Author: admin

At a games conference in Sofia, Bulgaria earlier this year, Larian gameplay scripter Mihail Kostov gave a presentation outlining the philosophies and strategies the studio employs to ensure games like Baldur’s Gate 3 stay playable even as players are actively tearing them apart. Recently made public on YouTube (via GamesRadar), Kostov’s talk explains how Larian addresses “edge cases”—times when “player action may push a system to the extreme”—with solutions that reward, rather than stifle, creativity.

We’ve written about the near-absurd depth of contingencies Baldur’s Gate 3 has in place to account for player chaos, like its roster of purpose-built backup NPCs who stand ready to replace any plot-relevant characters you might murder (and replacements for those replacements). While every developer designs with edge cases in mind, Kostov says Larian likes to “draw the line further out.”

Larian goes to such lengths to accommodate edge cases because, Kostov says, the studio wants to “fuel and reward” player creativity. According to Larian philosophy, players will experiment more if they feel they can not only complete the game after vaporizing …

Helldivers 2 got its biggest update in months today: the Escalation of Freedom patch adds a new highest difficulty (Level 10), a swamp planet biome, new enemy types, and missions. It’s a great day to return to what is still easily my game of the year so far, but in the loudest corners of the Helldivers 2 community, conversation around today’s update has been dominated by two bullet points in the patch notes. The fan-favorite flamethrower got nerfed, and the subreddit has gone nuclear over it:

• Adjusted flame effects to work more realistically.
• It doesn’t go through various bodies/objects where bounce off would be the expected behavior, like on armors and static objects.

What this means is that the flamethrower’s flames no longer penetrate the thick armor plating on Chargers. That’s a shame, because the flamethrower’s penchant for melting Chargers in seconds was considered one of the best reasons to bring it as your support weapon—its power justified the risk of burning yourself and teammates in the process.

The nerf is already very unpopular on the Helldivers 2 subreddit and on Twitter, where Arrowhead’s CEO Shams Jorja…

Intel has released its latest financial figures and they make for grim reading. The company chalked up its biggest ever quarterly loss of $2.8 billion, slightly better than the $3 billion loss that was predicted earlier in the week, with overall revenues down fully 36% compared to the first quarter of 2022. Ouch.

Despite that, CEO Pat Gelsinger is extremely bullish about Intel’s prospects. From a PC gamer’s perspective, a couple of things stand out. First, Gelsinger says Intel’s next-gen Meteor Lake is in production and will launch in the second half of this year. Yup, and actual product launch this year.

It’s also interesting to note that despite the fact Intel revenues for client PCs including gaming rigs fell by fully 38% for the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, Intel actually gained a little market share.

But arguably more important is Gelsinger’s doubling down on Intel’s commitment to roll out five new process nodes in just four years. That monumental effort is all about first making Intel competitive with TSMC and then surpassing its main rival in chip production to regain its position as maker of the world’s most advanced silico…

Previous crossovers in World of Warships have added ships based on Popeye and Warhammer 40,000, as well as Chuck Norris. And yet there’s something particularly baffling about the addition of a cast of characters from beloved 1999 turn-based strategy classic Heroes of Might and Magic 3 specifically.

The crossover will add six commanders, each based on a campaign hero from Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Headliners Queen Catherine Ironfist and the necromancer Sandro the Great are both voiced by their original actors, but you can also have your fleet of warships commanded by elven ranger Mephala, demoniac Nymus, minotaur Gunnar, or genie Solmyr ibn Wali Barad.

At the same time, a map based on Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is coming to the World of Warships armory, with hidden squares and elements that can be unlocked by spending crystals earned as you play. The trailer looks like it even has a hex grid, though that might just be artistic license. Honestly, who can say.

This month, World of Warships is also getting a Halloween operation that will represent the finale of the conflict against the battleship Rasputin begun in previous Halloween events. It’s called The Last…

Can you tell that a new Final Fantasy is on the way? The new mainline entry in the series that is Square Enix’s golden goose is imminent, and the Japanese publisher has the whole crew out on the PR trail. Final Fantasy 16 is out next month on consoles, though sadly us PC players will have to wait a little longer, so we’re feasting on crumbs (like wondering whether to drop the number entirely) while waiting for that release date for the PC version they’ve announced but pretended they didn’t announce.

One of the oddest tidbits comes courtesy of an interview with producer Naoki Yoshida, better-known as Yoshi-P, a man who’s often amusing to watch chiding the naughtier fans of Final Fantasy 14 or baking cookies. Final Fantasy 16 is aiming for that chimera of broader appeal, which of course means all things to all people, but in this case meant that Square Enix’s Japanese developers focused on fantasies that are currently popular in the western world. And by focused, I mean they got ordered to buy box sets. 

“As I’ve grown older, I’ve found that I like my fantasy based more in reality,” Yoshida told Eurogamer. “We wante…

If you’re in the market for a new graphics card and also planning on playing The Last of US Part I when it finally hits the PC on March 28th, then we have one heck of a deal for you.

AMD is bundling the game with all of its Radeon RX 6000 and 7000 series graphics cards. The Last of US Part I is currently available to pre order on Steam for $60 in the US and £50 in the UK, so that’s the effective savings on offer.

What it means, specifically, is that you can have an RX 6700 XT 12GB for $290 from Newegg, assuming you were going to buy The Last of US, anyway. That GPU is currently available for $350 on Newegg, which is one of the retailers participating with the promotion.

If that’s a little rich, how about an RX 6600 XT 8GB for an effective $215? These are the kinds of GPU prices we’ve been waiting years for. You can, of course, go higher up the AMD stack. An RX 6800 XT clocks in at an effective $505, for instance.

Inevitably, 60 bucks off is less meaningful as you scale the heights of the graphics hierarchy. That said, if you’re willing to go with a card on back order, an RX 7900 XT weighs in at $740 with the bundle, a solid $160 lower than its origi…