Month: September 2024

Alienware is a brand that many associate with distinctive chassis designs, speedy components, and a high price tag. While this Alienware M16 gaming laptop has the first two covered, I’ve spotted it for $1,900 at Best Buy, and at that price it’s one of the best RTX 4080 gaming laptop deals I’ve seen in a while.

It’s a bit of a chonky chassis design this, what with a fairly substantial rear lip and a significantly large lower deck, but it does manage to cram some truly high-performance components into that frame. For a start, let’s talk about the GPU. Here you’re getting the mobile RTX 4080 with a 175 W TDP, and that’s a much better shout for a mobile GPU than the RTX 4090 laptops we test on the regular.

It’s got a much better chance of delivering high performance without throttling back, and it shaves a significant amount off the price. In fact, it’s about as high as we recommend you go in Nvidia’s mobile GPU range, and should have no problem at all scything through the most demanding games, especially with DLSS 3 and Frame Generation to push those frame rates up into the stratosphere.

The 16-inch 240 Hz 1600p panel should have no problem displaying as many of t…

The latest update for superhero card battler Marvel Snap includes new cards, balance changes, and new bundles in the store—but also a charming new feature not listed in the patch notes. As announced by senior producer Nicki Broderick on Twitter, you can now view the artist credits for any card you own. As it would in a comic book, it lists who did the pencil drawings, the inking, and the colours.

“The team worked super hard on this and I’m stoked it’s finally live,” says Broderick. “We honestly wanted to have this feature in for global launch but there were other features that took priority. Thanks for your patience!”

 Once you’ve installed the latest update, just click on a card in your collection, and then click on the nameplate at the top (it’ll say ‘Base’ or ‘Variant’), and it’ll bring up the artist’s names, with symbols showing their roles. If you’re geeky about the comics it’s particularly interesting—while the base set were all drawn for the game, many of the variants are adaptations of specific covers and panels.  

You can see the credits at the top in the image below.

Ok, most players wi…

The Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Labs has announced it is leaving the United States, following last month’s decision by the Biden administration to ban the sale of Kaspersky software over alleged links to the Kremlin. A Kaspersky spokesperson told the BBC it was a “sad and difficult decision” but that “business opportunities in the country are no longer viable”.

Announcing the ban last month, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that Moscow’s alleged influence over Kaspersky was a risk to US infrastructure. “Russia has shown it has the capacity—and even more than that, the intent—to exploit Russian companies like Kaspersky to collect and weaponize the personal information of Americans,” said Raimondo. The ban meant Kaspersky would no longer be allowed to sell or provide updates to its software after September 29 and, the day after it was announced, the US Treasury announced sanctions on a dozen Kaspersky executives for good measure, though oddly did not target CEO and co-founder Eugene Kaspersky.

Kaspersky Labs initially said it intended to challenge the ban in court, but that appears to have gone by the wayside (let’s face it, a …

OpenAI announced on Twitter that it’s brought back ChatGPT’s ability to browse the internet so the popular chatbot can provide you with “current and authoritative information.” Answers to queries will have more up-to-date information while giving the proper linking to sources. The news comes after a recent update gave ChatGPT the ability to have a back-and-forth conversation with you. 

What this means for ChatGPT users is that you can now ask something like, “What’s the best gaming PC?” In response, it should give you a list along with where it got the information, properly crediting the sites it used to answer your question—something it struggled with previously.

Before the update, the pool of information for ChatGPT was limited to data before September 2021, so you were out of luck if you were looking for answers that required current-day information. The new feature is called ‘Browse with Bing’ and can be switched on in ChatGPT-4.

The update only seems to apply to ChatGPT-4 for ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users. The free version that uses ChatGPT-3.5 is still running off the old, outdated model. OpenAI did say that it will expand the feature to a…

Earlier this week, Wudijo, who found Diablo 4 fame during the beta by soloing the world boss, became the first player to reach level 100 in the game’s Hardcore mode entirely on his own. But glory is short-lived, and so too was Wudijo, who has been killed in a throwdown with the game’s toughest boss.

Wudijo wasn’t the first person to reach Hardcore 100—that honor went to cArn_, who claimed the crown on June 5. But cArn_ did so with a supporting team—Zizaran, Steelmage, and Nugiyen—who helped him push past Wudijo and other players in the final stretch of the race. Wudijo, on the other hand, did the whole thing on his own, so even though he’s not first to reach the top, it is by some measures an even more impressive accomplishment.

Alas, the epic tale has come to an end. The good news, such as it is, is that unlike cArn_, who lost his Hardcore hero to a glitch, Wudijo went down swinging in Diablo 4’s toughest fight: The Echo of Lilith, an ultra-powerful pinnacle boss designed to give max-level, fully-equipped players something to worry about.

Which isn’t to say the death wasn’t frustrating: As soon as his character goes down, Wudijo asks, “What h…

In an event the songsmiths will someday call ‘the shot heard around the world,’ an Overwatch hostess club has been unceremoniously scrubbed from Twitter (via Automaton). But not to worry, it lives once more.

Named OW_CabaretClub, the club wasn’t some kind of Overwatch-themed physical location but rather a Twitter-based service that let Overwatchers hire women to play alongside them for a fee. Punters could, if they were so inclined, get in on some flirtatious multiplayer or fall asleep with their partner in voice chat. 

The idea comes from Japanese hostess clubs—which any Yakuza player will be familiar with—where people (mostly if not entirely men, let’s be honest) can turn up and find a drink and a lady who will pay rapt attention to whatever they say.

It wasn’t long before the club’s Twitter account was blasted off the face of the Earth. Speculation is that Blizzard didn’t take kindly to its existence and the breach of its terms and conditions, but I’ve reached out to the studio to ask if it had a hand in the club’s banishment from Twitter and I’ll update if I hear back.

But not to worry, it was almost immediately replaced by a…

Wibbly-wobbly platformer Human: Fall Flat came out in 2016, and its blend of funky physics, dreamlike floating worlds, and multiplayer support saw it quickly find an audience. Those that like this game love it, and it’s a much more freeform and relaxing experience than some of the obvious comparisons one might make (such as Fall Guys).

I played it years ago and liked it well enough, but a new press release from publisher Curve had my jaw dropping. This game was on my radar as a ‘neat indie platformer’ but over the seven years since release Human: Fall Flat has shipped more than 40 million copies worldwide. This is a paid game that usually retails at around $20 across various storefronts, and not on any streaming service I can see, so even allowing for regular sale discounts that’s a lot of jellybeans. By which I mean cash.

“What makes Human: Fall Flat so great is our community,” said Tomas Sakalauskas, Human: Fall Flat’s creator and CEO / founder of No Brakes Games. “We really appreciate all the support of the fans and are astounded that we have over 40 million people experiencing our game around the world.”

“When Curve first met with No Brakes Games, we…

One of the year’s most breakneck technology stories was OpenAI’s CEO and co-founder Sam Altman being fired by the company’s board, then being reinstated after a few days of will-they-or-won’t-they back-and-forth. Over those days Altman was the subject of considerable professional backingfrom OpenAI investor Microsoft (which straight-up offered him a job) and OpenAI’s own staff, the vast majority of whom signed an open letter calling for his reinstatement. The firing was announced on the afternoon of Friday 17 November: Altman was back in the role by the following Wednesday.

The big mystery is why Altman was fired in the first place. Speculation abounds, and given this is all about AI, can get somewhat lurid. Dark rumours swirled of an advanced piece of software codenamed Q* (pronounced “Q-Star”, apparently) capable of solving simple math problems: a potential breakthrough in the search for a general artificial intelligence, and something the board was reportedly told of shortly before Altman was fired. More prosaically, some noted a potential clash between OpenAI’s not-for-profit mission and Altman’s desire to push the commercial side of its software (…

The latest trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader emphasizes choice and consequence, highlighting its equivalent of alignment—the conviction system. “While exploring you will be met with a great number of hard decisions,” the trailer says. “Do you try to save the population of a dying world? Or burn it all with the intent of containing heresy?”

Owlcat’s CRPG tracks your response to dilemmas like this on three axes, with five ranks to measure how far you go along each. The Imperialis conviction measures your fire-and-brimstone dedication to the God-Emperor, while Hereticus goes up when you prioritize power over morality and give in to the temptations of Chaos. Benevolentia increases if you act like individual human lives actually mean something—a controversial belief in the Imperium of Man. Ranking up convictions can unlock dialogue options, events, and abilities, as well as affecting how NPCs relate to you.

The trailer goes on to introduce Inquisitor Xavier Calcazar, who seems to be consequence personified. “All these decisions will affect the whole subsector, attracting the uncomfortable attention of Inquisitor Calcazar,” the trailer’s gruff narrator…

Back in May, Microsoft announced that Cortana—the Windows digital voice assistant, not Master Chief’s original AI ladyfriend—was being deprecated. Which is a word from the Corporate alignment tongue that translates into English as “killed off”. 

Her replacement is Windows Copilot, an AI-based personal assistant that does similar things but with a generative language model and less personality. Copilot can answer questions about Windows, summarize documents, suggest Spotify playlists, and so on. There’s also Bing Chat as well, I suppose.

Assuming you haven’t already disabled Cortana, she won’t actually die unless you apply the latest Windows 11 update. If you do, she’ll no longer be accessible on your PC, joining Clippy on the scrapheap of discarded Microsoft assistants.

There’s one small note of hope for people who get sad about robots dying, however. In the End of support for Cortana in Windows and Teams article on Microsoft Support, there’s a note that “Cortana in Outlook mobile will continue to be available.” I didn’t even know there was an Outlook app for mobile, but apparently there is, and Cortana will live on within it as a disembodied v…

Activision’s bold new vision for unifying the Call of Duty experience is off to a bad start. With the early release of Modern Warfare 3’s campaign, players are discovering that launching Call of Duty HQ, the unified front end for current and future CoD titles, is required to access the new game. That might not be such a big deal if it wasn’t so slow, inelegant, and seemingly pointless. Call of Duty is now a launcher within a launcher, and it sucks.

I’ll explain: Before you can launch Modern Warfare 3, you have to launch Modern Warfare 2 first. Seriously. “Call of Duty HQ” is just the Modern Warfare 2/Warzone client under a new name.

Switching between Modern Warfares 2 and 3 from the HQ is not like switching modes. Once you’re on the main menu, you could jump immediately into Warzone or a multiplayer match of MW2. Clicking the Modern Warfare 3 button, however, closes the HQ app and launches an entirely different executable called Modern Warfare 3. There is no option to just launch Modern Warfare 3, because “Modern Warfare 3” is not its own game. It’s buried, literally, inside CoD HQ as a piece of add-on content.

The result? It takes 70-90 seconds to lau…

Conservative politicians and commentators in the US are complaining that Xbox game consoles are now “woke” following an announcement earlier this month that Xbox Series X/S machines will be updated with an “Energy Saver” mode that reduces their power consumption when enabled.

This particular descent into partisan madness started on January 11, when Microsoft announced that the Xbox would be “the first gaming console to offer carbon aware game downloads and updates.” Simply put, it means that Xbox consoles will be capable of scheduling updates for times when the electrical grid is making use of lower-carbon sources of power. 

It’s a smart idea—Microsoft said the new setting cuts power usage by up to 20 times compared to the regular sleep mode—and it’s actually not new: The “carbon aware” feature was rolled out to Windows 11 last year.

Naturally, that didn’t stop the right-wing commentariat and their political enablers from seizing on the update as the next great transgression against freedom, and a new front in the culture wars, following equally idiotic sources of upset like M&Ms and gas stoves. Retweeting a story about the update posted on…

The wheels of game development roll on, and action RPG Last Epoch has a release date: February 21, 2024. First released back in 2019, Last Epoch bills itself as an isometric action RPG fan’s ARPG, developed by and for people who love a big pile of customizable skills and loot and a horde of baddies to plow through.

The 1.0 release will be considered the complete game, with the Warlock and Falconer classes forthcoming.  It will also include two Item Factions, a system designed to let players choose between collecting loot themselves or participating in a broader marketplace of trading gear with others. After release, the Eleventh Hour team intends to release updates every few months in what they’re calling “Cycles” that will include “end-game content, skills, unique items, gameplay systems, quality-of-life features, etc.”

Back in 2019 PC Gamer called Last Epoch a great new action RPG. “Last Epoch’s skill system is a brilliant evolution of Path of Exile’s labyrinthine web of upgrades and Diablo 3’s rune modifications,” said Eric Watson, who also called out the music as a high point.

We checked back in with Last Epoch in 2023, when it showed off f…

Update: AMD has confirmed it is investigating reports of damaged Ryzen CPUs, and also that it’s working with its partners to ensure BIOS limits are in place to keep voltages within spec.

Here’s the statement in full (via Anandtech):

“We are aware of a limited number of reports online claiming that excess voltage while overclocking may have damaged the motherboard socket and pin pads. We are actively investigating the situation and are working with our ODM partners to ensure voltages applied to Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs via motherboard BIOS settings are within product specifications. Anyone whose CPU may have been impacted by this issue should contact AMD customer support.”

Original story: Following initial reports of Ryzen 7000-series processors burning out under certain conditions, we now have a little more information on what might be causing these chips’ untimely deaths. 

In a statement to Der8auer, Asus notes that it has added new thermal monitoring mechanisms to protect chips. The statement goes on to mention AMD Expo and SoC voltage, which appears to suggest these may have some connection with the issues reported …