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January 2025 Archive

    1. NYT Connections hint (Sat, 1 Feb)
    2. EA re-release The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 on PC as DLC-stuffed Legacy editions
    3. Nvidia DLSS 4 explained: Multi Frame Generation, the Transformer model, and the GPUs you’ll need to run them
    4. Warner and DC Smash 'em up MultiVersus joins the pile of dead live service games
    5. Civilization 7's post-launch plans include free multiplayer and Age features and paid Ada Lovelace
    6. The best Minecraft Bedrock seeds
    7. The best Minecraft seeds 1.21.4 2025
    8. The best Minecraft shaders for 1.21.4
    9. Minecraft house ideas
    10. Editing Edward Snowden's "toothy little cockgoblin" Max Payne 2 review
    11. The creator of Arctic Eggs is making a fishing game that I'm sure will be completely normal
    12. In lyrical limbo RPG Three Verses, you ask gods to help poets finish their poems
    13. Wordle hint and answer #1322 (January 31 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Fri, 31 Jan)
    2. Vampire: The Masquerade writer's new dark fantasy vania also features vampires, plus screaming spiders
    3. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector review: a sci-fi RPG that explores new space, yet I yearn for old ground
    4. Please, call a job cut a job cut
    5. Spider-Man 2: All suits for both Peter and Miles
    6. Spider-Man 2: All Spider-Bots
    7. Dragonsweeper is a free, neat and nifty RPG take on a venerable PC puzzler
    8. BioWare quietly lay off key Dragon Age team members while talking up the next Mass Effect
    9. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 system requirements and PC features are all things to all Spider-people
    10. PlayStation finally drop the PSN account requirement that annoyed every PC player
    11. Wordle hint and answer #1321 (January 30 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Thu, 30 Jan)
    2. Space Engineers 2 early access review: a solid and solitary box of building blocks - yet not much else
    3. Here's a demo for Phantom Line, the paranormal military FPS that mixes S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with Control
    4. Demeo X Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked is a VR tabletop tactics game from Wizards Of The Coast
    5. Try this mod to calm Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s stuttering on PC
    6. Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 review: the new 4K graphics card to go for
    7. New No Man's Sky update adds walkable gas giants among "trillions" of new planets, just in case you were running out
    8. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 release time
    9. Eerie robot insect colony sim Microtopia launches in February, with 'programmable' ants
    10. Sniper At Work is a game of crafty first-person assassination with a touch of Hitman's sandboxing
    11. Dino Crisis and Dino Crisis 2 get re-released on PC via GOG, but that probably won't sate fans dying for a remake
    12. Peripeteia is perpetual pit of immersive sim despair dripping with post-Soviet bleakness, out in early access next month
    13. Wordle hint and answer #1320 (January 29 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Wed, 29 Jan)
    2. Monastery escape tactics sim The Stone Of Madness is out now and has me thinking about time
    3. Creator of already-disturbing elf-hatching sim now plots to make another virtual pet game inside it
    4. The Sims 1 and 2 are coming back to PC this week with all original expansion packs, says report
    5. Restaurant Tycoon 2 codes
    6. Outside The Blocks is a gorgeous diorama sculptor that had its developer travel Europe for architectural references
    7. "Majority" of Dauntless developers laid off two months after disastrous Steam launch wiped all player progress
    8. Conspiracy was briefly afoot in the Marvel Rivals community following NetEase hero plant rumours
    9. Bulletstorm and Painkiller devs People Can Fly to co-develop Gears of War: E-Day, following spate of layoffs and cancellations last year
    10. Wordle hint and answer #1319 (January 28 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Tue, 28 Jan)
    2. Darkest Dungeon 2's free Kingdoms mode is out now, and it's got its red hooks in me already
    3. Ubisoft lay off another 185 people and shutter one of the studios behind Star Wars: Outlaws and The Division 2
    4. Space Engineers 2 whooshes out of the airlock and into the cold dark void of early access
    5. Filipino horror game Hapunan is about escaping police brutality and selling fertilised duck eggs
    6. Team Ninja's Rise Of The Ronin simply cannot resist the allure of PC, arrives on Steam in March
    7. Bauhaus Bonk is an energetic, lethal single-button arcade game set to a bopping swing soundtrack
    8. Heroes World codes
    9. A One Piece Game codes
    10. Play Pogs, do crime in Y2K convenience shop sim Snow Town Geek Store
    11. The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
    12. Behold, the Steam Brick
    13. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth director thinks mods "breathe life into the PC market", following previous request to please not give Cait Sith a dump truck ass
    14. Wordle hint and answer #1318 (January 27 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Mon, 27 Jan)
    2. The Sunday Papers
    3. Wordle hint and answer #1317 (January 26 2025)
    1. A belated word or two on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's bestiary
    2. What are we all playing this weekend?
    3. NYT Connections hint (Sun, 26 Jan)
    4. Wordle hint and answer #1316 (January 25 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Sat, 25 Jan)
    2. Ninja Gaiden 2 Black: Is it a remake or remaster?
    3. Doom: The Dark Ages gets a big discount on PC if you pre-order today, here’s how to secure the deal
    4. Finally, someone investigated how many times you can piss in Heavy Rain
    5. Palworld's creators are paying the Kenzera devs to make a horror game about the entertainment industry
    6. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth continues the series' streak of iffy PC ports
    7. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: How to romance Tifa
    8. The mad artiste of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 paints a release date for the Persona-like RPG
    9. In Don't Get Got you try to escape a school full of freaky little guys and worst of all, your friends
    10. The big fish in swampy adventure South Of Midnight baits us with a release date
    11. Wordle hint and answer #1315 (January 24 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Fri, 24 Jan)
    2. Koei Tecmo surprise-release Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, "definitive" Unreal remaster of the 2008 hack-and-slash
    3. Amplitude announce Endless Legend 2, an oceanic 4X with Manor Lords outfit Hooded Horse as publisher
    4. Doom: The Dark Ages is out May 15th, 2025. Here's everything we learned from Id's press show
    5. Team Ninja announce Ninja Gaiden 4, and they're getting help from Platinum
    6. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: Best Materia
    7. The psychogeography-est of Disco Elysium's spiritual successors is a gonzo journalism RPG named Hopetown
    8. I enjoyed my time with Assassin's Creed Shadows, but I remain unconvinced by its split protagonists
    9. The Gamergator rhetoric of historical accuracy has come back to bite Kingdom Come on the arse
    10. Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders review - cross-country skiing as rewarding for the journey as the destination
    11. Glitchpunk is a flawed mess but kind of fun to roll in
    12. Dwarf Fortress Steam edition's Adventure Mode is out today
    13. Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review: the ultimate DLSS 4 billboard
    14. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: Best weapons and locations for all characters
    15. Lili is a retelling of Macbeth set in a "neo-noir" Iran that re-casts the three witches as hackers
    16. Nvidia are pretty sure the RTX 50 series GPUs won’t melt like the RTX 4090 did
    17. Mashina is a chill stop-motion adventure with friendly robots from the Judero Team
    18. Here's a free 80s-style ninja heist game where you race in splitscreen to loot a daimyo's castle
    19. What kind of diseased mind makes a city builder with actual building physics
    20. Celeste devs cancel lush platformer Earthblade to focus on smaller-scale projects
    21. Wordle hint and answer #1314 (January 23 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Thu, 23 Jan)
    2. My Summer Car review: A sordid sim of piss and pistons that won't hold your disgusting little hand
    3. This impressive Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 4090 Gaming PC just dropped below $3,000
    4. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth review: imperfect, uneven, unfocused, unmissable
    5. Fanatical’s Lunar New Year sale is fantastic, so here’s my top discounted picks
    6. Demon Soul Simulator codes
    7. Doom: The Dark Ages release date tipped to make a royal mess of May
    8. A new mode turns Halo: Infinite into Fall Guys with a "hex-a-gone" minigame
    9. Get froggin' and demagogue'n in manufactured dissent simulator Vox Regis
    10. Almost a third of developers think generative AI is a negative for the games industry, says new survey
    11. Wordle hint and answer #1313 (January 22 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Wed, 22 Jan)
    2. Here's a demo for Eternal Strands, the Zelda-meets-Colossus wizarding sim from a former Dragon Age director
    3. My most anticipated indie of 2025 quietly updated its demo build while I was off eating lunch
    4. Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director thinks GTA 6 might have the "clout" to normalise a $100 price tag
    5. Sledding Game is a chill "hangout game" like Webfishing, but with penguins that ragdoll downhill
    6. Elden Ring level map and area order
    7. Elden Ring Ranni quest walkthrough
    8. Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC boss order
    9. Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree area progression order
    10. Elden Ring best weapons
    11. The best early game weapons in Elden Ring
    12. How to start Shadow Of The Erdtree, the Elden Ring DLC
    13. In creepy real-time strategy game Calyx you battle a huge mass of alien plants
    14. Monster Hunter Wilds PC system requirements may yet fall, as Capcom aim to improve performance
    15. Lysergic FPS Mohrta is a medieval western gothic blend of Morrowind and Doom
    16. Wordle hint and answer #1312 (January 21 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Tue, 21 Jan)
    2. New RPG Cyclopean: The Great Abyss is a Lovecraftian Ultima homage, and I can't get torches to work
    3. Specialist RPG studio's unannounced Warhammer game revealed following layoffs
    4. Mindwave is a punky, relentless and completely hypnotic Warioware
    5. Straftat resurrects a Counter-Strike map you either love or hate, cannibalising FPS history in the best way possible
    6. Marvel Snap has been "banned" in the USA alongside TikTok, but devs insist it'll be back online soon
    7. Identify the scary numbers in macrodata refinement with this free Severance-inspired game
    8. The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
    9. Dino Crisis-esque horror Code Violet won't be coming to PC because the risk of "vulgar" mods isn't worth the "extra money"
    10. Wordle hint and answer #1311 (January 20 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Mon, 20 Jan)
    2. What's on your bookshelf?: comment farming from the abyss edition
    3. The Sunday Papers
    4. Wordle hint and answer #1310 (January 19 2025)
    1. Topdown tactical shooter Intravenous 2 now has Steam Workshop support and a map editor
    2. Sons Of The Forest now lets you build rafts - and don't worry, Kelvin is better at swimming now, too
    3. Genshin Impact maker will pay a $20 million fine to settle FTC charges that allege they misled players about lootbox odds
    4. NYT Connections hint (Sun, 19 Jan)
    5. What are we all playing this weekend?
    6. Wordle hint and answer #1309 (January 18 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Sat, 18 Jan)
    2. Unless this cake is lying to you Silksong will reappear in April
    3. Hyper Light Breaker early access review: a flashy but hollow roguelike with few of Drifter’s charms
    4. Best Path of Exile 2 class: Rankings and tier list
    5. Path of Exile 2 beginner guide: What to do first
    6. Path of Exile 2: PoE 2 crafting guide and overview
    7. 11-bit's latest curiosity Death Howl is a sorrowing open world deckbuilder set in the Nordic Stone Ages
    8. PlayStation put the axe in a live service God Of War game, alongside a project from the Days Gone studio
    9. The Marvel Rivals devs might ban you for using a mouse-and-keyboard adapter
    10. That Oblivion Feeling
    11. Come say goodbye to Ed, our departing reviews editor
    12. Wordle hint and answer #1308 (January 17 2025)
    1. Tales Of Graces f Remastered is out on PC for the first time, with new quality-of-life updates
    2. NYT Connections hint (Fri, 17 Jan)
    3. Tokyo Xtreme Racer returns to the road for the first time in 18 years next week
    4. Blade Chimera’s demo suggests another rad 2D metroidvania from the Touhou Luna Nights devs
    5. Video game publishers are starting to use "anti-DEI" as a marketing meme
    6. Budget charm makes body-burying oddly enjoyable in Plague: London 1665
    7. Killer strategy boardgame Root's new Steam expansion has made me aware that Root exists as a PC game
    8. Minishoot' Adventures review: a deceptively simple blend of 2D Zelda and shoot 'em up action
    9. Path of Exile 2 best Witch build
    10. Path of Exile 2 best Mercenary build
    11. Path of Exile 2 best Ranger build
    12. Path of Exile 2 best Warrior build
    13. Somebody recreated all of GTA 4's Liberty City in GTA 5 aaaaand it's gone
    14. Path of Exile 2 best Sorceress build
    15. Path of Exile 2 best Monk build
    16. The Nintendo Switch 2 looks like a Steam Deck but worse
    17. More than 6,700 people bought the false N95 face mask from Razer - and now they're getting refunds
    18. IGF 2025 nominees show what a wild and vibrant place indie gaming is
    19. Friendly adventure Lil Gator Game is getting a "game-sized" expansion called In The Dark
    20. Lonely Mountain: Snow Riders has a new release date and it's next week
    21. Afterlove EP, the final game from the creator of Coffee Talk, launches next month
    22. Wordle hint and answer today #1307 (January 16 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Thu, 16 Jan)
    2. Forest Reigns is a STALKER-style FPS in which Paris has been conquered by sentient trees
    3. Bioshock's lead designer is making an elven real-time tactics game that looks like a painting and reminds me of Myth
    4. Path of Exile 2: PoE 2 Skill Tree guide
    5. Doors codes
    6. The creator of retro FPS Fortune's Run is going to prison for three years
    7. Marvel Rivals to get two new heroes every three month season, say NetEase, and no, they're not adding role queue
    8. Petro-horror strategy game Anoxia Station makes Frostpunk look positively welcoming
    9. Wordle hint and answer today #1306 (January 15 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Wed, 15 Jan)
    2. Rejoice wandering emperors, for Civilization 7 will be Steam Deck verified at launch
    3. Path Of Exile 2 hacker temporarily hijacks dozens of player inventories via admin account
    4. Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion's rumoured Unreal Engine remake has a new take on stealth, stamina and blocking, say rumours
    5. Trigger Happy's Sam Prebble on perfecting the survival horror of Total Chaos - and playing the genre's classics for the first time
    6. Starfield's abandoned gore and dismemberment system sure would have made it less grey
    7. DLSS 3: how it works, how it performs, and when you should use it
    8. This roguelike made me feel like a genius (I didn't know what was happening but I was pleased with myself)
    9. You’ve probably played 2005’s most experimental horror game
    10. Ex-The Witcher 3 devs' vampire RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker gets a trailer, looks Witcherish
    11. I reckon you autobattler sickos will like Annihilate The Spance, probably you RTS nutters too
    12. Wordle hint and answer #1305 (January 14 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Tue, 14 Jan)
    2. Bungie and PlayStation are working on a MOBA inspired by Nintendo's Smash Bros, claims report
    3. What is Resizable BAR, and should you use it?
    4. Our 24 favourite games of 2024
    5. Flying city-builder Airborne Empire hits early access today with a new military element
    6. The future of MechWarrior looks uncertain amid Piranha Games layoffs and Toadman Interactive closure
    7. Ahh! 72 indie horror games and a Haunted PS1 demo disc just screeched into 2025 honking the horn and apologising for being late
    8. New Square Enix policy will clamp down on harassers, bigots and "unreasonable" compensation requests
    9. Dynasty Warriors: Origins review: a glorious, melodramatic and convincing illusion of tactical warfare
    10. The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
    11. Wordle hint and answer #1304 (January 13 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Mon, 13 Jan)
    2. What's on your bookshelf?: Leverage Head of IP and former Deck 13 narrative director Christian Fonnesbech
    3. The Sunday Papers
    4. Wordle hint and answer #1303 (January 12 2025)
    1. Pure Rock Crawling looks like a knockabout MudRunner without the mud
    2. Minecraft's beta versions now offer adorable hot and cold pig variants
    3. Marvel Rivals' latest update disabled mods, meaning you can no longer play as Skibidi Toilet or Vegeta
    4. NYT Connections hint (Sun, 12 Jan)
    5. What are we all playing this weekend?
    6. Wordle hint and answer #1302 (January 11 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Sat, 11 Jan)
    2. Hit city-builder Manor Lords has been updated with two new maps and a heap of changes
    3. Object-ive Review: Cyberpunk 2077's scanner
    4. Era One is an enveloping space RTS from Homeworld modders that lets you clip together your own Mothership
    5. After five hours, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a beautiful and blundering Boy's Day Out in Historyland
    6. Rally Point: Zephon demonstrates that good 4X faction design is really characterisation
    7. The 30 best Steam Deck games to play in 2025
    8. Please help, Warren Spector keeps emailing me about books
    9. RGG ends Like A Dragon Direct by proudly announcing they won't charge for New Game+ this time, something most games don't do anyway
    10. The Last Of Us Part II will require a PSN account to play on PC, making it unplayable in over 100 countries
    11. Wordle hint and answer #1301 (January 10 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Fri, 10 Jan)
    2. Assassin's Creed Shadows release delayed to March as Ubisoft's board consider a company sale
    3. Beyond Citadel is a fascinating, melancholy FPS, but you'll need a high tolerance for gore and titillation
    4. Goodboy Galaxy is a cleverly condensed low-stress Metroidy time
    5. No, Call Of Duty doesn't need to evolve
    6. Dreams On A Pillow's developer on the challenges of making games from the West Bank
    7. I'm sad to announce I'm considering playing League Of Legends again
    8. Geoguessr-inspired detective game Locator is about puzzles, perspective, and empathy on an alien planet
    9. Boku No Roblox codes
    10. Marvel Rivals patch makes Hulk less hulky, Hawkeye less shooty and the Goddess of Death deader, just in time for Season 1
    11. Future Creative Assembly games may "require blood thematically", which sure sounds like a Total War: Warhammer 40,000 teaser
    12. My Summer Car trundles out of early access with version 1.0 after nine years in the chop shop
    13. You can save up to $400 Off Alienware m16 R2 gaming laptops today
    14. Transformers: Reactivate, the Autobot action game from the Gears Tactics devs, has been cancelled
    15. Wordle hint and answer #1300 (January 9 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Thu, 9 Jan)
    2. MSI’s panoramic PC case severely underestimates how bad at cable tidying I am
    3. Space Engineers 2 launches this month and promises a refined and expanded starcrafting experience
    4. Stimulation Clicker is web 1.0 and web 3.0 having a fight inside one browser window
    5. Our 50 most anticipated PC games of 2025
    6. AMD’s CES 2025 announcements include what will probably be yet another 'world’s fastest' CPU
    7. World's biggest game publisher Tencent threaten to sue US government for listing them as a Chinese military company
    8. Smite 2's Aladdin will trap players in a lamp with an angry genie as the MOBA becomes free-to-play
    9. Former Annapurna staff reportedly found new studio to rescue sold-off Private Division projects, including new Game Freak game
    10. Wordle hint and answer #1299 (January 8 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Wed, 8 Jan)
    2. The US just added the world's biggest games publisher Tencent to their list of Chinese military companies
    3. Behold the Lenovo Legion Go S, the SteamOS handheld PC that isn’t a Steam Deck
    4. Type Soul codes
    5. The $1999 Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 makes the rest of the RTX 50 series look suspiciously sensible
    6. Strategy game The Deadly Path is Dungeon Keeper with a writhing helping of tabletop time management
    7. School shooting lawsuit reveals that Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million, the highest development cost yet reported by a publisher
    8. UFO 50 speedrunners complete its most opaque game in under five minutes
    9. Balatro mod Jimbo's Big Naturals is a lot funnier and safer for work than it sounds
    10. Voice-controlled murder mystery Dead Meat hits Steam this year, but its embrace of generative AI might spoil a great idea
    11. Wordle hint and answer #1298 (January 7 2025)
    1. NYT Connections hint (Tue, 7 Jan)
    2. Intel Arc B580 review: Late arriving, still welcome
    3. Many are the nostalgic 2D Sonic fangames, but Sonic Galactic might be the best
    4. GTA copycat Paradise is an alleged crypto scam, yet continues to gain Steam wishlists
    5. Fallout creator asks why triple-A RPGs focus on violence, doesn't provide very hopeful answer
    6. Tyrant’s Realm is a grimy, spartan soulslike infused with Deathtrap Dungeon nostalgia
    7. Artifact saw a mysterious player count jump over new year, six years after Valve’s trading card game died off
    8. The Maw: what's new in PC games this week?
    9. NYT Connections hints and answers (Monday 6th)
    10. Wordle hint and answer #1297 (January 6 2025)
    1. What's on your bookshelf?: ITU Copenhagen Games Professor Martin Pichlmair
    2. NYT Connections hints and answers (Sunday 5th)
    3. Wordle hint and answer #1296 (January 5 2025)
    1. What are we all playing this weekend?
    2. NYT Connections hints and answers (Saturday 4th)
    3. Wordle hint and answer #1295 (January 4 2025)
    1. Roblox: Rate My Car codes January 2025
    2. Marvel Rivals unbans Steam Deck and Mac players wrongly caught up in cheater purge
    3. SpaceCraft is aiming for the gap between Starfield, Satisfactory and Eve Online
    4. I am patiently waiting for someone to run Doom on one of these absurdly overpriced digital typewriters
    5. At this year's big speedrunning fest, Elden Ring bosses will be defeated with the power of saxophone
    6. Mechabellum Season 2 brings a square-jawed Sergeant specialist who’s definitely seen things no man should see
    7. NYT Connections hints and answers (Friday 3rd)
    8. Wordle hint and answer #1294 (January 3 2025)
    1. Bioshock was "basically a corridor", says Ken Levine - Judas won't be, and characters will have long memories
    2. Coven is a cheerfully monstrous witch's delight
    3. Gar-Type is a free pixelart shooter based on a cosmic horror meme about a lazy, ravenous housecat
    4. Go Fishing codes January 2025
    5. Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is a game about a man with hands
    6. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds creator wants to build a "metaverse" but says it might take 15 years and can't explain what it will look like yet
    7. The 30 best survival games on PC
    8. Ancient Chinese RPG The Bustling World is, in fact, all of the genres, from city builder to life sim
    9. Doom on a CAPTCHA is the most frustrating though admittedly raddest way to prove your humanity to an algorithm
    10. Enjoy some Ryanair Boeing 737 safety manual ekphrasis in Johnson A Plane Man
    11. Delightful dark fantasy fable Ghost Of A Tale, aka Ico meets Redwall, is getting an Unreal Engine sequel
    12. NYT Connections hints and answers (Thursday 2nd)
    13. Wordle hint and answer #1293 (January 2 2025)
    1. The RPS Selection Box: Graham's bonus games of the year 2024
    2. The final RPS Christmas Cracker 2024
    3. NYT Connections hints and answers (Wednesday 1st)
    4. Wordle hint and answer #1292 (January 1 2025)