooden tribute to the king of brown, Noctua.

Intel's technically unified both its Arc discrete and integrated graphics drivers, meaning that all the performance boosts we've seen benefitting the Arc A750 and A770 (less said about the Arc A580 the better) will arrive on its new integrated GPUs around the same time. 

If you want your shiny new Intel Core UItra laptop to come with an equally shiny Arc Graphics badge, then you're going to need to make sure you have at least 16GB of memory inside your machine and that it's configured in dual-channel mode, too.

Starfield did not land with quite the positive thump that just about everyone expected, and lots of people have thoughts about why—and that has apparently inspired Starfield design director Emil Pagliarulo to muse about how confident some of those critics are in their opinions, despite how «disconnected» they are from the process of actually making games.

We've joined forces up with Loupedeck and Streamlabs for a mighty streaming giveaway. We'll be handing out a Loupedeck Live S customizable livestream controller and a full year's Streamlabs Ultra subscription to one lucky winner. 

If you hate bards like Chris Livingston hates bards, you'll be thrilled to hear that GOG is giving away the strategy dungeon-crawler Legend of Keepers to mark the start of its 2023 Winter Sale.

Remember the big 4K update for Fallout 4 that was announced in 2022 as part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the original Fallout? The good news is that it's still happening, but the bad news is that it's not happening until sometime in 2024.

Welcome to your latest Wordle win. Now you're here, today's answer is only a cheeky click away, ready to send your win streak score a little higher. If you prefer your help to be a little less definitive, feel free to spend some time mulling over the December 14 (908) hint, or take a look at our general tips and tricks.

You're going to have to wait a little longer for Noctua's next-gen 140mm fan. Despite positive signs out at Computex this year that had suggested the fan would head to mass production by the tail-end of 2023, that plan has been scuppered by late issue. This means it has to go through a lengthy validation process all over again, and now we're looking at a Q2 2024 release, if not later again.

It might not be entirely sensible to refer to Kind Words—full name Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to)— as a «game,» but we argued about that distinction enough in the 2010s that I think we can sideline it for the remainder of this decade. I only mention it as context for what Kind Words is: a cozy bedroom environment equipped with the chill beats promised by the title, and an indiscriminate virtual post office that delivers anonymous notes and letters to random strangers, message-in-a-bottle style.

Earlier this week, Hasbro announced that it would be laying off approximately 1,100 employees two weeks before Christmas, as per an internal memo. At the time, I pointed out that the memo announced «the majority of the notifications will happen over the next six months, with the balance occurring over the next year.» While it doesn't directly contradict this statement, many layoffs are happening right now.

Acer Nitro 16 | RTX 4070 | AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS | 16-inch | 165Hz | 1600p | 16GB DDR5 | 512TB SSD | $1,299.99$1,029.99 at Best Buy (save $270)This is one of the cheapest RTX 4070 deals around at the moment and there's a lot to like here. The Ryzen CPU has a full eight cores, 16 threads, and that GPU is a high power version, with a 140W limit. The screen is fast and boasts a nice 16:10 ratio. However, the resolution is a bit high for the RTX 4070, so you might need to use upscaling more often than you'd like, and the amount of storage is pretty mean. But if you want to save as much as you can but still get a decent gaming laptop, this one's hard to beat.

If there's one thing the hot tub meta of 2021 taught us, it's that Twitch's policies around nudity can be incredibly confusing for everyone involved, including Twitch itself. When your massive streaming platform has to issue a public statement assuring fans it's not going to punish anyone for being sexy, you probably have to acknowledge that something has gone wrong somewhere.

Given that there's only about two weeks of 2023 left, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that Read Only Memories: Neurodiver has been pushed back into 2024, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little sad about it. The original Read Only Memories—which somehow turns nine years old next year, god help us—was an excellent cyberpunk visual novel I still think about from time to time

Extremely cool fan project alert: someone, or someones, has released a PC port of Nintendo classic The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX, modernized to run fantastically on modern PCs. It adds widescreen and high framerate support, with a silky smooth camera that lets you explore Link's Awakening as one large interconnected world instead of a sequence of connected screens. Link's Awakening DX HD was released on Itch.io 10 days ago and has started to catch the interest of Zelda fans across the internet—and it seems likely Nintendo's ire won't be far behind.

Ah, MultiVersus. By all accounts, it was a genuinely solid platform fighter with an all-star cast, torn away from us too soon. It was only an «open beta!» What do you mean there were seasons with battle passes? That's normal for an open beta. To test battle passes you could buy with real money. This sudden Wile E. Coyote bait-and-switch hit diehard fans like a painted cliff, especially since platform fighters on the PC have never really had their 'Smash Bros.' moment. There's plenty of decent ones, sure. Brawlhalla, Rivals of Aether, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2—but nothing ever quite captured a community in the same way as Nintendo's juggernaut. But MulitVersus felt like a real contender. The Warner Bros. portfolio is massive, and for a beautiful second, it seemed like we'd live in a world where Saul Goodman could spike the Iron Giant. Well, there might be hope on the horizon—though there's a thin line between hope and cope. As spotted by The Gamer, a Belgian McDonald's promotional sticker made the rounds on Twitter last week. 

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you're doing so on Chrome. It's the browser I've used daily for over a decade and makes up over 60% of overall browser usage. Trailing way behind is Safari with 18%, followed by Edge and Firefox. I can understand then, why longtime browser contestant Opera has been thinking outside the box to stand out.

In a recent interview with WoW's community council (thanks, WoWhead), the game's current director Ion Hazzikostas was asked about the current state of the story, and how dang hard it is to introduce new players to its extensive lore.

The Epic Games Store has kicked off its 2023 Holiday Sale, and once again the daily free games are back—17 of them in all, beginning today with Destiny 2: Legacy Collection, a bundle of the Witch Queen, Beyond Light, and Shadowkeep expansions for Destiny 2.

The PlayStation 5 celebrated its third birthday last month, with Sony marking the event by releasing a chassis refresh (aka the unofficially named PS5 Slim). With that all out of the way, the interwebs rumour network is now in 'PS5 Pro' mode and there's much talk about what the beefier model will have inside its case. So let me bring you up to speed on what the current specs are supposed to be and what this could mean for PC gaming, if any of it happens to be true.

Almost three decades after first debuting at the Los Angeles Convention Centre, the Entertainment Software Association has announced it's finally laying gaming convention E3 to rest.