Category: Equipment

AMD’s software division is working overtime at the moment. Along with expanding its Fluid Motion Frames technology to RX 6000-series graphics cards, a neat feature has been added to the game overlay in the latest preview drivers for RX 7000-series cards. In games that support and use AMD’s Anti-Lag+ feature, you can now show off the system lag of your gaming PC.

There are currently 12 games that support Anti-Lag+, including Fortnite, Overwatch 2, and Star Wars: Jedi Surivor. 

As reported by CapFrameX, this isn’t some made-up number. It’s a genuine measure of the length of time between a game’s engine starting the whole process for generating a new frame and the moment when the GPU has finished rendering it.

This includes how long the operating system spends polling hardware for input changes, the game engine running through all of its internal routines, the issuing of the frame, and the driver compiling the instructions for the graphics chip. That all sounds like it’s a lot of stuff but fortunately, it all happens in a blink of an eye. The bulk of the system lag is down to the GPU actually rendering the frame.

That’s assuming nothing is amiss, of cou…

That sure didn’t take long. Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered is out today, delivering a very nice graphical update to Lara Croft’s original three adventures along with some other niceties, including modern controls and high framerate support. Within hours mods for the remaster were popping up on the Nexus page, most of the initial wave seemingly focused on adding the classic graphics into the remastered graphics mode so they can be appreciated with the updated lighting and added environmental details. It also took less than 12 hours for someone to upload a topless Lara mod, because, well, of course.

It’s hard to think of a more primal bit of gaming lore than the “Tomb Raider nude code,” a schoolyard rumor that made its way into gaming magazines and message boards and circulated for years even though it did not exist. In 2021, one of the game’s developers reflected on the rumor, indicating that publisher Eidos didn’t exactly go out of its way to debunk it.

“Even during development someone in management, perhaps half-jokingly, asked us for something similar and we told them to bog off,” co-creator Paul Douglas told TheGamer. “There certainly wasn’t anything in the game that …

Remember the whole GameStop stonks thing from a couple years ago? It’s kind of complicated and kind of stupid, and frankly I don’t think anyone is entirely sure exactly what happened, but the bottom line is that a guy on Reddit started talking about GameStop stocks, then Elon Musk tweeted about it, then everyone went nuts, and then—for a brief while—profit. The whole thing had a certain Wolf of Wall Street vibe to it (except that the wolf in this case was Roaring Kitty) and sure enough, work to bring the tale to film was soon underway.

Today Sony Pictures Entertainment unveiled the first trailer for its contribution to that cinematic effort: A flick called Dumb Money, “the insane true story of everyday people who flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning GameStop (yes, the mall videogame store) into the world’s hottest company.”

“In the middle of everything is regular guy Keith Gill (Paul Dano), who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock and posting about it,” the YouTube listing states. “When his social posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a moveme…

Amazon’s Fallout series was a big hit, and it turns out the critics like it too. The show has been nominated for 16 Emmy awards, including a couple big ones: Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Walton Goggins.

Most of the categories Fallout is nominated in are for awards that are generally handed out off-camera—things like “Outstanding Period or Fantasy/Sci-Fi Makeup (Non-Prostethic),” or “Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Comedy Or Drama Series (One Hour),” the sorts of categories most of us likely haven’t even heard of. But it’s also up for awards in special visual effects, stunt performance, and writing for a drama series, which are nothing to sneeze at.

The highlight has to be the Outstanding Drama Series nom, which is great but, alas, not one I think it’s likely to win. The competition is stiff, including Shogun—”a programme about a man who’s so bad at boats he crashes into Japan” in the words of our own Joshua Wolens, which, okay, fair enough, although I don’t think that really captures the essence of the thing—as well as 3 Body Problem, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Slow Horses, The Crown, The Gilded Age, and The Morn…

Mods are one of my favourite things about PC gaming, and Baldur’s Gate 3 is no different. Give players even the slightest bit of access to your code, and they’ll create whole new games, stunning graphical overhauls, and community patches to squash bugs. Then there’s also the horrors.

The latest lovecraftian nightmare to pull into the station is this mod, named Thomas the Tank Engine. That’s it, just. Thomas the Tank Engine. No embellishments, no attempt at arcane lore, it is what you get. Don’t worry, he’s here. Nothing can hurt you anymore.

The way Nexus Mod user RemuFO4’s nightmare works is pretty simple. It replaces one of the Tiefling’s horns with a mesh of Thomas the Tank Engine’s whole body, just… glued on to the model. Like a Half-Life headcrab, this parasitic train pilots Tav’s body as it searches for a place to make its new nest.

I cannot imagine enduring a 100 plus hour playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 with this godforsaken beast stapled to your head. Though it’s tradition for these things to be completely unusable, like that one Starfield mod that makes it impossible to edit your ship.

It being tiefling-only has some unset…

Keep your Wordle win streak growing, and learn how to make the most of your crucial opening guesses with our helpful guides and tips. Get all the help you need with today’s Wordle, too: there’s a clue for the March 29 (648) puzzle just below, and a little past that, you’ll find the answer to today’s game ready and waiting for you.

I struggled far more than I should have with today’s puzzle. Not enough greens and too many greys started me off on the wrong foot, and two more goes with little to show for it had me worried that there was no coming back. Thankfully, a couple of well-placed greens finally showed up, and I guessed today’s Wordle answer on my next move.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, March 29

This term often refers to a steady stream of unfortunate events over a length of time—a project doomed from the start, a long road trip _____ with car issues—or some form of attack or unpleasantness that seems to come from all sides. 

ViewViewViewView

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

Yes, a vowel is used twice in today’s Wordle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every…

Tiny people in a big world survival game Grounded has got a heck of an update on the way: Make It and Break It will hit on November 13th, bringing in a creative mode called Playgrounds that lets you make custom game maps and modes using tools that seem pretty dang close to whatever the development team is using themselves.

The update will come complete with a set of “gizmos and gadgets” that let you build mechanics for your custom game spaces, like spawning and sounds. It’ll also include the ability for players to more easily save and share those creations with others, enabling entirely new gameplay modes for Grounded—racing, arena battles, whatever—alongside new survival experiences more adjacent to the core.

The update was made with the express goal of letting people extend the amount of playtime they can get from Grounded once the team at Obsidian inevitably has to move on.

“Giving people the opportunity to extend the lifetime of the games they enjoy is always really cool, which was very important to us. We’ve always wanted to see what the community can make with these tools,” said game director Adam Brennecke in an interview wi…

Dodging gunfire, my invisibility cloak flickering, I grab the enemy soldier by the neck and, utilizing my Nanosuit’s incredible strength, I THROW HIM THROUGH THE ROOF OF A BUILDING, sending wooden beams and metal panels flying.

That was cool AF, but I don’t have time to admire my handy work (get it!), as the immense racket caused by the collapsing structure has alerted the soldier’s friends, one of which fires off a flare to call in reinforcements. He dies quickly, shot through the head with my SCAR rifle, though, so does the gunner on a patrol boat that approaches from across the bay.

Turning to the military jeep that’s just arrived loaded with more soldiers, I activate my Nanosuit’s armor mode and storm the vehicle head-on, the suit absorbing plenty of damage. Just as the suit’s shield collapses I take cover behind a rock and then, after a second’s pause to recharge the shield, I take out both the dismounted soldiers and the vehicle’s gunner with headshots. It’s then that I commandeer the jeep and start assaulting enemy encampments, rattling off its .50 caliber cannon with wild abandon.

This is me having a great time playing Crysis Remastered, and the carnage…

We’ve all had that experience in XCOM where you’re so determined to get yourself out of an impossible situation that you just keep reloading your save and trying different approaches as your soldiers die over and over. Now imagine that instead of that just being an embarrassing memory, it’s the basis for a whole new approach to the genre. 

In Every Day We Fight, just shown off at the PC Gaming Show 2024, you take charge of a group of civilians caught in an alien invasion Groundhog Day. Thanks to some strange sci-fi tech tech, every time your untrained fighters die, they wake up back at the start of the day, ready to go again.

Battles are turn-based, but you’ll also be exploring in real time, and the time loop structure gives it a roguelike flavour. As you make your way into different districts of the city, you’ll discover new weapons and resources that you can take advantage of in subsequent runs. Equally, the more they fight (and die), the more skills your troops will learn, going from regular folk to hardened soldiers over the course of the conflict. That’s sort of fun and bleak at the same time. 

Your goal is to track down and defeat “Rift leaders”…

The last couple of years have seen some blockbusters deals in the games industry. Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is obviously the biggest of them all, but Sony’s buyout of Bungie is up there too, and even (relatively) smaller deals, like NetEase’s purchase of Quantic Dream or Nacon’s takeover of Daedalic, can’t be overlooked. And while we on the outside can debate the relative merits of this industry consolidation, GDC’s latest State of the Game Industry survey indicates that it’s making people who actually work in the business a little nervous.

In 2023, the first year developers were asked their thoughts about industry consolidation, 17% of respondents said they believed “major acquisitions” like Microsoft’s takeover of Activision would have a positive impact on the industry. By comparison, only 5% shared that opinion in 2024. The percentage who said these acquisitions will have a negative impact held roughly steady—43% this year, versus 44% in 2023—while those who feel it will have no meaningful impact either way shrunk from 7% in 2023 to just 2% in 2024.

That shift in attitude is understandable. 2023 was a brutal year for layoffs in the…