PC Gamer editor Lauren Morton wrote in February that "desktop pets are so back," and holy cow she was not wrong. One of the biggest games on Steam right now is a little doodad that puts a cute white kitty on your screen who baps an imaginary bongo drum every time you click or type.

Bongo Cat, as it's called, is really just that simple. Add it to your Steam account—it's free—install it, run it, and there he is, taking up a couple square inches of screen space. The Windows taskbar is Bongo Cat's natural home, but you can move him wherever you like. After that, he'll happily bap away as quickly as you type or click, while a counter underneath tracks your tally.

(Image credit: Marcel Zurawka)

And, yeah, that's it. Yet somehow, Bongo Cat hit a peak concurrent player count of more than 101,000 today, and is currently holding the number 12 spot on Steam's most played chart, between Monster Hunter Wilds and Apex Legends.

(Image credit: Marcel Zurawka)

Being free is no doubt part of that, as is the fact that once Bongo Cat is running, there's really no reason to stop him. Bongo Cat also earns hats as he frantically smacks at the inside of my screen, and I have to admit my discovery of that fact led to an exciting shared moment with my coworkers.

(Image credit: Future)

Well, I was excited. Them, maybe not so much.

But I think Lauren really nailed the resurgent appeal of desktop pets in February, when she wrote that they're "quintessentially PC" creations, especially now that ultrawide and multi-monitor setups are so common and we don't have to worry about their potential impact on performance.

"No matter what I'm doing at my desk—shopping, gaming, working, socializing—there's always room in the corner for my frog friend to mow his lawn," she wrote about Rokua's Idle Island, the desktop pet that had half of PC Gamer in thrall earlier this year. "Last week, I watched a little critter take a dump on the article I was writing in Google Docs. This is a joy and a burden reserved for users of personal computers."

It's the same with Bongo Cat. I've now got him shuffled off into the corner so I don't even see him most of the time, but every now and then I glance over and there he sits, paws up and a big uwu smile, ready to start bap-bap-bapping the moment I put fingers to keys.

A little part of me wonders if maybe there's a competitive element to it—I could be the first person at PC Gamer to hit that one million Bongo Beat achievement!—but mostly, it's just cute, right? Cute, easy, and harmless—really, is it any wonder people are after a little bit more of that in their lives?

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Trump's tariffs seem to be putting a thorn in the side of major hardware manufacturers, as both Nintendo and modular laptop maker Framework announced order delays in the span of just one week.

Posted to the Framework X account (via Ars Technica), Framework's tweet states, "Due to the new tariffs that came into effect on April 5th, we’re temporarily pausing US sales on a few base Framework Laptop 13 systems (Ultra 5 125H and Ryzen 5 7640U)."

In response to a follow-up question, Framework tweeted: "We priced our laptops when tariffs on imports from Taiwan were 0%. At a 10% tariff, we would have to sell the lowest-end SKUs at a loss".

Currently, Taiwan is a leader in producing electronics thanks partly to the presence of TSMC, the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturer. A blanket tariff was placed on all countries initially but tariffs on Taiwan have since jumped up to 32%.

Semiconductors are reportedly exempt from these tariffs but products that use semiconductors aren't, meaning electronics from Taiwan will still be hit. Taiwan has offered no reciprocal tariffs, in the hopes of developing talks with President Trump. This leaves companies relying on Taiwan manufacturing in a difficult position of uncertainty.

Due to the new tariffs that came into effect on April 5th, we’re temporarily pausing US sales on a few base Framework Laptop 13 systems (Ultra 5 125H and Ryzen 5 7640U). For now, these models will be removed from our US site. We will continue to provide updates as we have them.April 7, 2025

This is why Framework has announced it is only temporarily pausing US sales, as everything is up in the air right now. The hope remains that removed models may one day go back up on sale.

The more expensive 13-inch Framework laptops have so far been unaffected by this announcement and remain at the same price. This means customers in the US can still buy the Intel Ultra 7 155H model for $1,109 and the Ultra 7 165H for $1,509. Ryzen AI chip preorders are still available too, including the AI 5 340 model for $899, AI 7 350 for $1,229 or AI HX 370 for $1,659.

The Intel model that is no longer available to buy sold for $799 at 9% off on March 31 and the Ryzen 5 7640U model sold for $749 at 10% off on the same day. Now, as of the time of writing, the cheapest way to get an Intel prebuilt model is by paying just under $400 more for the Ultra 7 155H model. You can, however, still get the Ryzen 5 7640U with a 2K display for $899, which is $150 more.

pic.twitter.com/fhe8gNkZM4April 8, 2025

The transparency here is notable, as Framework claims "Other consumer goods makers have performed the same calculations and taken the same actions, though most have not been open about it."

Many manufacturers shipping to the US are likely in the middle of reassessing costs for their products as tariff talks continue. Framework is unlikely to be the last to make a public statement around it. Framework's only follow-up since announcing the suspension of some sales is a meme complaining about tariffs giving them headaches.

Same, Framework. Same.

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As the negative Steam reviews continue to pile up, Drug Dealer Simulator publisher Movie Games SA has addressed the controversy surrounding its investigation into the indie hit Schedule I with a simple, straightforward message on the DDS 2 Steam page: "There is no lawsuit."

It's been a rough couple days for Movie Games SA: The company confirmed yesterday that it is conducting an investigation of Schedule I over "potential infringement" of its Drug Dealer Simulator IP, "including elements of the game's plot, mechanics, as well as [the] UI." It also said that no legal action against Schedule I had been taken, which was confirmed by Schedule 1 creator Tyler of TVGS, and that it was undertaking the investigation as part of its "legal obligations."

It was a bit of nuance that didn't really land with gamers, who immediately slammed Drug Dealer Simulator and DDS 2 with hundreds of negative reviews—in the case of the original, enough to drag it down from a "very positive" overall rating to "mostly positive." Many of those negative reviews complained that Movie Games SA was suing TVGS, even though that's not currently happening.

Which brings us to today's update. It's largely a repeat of the information shared by Movie Games SA yesterday, but with an emphasis on one particular point:

(Image credit: Movie Games SA)

"There is no lawsuit," the update says, boldface and all, both in the post's title and its accompanying image. "It is not our intention to prevent TVGS from selling or developing their game.

"There is an investigation into the nature of similarities between the games since a preliminary legal analysis indicated there might have been an infringement. The analysis and investigation were necessary in the light of repeating opinions that the games are very similar. By not investigating it, Movie Games, being a publicly traded company, could face severe consequences for negligence."

The update also notes that the information about the investigation was only shared via Poland's ESPI, a stock market communications system "where we are obligated to publish such information for full transparency," and that it was picked up from there by media outlets, and "in some cases wrongly reported as a lawsuit."

There's no specific request to end the review bombing campaign on Steam, but the message is clearly damage control, with an implied "please stop" very clear throughout.

But it doesn't appear to be having the intended effect: There are a few messages here and there in the replies to the update acknowledging that the needs of publicly traded companies make Movie Games' explanation at least plausible, but by and large the responses do not reflect a widespread urge to forgive and forget.

Between Drug Dealer Simulator and DDS 2, there's currently about 23 pages of this. (Image credit: Steam)

I don't know international copyright law (or the details of this specific case) well enough to judge the actually necessity of the investigation, and the timing of the investigation does seem a bit, well, questionable: There are dozens of drug dealer sim games on Steam, but only one of them is parked near the top of Steam's most-played chart, ahead of Path of Exile 2, Marvel Rivals, and even Bongo Cat.

In that light, it's not hard to see why some people might imagine that Movie Games SA was digging for a piece of the action and got caught, and is now trying to clean it up with claims about regulatory responsibility. At the same time, there's no question that it is as Movie Games says: What happens in the future is yet to be determined, but for now, there is no lawsuit. Until the company confirms that there will never be a lawsuit, though, I suspect it's not going to matter.

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Anyone who has opened a pack of trading cards will know the thrill and excitement that goes along with it. Now imagine every character you've pulled is a middle-aged man from your town. If you're sat there thinking 'that sounds odd, why would I want that,' you clearly haven't heard of the card game which is currently taking a community in Japan by storm.

Kawara, a town in the Fukuoka Prefecture, has created an "Ojisan" or middle-aged man trading card game in an attempt to connect the younger generation with the older. This literally means packs of trading cards featuring the middle-aged men who live in the town are being collected by the local kids, and while it sounds strange, it's one of the most wholesome things I've ever heard about and now I'm desperate to start collecting too.

The creator of the game, Eri Miyahara, is the secretary general of the Saidosho Community Council. In an interview with Fuji News Network, she explained that "Relationships between children in the community were weak. There are so many amazing people here. I thought it was a shame that no one knew about them. Since the card game went viral, so many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures."

Miayahara also explained that the card game started with the sole intention of being collectible rather than there being any sort of competition. But before long, kids started to compare the stats found on the cards with one another and began to notice that certain cards were stronger than others. As a result, cards with new rules were introduced to allow "battling", but rather than your card being used to defeat your opponent, you have to outplay them using your Ojisan's skills and abilities.

Every card features hit points (HP) and magic points (MP) which are used to "fight" with one another. Each skill and ability featured on a card directly links to the real-life profession of each man too. For example, the collection features a former fire brigade chief, a model-kit fanatic who "can assemble anything", and the host of a soba noodle workshop.

However, the most popular card amongst the children is All-Rounder, which features Daimitsu Fujii, a 68-year-old man who worked as a correctional officer at a medical prison. The card has the highest HP and MP, which is what has made it so sought after amongst the children collecting the game. In the same Fuji News Network broadcast, Fujii himself says the card has resulted in kids around the town asking for his autograph, or referring to him as "the card guy.".

This isn't the only positive coming from the card game either. Miayahara went on to say "More kids are taking part in volunteer events, and the men are motivated by the attention. People don't say hello if they don't know each other, but once kids learn about their skills, they become 'heroes you can meet.' I hope this builds a community where children want to continue living."

The handmade cards are currently only available at the Saidosho Community Center and are so popular amongst the children that they keep selling out. For ¥100 (around $0.70), you can get a pack of three cards, or for ¥500 (about $3.50) you can get a pack of six which may include a shiny middle-aged man. The intention to unite generations is clearly working, and the impact of this game is even spreading further afield in Japan. In the Aomori Prefecture, a card game called Aomori no Sakana: Fisherman Cards has rolled out featuring local fishermen dressed in Kappa costumes. I long for the day my local community gets a card game of its own, and when it does I'll be first in line to collect them all.

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There are a few really neat references to Minecraft pop culture in A Minecraft Movie, including a tribute to Technoblade and a couple of DanTDM shoutouts. But there also seems to be quite a few cameos that were cut, including a scene featuring Valkyrae and several inventions from Mumbo Jumbo.

"Yeah, there were a ton of fun sequences we wanted to do," director Jared Hess says in an interview with TechRadar. "[Popular Minecraft YouTuber] Mumbo Jumbo, who's a redstone genius, was working on a great scene that we just couldn't do.

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"We had a sequence that involved a giant Piglin robot, which was a Trojan horse-type thing that worked via redstone. I storyboarded it, we had full animatics of it, and it was a really hilarious scene. But, we just weren't able to do it."

Mumbo Jumbo is a Minecraft YouTuber who specialises in creating redstone builds. Recently, he managed to make mechanical cogs and gears in vanilla Minecraft (no mods, just pure redstone) as well as a massive redstone fan.

These builds are all incredibly impressive. I love playing around with redstone, and have even gone to Mumbo Jumbo for inspiration for builds multiple times, but I could never come up with anything he makes on my own, my brain just isn't hardwired like that.

So it makes complete sense that when Hess wanted an expert to create some extraordinary redstone booby traps, he would turn to Mumbo Jumbo. "It would've been super fun to have that Mumbo Jumbo-designed sequence," Hess says. "But ultimately it didn't work out. He designed a bunch of crazy booby traps for us as well, but we couldn't make those work in the confines of our movie, too."

But even if Mumbo Jumbo's sequence didn't end up making it into the film, Hess and others working on A Minecraft Movie still tried to ensure that all the builds that were present worked just the way they should. "Everything we designed for the film, we wanted to make sure that you could actually go and make in the game," Hess continues. "So, even Steve's Lava Chicken Shack and all of those things, we'd be like 'Gosh, are we sure we can do this? Does it work? Okay, let's go to the game and build it right now. Right, it checks out. It's bulletproof."

So I guess that means my next job is to make a working Lava Chicken Shack in my Minecraft world. It's only small, so it shouldn't be too hard, plus it looks like it uses a pretty basic redstone pattern. And at the end of it all, I'll get some lava chicken, what's not to love?

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YouTube is conducting a "platform-wide review" of videos and channels on its platform to ensure age restrictions are being properly applied—and, for the record, says Balatro gameplay videos should not be rated 18+ unless they actually violate its gambling policy or other community guidelines.

The problem came up over the weekend when Balatro creator LocalThunk took to social media to say that Balatro videos "are being rated 18+ on YouTube now for gambling."

"Good thing we are protecting children from knowing what a 4 of a kind is and letting them watch CS case opening videos instead," LocalThunk wrote. And, hey, fair point: Videos of CS2 case openings, which have well-documented connections to actual gambling, are hardly in short supply on YouTube.

As silly as it is, it's also a genuine headache for YouTubers: Having an age restriction applied to a video limits who can see it (and thus who it can be recommended to via YouTube's algorithm) and can also impact monetization, as some advertisers won't allow their ads to run on age-restricted videos.

Ah, but it was all a mistake. "TY for flagging!" the TeamYouTube account posted on X in response to LocalThunk's message. "Videos featuring Balatro gameplay should not be age-restricted. We're reviewing the age-restrictions on these videos and conducting a platform-wide review. Thanks for your patience as we fix!"

[

(Image credit: TeamYouTube (Twitter))](https://x.com/TeamYouTube/status/1909446185598996790)

A YouTube spokesperson confirmed the response was legitimate in a statement sent to PC Gamer: "Videos featuring Balatro gameplay should not be age-restricted. We're fixing the issue and conducting a platform-wide review."

YouyTube suggested that Balatro fell victim to the recent changes to YouTube's policies on gambling-related content and how those policies are enforced, saying it welcomes feedback on its enforcement policies as it continues to fine-tune how they're applied. It also encouraged other content creators who are hit with an inappropriate age rating to file an appeal.

Those of you who've been following along will know that this isn't the first age-rating-gone-wrong rodeo for Balatro, a game that makes some superficial use of poker mechanics but is free from any in-game spending or external purchases.

In December 2024, PEGI—the Pan-European Gaming Information rating system—rated Balatro 18+, saying it teaches "knowledge and skill [that] could be transferred to a real-life game of poker." That rating was eventually walked back too, although it took a couple months to get that one cleared up.

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It happened as it always does: A new Monster Hunter released, veteran hunters complained it was too easy, and those of us who've watched this cycle repeat for the last 14 years settled in to wait for Capcom to inevitably send along a fresh parade of powerhouse monsters to balance the scales.

Now that Title Update 1 is here, I'm pleased to report that it only took Wilds a month to start humbling me.

(Image credit: Capcom)

Before last week's Wilds patch, I could count the times I'd been KO'd by a monster on one hand. I was still enjoying myself. For me, the satisfaction of Monster Hunter isn't in having slain a monster, but the fantasy of fighting it—how the weapon mechanics and arcane systems all feed into a natural mimicry where you're studying monsters just as your hunter has, until you're capable of fighting on equal footing with any two-story behemoth of horns, talons, and occasional lightning blasts.

Even Gore Magala had become the proverbial coughing baby, and I the hydrogen bomb.

The problem is, once you're acclimatized to Monster Hunter's higher difficulty tiers, which are added to each game in post-release expansions, you're not going to be on equal footing in the launch quests. You're going to be death incarnate. The visual, kinetic splendor of a well-executed hunt is still there—swatting aside a lunging monster with an offset attack will never disappoint—but by the time I'd upgraded my Wilds weapons and kitted out my endgame armor set, the fights were simply ending too soon.

Even worse, I was starting to develop bad habits, ripsawing into monster wounds with a reckless abandon, confident enough in my ability to trigger the next stagger window that I was willing to ignore inconsequential monster attacks. For all its frenzy, even Gore Magala had become the proverbial coughing baby, and I the hydrogen bomb.

(Image credit: Capcom)

Which is why I was so thrilled on Friday when I was casually swatted off my raptor house and punted back to camp with a nuclear fireball.

Zoh Shia, the final boss of Wilds' Low Rank story, is now a repeatable High Rank hunt, and Capcom wasn't stingy when it gave the frankendragon the necessary combat upgrades. It's faster, meaner. It's gained an arena-wide instakill attack: an apocalyptic torrent of fire that's guaranteed to cart you if you can't quickly find a way to spare yourself.

But that's only an aperitif for the fight's later stages. By the end of the hunt, the rapidly-mutating monster becomes a stress test of dodge timing and situational awareness, filling its cave with a barrage of atomic projectiles and lightning strikes, each capable of charging and detonating the crystals it leaves behind with every claw slam.

(Image credit: Capcom)

And it's not alone: Mizutsune, returning in the title update after its last appearance in Monster Hunter: Rise, is arguably a greater threat. Between all its bubble projectiles and pressurized water beams, it's capable of deploying a near-instant somersaulting tail slam that, in its Tempered variant, can one-shot an unsuspecting hunter. By the end of patch day, it'd cemented its reputation as Wilds' worst terror.

Monster Hunter has a habit of turning its players into Gokus.

Considering how many players found themselves fed into the Title Update 1 wood chipper, you might expect some amount of resentment. But many hunters have welcomed the ass-kicking, and I count myself among them.

My gaming habits are about as laidback as they come—my thousand hours and single raid completion in Destiny 2 are proof of that. But even as a pathological casual, I'm thrilled when a monster hits me hard enough that I have to use a fraction of my full power.

(Image credit: Capcom)

Monster Hunter has a habit of turning its players into Gokus. When I was abruptly smoked by Zoh Shia, it was a signal that I was being knocked back down to a more even playing field. It was Capcom saying I'd graduated from sleepwalking through sparring matches; it was time to put me back into a proper bout.

I finished that first HR Zoh Shia fight with one life left, and immediately dove back into another; for materials to make its weapons and armor, sure, but moreso to watch how cool it would look once I was weaving through the hellfire and arc lightning to land a clean sequence of hits on its alabaster-plated dome. I'm now seeking out Mizutsune whenever it spawns for the simple satisfaction of the five-or-so minutes I'll spend dodging its tail slams.

Luckily for me, there are even more threats coming my way. Arch-Tempered Rey Dau is arriving later this month, promising even higher intensity hunts against what might be my favorite addition that Wilds made to the Monster Hunter bestiary. And sometime this summer, I'll get to make an overdue acquaintance with Lagiacrus once the fan-favorite monster makes its long-awaited return.

If Title Update 1 is any indication, Capcom's lining up a healthy amount of carting in my future. Can't wait.

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As major US tariffs are starting to disrupt manufacturers, Samsung managed to get a small boon as customers bought its memory and phones for fear of tariffs bringing prices up.

According to a report by Reuters, Samsung made an estimated operating profit of 6.6 trillion won ($4.47 billion) for the January to March period this year, which is 1.5 trillion ($1 billion) more than the 5.1 trillion ($3.4 billion) estimated by the London Stock Exchange Group. This figure is slightly smaller than the same period last year but higher than what Samsung made in the previous quarter.

Hyundai Motor Securities head of research, Greg Roh, stated that, despite memory prices going down, "strong demand from customers looking to secure inventory ahead of potential U.S. tariffs helped boost Samsung’s memory chip shipments".

This could signal a difference in manufacturing approach for some of Samsung's clients due to an uncertain future of stock and pricing. Many companies work under the Just-in-time manufacturing strategy, where inventory is only acquired as needed, to reduce waste and avoid major stockpiles. This new surge in demand suggests that manufacturers buying off Samsung will be effectively hoarding memory to work in future devices.

Samsung seems to have benefitted heavily from the notion of tariffs, given they were sold in the January to March period but all is up in the air as countries react to the constant stream of information around tariffs right now.

(Image credit: Samsung)

According to Reuters, analysts reckon "shipments are likely to decline in the second quarter."

US President Donald Trump put a blanket 10% tariff on all countries on April 5th but has since raised it up to 32% for Vietnam, China and Taiwan. Trump has further threatened to raise the tariffs on China up to 50%, in response to China's retaliatory tariffs.

Samsung centres its manufacturing out of a handful of countries, including Vietnam, South Korea, and India, all of which will see the effects of tariffs. Tariffs tend to hit consumers as distributors tack on that extra fee to sold goods. Raising the price of goods without raising the profit margin is a bad result for a company as higher prices result in less demand, without the benefit of better relative profits to counteract it. This explains why some companies are buying ahead of time.

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Also in response to Trump's tariffs, Nintendo Switch 2 preorders were recently held back in America. Nintendo is likely reassessing how much it charges for consoles, as it will have to honour any preorders made at the price it initially sells them for.

The same is true of Framework, which just announced the cheaper versions of its 13-inch modular laptop would no longer be available for purchase as it would have to sell them at a loss to keep its price point. Phone sales have also risen for Samsung in the January to March period with preemptive sales for the Samsung Galaxy S25 going up ahead of tariffs.

Laptops and phones may just be the tip of a veritable iceberg of tech goods price bumps, so we'll just have to wait and see what else gets hit by the tariffs.

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In an industry already tanking a bunch of hits, full of layoffs and studio closures, the Japanese games industry seemed to be an exception in 2025—as noted by an analyst last month, five out of eight major publishers and studios hit all-time share price highs at the start of this year, with their only real issue being a lack of staff.

Well, the tariffs imposed by the United States have begun to put a stop to all that, it seems. Last week, the Trump administration imposed "reciprocal" tariffs across the globe. Japan is set to endure a 24% tariff that'll go into effect April 9—which has naturally created a huge dent in the stock market.

As pointed out by Japanese industry analyst Dr. Serkan Toto of KantanGames on X, many of those same eight companies have endured huge stock market losses.

"It's Monday 10 am in Japan, where Japanese game stocks currently react to these insultingly dumb tariffs like so," Toto writes. Over the course of the day, VGC247 proceeded to keep track of said stocks until the market closed. Here were the final numbers for April 7:

• Nintendo: -7.85%
• Sony: -10.4%
• Capcom: -6.61%
• Bandai Namco: -7.37%
• Square Enix: -5.62%
• Sega: -7.29%
• Koei Tecmo: -5.41%

It should be noted, again, that the hike to 24% isn't yet in effect—but baseline tariffs around the world of 10% happened after midnight on April 5. You might be wondering why those tariffs are impacting people who only publish and develop videogames like Square Enix—physical copies of games are increasingly irrelevant, after all—but it should be noted that any tariff that applies to physical goods is going to have knock-on impacts to digital services as well.

Companies like Nintendo and Sony are a little more intuitive, because they also make consoles—like the Switch 2, which has delayed pre-orders to America over the tariffs—but anything played on those consoles is bound to grow more expensive, as well. And it's not just consoles: PC parts'll feel the heat, too, even with exemptions for semiconductors in place.

As mentioned in the article I just linked, a worldwide economy also manufactures its parts… well, worldwide. PC Gamer's own Jacob Ridley explains: "When a semiconductor is manufactured and then packaged into a separate system, it could be subject to a different tariff without exemption, i.e. within an add-in card, computer or server rack."

VG247 is also right to point out that the US spends a huge amount on videogames—$46 billion in revenue in 2024, as compared to Japan, which spent around $16 billion. This disparity also can't help matters—the takeaway being that one of gaming's biggest spenders is about to be spending a whole lot less on gaming.

Ultimately, it's a nightmare web of cause and effect, where the actual impact of these tariffs—so 'carefully' and 'surgically' applied that the Trump administration has, uh, imposed a tariff on an uninhabited island of penguins and seals—is logistically impossible to avoid. At the very least, the Japanese games industry isn't alone in this—even board games are seeing a final end to the tabletop boom as a result. Unfortunately, we're all in for some very interesting times.

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Despite being someone who had never touched RuneScape outside of a slightly dodgy interaction in the game as a child, I somehow found myself right in the middle of RuneFest back in March. It is slightly strange infiltrating a convention for a community you've absolutely no stake in, but if Jagex's master plan was to get me to dabble in its MMO, it worked: I came home from the convention, and downloaded Old School RuneScape on my phone and PC.

This was a move that greatly pleased both my partner and a friend of mine who outed himself as a RuneScape enjoyer. One of the first things both of them said to me was that, if I wanted to farm my combat levels, the Stronghold of Security was the hip and happening place to be.

(Image credit: Jagex)

I'd been dancing around the idea of jumping into the hole slap-bang in the middle of the Barbarian Village, but 'Stronghold of Security' conjures up terrifying imagery of fiery fortresses littered with traps, barricades, and deadly enemies waiting for me to step one foot out of line so they can ambush me.

As soon as my partner told me there were rainbow booties waiting in the depths—in the ominous Sepulchre of Death—though, I immediately requested to be chaperoned down for my rewards. And hey, to be fair my assumptions of it being a dangerous bunker were mostly true, at least for my pitifully levelled adventurer.

But something I had completely failed to prepare for was the fact that half of the challenge would come from being diligently questioned about my cybersecurity prowess, and suddenly I felt eight-years-old in the mid-2000s all over again.

Password protected

Because sure, while the Stronghold of Security is a heavily gated vault, I don't need feats of strength to brute force my way past skeleton guards or looming sentinels. Turns out, I just need a little bit of internet know-how.

Who can I give my password to? Is it okay to buy a RuneScape account? Can I lend my account to a friend who can do a tough quest for me? These are the thought-provoking riddles I'm required to answer to traverse through the stronghold's gated maze, and going through it made me weirdly giddy about the whole thing.

(Image credit: Jagex)

It's funny in a way, because these are still the sort of questions being asked today. Anyone in a corporate job has probably had to sit through an hour or two of phishing awareness that isn't too far off what I'm going through in the Stronghold of Security. Maybe HR departments need to start chucking a bunch of mobs to kill between training modules, as a little treat.

Even still, it feels like a perfect time capsule of 2000s internet culture. A time where the horrors of the world wide web weren't entirely apparent, where tons of kids (like me) were given unrestricted access to spaces we shouldn't have even known about. A time where passwords didn't even need a number in them! And we all most certainly used our real-life name or literally the word "password" at least once.

Online accounts weren't exactly as closely tied to our entire lives as they are now, but they were still ripe for hackers and ne'er-do-wells to come along, pretend to be your friend, trick you into handing your account over, and then rinsing it of all valuable assets. And hell, people like me who grew up alongside these games were, you know, literal children. We had absolutely zero sense of cybersecurity. At least I didn't anyway. It's a wonder I never got hacked, quite frankly.

(Image credit: Jagex)

But that's why I think Stronghold of Security is actually pretty rad. It feels like such a unique way to push awareness around keeping yourself and your accounts safe out in the scary online world, and tying it to an easily-accessible spot with great combat farming opportunities and shiny rewards means it's nigh-unavoidable for anyone dedicating more than a few hours to RuneScape.

Ultimately, for all its whimsy, its core intention seemed to work. In 2020, former Jagex developer Mod Maz highlighted creating the Stronghold of Security as one of her defining moments on Twitter, adding that "hijacking and security tickets dropped by 80%" That's an impressive number, one which makes this bespoke idea even cooler in my eyes.

I'm almost sad that the gated questions are a one-and-done situation, because they're so endearing and, crucially, still relevant. I wouldn't be mad at having to retake my silly videogame security quiz every few years. Hell, I'd be even less mad if other games found whimsical ways to work in account safety like this. It's a win-win situation for everyone: Developers have fewer hacking-related headaches to deal with, and players get to learn that they definitely shouldn't give their password to 46-year-old Barry masquerading as a 12-year-old.

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Balatro's creator has no enemies—in fact, he has no negative feelings at all. He has spent so much time plugged into his poker roguelite (and our game of the year for 2024) that he has purged himself of all tempestuous emotions and emerged a new, centred being of pure cards.

As bragged about (rightfully so) on Bluesky, LocalThunk writes: "Beat every deck on every difficulty! I still want to 100% the game, I'm having a really great time and I think I know my game a lot better now. I also think all this time playing has killed any negative emotions I had toward it after all the stress from launch."

In fairness, it has to be pretty intense to release a silly little roguelite you cooked up because you couldn't play Rocket League, only to get showered with awards and praise from all the people you've hypnotized with a pixelated jester, a pristine gameplay loop, and a solid groove. The guy just wants to make videogames.

He did, however, reveal his strat with an invitation to roast him. Though after consulting with some of PC Gamer's more knee-deep Balatro experts, I've been told that his techniques are "mostly normal". There's a lot of two and three-pair runs in there. Perhaps the joke is that LocalThunk, the guy who designed a parlor with a dozen different flavours of ice cream, has gone for plain ol' reliable vanilla bean every time.

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: LocalThunk on Bluesky)Image 2 of 2

(Image credit: LocalThunk on Bluesky)

I am however seeing a lot of tribalism in the comments about how two pair is based, or something. PC Gamer's own Phil Savage has also informed me that "Hanging Chad is the goat. I will hear no Hanging Chad slander." He then proceeded to pull up his own stats, to prove that "Hanging Chad is a perfectly fine card to have in your top used."

(Image credit: LocalThunk)

Considering he's my boss, I've got no choice but to acquiesce. Hanging Chad is my new god, and I worship at its altar. In all seriousness—it's an impressive feat by LocalThunk, and to hear he's using the bread and butter strategies like the rest of us are is kinda heartwarming. Good ol' two pair, nothing beats that.

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If the queues outside my local cinema are any indication, A Minecraft Movie is set to become some sort of 21st-century Gone With The Wind and potentially displace several major world faiths by number of followers. But bad news for anyone attending the flick just to catch a glimpse of popular streamer Rachell 'Valkyrae' Hofstetter: she's mysteriously not in it anymore and is keeping schtum about why. But it might not be hard to put two and two together here.

Before A Minecraft Movie launched, Valkyrae was all set to join a bunch of other streamers in getting a short cameo in the film, but in a recent stream she revealed that her appearance had been cut.

"I'm not gonna touch too much on it," said the streamer, but she confirmed that she would have gotten roughly equal screentime that other people making cameos got: "which is like 30 seconds" or so.

Alas, it was not to be, and Valkyrae didn't say why. She did seem to suggest there was a behind-the-scenes fracas though: "I would much rather not have that 30 seconds than be sued. So it’s all good, okay?" After all, she continued "It really was a wonderful 10 days in New Zealand for that 30 seconds… I feel like things could have been so much worse, you know what I mean? That’s all I’m going to say about it."

And that's all you get, besides a brief follow-up from Valkyrae that "It’s not even Minecraft. It’s not even their fault," that her cameo was cut. Still, it's worth remembering that last September, Valkyrae made headlines when she called out Minecraft Movie star Jason Momoa for behaviour she claims she saw on set.

Momoa plays Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison in the film. (Image credit: Warner Bros)

"I just saw him, like, mistreat some of the crew and it was pretty disappointing," the streamer said last year. "He was just angry, like really mad and, like, yelling. So I was like, man, this is not a good work environment. Like, I would not be happy working under these conditions… so yeah, I would probably have to say that was probably the worst, like, celebrity thing I've seen."

Could that have poisoned the relationship between Valkyrae and Warner Bros, leading to her cameo getting axed from the final film? It seems likely to me, especially with the streamer seemingly relieved to have dodged some kind of legal bullet. But that's speculation on my part: Valkyrae's not saying and I doubt Warner Bros will be enthusiastic to dredge the matter back up either. Nevertheless, I've reached out to Warner for comment on this story, and will update if I hear back.

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The appearance of Minecraft on the big screen has unbalanced the humors of the world's youths, whose ecstatic outbursts at screenings are showering audiences with popcorn and cries of "chicken jockey!" At least two incidents have even ended with police intervention.

A chicken jockey is a baby zombie riding a chicken, a rare occurrence in Minecraft. Thanks to TikTok and whatever it is that compels humans to engage in weird collective behavior, the part of A Minecraft Movie where Jack Black sees a chicken jockey and shouts "chicken jockey!" has become a thing, and over the weekend kids in some theaters went wild for the line, shouting, recording with their phones, and launching popcorn into the airspace above the other theater goers.

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At the end of the video above, police are seen escorting a group of kids out of the theater. It's unclear what they did that the others didn't.

As actor Roger Clark—voice of Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2—observed, we're not yet a week into A Minecraft Movie's theater run and it's already developed a Rocky Horror Picture Show-style audience participation tradition.

"High school kids and adolescents alike screaming random Jack Black lines because of YouTube shorts and TikToks," the actor said on X. "Never seen anything like that before."

I saw Minecraft in the theater with my kids last night and am still processing what I saw. The only cinematic experience I can compare the audience participation to is Rocky Horror, except it’s with teenagers and their phones and the movie is not even a weekend old.April 6, 2025

Today's teenagers were raised on Minecraft, and it looks like they've decided to remind us older generations that while we might've pioneered a life of ironic-yet-obsessive pop culture appreciation, they were born into it. No surprise that A Minecraft Movie had the biggest opening weekend for a videogame adaptation ever.

The video above shows one of the more dramatic Minecraft Movie eruptions, but they were all over social media feeds this past weekend, and it isn't just the chicken jockey scene getting a reaction.

In another video with police involvement, embedded below, an officer says that a group "body slammed" a theater employee. (Theater employees are understandably not loving the situation.)

@hubert_762

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Here are a few more videos of the weekend's Minecraft frenzy:

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the minecraft movie is truly one of the worst movies i’ve ever seen but the universal reaction to “chicken jockey” im seeing made it all worth it. pic.twitter.com/0mxgliSYEpApril 5, 2025

@ickysnotbubble_

♬ QKThr - Aphex Twin

I need to know, are there people who actually enjoy watching a movie like this? pic.twitter.com/v9NSSe0sqdApril 5, 2025

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Before the disaster that was Stadia, Google demoed its game streaming tech via a free version of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey you could play in your browser. My fiancée has fond memories of whiling away slow nights at work playing this massive triple-A game on a crummy library OptiPlex.

Whatever came after with Stadia and game streaming in general, that demo felt like black magic. If a genuinely impressive tech demo can lead to a notorious industry flop, what about a distinctly unimpressive one?

What are the ethics of expending massive amounts of capital, energy, and man hours on not even a worse version of a game from 30 years ago, but a vague impression of it? These are the questions I pondered after having gotten motion sickness playing a game for the second time in my life with Microsoft's Copilot AI research demo of Quake 2.

"This bite-sized demo pulls you into an interactive space inspired by Quake II, where AI crafts immersive visuals and responsive action on the fly," reads Microsoft's Q&A page about the demo. "It’s a groundbreaking glimpse at a brand new way of interacting with games, turning cutting-edge research into a quick and compelling playable demo."

This demo is powered by a "World and Human Action Model" (WHAM), a generative AI model "that can dynamically create gameplay visuals and simulate player behavior in real time." Perusing Microsoft's Nature article on the tech, it appears to operate on similar principles to large language models and image generators, using recorded gameplay and inputs for training instead of static text and imagery.

This demo is not running in the original game's id Tech 2 engine. However Microsoft produces this demo, it's some kind of bespoke engine with an output that resembles Quake 2 because the AI model behind it was trained on Quake 2.

I'm reminded of those demakes of Doom for Texas Instruments calculators, but instead of marshalling limited resources to create an inferior impression of a pre-existing game, the Copilot Gaming Experience is the result of Microsoft's (and the entire tech industry's) herculean push for generative AI.

I don't know what the discrete Copilot Gaming project costs, but Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into compute, research, and lobbying for this technology. On Bluesky, developer Sos Sosowski pointed out that Microsoft's Nature paper lists 22 authors, as opposed to the 13 developers behind Quake 2.

Based on the paper, Sosowski also estimated that Microsoft's new model required more than three megawatts of power to begin producing consistent results⁠. That's assuming use of an RTX 5090, which Microsoft likely did not have access to given the timing of the paper's publication, but it's still helpful to get an idea of the scope of this project's power draw. According to battery manufacturer Pkenergy, a single megawatt requires 3,000-4,000 solar panels to produce.

Despite all of that investment, the demo is not good. The Copilot Gaming experience runs like a slideshow in a tiny window at the center of the browser, its jerkiness and muddled, goopy visuals⁠—familiar to anyone who's seen an AI-generated video⁠—gave me a rough case of motion sickness after bare minutes of play. The only other game to ever have set my belly a rumblin', EvilVEvil, did so closer to the hour mark.

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And while chatbots will tell you to eat rocks and drink piss, the Copilot Gaming Experience has its own fun "hallucinations"—the surreal, unnervingly confident errors produced by generative AI models that massive amounts of money, compute power, and uninhibited access to copyrighted material can't seem to address.

Looking at the floor or ceiling at any time in the Copilot Gaming Experience has about an 80% chance of completely transforming the room in front of you, almost like you teleported somewhere else in the level.

Of course, there is no "level," goal, or victory condition: The Copilot Gaming Experience is just constantly generating a new Quake 2-like bit of environment in front of you whenever you turn the corner, with what came before seemingly disappearing as you go.

One such warp moment sent me to the Shadow Realm, a pitch black void out of nowhere which took some finagling to get out of. There are "enemies," but when I killed one it just deformed into some kind of blob. Then I walked past it, turned around, and the hallway had completely changed, taking the blob with it.

Like so much of generative AI or the blockchain boom before it, I can imagine the "Well, it's just a WIP, first step type of thing" defense of what I was subjected to, but I'm just not convinced. Whatever specific compelling use cases may exist for generative AI tools, that's not what we've been aggressively sold and marketed for the past two years and counting, this insistence on cramming it into everything. Google Gemini is now constantly asking if I want its help writing, like some kind of horrible, latter-day Clippy.

Forced mass-adoption of this stuff by consumers is here, now, demanding our approval, attention, and precious time. A public tech demo exists to impress, and the Copilot Gaming Experience does not. Doom on a calculator, but we had to boil a lake or two to get it and are being told it's the future of games. I reject this future. Not only do I find it philosophically and ethically repugnant, it also made my tummy hurt.

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It comes as absolutely no surprise that A Minecraft Movie has done incredibly well at the box office. Even before it hit cinemas, Chris predicted that it would make a trillion dollars, and while he's a little off the money, the film still did spectacularly well.

In its opening weekend, A Minecraft Movie made $301 million worldwide and $157 million domestically, the biggest opening weekend ever for a videogame adaptation. To put this in perspective, The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the former highest-grossing videogame movie, debuting with $146.4 million domestically over a three-day weekend.

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Although The Super Mario Bros. Movie had a smaller budget of $100 million while A Minecraft Movie had $150 million, it doesn't make this achievement any less impressive. This also means that after its debut weekend, there's a decent chance that it is already profitable for Warner Bros. But like I said before, I saw this outcome from a mile away.

My first thought when I watched A Minecraft Movie was how it felt like it had been made in a lab to be marketable. It's utterly vanilla (pardon the pun), the story is drama-free, there are no greater moral issues, and the cast has been swept clean of any controversy, at the expense of one comedy rock duo. It's the perfect controversy-free kids' movie.

It also had a pretty impressive marketing campaign. Everywhere I look, I see photos of the Minecraft McDonald's meals or people talking about which little figure is the best collectable. And trying to win over fans of the game by just talking about how much lapis lazuli Jack Black mined whilst filming the blockbuster repeatedly obviously worked on some level.

(Image credit: Warner Bros)

But A Minecraft Movie has also managed to appeal to more than just kids. Despite clearly being made for those who grew up with TikTok, with Jack Black periodically yelling the names of Minecraft items and Jason Momoa's entire performance being a sequence of six-second bits and jokes.

Talking to the producer and director, it was clear that everyone involved with making A Minecraft Movie was aware of just how difficult it was going to be to appeal to more than one target audience. To that end, director Jared Hess and producer Torfi Ólafssonon decided to try and have as much fun with making the film as possible, hoping that their love of the game would shine through for long-time players as well as for newer fans. "The key to it was to be fun," Ólafssonon said. "To not take ourselves too seriously, but take the game very seriously."

And fair play to them because they clearly hit the nail on the head when it came to the concept, marketing, and execution of A Minecraft Movie, seeing how well it's done in its opening weekend. While I may not have absolutely loved A Minecraft Movie, which is reflected in my review, there's no denying that this is exactly what the masses love: head-empty fun.

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It's easy to go without extra energy in those first few levels of REPO, but you'll need some sort of power source for expensive new weapons as things ramp up. That's where Energy Crystals come in, providing a finite number of charges for your Semibot's growing arsenal.

Keep in mind, these little yellow power-ups are separate from the stamina upgrades Semibots can purchase at the Service Station between levels. Energy Crystals are strictly for recharging and repairing weapons and tools. To get your items back in tip-top shape for knocking about more nasty REPO monsters, here's a quick rundown on how Energy Crystals work in REPO.

(Image credit: Semiwork)

What do Energy Crystals do in REPO?

Energy Crystals serve as your source of fuel, ammo, and repairs for most items in REPO. The crystals can give a second wind to any used-up tools by recharging them in the truck.

There's of course the more obvious functionality in using Energy Crystals to revive lifeless drones or to reload items like the Tranq Gun, but even weapons like the Inflatable Hammer have a finite number of swings. Just remember, they aren't permanent upgrades to the truck's station. They'll eventually wind up sapped of strength, and you'll need more to keep recharging.

REPO: Energy Crystals and recharging items

(Image credit: Semiwork)

How do you use Energy Crystals?

You'll automatically use Energy Crystals when charging items inside the truck's recharging station—that's the little device on the right marked with a lightning symbol. Simply drop the drained item into the glowing yellow box, and the truck's portable workbench handles it from there. Good as new.

Unlike other consumables, you won't pick these items up and consume them during loadout, either. They'll slot right into the station and slowly tick down the more weapons or tools you repair. There's a limited number of uses per crystal, too, so be careful about which items take priority for charging.

So what's the deal with REPO's Recharge Drone?

REPO's Recharge Drone provides a portable source of energy for when you're far away from the truck, so there's no need to backtrack and recharge weapons. It can also recharge other drones, giving you more time with even handier assistants like the Indestructible Drone or Feather Drone.

It uses Energy Crystals to recharge back at the truck, so the long and short of it is, yes—you'll need more crystals to keep the drone ready to recharge other items while out and exploring. I'm stubborn, and would rather walk all the way back to the truck to fix my stuff, but that's also cost more me runs than I'd like to admit, so maybe learn from my mistakes.

REPO: How to buy more Energy Crystals

(Image credit: Semiwork)

How to get Energy Crystals

You can buy Energy Crystals between levels when visiting the Service Station. They're typically anywhere from 7k-15k per crystal and are restocked as you return.

Unlike other consumables, there's nothing permanent about the crystals. Once you've used them up, that's it, and you'll need to make it to the next Service Station pitstop to replenish your stockpile. Even if you have no plans to buy items for recharging early on, I'd recommend buying a few of these to hold onto ASAP. They only get more expensive as time goes on, and you'll be hurting for them in the later levels.

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When Sony's masterpiece The Last of Us Part 1 appeared on the humble PC two years ago, I hoped it would become a watershed moment in the history of console ports. Well, it was, but for all the wrong reasons—buggy and unstable, it hogged your CPU and GPU like nothing else, and most controversially of all, it tried to eat up way more VRAM than your graphics card has. It's fair to say that TLOU1's watershed moment cemented the whole '8 GB of VRAM isn't enough' debate.

Most of those issues were eventually resolved via a series of patches, but like so many big-budget, mega-graphics games, if you fire it up at 4K on Ultra settings, the game will happily let you use more VRAM than you actually have. The TLOU1 screenshot below is from a test rig using an RTX 3060 Ti, with 8 GB of memory, showing the built-in performance HUD; I've confirmed that RAM usage figure with other tools and the game is indeed trying to use around 10 GB of VRAM.

(Image credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment)

So when I began testing The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered a couple of weeks ago, the first thing I monitored after progressing through enough of the game was the amount of graphics memory it was trying to allocate and actually use. To do this, I used Microsoft's PIX on Windows, a tool for developers that lets them analyse in huge detail exactly what's going on underneath their game's hood, in terms of threads, resources, and performance.

To my surprise, I discovered two things: (1) TLOU2 doesn't over-eat VRAM like Part 1 did and (2) the game almost always uses 80% to 90% of the GPU's memory, irrespective of what resolution and graphics settings are being used. You might find that a little hard to believe but here's some evidence for you:

The screenshots below of PIX show the amount of GPU local and non-local memory being used in TLOU2, in a CyberPowerPC Ryzen 7 9800X3D rig, using an RTX 5080 and RTX 3060 Ti graphics card. The former has 16 GB of VRAM, whereas the latter has 8 GB of VRAM. In both cases, I ran the game at 4K using maximum quality settings (i.e. the Very High preset, along with 16x anisotropic filtering and the highest field of view), along with DLAA and frame generation enabled (DLSS for the 5080, FSR for the 3060 Ti).

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: Microsoft)Image 2 of 2

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Note that in both cases, the amount of local memory being used doesn't exceed the actual amount of RAM on each card—even though they're both running with the same graphics settings applied. Of course, that's how any game should handle memory but after the TLOU1 debacle, it was good to see it all resolved for Part 2.

If you look carefully at the PIX screenshots, you'll notice that the RTX 3060 Ti uses more non-local memory than the RTX 5080, specifically 4.25 GB versus 1.59 GB. Non-local, in this instance, refers to the system memory and what's using that chunk of RAM for the GPU is the game's asset streaming system. Since the 3060 Ti only has 8 GB of VRAM, the streaming buffer needs to be larger than that for the RTX 5080.

During the gameplay loop I carried out to collate this information, the RTX 5080 averaged 9.77 GB of local memory usage and 1.59 GB of non-local usage, for a total of 11.36 GB. In the case of the RTX 3060 Ti, the figures were 6.81 and 4.25 GB respectively, with that totalling 11.06 GB.

Why aren't they exactly the same? Well, the 3060 Ti was using FSR frame generation, whereas the 5080 was running DLSS frame gen, so the few hundred MB of memory usage between the two cards can be partially explained by this. The other possible reason for the difference is that the gameplay loops weren't identical, so for the recording, the two setups weren't pooling exactly the same assets.

TLOU2 at 4K Very High, with DLAA and frame gen enabled (Image credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Not that it really matters, as the point I'm making is that TLOU2 is an example of a game that's correctly handling VRAM by not trying to load up the GPU's memory with more assets than it can possibly handle. It's what all big AAA mega-graphics games should be doing and the obvious question to ask here, is why aren't they?

Well, another aspect of TLOU2 I monitored might explain why: the scale of the CPU workload. One of the test rigs I used in my performance analysis of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered was an old Core i7 9700K with a Radeon RX 5700 XT. Intel's old Coffee Lake Refresh CPU is an eight-core, eight-thread design, and no matter the settings I used, TLOU2 had the CPU core utilization pinned at 100% across all cores, all the time.

Even the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in the CyberPowerPC test rig was heavily loaded up, with its sixteen logical cores (i.e. eight physical cores handling two threads) being utilized heavily—not to the same extent as the 9700K but far more than any game I've tested of late.

TLOU2 generates a lot of threads to manage various tasks in parallel, such as issuing graphics commands and compiling shaders, but there are at least eight threads that are dedicated to DirectStorage tasks. At this point, I hasten to add that all modern games generate way more threads than you ever normally notice, so there's nothing especially noteworthy about the number that TLOU2 is using for DirectStorage.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

The above PIX screenshot shows these particular threads across 80 milliseconds worth of rendering (basically a handful of frames) and while many of the threads are idle in this period, two DirectStorage queues and the DirectStorage submit threads are relatively busy pulling up assets (or possibly 'sending them back' as so to speak).

Given that it's not possible to disable the use of DirectStorage and the background shader compilation in TLOU2, it's hard to tell just how much these workloads contribute to the heavy demand of the CPU's time but I suspect that none of it is trivial.

...while it's not a flawless technique, it does a pretty damn good job of getting around any VRAM limitations

However, I recognise the biggest programming challenge is just making all of this work smoothly and correctly synchronise with the primary threads, and that's possibly why most big game developers leave it to the end user to worry about VRAM usage rather than creating an asset management system like TLOU2's.

The Last of Us Part 1, like so many other games, includes a VRAM usage indicator in the graphics menu for its games and this is relatively easy to implement, although making it 100% accurate is harder than you might think.

At the risk of this coming across as a flamebait, let us consider for a moment whether TLOU's asset management system is a definite answer to the '8 GB of VRAM isn't enough' argument. In some ways, 8 GB is enough memory because I didn't run into it being a limit in TLOU2 (and I've tested a lot of different areas, settings, and PC configurations to confirm this).

It's not 8 GB of VRAM that holds back the 3060 Ti in TLOU2 (Image credit: Nvidia)

Just as in The Last of Us Part 2, any game doing the same thing will also need to stream more assets across the PCIe bus on an 8 GB graphics card compared to a 12 or 16 GB one, but if that's handled properly, it shouldn't affect performance to any noticeable degree. The relatively low performance of the RTX 3060 Ti at 4K Very High has nothing to do with the amount of RAM but instead the number of shaders, TMUs, ROPs, and memory bandwidth.

If you've read this far, you may be heading towards the Comments section to fling various YouTube links my way showing TLOU2 stuttering or running into other performance problems on graphics cards with 8 or less GB of VRAM. I'm certainly not going to say that those analysis pieces are all wrong and I'm the only one who's right.

(Image credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Anyone who's been in PC gaming long enough will know that PCs vary so much—in terms of hardware and software configurations and environments—that one can always end up having very different experiences.

[Content truncated due to length...]

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My favourite part of A Minecraft Movie, without a shadow of a doubt, has to be Jennifer Coolidge's romance with Nitwit, a villager who escapes the Overworld and gets hit by her car. It's a love story for the ages, and an onscreen romance that Coolidge has herself admitted had some fire to it.

"Sometimes you show up to a movie and you read the script and they haven't cast your lover yet and then you show up and you're like 'I don't know if I really want to make out with him'," Jennifer Coolidge says in an interview with BBC Radio 1. "But when I saw what Nitwit looked like and what Bret McKenzie looked like and the combination of the two. I mean, it was just like fire."

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While Steve and the rest of the crew are trying to save the Overworld, Jennifer Coolidge, who plays vice principal Marlene, stumbles across Nitwit, a Minecraft villager who strayed through the Overworld portal and straight into a road, and then into the bonnet of Marlene's car.

After trying to convince him not to sue her because "people just love to sue me when I hit them with my Jeep Grand Cherokee," Marlene settles things by offering to take Nitwit out to dinner as a way to say sorry and avoid court. What precedes is a surprisingly wholesome love story as Marlene and Nitwit get to know each other better.

While the chemistry is clearly undeniable, we can't give all the credit to Nitwit—some of it has to go to his on-set performer, Bret McKenzie. Nitwit's head was CGI, and McKenzie wore a block costume while on set. "He was inside a box, I don't know what he was doing in there," Coolidge says.

"It was a lot because Bret is—this is not very nice to say—more attractive than Nitwit," Coolidge tells Digital Spy. "Bret McKenzie's a genius, it's hard to do a performance through a cardboard box and still have you laughing, but he was able to do it," Coolidge told Digital Spy.

There were a few scenes in A Minecraft Movie which genuinely made me laugh, but Coolidge's scenes with Nitwit were the most consistently funny in the whole film. They were scattered in sparingly, but were a real highlight, so much so that I was left wanting more, especially after the outlandish mid-credit scene.

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The Huntress is Path of Exile 2's newest character class, a fearsome Azmeri warrior who hunts monstrous wild creatures armed with a buckler and her trusty spear. She darts in and out of combat, effortlessly parrying attacks while transitioning between melee and ranged combat in a mesmerizing, graceful dance of violence and death. Or, if you're like me, she grabs a crossbow and blasts everything in sight.

One of the beautiful things about Path of Exile 2 is that as much as a weapon type might be associated with a character class, there's nothing stopping you from doing something different. When I was looking for the best way to start a Huntress in 0.2, I was leery of signing myself up for a complicated playstyle like the spear. So I looked through the patch notes, found out crossbows were basically the only thing buffed in what was otherwise a bloodbath, and locked in.

My experience turned out to be one of absolute joy. While the internet exploded with people whining and complaining about how overtuned the monsters were and how bad the nerfs hit them, I sailed through the campaign into maps and continued blasting. Here's how I did it.

Key skills

This build uses the Glacial Bolt crossbow skill combined with Artillery Ballista to control the battlefield, clear packs, and absolutely decimate bosses with large hit boxes. Unfortunately, you can't get Artillery Ballista until level 31, so I recommend starting with Lightning Arrow. You can use crossbows from level one with grenades and other nonsense, but LA uses all the same scalings and requires no respeccing of your passive tree at all.

To start with, roll a Ranger. Get your bow, get the Lightning Arrow skill, get your uncut gem from Renly, and chuck everything in your stash. Then when your Huntress gets to the encampment, you'll be able to get the Lightning Arrow/Lightning Rod combo going, which will carry you through Act 2. Grab a bow with as much physical damage, flat damage, and attack speed as you can and go to work.

Lightning Arrow

Martial Tempo: Supported skills have 25% more attack speedLightning Infusion: Supported attacks gain 25% of damage as extra lightning damage, but deal 50% less cold and fire damage

Lightning Arrow will carry you through until you hit level 31 and can make the swap to crossbow. Martial Tempo helps with early attack speed, and Lightning Infusion is one of the best more damage multipliers you can get with a level one support gem.

Lightning Rod

Scattershot: Supported skill fires two additional projectiles, but deals 20% less damage and has 20% less attack speedConcentrated Effect: Supported skills have 40% more area damage, but 50% less area of effect

Drop Lighting Rod on rares, big packs, and bosses for huge amounts of damage. Once you have a field of rods down, your Lightning Arrow will trigger them to zap everything, shock them for multiplicative damage, and clear things out.

Herald of Thunder

Precision: 30% increased accuracy while a supported skill is active

Don't worry too much about supports for Herald of Thunder. It adds a bit of extra damage to what we're doing, but isn't crucial. If you find an amulet with 10 extra spirit chuck Precision in there.

Crossbow Transition

Once you hit level 31, I recommend making the swap to crossbows. Note that you'll need a level nine uncut gem to make your Artillery Ballista skill, so don't make the swap until you have that in hand. You'll be using Glacial Bolt as your primary skill both for clearing and bossing, which shoots out icy bolts that make walls in a v shape. When these walls take enough damage or are pushed by enemies, they explode for big damage and freeze.

Normally, this would require us to load another ammo type or fire a grenade to break them. Instead, we'll be using Artillery Ballista. This skill fires explosive bolts that rain from the sky, meaning if we drop these down, busting the walls becomes automated. It's a comfy playstyle with big damage, unreal boss kill, and unparalleled battlefield control.

Glacial Bolt

Cold Infusion: Supported attacks gain 25% of damage as extra cold damage, but deal 50% less lightning and fire damageScattershot: Supported skill fires two additional projectiles, but deals 20% less damage and has 20% less attack speedBullseye: Supported skills have 50% more accuracy rating

We'll support Glacial Bolt with Cold Infusion, Scattershot, and Bullseye. Cold Infusion gives us a nice damage increase, while Scattershot fires more bolts which means more walls. Bullseye is an incredible third gem once you start finding lesser jeweler's orbs, because the Amazon Critical Strike node gives us crit chance equal to 25% of our excess chance to hit—which essentially turns accuracy into damage.

Artillery Ballista

Overabundance: Supported skills have +1 to limit and 50% less skill durationMartial Tempo: Supported skills have 20% more attack speedPrimal Armament: Supported skills deal 25% more weapon elemental damage

Artillery Ballista is normally a solo player, but with Overabundance we can have two down at a time. Even with the skill duration reduction you still get them for eight seconds, which is plenty. Martial Tempo allows them to attack more quickly and Primal Armament is a nice damage multiplier. Early on, this skill deals substantial damage so be sure to keep it leveled up alongside Glacial Bolt.

Herald of Ice

Precision: 30% increased accuracy rating while a supported skill is activeMagnified Effect: Supported skills have 30% more area of effectClarity: 30% increased mana regeneration while a supported skill is active

Herald of Ice is where we use our spirit. It adds a nice additional source of damage and shatters corpses, which is handy. We use it to socket the extremely important Precision gem, because again, accuracy is critical hit chance. Mag effect makes our shatter explosions larger and if you have an extra jeweler's lying around you can throw Clarity in there to lessen your reliance on your mana potion.

Thunderous Leap

Throw a spear in your offhand weapon setup, preferably with attack speed on it. We'll use Thunderous Leap to reposition around walls of ice that haven't exploded or jump past mobs of monsters. A quality of life improvement that makes the most annoying part of the build much more manageable, and also lets us jump over walls and gaps!

Passive tree

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Our passive tree will focus on a few important things: attack speed, attack damage, movement speed, and accuracy. This build requires almost no attention to defense, which is one of its great strengths. Monsters are so busy attacking ice walls or ballistae, pathing around channels of frost, or frozen in place, that they hardly have a chance to attack us in the first place. Here's where to spend your points:

Start by pathing through the attack damage nodes to Primal Instinct and Eagle Eye. This gives us a nice base of damage and accuracy to make sure our shots are hitting and hitting hard.From there, head to the Precision Salvo cluster and Primal Sundering. More attack speed, more accuracy, more damage. You're gonna notice a trend here.Take Escape Velocity while pathing toward Maiming Strike. This build requires a ton of stats between crossbow skills requiring both strength and dex, and Herald of Ice requiring intelligence. Maiming Strike is nice because it maims enemies, which reduces their evasion rating, further juicing our Critical Strike node. Remember, it's not just excess accuracy, it's excess chance to hit. This is important!After Maiming Strike, you can head over to Acceleration or start working toward the Monk starting area and Blinding Strike. Blind also lowers enemy evasion rating which makes it super effective, but I found myself unable to pass up the movement speed.After Blinding Strike, path down through Essence of the Mountain and take Step Like Mist. The stats help a bunch, and I'm a sucker for movement speed.

This setup should make for an excellent start. Moving forward with your tree, keep your eyes peeled for critical damage bonus, skill speed, attack damage, and movement speed. Palsteron has a more advanced version of this build and you can check out his video here for further evolutions of it.

Ascendancy

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

We'll be selecting the Amazon as our ascendancy, and with it one of the most incredibly powerful nodes I've ever seen, Critical Strike. It turns 25% of our excess chance to hit into critical strike chance, and it's hard to even express how good this is.

It's important to note, as I've talked about above, that it's not just accuracy that scales this, but our chance to hit in general. That means that things that lower enemy evasion, like maim and blind, also help. In addition, the way the chance to hit tables work in Path of Exile 2 means that the closer we are, the higher chance to hit we have. If you're up in something's grill, you're almost guaranteed a crit.

This is one of the most satisfying things about the build, as we can pepper enemies with Glacial Bolts and Artillery Ballista, wear them down, chill them, and if we see a good window or freeze them, we can dart in and absolutely unload from point blank range. So good.

For your second set of points take Predatory Instinct, which gives you a nice juicy more damage multiplier against rare and unique monsters.

Gear and stat priorities

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Getting more performance out of your graphics card these days is a lot harder than it used to be, as they now overclock themselves and have hard power limits, AMD and Nvidia's latest GPUs are proving to be a big exception to this. Getting around all of that isn't always easy but in the case of one Radeon RX 9070 model, a simple BIOS flash is all you need to turn it into a potential RX 9070 XT beater.

AMD's recently launched Radeon RX 9000-series comprises just two models at the moment: the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT. The latter is the 'full die' version, sporting 64 CUs (Compute Units), a boost clock of 2.97 GHz, a power limit of 304 W, and 16 GB of VRAM. The RX 9070 is very similar: just four fewer CUs and the same amount of VRAM, but with a much lower 220 W power limit and a boost clock of 2.52 GHz.

Since there's only a $50 difference in the cards' MSRPs, PC gamers have been snapping up the XT version en masse, leaving them in short supply and forcing their prices sky-high. But one curious modder has discovered that it's possible to flash the Asus Prime RX 9070 OC BIOS with the one from the Prime RX 9070 XT OC (via 3D Center), giving the weaker model the same clock and power limits as its bigger brother.

The BIOS in question can be found in TechPowerUp's BIOS database, along with the software tool required to do the job. Now, I hasten to add that any RX 9070 reading this who might be tempted to try the same thing should note that this BIOS will almost certainly not work on any other model and even if you do happen to have an Asus Prime RX 9070, you need to be very careful about doing the whole procedure.

As to why you should even think about it in the first place, the Asus RX 9070 OC has an outright maximum clock speed of 2.61 GHz, whereas the XT version can go all the way up to 3.03 GHz—that's a 16% increase, substantially more than what you'd normally get with a manufacturer's 'overclocked' model. And to help the card sustain that higher speed, the power limit is also increased to 304 W (38% more).

The Asus Prime RX 9070 XT has one more power connector than the 9070 but that's not a problem. (Image credit: Future)

The modder reckons that his flashed RX 9070 is faster than a stock 9070 XT, but I'd want to see a lot more tests done to be certain of that because while the latter has a marginally slower boost clock, it does sport 512 more shader units.

Even though the Asus Prime RX 9070 only has two 8-pin power connectors to the XT variant's three, it's enough to handle the 304 W peak power consumption, so at least that's something we don't need to be concerned about. However, the flashed RX 9070 is apparently a little unstable in idle desktop mode due to the higher clock speeds and that is something to think twice about.

This is all very much classic AMD, and down to its rule-of-two release cadence where it generally offers two cards based on the same GPU at launch. The whole exercise reminds me very much of AMD's Vega 56 days. Everyone wanted the full-fat Vega 64 card, but just as with the 9070 XT, it was in high demand, resulting in low stock and high prices. However, the Vega 56 could be flashed with a Vega 64 BIOS, increasing its clock and power limits to the point where you could get a 64 card for 56 money.

It was the same around the very first RDNA cards, too. The RX 5700 XT was the top card, but the RX 5700 used the same chip and could be flashed with the top-spec card's BIOS to unlock its power and frequency limits—again, giving you essentially high-end GPU performance from one tier down.

Your next upgrade

(Image credit: Future)

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.

Ultimately, though, you have to ask yourself whether it's worth doing for the sake of 16% more performance. That might sound like a lot but a game running at, say, 50 fps would only go up to 58 fps and that's only if the game's performance was 100% limited by the GPU's clock speed. If you don't touch the VRAM clocks, for example, then you're unlikely to see as big an increase.

That all said, we've undervolted AMD's second-string RDNA 4 GPUs ourselves and with only minimal effort—and importantly very little impact on either thermals or power draw—have got an RX 9070 running, on average, 12 to 14% faster at 1440p and 4K. That puts it only around 2% behind the RX 9070 XT without the need to flash or tweak the BIOS and risk bricking your precious GPU hardware.

I used to spend hours experimenting with graphics cards, messing about with voltage mods and the like, but I don't want to deal with the increased heat output (and thus, increased fan noise) any more and while tweaking the voltage curves can counter some of this, it's all a bit too much work in my eyes for not enough gains—especially when I can just change a graphics option or apply upscaling to get an even bigger boost.

Still, I reckon that this news will be lapped up by many an RX 9070 owner and somebody, somewhere, will figure out how to make it all work properly, with no instability issues. After all, all of this is essentially a free, albeit risky, performance boost and in today's GPU market, free is a magical word.

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I don't know how anyone playing with a controller puts up with the inventory management that makes up so much of an action RPG like Diablo 4. If I couldn't click and drag my gems and helmets around I don't know how I'd cope. Much respect for my console siblings who somehow navigate not only inventories but also skill trees with controllers designed for playing Bushido Blade in 1997.

Their anguish will end during Diablo 4's July–September season, as revealed by the newly published roadmap for 2025. This roadmap details the year's four seasonal updates, as well as the permanent additions that will be released alongside each one.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

There won't be an expansion in 2025, however. As Diablo's general manager Rod Fergusson mentioned at DICE Las Vegas, the follow-up to Vessel of Hatred won't be out until next year. While initial plans were for Diablo 4 to have four seasons and one expansion worth of updates each year, expansion two has been delayed until 2026.

Coming up on the roadmap is the April–July season, called Belial's Return. As revealed a few weeks ago in a developer campfire chat, the Lord of Lies will be the pinnacle boss in Season 8. The boss ladder system will be revamped, and Urivar and the Harbinger of Hatred will be added to it. Boss-rush events called "apparition incursions" will crop up in the open world, and players will be able to earn 24 boss powers by defeating certain targets. There's also an "earnable feline pet" and a "new IP collab" on the cards.

The July–September season is called Sins of the Horadrim, which will add Horadric powers, another pet to earn, and "dungeon escalation". On the permanent addition side, new nightmare dungeon activities are coming alongside the aforementioned keyboard-and-mouse support for consoles.

And then in September–December we can expect the season of Infernal Chaos. Yes, there will be a new variety of powers to earn as part of that seasonal journey, and this time they're called chaos powers. Which is a bit vague. Expect an update to the wave-based infernal hordes mode, another pet, and another "new IP collab". We know Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida is a Blizzard stan who has said he'd love to do a Diablo crossover, but it could be Overwatch skins for all we know.

Finally, the 2026 section of the roadmap hints at a new ranking system as well as a leaderboard and, yep, that new expansion.

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James Bentley, hardware writer

(Image credit: Future)

This week: I've been watching the Nintendo Switch 2 news with excitement and tariff news with dread. Overall, a pretty standard week.

One of the most monumental upgrades I ever made to my gaming rig was swapping to an OLED monitor. A higher and clearer contrast, but also more vibrant colours and deeper blacks. It just makes colour pop in a way that is hard to fully describe unless you're seeing it light up in front of you. I've grown so accustomed to my 1440p OLED screen that my secondary monitor feels no longer enough even to display basic information and browse the internet. I have a hankering for a second OLED monitor and my bank account lives in fear of the day a good enough deal pops its head up.

Effectively, each pixel in an OLED monitor is its own light, which means no backlighting is needed for you to see the panel. This makes for inky blacks and a better contrast ratio.

There are a few good reasons to choose LED over OLED in setups, of course. LED monitors tend to be less power-hungry than their cooler-looking brother, and they're less expensive too. The fear of OLED burn-in is ever present (though one year-long test showed good results) and, some may opt to go for a cheaper 4K monitor than a more expensive 1440p OLED. With so many good options out there, that opportunity cost is ever-present, especially when you consider you need to get some time with an OLED monitor to see why they are so good.

While I understand why one may not go for an OLED screen in their home setup, I'm a tad disappointed we don't have more OLED screens in the handheld gaming market. Oddly, looking through the best handheld gaming PCs, only a few of them have an OLED screen: OneXPlayer's Strix Point equipped OneXFly F1 Pro and Valve's own Steam Deck OLED.

(Image credit: Future)

Despite almost no real tangible hardware changes, the swap from Nintendo Switch to Nintendo Switch OLED felt revelatory to me when I first upgraded back in 2021. I felt a unique joy in being able to see the same games I played just weeks prior but in a new light (or should I say lack of backlight?).

I had the same experience finally testing a Steam Deck OLED just a few months ago. It's a great indie machine thanks to that screen, its price point, and improved battery life over the standard model. It loses out against competition as you can get comparably more powerful devices for a similar amount of cash, but that screen is so lovely that there's an argument to be made for it anyway.

However, the recent announcement of the Nintendo Switch 2 has me thinking Nintendo has taken a step back with its LCD screen. In a recent roundtable interview attended by IGN, a Nintendo representative says: "Now there's a lot of advancements that have been made in LCD technology during development". They then go onto say that Nintendo put a lot of consideration in and decided on an LCD screen.

Part of the announcement for the Nintendo Switch 2 shows it supports HDR, something that the Nintendo Switch OLED did not. Perhaps, with the extra cost of OLED screens and the abundance of LED panels, Nintendo decided that LEDs with sufficient HDR improvements were good enough.

OLED monitors tend to lack the brightness of non-OLED choices and need to have smaller bright patches to really crank it up to eye-searing levels. HDR, or High Dynamic Range, allows monitors to show a wider range of colours. OLED have darker blacks and non-OLED have brighter screens so they have different considerations from a design standpoint.

(Image credit: Future)

We haven't yet seen the Nintendo Switch 2 screen in action so it could be rather impressive but that's one of the first things I plan on testing when I get my hands on one. However, HDR can be a tad hit or miss on screens and OLED tech is getting better by the day too. New OLED TVs from LG and Samsung are reported to get up to 400 nits of full brightness, which should only be a boon to HDR.

The swap to OLED panels has been one of the more monumental upgrades I've made in the last few years, and though I think a snappy IPS panel with HDR and VRR can certainly make for a good trade-off, I can't help but lament that none of my other screens are as great as my main monitor.

I may pick up a Nintendo Switch 2 anyway to play what From Software is cooking up, and I'm certainly tempted by the performance of the MSI Claw 8 AI+, but I can't help but wonder if it will feel like less of an upgrade and more of a sidestep.

However, I'm not looking to see OLED screens absolutely everywhere, I'm just looking to see them more than we have so far. OLED screens feel like a great companion for a gaming handheld. They look incredible, and the lack of a backlight means they take up less space than an LED panel. This can leave more room in the device itself for better thermals or a higher-performing battery. The Steam Deck OLED even manages to offer a better battery than its predecessor.

Price certainly plays a factor in why OLEDs are less common and at least some of the $1,300+ price of the OneXFly F1 Pro is due to its lush screen. It is worth noting that the Strix Point chip in that the F1 Pro will be the largest contributor to that cost though.

(Image credit: Future)

The OLED version of the Steam Deck is $150 more than the LCD Steam Deck but the former device has double the storage, making their price point more similar than you may think. For the enthusiast level nearly $1,000 handhelds, I certainly understand why companies haven't tacked on an OLED to not bump up to above $1,000. But the Legion Go S with its Z2 Go processor feels like the perfect chance for that screen.

The Switch OLED, in turn, is only $50 more than the Nintendo Switch. A handful of devices hold a secret weapon in their screens and I can't wait for more devices to catch up.

I can always hope Microsoft's upcoming handheld has an OLED screen. If everything is an Xbox, at least give it a great panel.

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Sabrina Carpenter has debuted in Fortnite as part of Season 8 in Fortnite Festival, so if you've been looking for a new skin to shake up your wardrobe, then now's your chance at getting something glamorous. Sabrina's skins and styles will be available for the entire season, which will come to a close on June 1, 2025, giving you plenty of time to unlock her or at least save up your V-Bucks to do so.

There are two different Sabrina Carpenter skins up for grabs this season, with four different outfits on the cards, and luckily they're pretty straightforward to unlock given you've got the virtual cash. You won't need to complete any quests or missions to do so, and they'll be available all season long. Here's what you need to do to get this pop princess in your game.

How to unlock Sabrina Carpenter in Fortnite through the Music Pass

The fastest way to unlock Sabrina Carpenter is by buying the season's Music Pass for 1,400 V-Bucks. Or, if you're already subscribed to Fortnite Crew, you'll automatically unlock this season's pass. Unlocking Sabrina this way will give you the yellow babydoll dress style. But, you'll also get to unlock a yellow bodysuit variant further down the pass if you're a dedicated player, as well as a multitude of other awards that justify the price.

More Sabrina Carpenter rewards are available through the Music Pass, which might make it seem more appealing and worthwhile than just buying the skin outright. Throughout the season, you'll be able to unlock "Juno" and "Nonsense" jam tracks alongside two guitars, an emote, and a banner icon all themed around Sabrina Carpenter.

How to unlock Sabrina Carpenter in Fortnite through the in-game shop

(Image credit: Epic Games)

If you'd rather not put in the extra work or commit to a Music Pass, you can also buy a Sabrina Carpenter skin from the item shop. This will be available throughout the season, which concludes on June 1, 2025. If you buy the Tour-Ready skin on its own, it'll cost you 1,500 V-Bucks. But, you can also buy "A Sweet Little Bundle" bundle for 2,800 V-Bucks, which seems a little more worthwhile. The bundle includes the following items:

Tour-Ready Sabrina Carpenter styleSC heart purse back blingPlease Please Please emoteTaste emoteCute cutout contrailSabrina's MicPlease Please Please jam track

The Tour-Ready style also comes in two colors, pastel pink and baby blue, which you'll unlock automatically once you've purchased either the bundle or the skin on its own. A Lego version of the skin is also automatically unlocked once you've made a purchase.

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Until the other day, what I knew about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was that:

• It's a French RPG with some Persona-inspired flair
• It's got turn-based combat with real-time mechanics
• It's coming out in April

Based on the screenshots of forlorn young adults, I also expected a melodramatic story about a quest to save the world, but I realized recently that I'd never actually read the game's premise.

It's more bonkers than I expected. Here's what the Steam page says about Expedition 33's story:

"Once a year, the Paintress wakes and paints upon her monolith. Paints her cursed number. And everyone of that age turns to smoke and fades away. Year by year, that number ticks down and more of us are erased. Tomorrow she'll wake and paint '33.' And tomorrow we depart on our final mission—Destroy the Paintress, so she can never paint death again."

Even when the RPG's wordy title became the subject of some good-natured internet heckling recently, it hadn't occurred to me that "Expedition 33" might refer to something specific. Now I know: There's an immortal painter who only paints numbers that make everyone that age die.

It's not the most absurd premise in the history of absurd RPG premises—plenty of fantasy worlds have irrational cosmic entities——but I've become fixated on the timing of this expedition: "Tomorrow she'll wake and paint '33.' And tomorrow we depart on our final mission."

Our brave adventurers waited for the very day The Paintress is going to kill every 33-year-old to embark on this quest to stop her? I know not everyone is a two-hours-early-to-the-airport person, but the stakes are pretty high here. Couldn't have left a day early?

That S-tier procrastination can perhaps be explained if the crew dispatched to save the 33-year-olds failed, and nobody knew until the age group was vaporized. The official description does imply that this is an expedition of 32-year-olds:

" With only one year left to live , join Gustave, Maelle, and their fellow Expeditioners as they embark upon a desperate quest to break the Paintress' cycle of death," it reads, emphasis mine. "Follow the trail of previous expeditions and discover their fate."

The exception is Maelle, voiced by Jennifer English of Shadowheart fame, who is 16.

In her reveal trailer, it's mentioned that Maelle has nine years to live, which means that this death magic doesn't just kill people of a certain age the moment it's painted, but works continuously throughout the year. (In eight years, Maelle will be 24 and the Paintress will paint 25, but that miss apparently doesn't grant her immunity and she'll die when she turns 25.)

So, it seems we probably do have an expedition of people in their early 30s who are either going to die when they turn 33, or next year when the Paintress counts down again. Or if they're killed in the course of their quest, in which case I guess it'll be Expedition 32's turn.

I still wonder why such an apparently small group has been sent to deal with this species-ending threat. In Fraser's recent hands-on preview (he didn't like the combat, but said that the game has potential), he noted that much of Expedition 33 is killed at the start, which helps explain why we're so few. But "expedition" still implies a modest detachment to me, and this seems like the sort of concern you might muster an army to do something about.

Did they try that earlier, when the world's 90-year-olds were being wiped out, and fail? Or did this world's leaders brush off the culling of the elderly and let their hearts grow cold? Is the whole thing a parable about collective action in the face of a pandemic? A metaphor for the unwillingness or inability of humanity and its richest nations to curb climate change through cooperation and sacrifice? Just RPG nonsense?

Time will tell! Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is out April 24 on PC and consoles, which also happens to be my birthday. I might take that as a concerning omen, but the truth is that I would've been vaporized years ago in Clair Obscur's world.

Oh, and "clair obscur" is the French term for the Italian "chiaroscuro," which refers to the modeling of three-dimensional forms seen in Renaissance paintings, as well as the high-contrast style of artists like Rembrandt and Caravaggio. What that means in the context of an artsier Thanos, I can't say.

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