Category: Games News

Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 are all the rage right now, but I’m here to tell you about something different. It’s a lush indie puzzle-adventure game “inspired by the myth of Babel” called Chants of Sennaar, and it’s out now on Steam.

Chants of Sennaar first caught my eye because it looks, superficially at least, like an up-close take on Monument Valley, one of my favorite mobile games, which finally made its way from iOS to PC in 2022. But Chants of Sennaar is much more than a geometric brain-teaser: It takes place inside a massive, twisting tower, filled with chambers, passageways, and people who no longer speak to one another. 

Into that breach steps you, a prophesied Traveller, whose arrival promises to break down those ancient, metaphorical walls and restore balanc…

One of Japan’s leading OLED panel makers, JOLED, has gone bust. While JOLED didn’t make any of the panels in the latest generation of OLED gaming monitors, its demise is worrisome on several levels.

JOLED is a relatively new company—having been formed out of the OLED business units of Sony and Panasonic in 2015—but it’s a sad matter for PC gamers that the outfit filed for bankruptcy on Monday (via Nikkei Asia).

As for why that matters for PC gaming, for starters JOLED was a pioneer in a new “inkjet” process of manufacturing OLED panels which promises to dramatically lower costs. Both LG’s WOLED and Samusng’s QD-OLED use a more expensive vacuum deposition manufacturing process that involves vaporizing the OLED material in a vacuum chamber before using masks to res…

Steam informs me that Fallout: New Vegas is my second-most-played game of all time (after Crusader Kings 2), and I will still take any excuse to boot it up again. Lucky for me, then, that some enterprising modders have launched an ongoing online contest taking place entirely within the borders of NV’s Mojave Desert.

Called Ready Courier One and created by a modder named TommInfinite, the mod is “an online contest for Fallout: New Vegas where anyone can win the prize.” The contest centres around 26 riddles about various bits of Fallout lore. You install it, get presented with a riddle, and set out to press N on the answer—which can be anything from an NPC to a minor static object—somewhere in New Vegas or its DLCs, except Honest Hearts for some reason. It knows…

The signs that Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is coming soon are everywhere and nowhere all at once. Fans are latching onto anything and everything they can find to prove FromSoftware is about to drop the release date. This week’s clue comes from a tiny Steam update labeled as DLC, and, while it is slightly more credible than a date from a controller manufacturer, it’s still mighty thin.

Earlier this week, a new DLC app identification number was added to Elden Ring on Steam (via SteamDB), suggesting that FromSoft is preparing to list Shadows of the Erdtree on the store page. Naturally, Elden Ring fans saw this and immediately started constructing a theory that starts with an announcement at tomorrow’s Xbox Developer Direct.

It’s not as big of a leap as it may seem: E…

Watch On

The submarine-captain simulator used to be a pretty big deal, but it—among many other simulator genres—has fallen out of favor in the past decade. Depending on who you ask, the last great submarine sim was one of the last few Silent Hunter games released between 2005 and 2010—all of which are surely heavily modded in some way.

No more, though, as Deep Water Studio’s UBOAT is set to release some time soon and seems to have really taken genre fans with its blend of operations detail and life on-board the infamous convoy-raiding German submarines of World War 2. First released in 2019, the Early Access period is now coming to a close with the release of a beta for the complete game this past week.

Though it’s definitely a simulator of fighting on a Wo…

Thanks to AI-generated content the internet sure has been showing me some weird stuff lately. That includes the obvious things like images with far too many fingers and teeth, but also uncanny valley horrors like the recurring face of Loab. This time, AI has delivered us a pizza commercial that might just be more terrifying and hilarious than anything Loab could offer.

Tom’s Hardware spotted the video on Pizza Later’s YouTube showcasing this wonderful effort in AI. The video is an absolutel smorgasbord of uncanny treats as it advertises the hippest new pizza place around: Pepperoni Hug Spot. I don’t want to ruin the experience too much, but get ready to see people eat pizza in a totally normal and cool way.

Over on Twitter, Pizza Later explains a little about the process beh…

Asus unveiled its first ROG NUC back at CES 2024. We got a look of the unit itself along with some launch specifications, but pricing and a release date were not revealed. We now have a pretty good idea of both thanks to a pre-order listing at European retailer Proshop (via NotebookCheck).

The listing reveals a launch price of €2,500. That’s for the high end version which comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU and RTX 4070 laptop GPU. This SKU comes with 2x16GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB SSD. Proshop’s listing indicates a release date of April 10. 

€2,500 is a lot of money. At that price it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing this configuration topping bestseller lists. Thankfully, there’s at least one more affordable version coming. According to Asus’ product page, a…

Want to keep winning at Wordle during 2023? Of course you do. So it’s a good thing all the help you need to make the daily Wordle challenge as easy as you want it to be is right here, whether that’s the answer to today’s puzzle on a plate or a clue to make the January 2 (562) Wordle just a little bit easier.

I narrowly avoided one of those dreadful runs where one stubborn grey space keeps me from finding the answer, although it took until the very last guess to find the green. I had hoped in 2023 I’d have learned by now to go for the obvious word first because it’s often the right answer, but old habits die hard.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Monday, January 2

Today’s answer is usually used to describe an item of clothing of various lengths that …

PC Gamer’s all-singing all-dancing all-action 30th anniversary issue is on-sale today, and includes a slew of major interviews with the creatives that have shaped our industry and some of the most important games in history. PCG’s editor Robert Jones sat down with Warren Spector and Paul Neurath, key members of the original System Shock team, which is generally considered the first game you could call an immersive sim, with its influence is still prevalent in the contemporary industry across the likes of Arkane’s various titles and 2K’s Bioshock series.

The origins of the game go back to its lead programmer Doug Church who, while Warren Spector was polishing up a proposal for something called Alien Commander, shared how bored he was with the then-industry’s over-reliance on genre …

Update: And just like that, the deal is done: Private equity company CVC has announced an agreement to acquire Jagex from current owner Carlyle Group in a deal that Jagex CEO Phil Mansell said will enable it to “continue to enhance our platform for the good of both our existing valued gamers and potential new gamers yet to experience our products.”

“We are huge fans of the RuneScape games, the large global community of players, and the Games-as-a-Service capability at Jagex,” CVC Sports, Media and Entertainment head Nick Clarry said. “Our ambition is to bring relevant experience from our sports, media & entertainment assets to help realise the full potential of Jagex over the years ahead.”

The cost of the acquisition agreement was not revealed but …