Category: Equipment

While we had a lot of love to share in our Persona 3 Reload review, we couldn’t help but note one glaring omission in the remade slice of life dungeon crawler: Kotone Shiomi, the female protagonist added in Persona 3’s PSP port, Persona 3 Portable. Despite her absence, Players have held out hopes that Portable’s female protag option might return as other content from earlier versions of P3 arrives as DLC for Reload. Sadly, Persona series producer Kazuhisa Wada once again says it’s not to be.

In an interview from Game Informer issue 368—which, because GameStop obliterated the archive for its recently-shuttered magazine, is only available in print—an apologetic Wada said Atlus had considered adding Kotone to P3R while planning the upcoming epilogue DLC, Episode Aigis – T…

All being said, Helldivers 2’s latest patch appears to have been a solid hit with players, which is a relief. While the game’s never going to claw its way back to its stratospheric 400,000 player peak—a normal thing for most live-service phenomena—it’s nestled into a very respectable 50,000-player average. Doubly so considering everyone and their Mohg is playing a little game called Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, right now.

Well, there is one exception—it’s a good patch for everyone but the Spear—a rocket launcher I am about to humanise to a weird degree, because for some reason I just feel so bad for the little guy. In case you don’t know your history, the FAF-14 Spear has been a bit of an underdog since launch. Chiefly, because its targeting system wa…

During the same financial call in which Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav revealed Mortal Kombat 12 is coming this year, he also mentioned The Lord of the Rings. Rights to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories to film were part of the spending spree Embracer Group went on last year, and the co-chairs and CEOs of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, struck a deal with Embracer to make “multiple Lord of the Rings movies,” Zaslav said. “Lord of the Rings is one of the most iconic storytelling franchises of all time, and we’re so excited.”

A press release from Embracer Group goes into it further without actually adding any more real detail, except to clarify that this is a “multi-year agreement to collaborate on feature films based on The Lord of the Rings and The…

Over the weekend in Helldivers 2, the tireless forces of Super Earth proved that the narrowest of victories can bring the sweetest rewards—particularly when those rewards involve a surprise, galaxy-wide mech giveaway. When a Major Order demanding the liberation of three planets seemed doomed to fail, the Helldivers achieved a last-minute victory so impressive that High Command’s rolling out war robots to everyone who can fill a cockpit.

The Major Order in question enlisted the Helldivers to secure Charbal-VII, Charon Prime, and Choepessa IV during a temporary lapse in Automaton defenses, and they had only 72 hours to do it. As the operation entered its final hours, Helldivers had secured Charbal-VII and Charon Prime, but Choepessa IV remained stubbornly unconquered by libert…

A new mission appeared this week in Destiny 2’s The Final Shape expansion. Dual Destiny is an exotic quest hidden in the expansion’s new destination, The Pale Heart. It requires a bit of legwork to unlock, but your reward for completing it is the new exotic class item—a randomly rolled drop that combines the effects of two existing exotic armour pieces.

There are some powerful effects in the class item’s perk pool—replicating effects of buildcrafting standards like Heart of Inmost Light, Synthocepts, Star-Eater Scales and many, many more. Being able to pair two strong exotic effects together is obviously potent, and it should allow for some incredibly powerful Prismatic builds. And the desirability of this new type of exotic is precisely why drama, following a brief wi…

Who says you need to spend a lot of money on a speedy gaming monitor? Best Buy has a great deal on a 24.5-inch 1080p 240Hz gaming monitor from Lenovo for only $200. 

The Lenovo Legion Y25-25 launched in 2021 for $350; it’s recently dropped to $300 in recent weeks though. It hasn’t been this cheap since Black Friday. So, if you’re not ready to drop over $1,000 on a 240Hz 1440p OLED screen just yet, you can still get the most out of your RTX GPU 30-series GPU with this budget screen,

This Lenovo IPS is designed with competitive gamers in mind. It’s got a 240Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time. This means you’ll be able to enjoy some pretty smooth gameplay from all your favorite shooters, like Valorant or Call of Duty: Warzone.

While speed is everything with this…

A new trailer revealed during today’s Warhammer Skulls showcase has revealed that PvP multiplayer will indeed be returning to Space Marine 2, and not only that—the game will also feature an all-new “Operations Mode” for up to three players.

We already knew the Space Marine 2 will support co-op play in the campaign, but the Operations Mode is separate from all that, and narratively at least it sounds a bit like Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer mode: Saber Interactive creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick told PCGamesN the mode gives players “other perspectives” on the war against Tyranids, as they undertake missions that will support the campaign being waged by Titus.

“You’ll hear one conversation in the campaign with Titus, and then you’ll actually get to play t…

A gaming mouse can be a pretty signature piece of kit for many PC gamers. They’re also probably one of the most divisive peripheral categories on the scene. Ask a group of PC gamers what their favourite gaming mouse is and you’ll likely get a different answer from each one. There are just so many variables even for specialised FPS and MMO mice. Now, here to add yet more variation to the scene is the Viper Mini Signature Edition, Razer’s smallest gaming mouse yet.

With the current market, almost any gaming mouse desires you have can be catered for. But one thing I still don’t see a lot of is smaller gaming mice. When you consider how many younger folks game, it’s kinda surprising—let alone adults with smaller hands, or just people who like a nice little portable mouse. T…

The Stardew Valley 1.6 update is done! Done having new content added to it, that is. Creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone said on Twitter today that the long-awaited update is now content-complete, and now he’s focused on polish and bugs.

(Sorry about the fakeout. It was exciting there for a second though, wasn’t it?)

“1.6 ended up being a little larger in scope than originally planned,” Barone tweeted. “I’m done adding major new content to it now, though, and it’s in a bug-fixing and polishing phase until it’s ready for release. Thx for your patience. It’ll be fun to see everyone play it!”

“A little larger in scope” is definitely one way to put it. After releasing the huge 1.5 update for PC at the end of 2020, Barone seemed to shift his focus to his next game, Haunted C…

FromSoft president, Dark Souls creator, and guy who never reads the comments Hidetaka Miyazaki has won himself yet another title, Famitsu reports: He’s the second game developer ever to receive a spot on Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year list. Sitting alongside names like Joe Biden, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and, uh, MrBeast, Miyazaki is the first dev to make the list since Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto in 2007.

Every person on the list has a short blurb written by a famous (though, I suppose, not notably influential, which has got to sting) person explaining their significance, and Miyazaki’s is no different. His entry was written by Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog co-president and co-creator of The Last of Us.

“The first time I played one of Hidetak…

Starfield wouldn’t be a Bethesda game without goofy, systems-based nonsense. I say this with complete affection in my heart for this sort of thing—I genuinely think stuff like this adds a lot of nonsensical charm, like how you can stuff a thousands of potatoes into a cargo hold, or build the galaxy’s most cursed L-shaped spaceship.

All that was missing was a good bloodbath—and now we’ve got one. Reddit user Predator-FTW encountered this bug during his space exploration, an absolute all-out brawl between every ship in the system and the Deimos Staryard.

Every ship in the system randomly started attacking the Deimos Staryard from r/Starfield

“Oh yeah, you’re done!” one pilot cries out, while another taunt…

A feature of online life for anyone who’s ever expressed the vaguest of interest in videogames is weird adverts for shovelware games. You know the type, my lord: little vignettes where someone’s building a house, or saving a damsel from a burning pyre, or mixing gloop in an oddly satisfying way.

Well now someone’s made a minigame collection on Steam with perhaps one of the most outstanding titles I’ve ever seen. I am going to give this name its own paragraph and allow it to retain caps lock for the full effect:

YEAH! YOU WANT “THOSE GAMES,” RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET’S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM!

Or YYWTGRSHYGNLSYCT for short. Mostly I just admire the over-enthusiastic “YEAH!” at the start of what boils down to a stickman minigame collection. It seems inspired by a…

If I was labouring under the weight of one thousand and five hundred dollar bills, and was hankering after a new techie toy with which to dispense with my cash, then these are the Amazon Fall Prime Day gaming laptops I’d been throwing my money at. It’s actually a pretty good haul, too, even if this Big Deal Days schtick hasn’t provided really spectacular deals across the board.

There are quality laptops around the $1,500 mark, but also a selection of good quality machines for well under $1,000, too. 

This Asus machine at the top is my pick, though. The Asus TUF A17 is on sale at Amazon for $1,369 right now, and that feels like a bit of a bargain for an RTX 4070 gaming laptop. It’s not really that portable a notebook really, more of a desktop replacement with its 17.3-in…

Flying Terminids are a myth no longer in Helldivers 2—that’s according to an official in-game dispatch that hit the servers yesterday, along with horrifying towers that spawn soaring insectoids. 

The current major order to liberate Zagon and Fori Prime is proceeding apace, with Fori Prime on the cusp of liberation at the time of writing. However, there’s been a snag—our brave soldiers are reporting an insectoid menace previously thought a fascist myth: Shriekers.  

Recovered footage from the ongoing battle in Fori Prime, viewer discretion advised. from r/Helldivers

Previously dismissed as enemy propaganda by Arrowhead Games’ CEO Johan Pilestedt himself, nests of these buggers form a new mission objective on th…

A new 2D action-platforming roguelike released today, with Ants Took My Eyeball challenging you to descend into an ever-changing ant hill in search of your missing body part. Swapping between melee weapons, ranged weapons, gadgets, and trinkets, your job is to go as deep as you can before coming back for another try.

It’s a pretty delightfully fast-paced experience, emphasizing a twitch-based shooting and smashing action that really shines as you get better and better on each new run. Your stuff also gets upgraded mid-hive, as you scrap extra items for gold and parts to upgrade the best among the loot you’ve found to use. 

The deeper you get the more gems you can find, and those gems have lots of useful effects between attempts at the ant hill. That stuff gives you ever…

In 2022, a group of voice actors from Team Fortress 2—Valve’s game of first-person shooting and endlessly shouting “MEDDDICCC!” when I’m right behind you, like I always am—caused chaos across small-town America in a hunt for sandwiches. Well, “sandviches”. They were also searching for the Medic, because some things never change.

It was a delightful series in which the actors, including Ellen McLain, who portrayed TF2’s loudspeaker-dominating Administrator but is more famous as GLaDOS from the Portal games, baffled bystanders while blaring at each other in-character. The videos have peaked in their most recent chapter: the Search for Sandvich becomes Song for Sandvich, with the voice actors performing a version of Mamma Mia by ABBA only with the lyrics changed to refere…

When AMD announced the Ryzen 9000-series CPUs at Computex, one particular little nugget caught my attention. The 8-core Ryzen 7 9700X was given a very respectable 65W TDP. That’s well below the 105W and 120W TDPs of the Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 7 7800X3D respectively. 

A new rumor suggests AMD might have jumped the gun on that, at least when it comes to gaming performance. AMD’s Senior Technical Marketing Manager of Consumer Processors Donny Woligroski confirmed the 9700X won’t have the grunt to beat out the 7800X3D in gaming, even if it’s stronger in non-gaming workloads.

According to information given to Wccftech, AMD is considering a very late 9700X spec change by giving it a 120W TDP instead of the previously announced 65W. That’s not exactly a welcome change, but if…

As Blizzard playfully teased earlier this week, we’re getting another Diablo 4 playtest next month. That’s great, but if you were hoping to carry your progress over from the March beta, you’re out of luck. The developer revealed in its blog post that not only are your Diablo 4 beta characters gone for good, but any character created during the May 12 – May 14 “Server Slam” will also be deleted before the full game releases.

“Any character progress made during the early access and open beta weekends will not carry over to server slam,” the post says. “Additionally, any character progress made during server slam will not carry over to launch.” 

It’s a tad frustrating considering that Blizzard has added a whole new exclusive treat on top of its existing Diablo 4 beta rewar…

Stardew Valley’s 1.6 update has been in the works for just under a year—I know because I can’t stop checking my watch. As the release date (March 19) approaches, developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has teased that the update packs in a lot more than what’s been revealed. 

Thanks to a sneak peek last year, we already know that 1.6 will include a new major festival, two mini-festivals, late-game content, new items and crafting recipes, 100+ new lines of dialogue, and winter outfits for the villagers. However, in an interview with Polygon, where Barone discussed the Stardew Valley soundtrack concert, he also teased that “there’s a lot more of the update than people think.” 

“It’s more focused on the valley and the core areas of the game,” Barone continued. “It …

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is entering its “early access” period tomorrow—players who pre-order it’ll be able to get on a boat to Tural before anyone else, though it’s more of a formality (and a chance to get a shiny EXP earring) since the cut-off for the pre-order rewards is July 2 when the game releases.

To celebrate, Square Enix has pulled out all the stops to create a fake tourism website for Tural, the continent we’ll be sailing to—and it’s honestly downright adorable. They even got in Rhys Darby to do some video promotions for Tural tourism—or “Turalism”—who you might recognise as Stede Bonnett from Our Flag Means Death and Russel from Half-Life: Alyx.

It has recommendations for activities like riding a dirigible, or a foodie tour of the bazaar…

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told IGN today that the company has not closed Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games or OlliOlli maker Roll7 despite a recent report that said the studios had been shut down.

“We didn’t shutter those studios, to be clear,” Zelnick told the site. “And we are always looking at our release schedule across all of our studios to make sure that it makes sense. So we are being very judicious because we are in the middle of a cost reduction program that we’ve already concluded and are now fully rolling out. We’ve announced that we’re saving $165 million in existing and future costs, but we haven’t shuttered anything.”

What isn’t clear from his comment is whether Zelnick genuinely means that Intercept and Roll7 will continue to operate as they …

Something like two and a half years after I first saw the concept and thought “that looks neat” we’re finally gonna get it. We’re finally gonna get a game where you use a mech to plow a field grow and plant some seeds and water them and then harvest a big weird alien fruit.

Videogames, hell yeah.

Following a new trailer earlier his week, Lightyear Frontier developers Frame Break have announced that it’ll release into Early Access in March 2024. First teased quite some time ago, it’s a game about homesteading on an alien world with mechs and up to four players, cooperatively. It’s very exciting, because frankly, that’s a very exciting idea.

The new trailer has the very geared up farmers of the frontier stomping about in their mechs, tossing treats to birds, and otherwis…

Casey Yano, co-founder of Slay the Spire developer Mega Crit, quit his job several years ago to work on the deckbuilder that would eventually earn a 92% from PC Gamer and a 97% overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam. It wasn’t a smash hit at first, when it launched in early access, but as Slay the Spire picked up attention it eventually became the inspiration for dozens more singleplayer deckbuilding roguelikes. Many of those games have also been successful, but the surprise breakout of this year’s Helldivers 2 and its unique approach to a live service shooter prompted PC Gamer’s Evan Lahti to ask to what extent developers should be trying to capitalize on whatever’s currently trendy.

“If any big companies are listening: Taking risks is actually the least risky thing you can do,”…

Poncle have announced a new DLC for our best roguelike of 2022: Vampire Survivors, in collaboration with Innersloth’s Among Us. This new DLC called Emergency Meeting is set to arrive on PC on December 18, 2023.

The announcement came as part of the Day of the Devs livestream on the Game Awards YouTube channel, with an impressive animated trailer which also highlighted a bit of crewmate gameplay at the end. Emergency Meeting will bring new “Crewmates, weapons, power-ups, and a stage inspired by the Imposter-hunting hit, Among us” according to Poncle’s Emergency Meeting FAQ.

Vampire Survivors received a mighty score of 87 in our review, so the prospect of 9 new characters, 15 new weapons, 1 new stage, a fresh adventure, and 20 in-game u…

Slay the Spire, the brilliant roguelike deckbuilder that first released in early access in 2017, is getting a sequel next year.

Slay the Spire 2 was announced with a teaser video, embedded above, at the Triple-I Initiative showcase today. It’s quite a glow up: A brief but sweet animated reintroduction to the Spire.

Near the end of the teaser, we see what I assume will be Slay the Spire 2’s three launch characters: The Ironclad and The Silent, and a new skeleton character. A screenshot on Slay the Spire 2’s just-launched Steam page reveals the skeleton to be The Necrobinder, “a wandering lich who seeks to bind the forgotten corpse.”

I’m a little sad not to see my boy The Defect, the first character I beat the original Slay the Spire with, but we don’t know for sure what…

Following six days of “early access” for $100 Premium Edition owners, Starfield launches for all owners at 5 pm Pacific today, as well as for Game Pass subscribers. A lot of people are going to race to launch Bethesda’s big space RPG at that moment, but when they do, they could get an error message. If that happens to you, take some comfort in the knowledge that this was anticipated, and may be resolved quickly.

We saw this happen during Starfield’s first launch last week: After preloading Starfield and waiting for the appointed hour to come, a number of players were confronted by a “you’re too early” error message. The issue was short-lived, and Microsoft is bracing players for the chance that it’ll make a comeback during today’s full launch.

“If you experience any issues g…