Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is hard—real hard, in fact. Having just wrapped up my ashes-free playthrough myself, I definitely feel like everything in it is a major step up when compared to the base game. Nothing insurmountable, but the exact opposite of a cakewalk, as FromSoftware DLCs tend to be.
This controversial difficulty spike—in a genre known for being a series of controversial difficulty spikes—has led to “Mixed” reviews on Steam for the time being.
Complaints are the usual suspects: bosses attack too fast, they deal with too much damage, the camera is bad, the Black Gaol Knight beat me up and stole my lunch money, I don’t want to have to hunt down Scadutree fragments, and so on. As someone who is fresh off the back of having beaten the expansion without using ashes, I think a lot of these woes will fade with time—some of them are fair enough, though. Performance hasn’t been great, and I have mixed feelings about the Scadutree Fragme…
Fandom is a wiki hosting service, co-founded by the wiki king himself Jimmy Wales, and it is big business. Unlike Wales’ other ventures Fandom is a for-profit company and its homepage is one of the most popular websites in the world. The company was acquired in 2018 by private equity firm TPG Inc., following which it went on something of an acquisition spree itself and bought, among other things, Curse LLC’s wiki service Gamepedia: host of countless official wikis including The Witcher, Minecraft, Dota 2, COD and Wowpedia.
Gamepedia’s content was gradually migrated to Fandom’s service before, in mid-2021, the site was rebranded as Fandom. But ever since the acquisition contributors and editors have been uneasy about Fandom’s big money owners applying the nipple clamps and, as the site design has changed and there’s been an increase in ads and popups, those feelings have finally boiled-over in one of the biggest wikis of all: Minecraft.
The Minecraft wiki editors are mad …
Less than a month after the highly anticipated life sim Life By You was delayed without a new release date, Paradox has announced that the whole project has been cancelled.
“Sadly, we’ve decided to cancel the release of our long-awaited life sim Life by You,” says a message on the Paradox forums, attributed to deputy CEO Mattias Lilja. “This was an incredibly difficult call to make and is a clear failure on Paradox’s part to meet both our own and the community’s expectations.”
The cancellation was also announced on Paradox’s Twitter feed and website.
Lilja acknowledged that “Life by You has been in the works for a long time” and said Paradox hoped “it would be able to leave a mark in this exciting and new genre for us.” That, he explained, is why Paradox has already delayed releasing it twice: “to give the studio and the game a fair shot at realizing the potential we saw.”
We saw that potential too. In a 2023 preview we said that Life by You is li…
There are some practical ways to boost your chances of nabbing a Pal in Palworld—for example, you can get around an initial check by throwing your sphere from behind (called a ‘back bonus’). The most reliable way, however, is using a Lifmunk Effigy: Items scattered around the world that boost your capture rate. Or at least that’s the idea.
The impact of the humble Lifmunk was tested by Chalenor on YouTube, who “after having to use 15 spheres on an alleged 50% capture chance” did some Palworld science. In their investigations, Chalenor found that a save file with their Lifmunk Effigies turned in was performing significantly worse than a save file with no buffs at all.
As pointed out in the video’s comments, there are some issues with Chalenor’s methods here even if the evidence seems compelling. For one, their sample size is small for a large-scale probability test. Secondly, Chalenor is using a variety of pals with a variety of levels and HP values, so there could …
You know all those Xbox rumours? The hot new hardware including a handheld, the idea that Microsoft is giving up on consoles altogether and releasing its exclusive Xbox games on third party platforms. Turns out it’s true. Well, most of it.
Microsoft made a fairly comprehensive Xbox data dump yesterday including an official podcast on YouTube and an interview with Microsoft’s gaming head honcho Phil Spencer. Takeaway number one is that Microsoft is committed to a full Xbox hardware roadmap that certainly includes a new console that will deliver the “largest technical leap” in the history of Xbox and may include a new handheld. Takeaway number two? Microsoft is indeed going to release some previously Xbox-exclusive titles on other platforms.
Let’s deal with the hardware side first. Here’s what Xbox president Sarah Bond has to say about that.
“We’ve got more to come. There’s some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this ho…
If you’re as terminally online as most of the modern world today, you’ll have been witness to the slow burning dumpster fire that is Musk’s Twitter. From the dust of the blue-bird’s ashes, a digital migration has begun with users scrambling to find alternatives to the crypto-suffused social media platform.
Coming up the rear is Meta’s latest Twitter competitor, the Instagram adjacent Threads network. Having promised its users future access to something called the “Fediverse” is garnering a lot of hate from a growing anti-Meta “Pact” due to worries that “they are absolutely NOT going to moderate their shit properly.”
Before we get into the controversy, though, we have to understand more about the Fediverse and how it works.
You might’ve heard the term Fediverse if you’ve been looking for Twitter alternative social media platforms, particularly in conjunction with the Mastodon social network. While it’s easy to pass off the Fediverse as a simple umbrella term f…
I really like the idea of WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery (SoD)—it’s a genuinely fresh take on what it means to make a classic server. Not just rehashing the old, but remixing it too.
In case you haven’t been keeping tabs, WoW Classic’s new seasonal realms will go through a Diablo 4-style cycle of seasonal adjustments which raise the level cap bit-by-bit. SoD currently has a level cap of 25, turning Blackfathom Deeps into a whole new raid, and has added runes which can be collected and applied to your gear for funky effects.
It’s a neat concept that’s turned WoW Classic into its own unique MMO, built out of recycled old expansion content. Though with that innovation comes the danger of players figuring out the most efficient way to break something. As is the case with SoD’s new world PvP event in the ye olden zone of Ashenvale.
I haven’t been able to get my boots on the ground and experience it for myself just yet—while I did roll up a sha…
If you’d like a little guidance for today’s Wordle, a fresh clue written especially for you is waiting just below, as well as a variety of more general tips designed to help you win every game. Need something more? You’ve got it: the answer to the June 24 (735) Wordle’s only a click away.
Even though my early green wasn’t in the best place and my yellows were a little too flexible for comfort, today’s puzzle ended up being a quick and easy game for me. The leap from scattershot exploration to a targeted guess worked out exactly as I hoped it would. After yesterday’s failure, today’s Wordle answer came as something of a relief.
Today’s Wordle hint
A Wordle hint for Saturday, June 24
Anything impressively large or important could be described using today’s word. It’s also the name of a type of piano, and British slang for a thousand pounds (money, not weight). There’s just one vowel in today’s answer.
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Is there a dou…
Whatever your puzzle-solving level, you’ll find the Wordle help you need right here. If you’d like to give every guess you make some extra polish, try our general tips. If you crave some guidance for the August 28 (1166) puzzle, take a look at Wednesday’s clue. Or if you just need today’s Wordle answer on a plate, click straight to it. Your game, your way.
It’s obvious now I’m staring at the answer, but when it came to rearranging my yellow letters today I really had no idea what to do with them. So instead of trying to spot a word amongst the jumble, I used the clues I’d been given to logically lock them in place, and then went hunting for the only letter that could fill in the gap left behind.
Today’s Wordle hint
Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, August 28
A person described in this way would be flexible, supple, and graceful. This is the movement of gymnasts and dancers.
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Is there a double letter in Wordle to…
All the help you need to solve today’s Wordle, your way, is right here. Come take a look at a hint for the February 6 (962) game if you need a nudge in the right direction, read our general tips if you need a fresh angle on your daily guesses, or go straight for the win with today’s Wordle answer.
I love seeing two yellow letters pop up on my first go. Seeing them stay yellow on my second… not so much. I really had to fight for today’s answer, every row revealing too many greys for far too long. It was tough, but the complete turnaround towards the bottom when I finally found the right word did feel satisfying.
Today’s Wordle hint
Wordle today: A hint for Tuesday, February 6
Today’s answer is all about making a decision, or asking for clarification on a multiple choice question. Imagine you’re trying to decide on a pair of shoes to wear today: you might ask a friend _____ ones to wear.
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