Month: September 2024

Star Wars: Dark Forces is the latest nineties’ PC gaming classic to receive an overhaul from remastering maestros Nightdive Studios. But as this month’s PC Gamer magazine reveals, LucasArts’ shooter has proved unusually challenging from a technical perspective. Speaking to PCG’s print editor Robert Jones, Nightdive’s project lead on Dark Forces explains the game features a homebrew equivalent to modern multi-threading that was years ahead of its time.

“Dark Forces has been difficult to change, from the technical end of things, because it is very heavily over-designed,” says Max Waine. “There were a lot of small details in how LucasArts did things at the time that made stuff particularly difficult.” One of these things was the aforementioned multi-threading solution. “They managed …

Kickstart a week of NYT Connections with a guaranteed win: all you have to do is sneak a cheeky peek at today’s answers and then bask in your speedy victory. If you prefer to keep things honest but can’t quite find the link between words, take a look at the hints for the September 18 (#99) game and give yourself a helping hand.

Today’s Connections really surprised me. I didn’t expect myself to see the link between one of the groups today, but I found myself putting them together quite quickly and without too much fuss. That’s not a bad way to start the week at all—here’s hoping I can keep it up.

NYT Connections hint today: Monday, September 18 

Let’s help you make sense of today’s tangle of Connections.

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Delightfully-themed Demonic Deckbuilder Power Chord has unleashed its mightiest lineups, arriving out of Early Access and into a full release. In Power Chord you “Assemble Earth’s mightiest musicians, each with their own unique cards and gear, to fight your way through the hordes and destroy the only guitar powerful enough to reopen the scratch between worlds.”

We first got a look at the uniquely-themed Power Chord in late 2021, when a demo first showed off its stylish aesthetics and explosively metal sounds. It stood out from the pack at the time because it was so clearly trying to do something new and interesting that others in the genre weren’t. It combines multiple characters, but isn’t purely class-based.

For those who want some variety to their roguelike deckbuilding, …

Theme park management sim and vomit-soaked hellscape creation tool RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 has played host to some real horrorshows. Streamer Marcel Vos is responsible for many of them, having built record-setting tracks like the nightmarish one that takes 12 real years to complete. His latest work puts that in perspective: it takes over three quinvigintillion years to complete. A quinvigintillion is a one with 78 zeros after it.

Vos calls it the Universe Coaster, and it’s not exactly a thrill a minute. As his 14-minute video explains, via Kotaku, it begins with a looping coaster that runs along a long, spiral track at a speed of about a kilometer per hour. The track ends in nothing, though there is a decorative skeleton in a top hat, but the coaster doesn’t crash at this dead end.…

One of the new base game features in The Sims 4 called Romantic Boundaries is attempting to mimic real relationships that are “nuanced and complex” by letting players tweak their Sims’ preferences around exclusivity and jealousy. 

Arriving in the upcoming Lovestruck expansion. “[You can] define the conditions under which your Sims become jealous,” according to the patch notes. “These live in Create-A-Sim alongside the Gender and Sexual Orientation options in the Identity Panel, and you can change them at any point in time.”

There are different levels of jealousy that you can assign to Sims now: getting jealous at non-physical romance, physical romance, “WooHoo”, or if you don’t want to have to deal with all that emotional mess, you can change it so that they won’t get j…

Asus has outlined how it will update its repair service for faulty products, in another response to customer outcry about its poor service.

A new document from Asus includes more information on how it will go about changing a returns process. A process which has very recently been exposed as ineffective and ludicrous by customers struggling to use it for its intended purpose.

Asus begins the document with an admission it “recognizes that our warranty, RMA communications, and repair services have not consistently met these high standards, and we are committed to doing better.”

This follows a previous statement on the concerns of customers, which could barely be considered any admission of fault.

Asus outlines seven key improvement areas it will focus on over the c…

The escort mission is one of the most reviled of videogame tropes, but solo-developed platformer Moons Of Darsalon boldly leans into it as its whole deal. Darsalon is a puzzle-platformer in the vein of Lemmings, tasking you with hunting down hapless “Darsonauts” in its sprawling levels, then shepherding them to safety.

It’s a concept that inherently stresses me out⁠—having to keep these little goobers alive⁠—but thankfully they have some pretty smart pathfinding, always being just hapless enough to be a worthy navigational challenge, but never quite feeling like a millstone. Darsalon also shines by letting you set your own pace with difficulty. “Normal” mode would be what I usually go for: one star out of four, minimum Darsonauts rescued, and no op…

HyperX has just released the Cloud III, a new mid-range wired gaming headset to eventually replace the popular Cloud II. With a pretty great track record for gaming headsets—the Cloud Alpha Wireless is our pick for the best wireless gaming headset right now—I had high hopes going into my hands-on over at Computex.

The focus with the Cloud III, I’m told, is on comfort. The biggest design change has been to the headband, which is significantly plusher than the last. It’s also slimmer around the earcups than the Cloud II, and that all makes for a good first impression when you rest them atop of your head.

I had maybe 10 minutes with the headset. Hardly a good test of how comfy it is over long periods, but not bad so far. The Cloud III is the same weight as th…

The Game Awards had some interesting problems this year. In particular, the words “Please Wrap it up” will be carved into the public’s brains for a while due to some major criticisms on how rushed the award speeches from the devs were.

In particular, I noticed that Neil Newbon (the voice of Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3) looked like he was feeling that pressure: “I’m sorry, I’ve got to wrap it up apparently” he mentions, speaking through the ‘your time’s up’ music to deliver a genuinely touching capstone to his role.

I decided to contact Newbon Friday last week, wondering if there was anything else he’d like to add to that speech. Yesterday, I received a phone call from the extremely jetlagged actor who very kindly spoke at length about the honour.

“The …

Whether you’re hoping to win today’s Wordle, win every day, or just want to know what the heck this game’s all about then you’re in the right place. Just below you’ll find links to helpful guides and archives, a fresh hint for the January 18 (578) Wordle, and even the answer in easily accessible plain text.

Nope, not there—not there either. Today’s yellows didn’t seem to fit in anywhere at all. After a few attempts those misses started to make themselves useful, as eventually there was nowhere left for the letters to go other than in the sole slot they hadn’t been in before.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, January 18

You’ll need to think about vegetables, as today’s answer is the name of a particular member of the beet family with …