Posts

Worth poking your eye out of the sand, at least If I could distillAtlas FallenI’d say it’s like going to a video game store, rifling through the pre-owned shelves, and selecting a purchase based purely off what’s most likely to deliver an average-to-good time. Bulky pauldrons and a glowy blue gauntlet? Perfect. Set your expectations low and you’ve got a game with genuinely great fights against dusty crabs, mixed with acceptable open world-ish fetch quests....

Look ma, gnome pants The latestBaldur’s Gate 3patch is out, and all anybody will talk about are the buggy invisible gnome underpants and the penises clipping through clothing. Larian themselves highlighted it in their patch notes, and the socials have predictably gone wild with talk of girthy githyankis. Well, some of us like to think of ourselves as serious journalists, thank you very much, so I’d like to call your attention to the, dare I say, more grown-up elements of the patch, which range from fine-tuning the tooltips to making dragons appear in the right place....

Discover the true identity of the Strange Ox in Baldur’s Gate 3 Want to know more about the Strange Ox in Baldur’s Gate 3?Upon arriving in the Druid’s Grove inBaldur’s Gate 3, you can meet a Strange Ox. If you pass an Insight check while walking past, your character will note that the Strange Ox’s gaze is following them, and this can lead into a particularly strange conversation. In this guide, we’ll explain the full story behind the Strange Ox inBaldur’s Gate 3, showing you where to find them in the Druid’s Grove and later in the story....

Learn how to delve into the Underdark in Baldur’s Gate 3 Want to know how to get to the Underdark in Baldur’s Gate 3?The Underdark: a subterranean labyrinth of cave tunnels, the home of the Duergar, Drow, and mushroom people known as Myconids, and, in D&D lore, the lair of the dragon Thumberchaud. InBaldur’s Gate 3, it’s a place full of adventures to have, quests to complete, and enemies to kill, and you can actually reach it rather early on....

Learn how to find your belongings in Baldur’s Gate 3 Need to find your belongings in Baldur’s Gate 3?While exploring the Druid Grove inBaldur’s Gate 3, you can meet a young Tiefling trader named Mattis. After talking to and trading with Mattis, you’ll make a Perception check. Depending on whether you succeed and the degree of success, it may reveal that some of your items have been stolen! The cutscene will end, and a young Tiefling will dash into a nearby cave that may be inaccessible to your character....

Approve/deny? Dystopian border control simulatorPapers, Pleaseturns 10 years old this week, and developer Lucas Pope has marked the occasion by demaking it. Created in collaboration with Keiko Pope, the resulting browser-basedLCD, Please"runs" on a mocked-up LCD console, akin to Nintendo’s Game & Watch. Pope is also celebrating the anniversary by donating $100,000 to the International Rescue Committee. Much has been written about Papers, Please and the line it treads between efficiency and empathy, together with the fine detail of its satire of the immigration process and Soviet bureaucracy....

“We weren’t focused on the things that we’re best at” You might already know that first-person fantasy RPGAvowedbegan life asObsidian’s take on Skyrim, but did you know that it was originally pushed as amultiplayer game, prior to being acquired by Microsoft? That’s according to studio head and founder Feargus Urquhart, speaking in the latest and final episode of the Obsidian 20th Anniversary documentary, which is chock-a-block with intriguing factoids from throughout the studio’s history....

$56 cheaper than it was in March. It’s not just me - NVMe SSD prices have gotten absolutely wild recently, right? Today we spotted a deal on the 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus, formerly one of the very fastest SSDs on the market. It normally retails for $100, but today it’s down to an even more incredible $74 at Amazon - not bad for a drive thatoriginally retailed at $500andcost $100 more in January!...

Hitting the high notes Scan the cast list forStray Godsand you may notice a fair bit of overlap with that of The Last Of Us. Both Troy Baker (Joel) and Ashley Johnson (Ellie) appear in key supporting roles here, while star billing goes to Laura Bailey, aka Abby from Naughty Dog’s sequel. Obviously, this means Stray Gods has some top-notch voice talent on board, but these casting choices also make another kind of sense....

Always be stealing everyone’s swords, is what I’m saying I’m still stupidly early on in myBaldur’s Gate 3journey - I did, after all, spend several hoursreplaying the startto see how different origin characters worked - but last night I had my first real run-in up at the chapel near where you crash land in the big nautiloid. I’d played this bit before in early access, so I knew to fireball the tiny bit of rope to drop the big stone down into the floor and take out the rest of the bandits hanging about up there pretty sharpish....

A good price for a modular 80+ Platinum rated PSU. Corsair makes some of the best power supplies in the business, and today one of their highly-rated 850W Platinum units is down to $125 at Newegg. To get this price on the Corsair HX850, use codeBTSCVA93at the checkout. This is a good price for this PSU, $60 below its US MSRP. The advantage of 80+ Platinum-rated power supplies versus 80+ Gold-rated ones is that they hit higher standards for efficiency, saving you a small amount of money over time....

Another chance to get a discounted Deck, though supplies are limited If you don’t mind your handheld gaming PC coming with the odd scratch mark, you may be interested to hear that Valve are now selling “Certified” refurbishedSteam Deckson the cheap. A refurb of the top-spec 512GB model will save you over £100 / $100, and there are similarly proportioned discounts on renewed 256GB and 64GB models. “Each Certified Refurbished Steam Deck has been thoroughly tested to the same high standards as our retail units,” explains theSteam store page....

Stuck on the Wordle word for August 9? Read our hint or find the answer below! Need a hint for today’s Wordle answer?IsWordlein the mood to treat you gently today after several consecutive puzzles proved to be more than a bit tricky? Unfortuantely, I wouldn’t go that far. Still, never mind, we can work this one through together with some clues. Every day, Wordle presents its legions of players with a deviously simple quandary: can you guess the right five-letter word within just six guesses?...