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Captain Blood's trailer looks like it should be buffering in 240p on Mediafire with a Ventrilo window next to it. Captain Blood itself looks like it should live in a generic Blockbuster case on a DVD so abused it makes my Xbox 360 disc drive howl in agony. Among the detritus of Steam's New & Noteworthy page, this game is the equivalent of a perfectly preserved T. Rex mandible—if dinosaurs were contemporary to Halo 3, anyway.

Despite being released this week, Captain Blood looks every bit the relic of 2000s development hell it is. This isn't lost on anyone behind the game, which began development in 2003 and almost released (but didn't) on the seventh generation of consoles. Unlike most retro revivals, this isn't a detailed touch-up or reimagining of a storied classic; it's a canned game taken to the finish line exactly as it might have released in 2011 or so.

Oleg Klapovskiy, co-founder of the game's publisher, SNEG, says the release is an act of preservation above all else. It got some tweaks and bug fixes to ensure its playability, but in all other respects, it's a relic.

Blood will out

You know that kind of Xbox 360-era experience... It's exactly a weekend long, it gives you a certain level of joy and you move on

Publisher Artem Shchuiko

"We're having fun looking at how people assess it," Klapovskiy said. "Our goal was to bring it as close to the original as possible. We are not game designers; it's not our game, we were not working on it from the very beginning. There was a team of creative minds that had the vision for it."

"If you assess the game by modern standards, I think I would put it at a very low score. I would say, three? Four? But again, that's not a game from 2025 … Obviously, it has all its charm, all its flaws, and all the vibes are from that era. If you assess it as a game from that time, I would assess it as a 7.5/10 game. It's all a matter of taste, how [you] approach it."

That's not to say the game has no niche. Its most obvious inspiration is the original God of War, which released a year before Captain Blood restarted development (for the second time) in 2006. But these days, it's probably closer to the horde of games God of War inspired: clunky cult hits like Darksiders and Dante's Inferno.

Artem Shchuiko, who co-founded SNEG with Klapovskiy after the two worked together at GOG for several years and shared a passion for games preservation, said Blood's faults should evoke a certain fondness, warts and all.

"You know that kind of Xbox 360-, PS3-era experience. You get the overhyped game, you know based on the trailers that it's not gonna be amazing, but then you play it and it's exactly a weekend long … it gives you a certain level of joy and you move on. That's kind of the nostalgic part of this game," Shchuiko said. "The goal was not to make a 10/10. The goal was to get it shipped and release it."

Shchuiko added that while some recent games like Evil West have been compared favorably to the janky action games of those days, "it's one thing to pretend to be from the 360 era, to be inspired … it's another thing to be exactly a game of that era."

(Image credit: Sneg, Seawolf Studio, General Arcade)

While plenty of games go for a nostalgia hit, Shchuiko said most publishers would balk at the idea of bringing back a bygone era's low points as well as its high points.

"This game would cost a crazy amount of money today to be made, and it will not find its market, most likely. It's the kind of game which cannot be made today. That makes it even more interesting. You're getting something which you're kind of not supposed to be getting based on the modern realities of the market."

Setting sail

The easy part of resurrecting a canned game like Captain Blood turned out to be obtaining the rights. While it wasn't trivial, Klapovskiy said it was "one of the easiest" experiences SNEG has had so far securing rights to release an old game. A nearly complete build had already leaked online, so getting the old codebase together wasn't a struggle either. The entire original development team from Akella, now going by Seawolf Studio, was on board too—though the choice not to modernize or add features to the game, to fulfill the vision they couldn't 15 years ago, saw some dissent.

"Even today I got a message from one of the guys from the original team … he's like, 'Hey, what if we give you money to make a sequel?' I'm like, 'Guys, you don't even know if there's any interest in this game but you're proposing money?' Like what the hell is this," Klapovskiy said. "There were quite a few people coming to us and [offering investment money]. We were like, 'Guys, we're not about investors' money, it's a passion project. It's fun and passion.'"

That's not to say the team wasn't excited to finally see the game release. Many of those developers had jobs at other game studios now, some working on huge games like Roblox, and worked on Captain Blood as they were available.

Shchuiko said that any passion for games preservation is felt twofold by developers with a game under their belt which never saw the light of day. Once it became evident they had the opportunity to provide some closure, he said it felt like a responsibility.

(Image credit: Sneg, Seawolf Studio, General Arcade)

"One thing you can universally notice is some deeply hidden burden of something that never got shipped or released; I think they carried it with them to a certain extent," he said. "I think it was very quickly and evidently an important thing to ship it and we got nothing but support in this regard."

The SNEG co-founders said they aren't certain what the future will look like for Seawolf or Captain Blood, but Shchuiko pointed out that a lot of treasured games from the past started as messy tributes and rough proofs of concept; and though Captain Blood might not not blow players away, the heart and labor put into it is why it's worth preserving.

"Think about the franchises which we all know now, they're all making gazillions of dollars. When they were making the first game, it was at first a clunky iteration. Think about Assassin's Creed, you name it, and [Captain Blood] has this feeling. They clearly were inspired by God of War, they clearly were playing modern stuff back then and they just wanted to make their own … but they didn't have enough experience, so they got this. All good stories usually start with developers having this first clunky, but promising, game."

(Image credit: Sneg, Seawolf Studio, General Arcade)

Klapovskiy added that if it's a good time, that's all that matters.

"I think that if you watch the trailers, you can see that we're trying to make fun even out of ourselves here. We'll be super proud if people who play it, stream it, write about it, have a smile while playing it … that's what our industry's about. It's about entertaining."

You can find Captain Blood on Steam, where it currently enjoying a small but "very positive" reception.

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It was pretty obvious, right from the first dev diary published on February 24, 2024 that Paradox Tinto was working on Europa Universalis 5. The studio had been set up to maintain 2013's Europa Universalis 4, and was headed by EU director Johan Andersson. Everything it showed us from Project Caesar screamed Europa Universalis 5.

And Andersson had been extremely eager to get started. "I wanted to make a new game," he told me earlier this year, in Tinto's unassuming suburban office, located in Sitges, Spain. "I'd learned so much from Imperator, and the post-launch there and figuring out what I want to do when I'm doing the next game. I'd been trying out ideas in my head and then realised, OK, I can make an EU sequel. We need to make an EU sequel."

Imperator: Rome sold well at launch and received a lot of glowing reviews, including from me. In my Imperator: Rome review, I gave it 92%, calling it "Huge, inventive and the reason I'm sleep deprived." It was a game of diminishing returns, though, and Paradox's perfectionist fanbase wasn't as impressed.

Player reviews, then, were less favourable, and while Andersson and his team have managed to turn things around (recent Steam reviews are "Very Positive"), it's probably never going to garner the kind of love that Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis receives. But Imperator was important stepping stone—one that led Paradox Tinto to EU5.

There are two major things Andersson learned from designing and refining Imperator, which he's now applying to EU5. "Less board game things, is one thing," he said. This is why the concept of 'mana' has been largely tossed out.

You've got resources, of course, and lots of numbers to reflect things like your nation's stability, but it's mostly moved away from the more abstract concepts of power. People—pops, estates, soldiers, advisors, cabinet ministers—take centre stage. Dynamic, sometimes confounding, this human element serves as both the expression of your power and the thing you're trying to control.

I can make an EU sequel. We need to make an EU sequel.

Johan Andersson, Paradox Tinto studio manager

But there's another thing that's proved to be even more critical, and why we've spent the last year being able to read detailed, insightful explanations of EU5's systems in unexpectedly granular detail, long before Paradox even confirmed what game it was making.

"The most important [lesson] is: involve the community more and listen more to the community," he said. "We did a lot of quantitative and qualitative user research at the start, like checking what they wanted by doing big surveys, then doing interviews with part of the community and figuring out what they wanted. That aligned pretty much with the vision I had of a deeper, economical game and more peace time activities."

If Andersson had it his way, the reveal would have happened a bit sooner, in fact. "I wanted to do it a little bit earlier, but marketing people tend to get panicky when you start talking." This also explains why, despite how obvious it was that Paradox Tinto was working on EU5, the team couldn't quite go so far as to confirm that.

And this isn't lip service. Each dev diary has generated so much feedback, and the team has been quick to respond and, in a bunch of cases, make swift changes. There have been some occasions where Andersson would reveal a mechanic, and then a week or two later tell the community that it's already been changed based on their response.

One example is the change in the relationship between pops, the people living in your provinces, and the estates, which are broader groups of people who can influence the nation.

"We used to have an estate to pop direct connection," Andersson said. "We only had four estates and five pop types. It was like one-to-one links. Now we have multiple adaptive estates because of community feedback. We also have more variation in pop types with, like, labourers and soldiers and tribesmen. So it makes them a more fluid and more natural mechanic."

As I said in my Europa Universalis 5 preview, it does come across as an uncompromising game—one that feels like it benefits from a strong vision. But it's simultaneously a game that's being developed specifically for Paradox's community of hardcore grand strategy enthusiasts, and their influence on it is already obvious.

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Microsoft founder Bill Gates has announced a new plan to give away 99% of his $108 billion fortune by 2045, alongside which he's given an interview to the Financial Times damning the actions of his fellow billionaire Elon Musk within the Trump administration.

Gates' blog post outlines three core goals for the Gates Foundation, which are: the eradication of preventable diseases that kill mothers and children; the elimination of infectious diseases such as malaria and measles; and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. It's in this context that Gates takes aim at not just Musk but countries like the UK and France for cutting foreign aid budgets.

"It's unclear whether the world's richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people," says Gates. "But the one thing we can guarantee is that, in all of our work, the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries pull themselves out of poverty."

Gates then went for Musk, claiming that the Tesla CEO's role in the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) makes Musk personally responsible for the outcome of decisions such as cutting the US Agency for International Development's budget and gutting its staff.

"The picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one," said Gates. He raises the example of a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, which President Donald Trump falsely claimed was using US funding to make condoms "for Hamas," a claim that Musk himself later acknowledged was wrong.

Musk also confused the hospital's location with Gaza in Palestine, saying at the time "some of the things that I say will be incorrect."

(Image credit: Getty Images)

"I'd love for [Musk] to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money," said Gates.

Gates goes on to reference Musk calling USAID "a criminal organisation", saying this shows Musk has no idea what the agency does. This is not the first time that the billionaires have clashed, with Musk previously calling Gates' style of philanthropic giving "bullshit" and claiming companies like Tesla would more effectively tackle issues like climate change.

Gates' blog post says The Gates Foundation has spent around $100 billion on its various projects, and expects to spend $200 million over the next two decades. Gates explains some of his thinking by citing a 1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth, which argues that the super-rich have a moral duty to return their fortunes to society.

"People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that 'he died rich' will not be one of them," says Gates.

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Last week Rockstar announced a major delay to Grand Theft Auto 6, and earlier this week softened the blow by releasing the game's second trailer. It's an incredible spectacle that shows a game more ambitious than anything I've seen before and packed with detail. The real stars are all the wildlife (and beer bottles).

Rockstar now says that this trailer is the biggest video launch of all time, which is a rather fluffy phrase but it offers some impressive stats to back it up. Since the trailer was released on Tuesday it has received over 475 million views across all platforms, a number that's now doubtless even higher. The YouTube version alone is currently sitting at just under 95 million views.

The game's first trailer, released in 2023, saw 93 million views over the same time period after release, though that one for whatever reason was also a YouTube exclusive (and broke viewership records, even if it couldn't quite outperform BTS).

The Hollywood Reporter compares the 475 million number to some major movie releases: Deadpool & Wolverine's trailer got 365 million views in its first day, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps had more than 200 million.

One more stat. The trailer features several tracks but the main song is Hot Together by The Pointer Sisters, something of a deep cut from a band best-known for tracks like I'm So Excited, and Spotify says streams of this song subsequently increased by *checks notes* 182,000%.

"Grand Theft Auto cuts through popular culture like almost nothing else," said Spotify’s Sulinna Ong. "Music has been synonymous with the series since the very beginning, so it's great to see fans both new and established connecting with an iconic track in this way."

GTA 6 is now due for release on May 26, 2026, though when we'll see it on PC is anyone's guess: the same year would be lovely, but Rockstar's past form suggests a 2027 release wouldn't be out of the question (or even god forbid 2028).

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A couple of weeks ago I reported the surprising news that Intel's elderly and bug-infested 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs are still selling in numbers. Now it turns out Intel is also still working at completely fixing all the problems those chips have had since launch. The results are a new microcode update which comes over six months since the last patch was released in September.

To say this story has been running on and on is an acute understatement. Back in September, we moaned that, "one might have thought all the Intel stability issue malarkey was behind us," what with previous patches in June and August last year which aimed to solve the problems having been and gone.

But here we are in May 2025 and Intel has yet another patch for the well publicised stability issues that plagued 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs. The new microcode fix—dubbed 0x12F and not to be confused with the 0x125, 0x129 and 0x12B patches that came before it—"further improves system conditions that can potentially contribute to Vmin Shift Instability on Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop-powered systems."

Intel is at pains to point out that this new microcode does not imply a change in its analysis of the actual cause of the problems. "The release of the 0x12F microcode does not alter the root cause determination for the Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processor Vmin Shift Instability issue," Intel says.

You can read Intel's detailed explanation here. But the short version is that multiple factors were causing the chips to run excess voltage and power levels. Exactly what changes Intel has made with the latest patch aren't clear.

Sadly, sorting out Raptor Lake's problems requires more than a simple CPU re-seating. (Image credit: Intel)

It's frankly pretty remarkable that Intel is still releasing patches for this bug, well over year after the problem first emerged. On the one hand, it's reassuring that Intel is still putting resources into older products, but on the other, you really might have thought it would have fixed the problem with earlier patches.

Indeed, the fact that Intel is still working away at the problem implies that there may never be a "total fix" for Raptor Lake's woes.

On a somewhat tangential note, almost as surprising as the idea that Intel is still chipping away at these processors is the revelation that it does serious internal testing at a resolution of 1,280 by 1,024 pixels.

In the release notes for this latest patch, Intel details that resolution for its Cinebench R23.200, Speedometer 3, WebXPRT4 (v3.73), and Crossmark testing. If I remember correctly, the last time I used that res. was around 2004, when a 19-inch flat panel was the latest thing and many PC gamers might still be using 1,280 by 1,024 on a CRT.

But here's Intel, right at the bleeding edge in 2025, doing testing at 1,280 by 1,024. Interesting, eh?

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If you are anything like me, there's a good chance that your TikTok is currently exploding with clips, tips, and guides in the wake of the launch of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Perhaps my favourite little digital nugget to come out of my scrolling is one account dedicated to showing off new games through the retro screen of a CRT TV.

User, CRT Dream, posted their "Oblivion on a CRT" video this week, and it shows off part of the joy of using a CRT well. There are a few major reasons people still love CRTs. The first, because it's nostalgic, is definitely part of the vibe that CRT Dream is trying to conjure here.

Showing the TV in low light, with candles, and a copy of Morrowind on the original Xbox certainly evokes that vibe, but so too does the sound. Dark Fantasy Song Ambient Mix Slowed (Dorian Concept Hide CS01), yes that is the song's full title, is often used alongside retro dark fantasy stills, and an unfortunate amount of AI-generated art.

However, there are, if not practical then at least reasonable, reasons to hang on to that blocky old TV your parents haven't mustered the will to throw out. Modern gaming on a CRT gives you vibrant, clear colors, deep blacks, and great whites. It is also very responsive. Just look at the video and tell me it doesn't add to the fantasy set up by Oblivion's grimey prison walls or high castles. CRT TVs smooth edges in a way that works well for retro games that otherwise look overly sharp on LCDs.

Putting the technical reasons aside, it just has a look and feel that is distinct, and this is why some retro purists would never let their old NES touch anything else. CRT TVs do have a pretty low resolution across the board, and this means a modern TV will look better in a technical sense, but those using CRT TVS aren't doing it to get the highest, most cutting-edge resolutions.

@crtdream♬ Dark Fantasy Song Ambient Mix Slowed (Dorian Concept Hide CS01) - Secret Potion & Lofi Beats To Chill Study Sleep

CRT Dream is less about playing retro games and more about playing new games in a retro way. Scrolling through their TikTok, you can see Oblivion Remastered, Bloodborne, and they even watched the trailer for The Duskbloods on it.

Watching Bioshock Infinite playing on a CRT with Higher by Creed playing the background sort of sounds like my nightmares, but there's something about watching it through the TikTok of a passionate fan that just makes me say 'Hell Yeah'.

This dedication to the bit is charming in the most geeky way. To get some of these games running on a CRT TV, not only do you need an adapter to go from HDMI or Display Port to VGA adapter, but you sometimes need to go into game files to get the game running on the 4:3 resolution necessary for the TV. Even then, further tinkering is often required to get the UI looking just right.

After all this work, the end result is worth it. Silent Hill 2 Remake looks fittingly blocky on it. I won't be letting go of my OLED monitor and all the modern trappings that come with it, but maybe there's room in my heart (or living room) for a secondary one.

I, unfortunately, had to get rid of a rather large CRT TV before leaving my home country, but I can't say CRT Dream hasn't tempted me to pick one up once more.

Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels.Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick.Best 4K monitor for gaming: High-res only.Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gaming.

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AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 9060 XT is meant to be about accessible gaming performance when it arrives, probably within a few weeks. But if a couple of listings that currently appear on Amazon (via Videocardz) are anything to go by, we may have to adjust expectations. The 8 GB variant of the GPU is listed for $449, with the 16 GB option at $519. Ouch.

Both of the cards are XFX-branded 'OC' GPUs. So, they may have MSRPs well above whatever AMD chooses as a base price for the RX 9060 XT twins—though as XFX "Swift" models, they are not from XFX's very highest tier of AIB cards. And, of course, MSRPs are only very loosely related to real-world pricing when it comes to graphics cards these days.

Despite all that, these prices still look awfully unappealing. By way of example, Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, which is probably the closest existing competitor for the new AMD GPU, has an MSRP of $429. The 8 GB 5060 Ti is MSRP'ed at $379.

Real-world pricing is a little higher at roughly $420 for the 5060 Ti 8 GB and $480 for the 16 GB card. But that's still below these XFX RX 9060 XT listings, which hardly fits AMD's broader sales pitch for Radeon GPUs of late, that's centred around value and bang for buck.

The prices are also painfully unappealing in the context of AMD's own Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT boards. While the RX 9060 XT hasn't been officially announced, its specifications are fairly certain to be exactly one half of the 9070 XT and thus 2,048 stream processors and a 128-bit memory bus to the 4,096 processors and 256-bit bus of the 9070 XT.

Sad face: The AMD RX 9070 XT is selling for well above MSRP and the upcoming 9060 XT looks to be heading the same way. (Image credit: Future)

Lest you have forgotten, the 9070 XT is MSRP'ed at $599, with the vanilla 9070 at $549. So, the idea you'd want to pay over $500 for half the GPU simply doesn't scan.

The catch is that the 9070 XT tends to go for well over MSRP, and that's if you can get it at all. Newegg, by way of example, lists 9070 XTs from about $660. But the cheapest actually in stock is up for a ridiculous $899.

Of course, US pricing is particularly bad right now. In the UK you can grab a 9070 XT for £660 easily enough. Above MSRP, to be sure, but not nearly as bad.

Arguably more of a problem is the fact that you can grab an Nvidia RTX 5070 in the US for just over $600 in the US and just over £500 in the UK. OK, you're only getting 12GB of VRAM with the 5070. But it's a fundamentally more powerful GPU and also offers Nvidia's industry-leading feature set, superior path tracing performance and all that stuff.

Anyway, we'll obviously have to wait and see where the new AMD GPUs land in terms of both MSRP and real-world pricing when they arrive, probably at Computex starting 20 May. But these Amazon listings hardly bode well.

For the record, the Amazon listings mention a June 5 release date. So, that's probably a relevant marker in terms of actual retail availability.

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It's been a tumultuous year for Chrono Trigger enthusiasts. Rumors of a potential remake have cropped up several times, only to be quickly debunked. I can't blame fans for their gullibility: it really is very weird that Square Enix hasn't done anything with the Chrono series for so long, though the publisher did indicate in March that it intends to honor the 30th anniversary of Chrono Trigger with projects that "go beyond the world of the game."

Corporate mysticism aside, JRPG legend Yuji Horii, who among other things had a hand in writing Chrono Trigger, and has worked on countless Dragon Quest games including the forthcoming Dragon Quest 12, has indicated in an interview with Gamereactor that he wants to work on Chrono Trigger.

Noting the 30th anniversary, Horii says "Yes, it has been a long time. Yes, I want to do something." Acknowledging the HD-2D remakes of the older Dragon Quest games, Horii adds that he's "getting a lot of requests for a Chrono Trigger remake as well, so I'm starting to look into it."

This follows a quickly debunked rumor earlier this month. At a Comicon in Italy a translator misinterpreted Horii as all but confirming a Chrono Trigger remake, but Gematsu later confirmed that Horii hadn't made any confirmation at all: it was a translator's gaffe, basically.

A HD-2D remake seems like an obvious choice, though a small part of me dreams of Chrono Trigger getting the Final Fantasy 7 Remake treatment. That seems fanciful, especially given the erratic market and Square Enix' famously high sales expectations. Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D did exceptionally well for Square Enix—to the extent that they were actually happy with its sales—so it seems inevitable that the company will double down on this remake format. I'm fine with that, as long as they don't touch the music.

Whatever form it takes, a Chrono Trigger revival of some kind seems basically inevitable at this point. While you wait, the original is discounted by 50% on Steam at the moment, and is perfectly playable nowadays despite being busted at launch. Its divisive sequel Chrono Cross is also going cheap.

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In a time when the FPS campaign is so vanishingly rare that the only helping of big-budget shooting we can rely on each year is from Call of Duty, it'd be easy for id Software to kick up its feet and decide "more Doom" is good enough. Honestly, it'd be good enough for me. But that'd be dereliction of id's duty to the genre it created.

To id, a new Doom is an opportunity to demolish a perfectly good sand castle and start fresh*.* Doom: The Dark Ages is the trilogy's sharpest zag yet—recasting the Slayer from a meaty fighter jet, ducking and dashing past the hordes of Hell, to a stalwart tank, smashing shield-first into the action.

NEED TO KNOW

What is it The latest FPS from the makers of Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein.Release Date May 15, 2025Expect to Pay $70/£60Developer id SoftwarePublisher MicrosoftReviewed on RTX 2080 Super, Intel Core i9 9900KS, 32GB RAMMultiplayer NoSteam Deck UntestedLink Official site

The transition is successful, but not without major sacrifice. This is Doom at its most indulgent and deliciously violent, but it's also dumbed down and undeniably the easiest of the trilogy. Maps are uncharacteristically barren, secrets abnormally obvious, and puzzles so simple that they hardly fit the description. Viewed through the lens of loud feedback that insisted Doom Eternal was too complicated, The Dark Ages is an overcorrection.

Short leash

The Dark Ages turns back the clock to our favorite demon smasher's salad days as a pawn of the Makyrs (those floating tentacle guys from the previous games) in a war against Hell. He's the same Slayer as ever, still feral and focused in his distaste for demons, now sporting a tasteful beast pelt to let us know we're in olden times. But in a decision that proves profoundly shortsighted, the Makyrs keep him locked up in a spaceship with a shock collar. You can imagine how that goes.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

We got Sentinels, battle tanks, mechs, dragons, and a surprising density of cutscenes for Doom. This time, it's not just detached robot voices telling the Slayer what to kill next. Instead, we see the main players in his orbit, King Novik of Argent D'Nur vs. Prince Ahzrak of Hell, facing off between bouts of bloodshed. Characters and plot have as much nuance as professional wrestling, setting the stage for the campaign's next set piece—a grand siege, ancestral forge, the belly of a demon taller than a downtown highrise—without ever getting bogged down by proper nouns.

It's appropriately uncomplicated. The Slayer's otherworldly determination and general freakishness are amplified by his proximity to normal, communicative humans. They treat him like an unknowable demigod, inherently dangerous but effective when pointed in the direction of hellspawn. I loved the dynamic, partly because id is paying off years of mythbuilding, but also because this Slayer adopts the role of a deranged Master Chief, more or less following orders as long as he agrees with the mission.

Close guard

The Dark Age's rebooted gun ballet revolves around the Shield Saw. Permanently bound to right-click, the shield blocks all damage from the front and sends green projectiles back to their senders. It's a singular change that ripples through every facet of The Dark Ages, anchoring the Slayer to the ground in exchange for survivability.

(Image credit: Bethesda)PC performance

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Our Nick's been running the rule over Doom: The Dark Ages' PC performance for the past week or so, across a wide selection of systems; young and old, high-end and low, desktop and laptop. And it's performing pretty well whatever rig you might have.

I cannot sing the praises of the Shield Saw loud enough: Shrugging off the blows of lesser demons and nailing the timing on parries is empowering from minute one, elevating Doom's brutality and giving the player permission to run toward the biggest threats instead of playing keep-away. In fact, the only move resembling Eternal's air dash is a shield dash that instantly closes the distance on large demons and obliterates fodder on contact. An early upgrade gives the shield its chainsaw teeth, turning it into a throwable that either stuns or slices straight through demons.

The shield slots into Doom's deadly dance like it was always there. It's elegant, useful, aggressive… and unfortunately also one-note. Once you can throw it around, the shield is done evolving, my tactics were locked in for the campaign's duration.

Civilized age

What The Dark Ages gains with its shield, it loses with its guns. Relinquishing right-click to block means guns no longer have dedicated secondary fire modes—they're still upgradable, but now focused on passive boosts to reload speed, fire rate, or damage. Besides a few bright spots, like a Shredder upgrade that let me shoot at my thrown shield to ricochet stakes toward surrounding enemies, my weapons never improved in ways that encouraged me to alter my game plan.

Bland guns are a symptom of The Dark Ages' larger streamlining problems.

For example: I'd been glancing at this greyed-out screen of upgrades called Shield Runes for hours, anticipating some sort of blue Gravity Gun-level twist that'd take my shield antics to the next level. When I got my first Shield Rune halfway through the game, I was disappointed to find that they're essentially gun upgrades for the shield—damage-dealing attacks automatically triggered by successful parries, and I could only have one equipped. Neat, but since they're just something that happens when I parry an attack (something I was already doing whenever possible), it's just more DPS on the pile.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

What worked in hour one of The Dark Ages—spamming my shotguns, shield dashing away from danger, and deflecting anything colored green—worked in hour 17, and that's a huge bummer.

As much as it pains me to admit, The Dark Ages' thematic stand-ins for ballistic guns just aren't as fun to shoot. The Ballista replacement launches stakes that hit hard but have an oddly short range, the Shredder is just a Heavy Cannon that sounds like a nail gun, and those guns that hurl bits of skull are all bark and no bite. The lone exception to this rule is the Chainshot—a monstrous back-half arrival that launches wrecking balls, caving in skulls before reeling back into the gun like a sinful yo-yo. Thankfully id didn't mess with its two shotguns, the rocket launcher, or the plasma rifle, all of which sound and look better than ever.

Blunt trauma

Bland guns are a symptom of The Dark Ages' larger streamlining problems. The role of any individual gun is murky at best because all demons are vulnerable to almost all weapons, and most don't pose a significant threat. Every boss fight and high-tier enemy is designed around creating openings by parrying with the shield.

This is a quietly huge shift because in both previous Dooms of this series, enemies had clear-cut resistances and weaknesses that, here, are replaced by throwing the shield at armor to destroy it. The Slayer's constant vulnerability previously meant his arsenal was his shield. It was about working quickly and efficiently to kill demons faster than they can kill you. It was crucial to survey the battlefield and make decisions about which weapons to conserve for tougher targets. The only way out was through. In The Dark Ages, the solution to every problem is in your left hand: Block it, shoot it, and you're done.

It doesn't help that ammo is completely irrelevant, too. In a truly baffling change, the chainsaw is gone, and now all you gotta do for endless piles of ammo is punch (E) the nearest grunt. Glory kills get a similar treatment: They're mostly gone, with larger demons getting some gruesome new animations while the majority of executions settle for brief slo-mo punches that pop health items. Hear that? It's the sound of Doom's signature health/ammo/shield resource economy evaporating.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

Flattened

The last two Dooms set the bar absurdly high, and being in their shadows still makes The Dark Ages one of the best singleplayer FPSes around.

I get the sense that The Dark Ages' heavy mechanical pruning is in service of making it the most accessible, instantly enjoyable Doom for the most people. If that's the case, then mission accomplished. It's still Doom, so it's still very fun. The last two set the bar absurdly high, and being in their shadows still makes The Dark Ages one of the best singleplayer FPSes around.

I suspect its throttled pace will make The Dark Ages the most comfortable of the series to play with a controller. Customizable difficulty will help, too: A long list of toggles and sliders let me tune everything from projectile speeds and parry windows to exact damage values. That's a win for everybody.

I did have more fun after increasing enemy aggression, tightening the parry window, and experimenting with higher projectile speeds, but at some point, I had to accept I was fishing for complexity that wasn't there.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

The Dark Ages' levels are especially simplistic next to the mazes and jungle gyms of the last two games. Presumably to accommodate all the slow-moving projectiles and the Slayer's wimpy new jump, most maps are massive, flat, and devoid of hazards—like id took Doom 2016's winding corridors and pressed them into a pancake. I like that they're more friendly to backtracking than ever, with areas spoking off a central platform, but a few of the larger maps had me sprinting across empty deserts way too often.

Secrets are still scattered literally everywhere, but the majority of them are so obviously placed and announced by the map that I rarely felt like I was discovering something. It's another area where Eternal had more to offer: Those ultra-hard, opt-in challenge rooms? Gone. Now puzzles just give you an extra life or more gold to buy upgrades. At least those platforming sections that a lot of folks hated (but I loved) demanded a quick reflex test to get to the side goodies.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

I should mention the mech and dragon stuff that's all over the trailers. They're cool little moments of punching demons in a big robot and dogfighting with hellships sprinkled throughout the 22-level campaign, but they're so brief, easy, and detached from the main action that they didn't stick in my head. An unnecessary, but welcome change of scenery.

If it sounds like I'm just asking for Doom Eternal 2, I promise I'm not. The Dark Ages is fun in totally different ways than its predecessors, and I love that, but its peaks are lower. After rolling credits, I went back to Doom (2016) and Eternal to confirm the gut feeling. id has done a lot of subtraction with not a lot of addition, and I reckon this is the first Doom that I won't replay. Doom is a series I associate with taking big swings, but The Dark Ages is safe.

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The 16-inch gaming laptop is a wonderful invention. The slightly larger screen over a 15.6-inch model, made even wider thanks to modern slim bezels, looks great, and allows for a chassis that's just that tiny bit roomier, so we get full-size keys, numpads, even speakers. They're not as ridiculous as 18-inch laptops—those silly machines—and you can actually use them as portables instead of being tied to keeping them on a table somewhere.

HP has taken the opportunity to cram this 16-inch Omen Max 16 with the latest gaming technology. There's a Core Ultra 9 and an RTX 5080 laptop GPU in there, along with lots of RAM and a decent SSD. It's a complete package, albeit a bit of a heavy one.

There's a lot to like about the Omen Max 16, but what I especially appreciate is the way it doesn't skimp. Being able to fit one of the new RTX 50-series graphics chips in a laptop is one thing, but HP didn't need to put Thunderbolt 4 in a gaming machine—USB 4 or even USB 3.2 10 Gbps would have done—so we get extra video outputs alongside an HDMI 2.1 that's already perfectly well suited to hooking up an external monitor, alongside the capability to use some of the fastest external storage and a 2.5Gb Ethernet network too.

Away from the port selection, this is also a really nice laptop to actually use. The screen is an IPS rather than an OLED, with a 16:10 2.5K resolution and a 240 Hz refresh rate that will still make many people happy. It's not a touchscreen, but you get a decent-sized trackpad.

Max 16 specs

(Image credit: Future)

CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX NPU: Intel AI BoostGraphics: Nvidia RTX 5080 (175 W)Memory: 32 GB DDR5-5600Storage: 1 TB SSDScreen size: 16-inchScreen type: IPSResolution: 2560 x 1600Refresh rate: 240 HzPorts: 2x Thunderbolt 4, 2x USB Type-A 10Gbps, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 2.5Gb Ethernet, 1x AC charging, 1x 3.5 mm audio comboWireless connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4Dimensions: 35.65 x 26.9 x 2.48 cmWeight: 2.68 kgPrice: $3,299.99 | £2,999.99

Though it only seems to respond to taps and not clicks, despite having a nicely positive click mechanism, which is a big problem if you're trying to drag with the trackpad—hopefully this will turn out to be a settings or driver issue and can be addressed. There's also a keyboard with a 3D effect to the keys that looks like someone's been biting the tips off Toblerone segments.

Still, it's definitely a gaming laptop. You can tell by the way it lights up (the keyboard is a rainbow, and there's a light bar under the front lip), has a foreboding name, and a little slogan written on the back. It's "Designed and built for winning," apparently. While it's outside the scope of this review to promise victory, or even speculate on its likelihood, what it can do is offer proof of frame rates.

Cramming a GPU like the RTX 5080 into a laptop was always going to generate the frames, but it generates heat too. Having the fan exhaust pointing downward means that warmth is directed at an area of leg just above your knees, making it a suboptimal machine for use while wearing shorts, and there are also some big vents at the back.

It needs them.

I saw CPU temperatures rise to 60 °C just while installing software and 105 °C (briefly—well into thermal throttling territory) while running benchmarks, with the GPU spending most of its time around 70 °C while being pushed. Though it's fair to say that all the laptops we've has tested with this CPU exhibit this same thermal behaviour.

HP has equipped the Omen Max with its 'AI' fan control software, and an ‘Unleashed' mode that sends the fans up to 5,000 RPM in its attempts to keep the CPU under control, and they certainly make themselves known. The Balanced fan mode keeps things a lot quieter, but also knocks almost 25% off its score in the Time Spy Extreme benchmark.

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The Core Ultra 9 in the Omen Max 16 is a 24-core Arrow Lake-HX model (which means no hyperthreading), which is capable of 5.4 GHz alongside 36 TOPS of AI performance and with a maximum turbo power of 160 W. It's the same chip you'll find in laptops such as the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 and MSI Vector 16 HX AI A2XW, clearly a popular choice for mobile gaming in 2025. It's a very capable processor, whizzing through creative work as well as games, and providing a lot of grunt for CPU-intensive games such as Baldur's Gate 3. It's not quite a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and BG3 sure does love that extra cache, but I'm not sure we need 150 fps or more in top-down RPGs anyway.

If you've got the monitor to take it (and the Omen Max goes all the way up to 240 Hz) then you can use DLSS 4's multi-frame generation to give your games a bit of a boost. It's one of the more interesting features of the new RTX 50-series GPUs, and it does make a difference, boosting the frame rate in Cyberpunk 2077 from 38 fps to 116 fps at the native 1600p resolution.

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Elsewhere, the gaming benchmark results from the Omen Max are surprisingly inconsistent. It is capable of some good frame rates, though consistently produced ever-so-slightly lower average figures than other laptops we've tested packing the same RTX 5080 chips, and suffers from stuttering in multiple games leading to some 1% low scores that really stand out from the rest.

This might be one firmware or driver update away from improvement, but we can only review what's in front of us.

It's not all bad news: the SSD in the Omen Max 16 performs slightly better than those in similar machines. Its maximum bandwidth score in our tests hits 398.42 MB/s, beating the MSI Vector by almost 100 MB/s and the Asus ROG Flow Z13 by more than 70 MB/s. It's probably not something you'll notice in-game, as it will shorten loading times by only a small amount, but it's always nice to know.

And while nobody buys a gaming laptop for the battery life, the Omen Max doesn't do too badly... as long as you don't actually play games. Because it does that clever Nvidia Optimus thing that switches between the iGPU and GeForce card depending on what you're doing. So if you're just using it to watch videos or browse the web, you can expect almost four hours of use out of it before you go hunting for the very large 330W power brick.

Buy if...

✅ You can get it at a good price: there's probably nothing wrong with the Omen 16 that a few driver updates won't fix, so it's worth taking advantage of its value.

Don't buy if...

❌ You can't deal with the stutters: Chances are they won't last long, but with mildly better frame rates elsewhere, you might want to go there too.

Start playing games and stressing the RTX 5080, and the time it can spend away from a power outlet will drop to about an hour and a half even though Blackwell GPUs are meant to be more power efficient than older generations.

Value-wise, the Omen Max 16 has to be weighed against other gaming laptops with similar specs, and a lot of them have come along at once. There's the MSI Vector 16 HX AI, which has 16 GB of RAM but costs $900 less. And there's the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025) which costs $300 more and has a 120 W version of the GPU. So it does occupy some middle ground, especially when you put 32 GB of RAM in the Vector, and in recent laptop tests it's the cheapest to offer the 175 W RTX 5080 and 32GB of RAM.

It's still not a budget machine—and that's okay—but the Omen Max 16 has a lot of competition out there from the usual suspects. You'll also have to keep the fans high if you want the best performance, so perhaps some of the best noise-cancelling headphones should be on your shopping list too.

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A mere 15 seconds into the new GTA 6 trailer and we've already spotted something exciting. No, I'm not talking about Jason Duval's chiseled torso. I'm talking about all the animals you can see if you're not staring at Jason Duval's chiseled torso.

You probably saw a bunch of seagulls and pelicans flying overhead as the trailer opens: they're easy enough to spot. But there's also an enormous iguana ambling toward Jason's house in the very second shot, and a raccoon can be seen, twice, digging through a trashcan in the background as Brian chastises our hunky hero. Aw, trash panda!

That's not all the wildlife and pets on display in the trailer and screenshots Rockstar released this week, if you pull your eyes away from the action. A bodega cat sits on an ATM cleaning itself as Jason buys beer, Jason and Lucia have a pet python in their house.

There's even a great white shark that can just barely be seen lurking beneath the waves of a busy marina.

(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

I'm thrilled to see all these creatures in the background (I feel like I spot more each time I watch) and there are also plenty on full display: along with the trailer Rockstar released a buttload of screenshots this week featuring sea turtles, panthers, deer, gators, and don't worry, they didn't forget dogs.

Even screens with an animal front and center, like the one below showing a couple of gators, you can still see more animals: there are some herons or maybe spoonbills to the middle-right of the image and what may be nutria or muskrats to the middle-left.

(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

I'm glad the tradition continues: GTA 5 also has tons of animals if you know where to look. Head to the farms of Grapeseed and you'll see pigs and chickens. Take a trip to Mount Chiliad and you might spot some elk or boars. From cougars to coyotes to cows to cats, the world is full of wildlife, livestock, and pets, so I'm happy to see GTA 6 is also bursting at the seams with feathered and furry friends.

Some of my excitement is purely selfish: a mod for GTA 5 let me play the game as a shark, which was quite honestly the most fun I had in GTA 5. Who needs guns when you can just bite your enemies in half? As long as they're in the water, that is. If not, you might have to wriggle out on land or call for a cabbie to have a snack:

I know my dream of being a shark in GTA 6 is a long, long way off: first the game has to come out in 2026, then it has to come out on PC in 2027 (?), and then modders will have to do whatever magic they do that will let me inhabit a shark instead of Jason Duval. But I bet it'll be worth waiting for.

I'm also happy because Rockstar gives a lot of attention to its animals in general. The wildlife in Red Dead Redemption 2 was so enjoyable, not just to hunt (though that was fun), but to observe. The horses were incredibly detailed, the bears were terrifying, and everything else from birds to beavers to bullfrogs were so caringly created that it made putting down your pistol and going on a nature walk supremely satisfying.

To me, GTA and RDR games are most enjoyable once you've finished the story missions and are left with a big, beautiful sandbox to explore and play around in. Once Jason and Lucia's drama is in my rearview, I'm looking forward to parking the car and going on a long nature walk to see how many animals I can spot. And hopefully, somewhere down the line, I'll get to play as a shark again.

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If, like me, you enjoy playing stealthy characters in fantasy RPGs, then a new mod that boosts sneak attack damage multipliers in Oblivion Remastered is well worth checking out.

As standard in Oblivion Remastered, almost all weapon types deal the same sneak attack multipliers, which are x2 at Novice, before climbing (and crucially stalling) at x3 for Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert and Master. The remaster has some more notable damage boosts for daggers (in a change over original Oblivion), but it's just not the same and still lacks role-playing-friendly progression.

Now don't get me wrong, landing a x2 or x3 sneak attack from stealth does do a good chunk of damage to a foe. What it often doesn't do, however, is one-shot tougher opponents (especially at higher levels of the game), which can feel a bit cheap when you shoot them directly in the eye with an arrow or bring a claymore down upon their neck from the shadows. Like, nobody, survives that, right?

Luckily, though, the 'Increased sneak attack damage multiplier' mod by Ismttt moves to address that, making sneak attack damage multipliers more potent at higher levels of stealth mastery with an improving linear progression.

So now, for example, striking a foe with a bow unseen will deal x2 damage multiplier at Novice level, but then climb to x3 at Apprentice, x4 at Journeyman, x5 at Expert, and x6 at Master level. The better you get at stealthily striking from the shadows with your weapons, the more damage you will deal, unlike the base game where that stalls.

This mod rewards characters who master stealth with huge sneak damage multipliers. (Image credit: Bethesda)

Stab happy

Not all weapons follow the same multipliers, though, with larger two-handed weapons like the claymore (which in the real world would be harder to use stealthily, so it makes sense) only proceeding from x1 at Novice to x5 at Master. It's lower multipliers, but still, you get the linear improvement as you ascend sneaking levels.

But, where I can't see many stealth assassin-type characters in Oblivion Remastered using a claymore as their weapon of choice, I can see many using a dagger, and thanks to this mod, any wielder of one will truly become one with Sithis.

That's because the dagger's sneak multiplier now starts at x5 at Novice, before ascending through x8 at Apprentice, x11 at Journeyman, x14 at Expert, and through to a Grim Reaper-approved x17 at Master level. Now that's potent!

Neatly, following feedback from PC gamers, the mod's maker has also supplied a series of other variants of the mod, too, all of which offer different types of sneak damage multiplication.

For example, if you want to keep the linear progression but don't want such high damage multipliers, you can grab that version by downloading the 'Sneak multiplier b' variant. If you'd rather deal so much sneak damage you could one-shot Akatosh himself, then grabbing the 'Sneak multiplier x2' variant is for you. That one takes the dagger's Master-level sneak attack damage multiplier up to x34! Yep, truly god-slaying damage.

So, yes, if you're currently playing a stealthy character, then a variant of this mod feels to me like a smart download, even if it is just to add in that missing linear improvement that, to my mind at least, is better for roleplaying. Equally, if you haven't played a sneak-master in Oblivion Remastered then I'd recommend doing so immediately, as some of the game's best content (I'm thinking the Dark Brotherhood, especially) and mechanics (bows feel so much better than swords IMO) lean into this type of character.

For more information about what Bethesda's remastered fantasy RPG offers, be sure to check out our official Oblivion Remastered review.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's got its first proper hotfix patch, and as promised, the 2 billion damage build is well and truly dead. Stendhal's been de-juiced, and a second, surprise nerf to Medalum will also tone down Maelle's damage just a bit.

Overall, the update's relatively minor—it has a bunch of fixes to ultrawide support and mouse and keyboard controls (which the game doesn't quite recommend. People who parry with their mouse button are different beasts, and I fear them).

The world map should have less geometry for you to get stuck on, whether you're hoofing it on foot or riding on best boy and certified weewee/woowoo expert Esquie. A couple of softlocks have been stamped out, too, including one where you could accidentally permanently banish most of your party to the shadow realm.

The big changes here are in the weapons and balance tuning. Both Lune's Lithelim and Sciel's Blizzon have had their attribute scalings fixed, but the real tweaks are to Maelle's sword Medalum, and her big nuke Stendhal.

Stendhal's just had its damage flat reduced by 40%—meanwhile, Medalum was apparently bugged. All weapons in Clair Obscur have three passive perks, and the max-level perk for Medalum, which doubled your burn damage while in Virtuose Stance, was apparently doubling all damage. Which, uh, yeah. That's less of a nerf and more of a bug fix.

Again, I'm all in favour of these changes, which goes against my usual philosophy with single-player games. But there's a difference between a build being slightly broken, and it just allowing you to run over every single endgame challenge with a shank-wielding 16 year old.

Besides, I beat Simon without Stendhal, and I am now pleased everyone else will have to suffer in the same way I did: A 16-minute knockout brawl with over 190 parries, just like the Paintress intended.

You can find the full patch notes below:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Patch 1.2.3

(Image credit: Sandfall Interactive)

Steam Deck

Fixed backgrounds of various menus not displaying properly on the Steam Deck

Various Ultrawide Fixes

Gameplay no longer becomes zoomed after a cutscene occurs in ultrawide resolutionsThe Options menu image will no longer be stretched in ultrawide resolutionsCombat UI now adapts correctly to ultrawide resolutionsGame will no longer minimize upon changing settings in ultrawide resolutionCutscenes won’t letterbox in 32:9 aspect ratio**Title screen now displays fullscreen when the game is launched in ultrawide resolution

Mouse and Keyboard

UI button prompts in Expedition Menu are now visible and fully able to be triggered with KeyboardMouse buttons do not become unresponsive after first useWith mouse cursor on screen, using 'WSAD' or directional arrows to navigate in UI or trigger any other functionality will no longer hide the cursor instead of doing the intended actionLeft Mouse-button click will no longer block the player from using Keyboard to navigate menusMouse input is not lost after the first Jump counter attack if it is pressed only once

Fixed areas of the world map where you can get stuck:

Between lanterns scattered on the ground near Stone Wave Cliff portalWhile walking on the ship wreck near the Forgotten Battlefield level entranceBetween lanterns on the ground near Bourgeon encounter next to Stone Wave Cliffs levelBetween two small rocks located between Spring Meadows and Abbest CaveBetween vases and corals when jumping from rooftoppsBetween various rocksIn ruins behind Flying Manor level entranceNear the bridge between Flying Waters and Spring MeadowsIn the rocks on the World Map, near Flying Waters**Next to hardened land, close to the Flying Waters location exit

Fixed situations where Esquie specifically would get stuck (poor guy):

When taking off from paint bridges, making him fall through the bridge and restrict movementWhen flying into bottom parts of levitating structures near VisagesNear the Flying Waters entrance level**Near a giant hammer when traversing close to Blades' Graveyard level

Weapon and skill fixes and tuning:

*Fixed Lithelim attribute scaling not working at high level. Reduced initial Vitality scaling from A to C (will still end at S at max level). Added Luck scaling starting at D.**Fixed Blizzon attribute scaling not working at high level. Reduced initial Luck scaling from B to C (will still end at S at max level). Added Defense scaling starting at D.**Fixed Medalum third Lumina doubling all damage in Virtuose Stance instead of doubling only Burn damage.*Stendhal: Reduced damage by 40%.

Other fixes

*Boss encounter in Stone Wave Cliffs can now be finished on NG+You will no longer be blocked by the Journal UI window after opening the first Journal in the Spring MeadowsFixed being unable to shoot in Free aim while exploring levels due to worn triggersLune and Monoco no longer spawn in same place during end of theirs Level 6 relationship quests if they are completed without going to campIf at camp you pick “remember the objective”, then quickly choose to "go to sleep" and immediately after press "leave", the screen no longer goes black**You can no longer trigger the "Discovering the truth" cutscene in Old Lumière a second time in a row, splitting the party forever with only Verso and Maelle in it.*Update to rolling credits

This is the first in a series of patches we are looking to do over the coming months. We are still investigating many feature requests and issues for future updates.

Stay tuned!

The Expedition 33 Team

Expedition 33 tips: Conquer the continentExpedition 33 lost Gestrals: Runaway kidsExpedition 33 mime locations: Beat the buskersExpedition 33 old key: What it opensExpedition 33 weird pictos: Where to use them

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For better or worse, society must soon reckon with Gex once more. As we reported with no small amount of trepidation in 2023, Limited Run Games is releasing Gex Trilogy, a remaster collection of all three adventures of the anthropoid lizard that Crystal Dynamics first inflicted on the human consciousness in 1995. And yesterday, Limited Run revealed the Gex Trilogy Tail Time Edition, a $200 fever dream of Gex idolatry including not one, but two separate physical instantiations of Gex that you can place in your real, human home.

If you didn't spend a lot of time staring at videogame rental store selections in the late 90s and early 2000s, you might not be familiar with Gex. The gist is that he's a lizard, but also a guy, and kind of a secret agent, except he can go into a sort of TV dimension and dress up as Sherlock Holmes or whatever.

(Image credit: Limited Run Games, Square Enix)

His first game was a side-scroller, but the sequels entered Gex into the honored pantheon of 3D character platformer protagonists—except maybe not quite as honored as his peers, considering how long it's taken for a remaster. Voiced by Dana Gould, Gex was a product of a simpler time when you could spin three games out of a comedian pretending to be a reptile pretending to be pop culture characters.

If Gex's long absence seemed an injustice to you, you can now make up for it with $200 of prime Gex memorabilia like trading cards, a pin, a 7-inch Gex statue, and a 3-foot-tall inflatable Gex doll. Do these works not please you?

My favorite inclusion in the bunch is the collector's edition's exclusive box art, illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano, whose gorgeously surreal art style helped define the visual identity of Final Fantasy through concept designs and commissioned illustrations. And now he's done a Gex. He's got a sword. It's incredible.

If that's not enough to tempt you, here's the full rundown of everything that's included in the Gex Trilogy Tail Time Edition:

Gex Trilogy gameTail Time Edition box featuring art by Yoshitaka AmanoAn additional PS1-style retro game caseFull soundtrack of each gameSteelbook featuring art by Marcos Lopez12" x 16" Double-Sided Poster featuring art by Alex TJ Campbell36" Inflatable Gex Doll7" Gex StatueRemote pinGex trading cards (I don't know what kind of exchange rate you can expect for these)A Steam code for the trilogy remaster, if you're buying the PC version

There's also a $75 classic edition with just the game, retro box, steelbook, and a "soundtrack selection," but that doesn't even include one physical Gex. To me, that's an insult, but your standards may differ. Amano's Gex masterwork is additionally available as a $50 poster or $30 1000-piece puzzle, if you just want to appreciate it on its own.

Gex Trilogy will launch on Steam on June 16, but the preorders of its various physical collections and accoutrement have estimated shipping dates ranging from October to next March. But hey, we've waited this long. What's another year for two Gexes?

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Unreal Engine 5, with its fancy Lumen illumination and reflections feature, is a bit of a stunner in the right environment, but its continued prevalence might suggest cheaper rigs are due for an upgrade, if Mafia: The Old Country system requirements are anything to go off.

Just yesterday, Mafia: The Old Country's release date was announced (August 8), and now, one day later, the Steam page has unveiled its system requirements.

They are more or less what you might expect from a modern big-budget Unreal Engine 5 game, especially one in a franchise that has historically looked great for its time. However, the recommended RAM seems a tad high.

Not only does it suggest a minimum of 16 GB of RAM just to play it, but the recommended specs sit at 32 GB of RAM. Notably, the minimum specs will get you the Medium graphics preset at 1080p.

Alongside the 16 GB of RAM to run it on minimum, you need an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, Intel Core i7 9700K, or better. Then, for the GPU, you will need an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT or an Nvidia RTX 2070.

These are all mid-range parts from before 2020, so if you haven't yet put in an RTX card, you might want to do so with the onslaught of Unreal Engine 5 games coming down the pipeline. Doom: The Dark Ages is about to launch, and despite performing well, it needs a similarly beefy set of specs.

If you want to run Mafia: The Old Country on High preset at 1440p (what's recommended), you will need an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, Intel Core i7 12700K processor or better.

As well as this, you will need a rather large 32 GB of RAM, alongside an AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, or better. A rig that can run Mafia: The Old Country on recommended specs is still a rather beefy one, and probably not due for an upgrade for a little while.

The choice to put the Medium graphics preset as the minimum recommendations is likely a sign of the heavy lifting required to get Unreal Engine 5 working in this game in the first place.

The RTX 2060 is a 6 GB card, whereas the RTX 2070 is 8 GB, and Hangar 13 likely doesn't want to go below that threshold. The 2070's 8 GB of RAM is likely the minimum that can get this game working, so players might as well run it on Medium.

At 55 GB, it's a fairly big game, but not monstrously so. However, an SSD being required, rather than recommended, is a telling sign of how far recommended specs have come.

If you plan on playing Mafia: The Old Country when it launches in August, you'll need a fairly competent machine to run its UE 5 world. If previous Mafia games are anything to go off, I'm expecting it to at least look like it's worth all that power.

Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.

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I had the pleasure of attending a Netflix event around the WoW documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin last year—one that was attended by folks from Muscular Dystrophy UK, a charity that helps fund research into the kinds of muscle-wasting conditions that impact not just Ibelin's late player, Mats Steen, but many disabled gamers the world over.

Steen's journey, as told through the documentary, has already helped raise $2 million in conjunction with Blizzard. But it's also inspired Muscular Dystrophy UK to walk a similar path, using videogames as a means to not only raise money for those with muscle wasting conditions, but also empower them to take part in the fundraising themselves.

I sat down with Liam Quinn, corporate partnerships officer at Muscular Dystrophy UK, who I met at that initial event. Quinn has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) type three—but he's also a World of Warcraft player, who met his wife Ana after flaming someone during a dungeon queue like a proper MMO patriot. As he told me last year: "Ana was tanking, so I was like, 'would you like to stay in the group and we can carry on going?'" And the rest is history.

That entire experience—the documentary and the event, not the terrible dungeon run—was transformative for Quinn's efforts to help bring the community of videogames to more people with conditions like his: "The plan was to try and do something in person that could bring our community of people living with muscle weakening and wasting conditions together over this sort of shared hobby. Which obviously the Life of Ibelin shone a spotlight on."

However, the documentary changed things: "I think it was eye opening for a lot of our community. I don't want to speak for everybody, but maybe some didn't realize that everyone was playing games, and everyone was enjoying them for the same reasons. It was a very shared experience among the community."

Through Ibelin, Mats Steen was able to live a rich and transformed life—and for Quinn, who similarly found his wife playing videogames, that resonated with him. Still, he laments that not a lot of people with muscle wasting conditions (and other disabilities, too) are able to find community in online spaces. Similar to Steen, who struggled to tell his guild he had Duchenne's, Quinn had a moment where he briefly considered hiding the truth from Ana.

"I think it's hard to reach out and find a community that has that shared experience. And I think part of what we want to achieve with Game On at MDUK, is to signpost that community. So they don't have to think: Do I reveal this to my close peers? … You can know that this community is out there and existing.

"It shouldn't be on people in our community to constantly have to chase that themselves. That's where we come in. And hopefully we can facilitate that for them by providing the platform of Game On, definitely."

Game On

Game On is, simply put, an initiative built to help enable fundraisers and foster online community spaces for those with muscular dystrophy conditions to support each other. Getting in touch with Muscular Dystrophy UK will let them set you up to help do a fundraiser either on your channel, or theirs. Their first proper event, which took place at Play New Meta in Islington, was a great proof of concept for the whole endeavour.

(Image credit: Muscular Dystrophy UK)

"There were a few cancellations—there were some weather and cancellations—but it didn't matter," he explains, saying that they still managed to get over a hundred people watching the livestream alone. Maybe a humble number by internet streamer superstar standards, but when it comes to any fundraiser, especially one angled to fostering a community? It's a great start.

Quinn is glad that those cancellations were able to attend digitally, since mobility is naturally an issue for people like him—and with the internet's instant connectivity, it's something gaming uniquely can provide: "Someone's capacity to involve themselves might be greatly improved by their ability to be within their home comforts and in a setting that they're familiar with, and doing something that is an enjoyment and a hobby for them."

Quinn brings up Stephen Wallace as a great example of someone whose gaming efforts have helped the charity before. Wallace, also known as 06wallst on Twitch, "had a close friend who had the condition, and he's now used the platform of Game On via his platform on Twitch".

Wallace alone has raised over £2,500 for the charity while working with them. "In terms of what an individual can do with Game On to amplify awareness … Yeah, it's a standout for me."

Showing the way

In terms of other things people can do to help, Quinn says the biggest hurdle by far is letting folks know these spaces and communities exist for them. "It really is to signpost it," he says, "and highlight that it's a possibility, that it's there for them … if they don't know it's there, they can't take part in it."

(Image credit: Blizzard)

There's making sure you're listening to each individual person's own access means, Quinn says, but it really does come down to making sure you "invite people, reach out, and extend that olive branch."

As for the future of Game On, while there's not an event lined up just yet, Quin'll be at TwitchCon in Rotterdam later this month with "tote bags, goodies, and there for a chat with anybody who may have a friend with the condition … we'll be around, we'll be live-streaming as much as we can on the MDUK Twitch page." Quinn says they're also planning to launch a podcast around a week before TwitchCon.

"Anyone can get involved," Quinn emphasises. "Anyone who wants to raise money by holding a monopoly night, a chess tournament at a local, if they want to stream on their Twitch page and play World of Tanks or do a run-through of FF7, whatever they want to do, sign up for Game On and we can support you."

As for what Quinn wants out of the endeavour, "All I can do is hope that they get any percentage of the satisfaction that I've had from what games have given me, and the enjoyment that I've had and the life I've created for myself from them … any amount of that other people are able to experience, I think, would be a success." You can sign up for Game On here.

Best MMOs: Most massiveBest strategy games: Number crunchingBest open world games: Unlimited explorationBest survival games: Live craft loveBest horror games: Fight or flight

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Today, Palworld received a new patch. Update v0.5.5 doesn't add any new features, Pals, or environments. It doesn't fix any bugs or offer any optimization improvements. Instead, the accompanying Steam news post from developer Pocketpair only includes one patch note:

Mechanics Adjustment: The mechanics for gliding with a Pal have been changed. Until now, you could use certain Pals as a glider, however from this patch you will only be able to glide by using a glider. Glider Pals will now provide a new passive partner skill effect while gliding, but the player must have a glider equipped to actually glide.

(Image credit: Pocketpair)

Pocketpair offered additional context for the update in a post on X, explaining that the adjustment to Pal gliding was "another compromise" made in response to Nintendo's ongoing lawsuit, which alleges that Pocketpair infringed on a series of patents protecting Pokémon game mechanics.

In its tweet, Pocketpair confirmed that an earlier November 2024 update to Palworld, which made it so Pals were summoned beside the player instead of released from Poké Ball-esque spheres, had been implemented to address the lawsuit allegations.

"As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation. Everyone here at Pocketpair was disappointed that this adjustment had to be made, and we fully understand that many players feel the same frustration," Pocketpair said. "Unfortunately, as the alternative would have led to an even greater deterioration of the gameplay experience for players, it was determined that this change was necessary."

[Regarding the lawsuit, changes to Palworld and the future]We would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation for the continued support of our fans over the past few months. We apologize for not being able to share as much information as we would like, but we trust…May 8, 2025

Likewise, Pocketpair said that today's patch was "necessary in order to prevent further disruptions to the development of Palworld."

Pocketpair doesn't specify what that "greater deterioration of the gameplay experience" might have been, but considering Nintendo's history of pursuing a salted-earth legal strategy, I suspect it was less a matter of maintaining fun gameplay and more about the game's continued existence.

The patents asserted in Nintendo's lawsuit, JP7545191, JP7493117, and JP7528390, grant protections on a series of mechanics related to catching and riding Pokémon as implemented in 2022's Pokémon Legends: Arceus. By updating Palworld to distance its mechanics from those described in Nintendo's asserted patents, Pocketpair is following a prediction made by videogame IP lawyer Kirk Sigmon, who spoke to PC Gamer in September 2024 about the lawsuit's potential outcomes.

(Image credit: Pocketpair)

The lawsuit, Sigmon said, presents risks for both sides. For Nintendo, the risk would be losing those patents entirely. Personally speaking, my criticisms of Palworld are pretty well-documented, and even I think the idea that Nintendo can claim a patent on riding a creature around is both absurd and blatantly noncompetitive. If a judge agreed, they'd have grounds to revoke those protections. But IP lawsuits are notoriously expensive, and every week the lawsuit continues is one in which Pocketpair is bleeding legal fees—and I personally wouldn't want to try to outlast Nintendo's legal budget.

As a result, Sigmon's prediction in September was that neither party would want to prolong the lawsuit. "You get them in a room, you go, 'Look, neither of us want to do this. What do you want done?' It could be something as simple as a licensing agreement," Sigmon said. "You could say, 'We're going to agree to some changes in the game,' and add some conditions. Usually, both parties before they even go into those meetings have a general idea of the sphere of things they're willing to agree to."

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Overwatch 2 has been on a roll when it comes to all the collaborations that it's had over the last couple of years. What started as an uncommon occurrence has quickly escalated into a frequent event, with the latest crossover bringing Street Fighter 6 into the mix.

Earlier today, Overwatch 2 announced that several of its own heroes will be getting Street Fighter 6-themed skins. There's Juno as Chun Li, Zenyatta as Dhalsim, Soldier: 76 as Guile, Winston as Blanka, Hanzo as Ryu, Kiriko as Juri, Widowmaker as Cammy, and Sigma as M.Bison.

Here comes a new challenger! 🕹️💪Dominate the battlefield as your favorite fighters when Overwatch 2 x Street Fighter 6 arrives on May 20 💥 pic.twitter.com/hQDBxLMroZMay 9, 2025

The collab trailer shows off each one of these skins as all the characters involved fight one another, giving hints to how their abilities may be tweaked in-game to match the character. At one point, Hanzo shouts "Hadoken!" while firing off the iconic move. I'm guessing he may call this out when he ults in-game, and his Dragonstrike will also be changed to fit the vibe.

Overwatch 2 collabs have been getting better as time goes on, with more than just new skins introduced. Increasingly detailed sound and particle effects have been added to elevate the crossover. Like the wind rushing by Orisa when she emotes with her Avatar: The Last Airbender Appa skin, or the Firenation theme tune playing when Genji ults with his Zuko skin equipped. My guess is that we'll also get some similarly-cool effects this time around, too.

There have been a couple of weird collabs, too, though. The main one that springs to mind is an odd Porsche collab that happened a year ago. It only involved D.Va and Pharah but the skins still looked rather odd.

While it may be a pretty stacked collab, there are still some players who are upset that their favourite heroes didn't make the cut. Doomfist, Sojourn, and Tracer are names I've seen thrown around that players think would work well with the SF6 roster. While I love to see Juno and Soldier 76 involved, I have to admit that Doomfist would've been a really great fit for this—he already punches people, c'mon. But who am I to complain when we just got a Juno x Chun Li skin? I'm just counting my blessings.

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FromSoftware finally showed off what one of the new Elden Ring: Nightreign Night Bosses is going to look like in the heat of battle, and it looks every bit as chaotic as the frenzied flame and painful as the golden order.

"Behold, the first live gameplay for Libra, Creature of Night," Bandai Namco US says with a video from PAX East. The clip shows three players taking on Libra after what looks like a couple of days; just look at the size of the players' health bars.

BEHOLD! The first live gameplay for Libra: Creature of Night!Catch ELDEN RING #NIGHTREIGN at @PAX East pic.twitter.com/D895VWzcDrMay 8, 2025

Nightreign's runthroughs are purposefully pretty short. At the start, you pick one of eight final bosses to battle, but before you take them on, you need to survive two "days" in Nightreign. This will let you level up your attributes, collect loot, and just practice fighting as a team of three.

You start out on the outskirts of a different version of Limgrave and work your way to the centre, fighting bosses and grunts along the way. Once you get to the centre, or if you get to the centre, I should say, there'll be a random boss waiting to fight you. Only after you defeat them can you go on to the next day.

But Libra isn't a final boss, it's just an end-of-day foe. I say just as if it doesn't look absolutely terrifying and won't be decently hard to take down. Libra combines incantations that are similar to the frenzied flame and the golden order with swift melee attacks. It can conjure an orb that'll shoot beams of light out of it and a glyph that'll emit rapid light projectiles. It also uses large area of effect fire spells that inflict madness.

Elden Ring Ranni quest: Follow the witchElden Ring Blaidd quest: Wolf man watchElden Ring Nepheli quest: Warrior womanElden Ring Fia quest: Cold comfortElden Ring volcano manor quest: Get Mt. Gelmir

You don't really get a good look at it in this video, but if you manage to dodge a melee attack from Libra, then it'll open the boss up to a counterattack, so you'd better practice your rolling. The video just looks tiringly chaotic, flames are raining from the sky, people are yelling, all the players keep nearly getting one shot, and this boss is taking an offensively small amount of damage after each hit. I'm sure Libra is going to be one of my favourites.

These are some of the other bosses that we know will make an appearance in Nightreign:

The Centipede Demon from Dark Souls.The Demi-Human Queen and Demi-Human Swordmaster from Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree.Morgott from Elden Ring.Tricephalos: a three-headed wolf.Draconic Tree Sentinel from Elden Ring.Flying Dragon Agheel from Elden Ring.Wormface from Elden Ring.Fire Monk from Elden Ring.Flaming Chariots from Elden Ring.Golden Hippopotamus from Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.Godskin Apostle and Noble from Elden RingThe Nameless King from Dark Souls 3.

But there should be tons of other bosses either making an appearance at the end of the day or just randomly throughout runthroughs. When I played in the closed network test, I encountered the Godskin Noble as soon as I landed, and Morgott randomly appeared so many times I felt like he had become a part of our crew.

I must admit, though, while the Demi-Human Queen and Demi-Human Swordmaster were irritating enough to fight against with three strangers, Libra looks like it'll start a lot of arguments and probably lead to plenty of rage quits.

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Doom has been around so long—32 years and counting—that you'd be forgiven for thinking that developers id Software must have produced hundreds of entries for the franchise on PC. The shocking truth is there have just been five, if one ignores all the third-party versions, expansion stuff and rejigged editions. And it's been five years since the last one, Doom Eternal, graced our gaming rigs. Well, it's back again and Doom: The Dark Ages is the first Doom game to be fully ray traced, all the time.

If that's got you worried about performance or the necessity for blurry upscalers and wonky frame generation, then let me allay those fears now—Doom: The Dark Ages runs pretty well across a decent range of PC configurations, though the entry requirements are a little on the steep side.First of all, you need a GPU with dedicated ray tracing hardware. For AMD users, that means an RX 6000-series graphics card or newer. In the case of Intel, both generations of the Arc range will do, and for Nvidia fans, any RTX card will cut the mustard. Well, not quite any card because Doom: The Dark Ages also requires 8 GB of VRAM as a minimum.Actually, it doesn't and I'll prove this shortly. What you do need, though, is a decent platform around your graphics card. While Doom: The Dark Ages isn't super heavy on your CPU, it does need to be reasonably new and, ideally, one with 12 threads or more. But enough chitter-chatter, let's go and see how well the new Doom actually runs.

Test PC specs

Acer Nitro V 15 (Gaming mode), Ryzen 7 7735HS, RTX 4050 Laptop (75 W), 16 GB DDR5-4800Core i7 9700K (65 W), 16 GB DDR4-3200, GeForce RTX 2060Ryzen 5 5600X (65 W), 16 GB DDR4-3200, GeForce RTX 3060 TiRyzen 7 5700X3D (105 W), 32 GB DDR4-3200, Radeon RX 6750 XTCore i5 13600K (125 W), 32 GB DDR5-6400, Radeon RX 7900 XTCore Ultra 7 265K (250 W, 200S Boost), 48 GB DDR5-8000, GeForce RTX 5070CyberPowerPC/MSI, Ryzen 7 9800X3D (120 W), 32 GB DDR5-6400, GeForce RTX 5090

Monitors: Acer Nitro XV282K KV / MSI MPG 321URXOperating System: Windows 11 24H2****Drivers: Adrenalin 25.19.09.01 / GeForce Game Ready 573.16 (both pre-release)

To get a measure of how Doom: The Dark Ages runs across a range of gaming PCs, I used Bethesda's PC system requirements to choose what systems to test it on. With ray tracing permanently used and no shader-based replacement to fall back on, that meant waving goodbye to my faithful old Radeon RX 5700 XT as the base GPU.

The lowest spec ray-tracing capable GPU I could use was a GeForce RTX 2060. This, along with the Core i7 9700K platform it was housed in, is below the minimum system requirements but they're only guidelines, not hard and fast rules! The same is true for the RTX 4050 laptop, as both it and the older Turing GPU only have 6 GB of VRAM. However, I wanted to compare the two graphics chips to see if Nvidia's advances in ray tracing overrode the differences in CPU and VRAM amounts.

I used the starting phase of the second chapter, up to the first locked door in the level, as my test area of choice. There are other sections of the game where the performance is lower than what you'll see below, but equally, there are plenty of sections where Doom: The Dark Ages runs faster. Overall, the area I've used is a reasonable representation of the whole game, though I've not checked out every section yet.

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

One important thing to note with the new Doom is that the engine doesn't skip frames when running slowly. Essentially, the game's internal clock is somewhat tied to the frame rate, and when the latter is below 30 fps, the game becomes increasingly treacle-like, like everything is running in slow motion.

It seems like the engine is capped at 60 fps, because any frame rate around this level feels sharp and snappy. Oddly, going much higher than this doesn't feel any better—in fact, between 90 and 120 fps, Doom: The Dark Ages feels a tad disjointed. It's not lagging or stuttering in any way, and no performance metric agrees with the feeling, but at 120 fps, it doesn't feel as silky smooth as you'd expect.

Doom: The Dark Ages has six graphics presets—Low, Medium, High, Ultra, Nightmare, and Ultra Nightmare. However, the last two in the review code were essentially inactive, as they'll be properly used when id Software releases a path tracing patch later.

For testing, I used two pre-release drivers from AMD and Nvidia, as Bethesda recommended that these would ensure the game would run as glitch-free as possible. I didn't experience any crashes, but the Adrenalin drivers refused to work with MSI Afterburner (so I resorted to using Intel's PresentMon for some of the upscaling performance videos), and both sets occasionally threw up the odd rendering hiccup.

Low quality preset

As with all my performance analysis pieces, I started with the Low preset and left the rest of the graphics options on their default settings. This includes TAA for anti-aliasing and a texture pool size of 2048 MB (more about this setting later). Before we dive into the performance results, just watch the above video of a test run with the Low preset and then skip ahead and view that for the Ultra preset.

Can you see any difference? There are some, but you have to really look for them, and in some ways, it's really great that id Software has made Doom: The Dark Ages look as good as it does on the lowest of settings. On the other hand, it makes me wonder what the point of the other presets is—what use is there in having all those individual graphics options, when they barely seem to change anything?

That oddity aside, the new Doom runs pretty well across the board at 1080p Low. I know that's to be expected, but with ray tracing used everywhere, there was always a chance that it wouldn't be great, even though Indiana Jones and the Great Circle runs pretty well, and that's always ray traced, too (and powered by id Tech 7).

However, things take an interesting turn once the resolution increases to 1440p and 4K. The RTX 4050 laptop copes fine at 1080p, but adding more pixels just tanks the performance. Now that is to be expected, as every pixel will just generate more rays to be processed and the RTX 4050 isn't designed to handle more 1080p.

Now, you might think that another issue is the laptop's 6 GB of VRAM. Doom: The Dark Ages has a dedicated setting for the texture pool, and it defaults to 2048 MB—that means 2 GB of VRAM are being used for streaming textures, leaving just 4 GB for everything else. Doesn't sound like it's enough, right?

As you can see above, changing the texture pool size doesn't make much difference. So, even though Bethesda recommends 8 GB of VRAM as being the absolute minimum to run the game, as long as you keep to 1080p and you're using a recent generation of GPU, 6 GB isn't as big a barrier as you might think.

The RTX 4050 might be able to run Doom: The Dark Ages faster if it had more VRAM but I don't think anyone's really going to complain about getting over 60 fps, when the Low preset looks fine.

Medium quality preset

Switching to the Medium preset improves the quality and accuracy of ray-traced reflections, but that's about it for immediately noticeable graphics gains. There are other improvements, such as better lighting and shadows, but nothing to make you go 'Wow, this is so much better!' At least the performance hit is very small, going from Low to Medium.

It's so small, in fact, that you might as well just use Medium as the 'Low' preset—you get pretty much the same frame rate as you get with the actual Low preset, but with nicer reflections. That's as long as you stick to 1080p or 1440p, as 4K really grinds down the frame rate.

The RTX 5090 test rig loses just over half its performance when going from 1080p to 4K, with the Medium preset, but while that may sound like a bit hit, don't forget that 4K has four times more pixels than 1080p. That's a healthy amount of extra rays to trace and shade, so the performance drop is understandable.

One interesting problem occurred with the RTX 2060 test rig, with the Medium preset (and it repeated for High and Ultra). Basically, the game refused to register shield hits for ticking off a quest marker—all of the animations, kill sequences, etc would run as normal (well, as normal as you'd expect for 26 fps) but they'd just not be recognised as having taken place.

The solution was to use upscaling, and we'll look at what that does for performance shortly.

High quality preset

I expected there to be some bigger changes in the graphics quality, going from Medium to High, but as you can see in the above video, there's little to separate the two. Just as with the previous preset, the drop in frame rate is small—enough that one might be tempted to consider High as basically the 'Medium' preset.

But hang on, isn't Medium the new 'Low'? Surely that would make High the same as Low! I'm exaggerating, of course, as the RTX 3060 Ti test rig runs 20% slower, on average, at 1080p and 22% slower at 1440p (when comparing the High preset to the Low one). That's hardly an insignificant decrease, but the Ampere-powered GPU is still managing to pull over 50 frames per second.

Just as with the other presets, 4K Dooming is the preserve of the RTX 5090, though the RX 7900 XT isn't that far off 60 fps with the Low preset—that's pretty impressive considering that this native rendering and AMD's GPUs have never had the greatest of reputations when it comes to ray tracing.

At the very least, the closeness of the presets—in terms of graphics and performance—means that there's no need to worry about 'best settings' and other tweaks. Just fire Doom: The Dark Ages up at Medium or High, and then adjust the resolution (either natively or via upscaling) to get the performance you want.

Ultra quality preset

At the time of testing, the Ultra preset is the highest graphics option, and it should come as no surprise that Ultra doesn't look a whole lot better than the High preset (or Medium, for that matter), given what we've seen so far.

The options are changing something, otherwise, there would be no performance difference whatsoever between the presets, and it's entirely possible that the changes are far more noticeable in other regions of the game. However, I'm still conflicted over how I feel about it all. Let's take a look at the ray-traced reflections change with each preset, because it's too hard to pick this out from the videos.

Image 1 of 4

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 2 of 4

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 3 of 4

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 4 of 4

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Note that with the Low preset, you don't get much in the way of the environment appearing in the reflections, just the lighting. But if you scroll across to the Medium preset and then follow through to the Ultra preset, you'll see that you get everything with all four options above Low.

Of course, if one stops stomping around and peers closer at the scenery, other differences do start to show up. For example, the Low preset disables self-shadowing, whereas the other presets produce increasingly better levels of shadows and lighting.

Image 1 of 4

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 2 of 4

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 3 of 4

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 4 of 4

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Just as with reflections, once you're past the Low preset, the graphical improvements are relatively small, especially if you compare Medium to High, and then High to Ultra. There are almost no changes to the textures used in the above screenshots, either.

On the one hand, it's great that Low settings look pretty decent, and Medium is arguably good enough to be used by everyone. The upshot of this is that it means you don't need a super-expensive, high-end graphics card to enjoy a visual treat in Doom: The Dark Ages.

But on the other hand, it's disappointing that Ultra doesn't really stand out from the crowd, compared to High or Medium. Perhaps when we get to see path tracing in action, it will be a different story, as id Software might also include higher texture resolutions.

I explored how the size of the texture pool affected the performance of the RTX 3060 Ti with the Ultra preset, as this was the only 8 GB card I've used in this analysis. There's a noticeable drop in the 1% low frame rates once it's set to 3 GB or more, even at 1080p, but you might as well just leave it at the default 2048 MB setting because higher values don't really improve the graphics that much.

At its lowest value of 1536 MB, you can definitely see where textures are being pulled in because they're not present in the pool, but with chaotic battles everywhere, you don't really have much time to sit back and worry about it.

Overall, there's no catastrophic drop-off in performance with the Ultra preset, perhaps because of the small graphical improvements over High. Even the RTX 4050 laptop is still surprisingly playable—you're better off using a lower preset, though, to reduce the amount of asset streaming taking place.

At 1080p, all bar the slowest two setups push 60 fps, or more, at 1080p; at 1440p, though, there are just too many rays flying around for the RTX 3060 Ti and RX 6750 XT to cope with. 4K is for the RTX 5090 only, but don't forget that this is still all at native rendering. Enabling upscaling and frame generation paints a very different picture.

Upscaling performance

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Doom: The Dark Ages supports AMD's FSR, Intel's XeSS, and Nvidia's DLSS upscaling systems, but it's fair to say that the latter's implementation is far superior to the others. That's not id Software's fault, though, as currently FSR 4 doesn't support Vulkan (the graphics API used in this game).

However, FSR 3.1 does support Vulkan, and as far as I can tell, that's not being used. Or if it is, then it's disappointing that id Software hasn't decoupled the upscaler and frame generation mechanisms. Yes, that's right—if you have a GeForce RTX 20 or 30 series graphics card, you've got no way to use frame generation.

This might all change in future patches, and I hope it does, because Doom: The Dark Ages is one of the few games where frame generation is not only useful, but its inherent input lag is barely noticeable. That said, there is one case where you don't want to enable frame generation.

DLSS Quality upscalingRyzen 7 7735HS, GeForce RTX 4050, 1080p, Medium preset

No, those results aren't a mistake—I tested and checked them multiple times, and used different programs to record the frame rates. They all agreed with the fact that the use of DLSS frame generation on the RTX 4050 actually makes things considerably worse.

I know what you're thinking and it's that with frame generation enabled, the RTX 4050 just doesn't have enough VRAM. However, having recorded the memory usage via PIX on Windows, DLSS Balanced with Frame Generation actually uses slightly less VRAM than native rendering does, at 1080p Medium preset.

What could be happening is that PIX isn't reporting VRAM usage correctly, or at the very least, it's not showing the full picture as to how much asset streaming is taking place. But whatever the explanation is, you don't need to use frame generation, as the little laptop GPU pulls some impressive frame rates once DLSS upscaling is used. Given that the CUDA, Tensor, and RT cores in the 4050 are exactly the same as those in, say, a 4090 (just a lot fewer of them), it makes sense that it should do well once you give fewer pixels to ray trace.

DLSS Quality upscalingRyzen 5 5600X, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 1080p, Ultra preset

Since the FSR implementation doesn't offer upscaling and frame generation separately, the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 2060 only get to use DLSS upscaling. But just as with the RTX 4050, the loss of frame generation isn't... well... a loss, and the Ampere GPU easily copes with Doom: The Dark Ages on the Ultra preset.

That's at 1080p, of course, and increasing the resolution to 1440p puts a much bigger strain on the graphics chip. DLSS can make it playable, bringing the frame rate up to the 60 fps mark, but you won't see much over the 75 fps region, even with DLSS Performance.

The old RTX 2060 can't get anywhere near 60 fps, but that's partly down to the Core i7 9700K it was paired with. It doesn't seem to be down to a lack of threads (it's an 8-core, 8-thread CPU) but more a case of the whole system not having enough performance to ensure the 2060 is never left waiting for data or instructions.

Even so, with DLSS Balanced, you get a reasonable 44 fps on average, without too much fuzziness to the graphics. That might not seem very playable, but it's actually okay—it is a touch laggy when the game's world is packed with enemies, mind.

FSR Performance upscaling + 2X frame generationCore i5 13600K, Radeon RX 7900 XT, 4K, Ultra preset

Despite my criticism of id Software not separating FSR's upscaler and frame generator, I have to say that the actual quality of AMD's algorithms is really very good in Doom: The Dark Ages. Not quite on a par with DLSS, but during actual gameplay, you're never going to notice.

With FSR Performance and frame generation enabled, the Radeon RX 7900 XT pulls off some very impressive frame rates. It's in that slightly odd zone of being a little too fast, leading to that disconnect between smooth rendering but somewhat stilted feedback, but using FSR Quality instead easily gets around that.

The star of the show has to be the RX 6750 XT. AMD's RNDA 2 architecture isn't the best at ray tracing, though you wouldn't think that here. Using FSR Balanced with frame generation results in a near-perfect blend of fast rendering and snappy inputs.

DLSS Quality upscaling + 3X frame generationRyzen 7 9800X3D, GeForce RTX 5090, 4K, Ultra preset

As good as the little RX 6750 XT is with FSR, I think it's fair to say that Doom: The Dark Ages is the poster child for Nvidia's DLSS 4. Ray reconstruction wasn't available in the preview code (it'll appear in a later patch), but everything else is present, and the combination of DLSS upscaling, multi frame generation, and Reflex produces some truly ludicrous frame rates.

Whether one wishes to go down the road and argue that they're not real frame rates is another matter entirely, but even if you don't bother with frame generation, upscaling is well worth using. There's no perceivable loss in visual fidelity, even at 1440p DLSS Performance, although 4x frame generation does produce a little too much blurring on fast-moving objects.

The RTX 5090 is as good as you'd expect in Doom: The Dark Ages. Getting 90 fps on average at 4K Ultra without upscaling is something to behold, though how that will change once path tracing makes an appearance is anyone's guess.

Final thoughts

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

When it was announced that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would be using ray-tracing all the time, I realised that the next iteration of the id Tech and Doom would almost certainly be doing the same thing, and that's exactly what we've got. It's certainly not the first game to be doing this, but it's arguably the first to run RT pretty quickly on GPUs that have traditionally struggled with ray tracing.

There again, when you look at the graphics in Doom: The Dark Ages more diligently, it's not as visually impressive as Alan Wake 2 or Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. But these are slower-paced games than Doom, and one isn't really going to be spending time admiring the grim world around you when there are hordes of demons to wade through.

The 2016 reboot of Doom set the bar for excellent graphics and excellent performance, and while Doom: The Dark Ages is arguably not on the same level as that classic, it still looks pretty good and runs well for a fully ray-traced game. That said, the denoising isn't perfect, some of the textures are quite low in resolution, and the motion blur is rather overdone.

But while the gameplay choices might not be to everyone's taste (for me, the music is actually the biggest letdown), but the coding wizards at id Software have certainly produced a solid entry in the three-decade Doom franchise. If a cheap gaming laptop can pull 60 fps, then there's hope for us all.

And there aren't many game series you can say that about.

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The business relationship between audio brand Sennheiser and audio care conglomerate Sonova is a little confusing, but basically what you need to know is that Sonova finalised their purchase of Sennheiser's consumer division for €200 million back in March 2022. Sennheiser still makes their own studio kit for professionals, but amateur audiophiles are served by Sonova draped in Sennheiser's brand banner. To put it another way, when you pick up some Sennheiser branded headphones—like the HD 550 that Jacob just reviewed—they're actually made by Sonova.

What's far easier to understand is that Sennheiser and Sonova are being fined to a total of nearly €6 million for price fixing. The Bundeskartellamt—that's the federal cartel office in Germany—found that Sennheiser had been engaging in price fixing since at least 2015. What's more, Sonova continued the practice after its purchase of the brand, right up until the antitrust investigation began in September 2022.

According to the Bundeskartellamt's findings, this price fixing was a concerted, vertical effort between Sennheiser itself and merchants selling products to end-users, though interestingly the council isn't fining any of the involved retailers.

Sennheiser closely monitored consumer prices using both price comparison websites as well as more specialised software. If the company found consumer pricing was significantly below their MSRP, it would reach out to affected retailers directly. Following this intervention from Sennheiser, retailers would then frequently raise their price and the end consumer would ultimately pay for it.

The Bundeskartellamt describes a "code language" being used for internal conversations about price maintenance measures at Sennheiser, though that's far from the wildest detail. According to Bundeskartellamt president Andreas Mundt, "Sennheiser employees even underwent antitrust training but used that knowledge to cover up their price-fixing practices." He adds, "This illustrates that companies must not only adopt compliance measures but also put them into practice.”

The result is a fine in the millions that apparently takes into account the fact Sennheiser and Sonova co-operated fully with the Bundeskartellamt's investigation. Besides the audio giants at the centre of this case, three Sennheiser employees specifically are also being fined and, boy, would I hate to be any one of those guys.

Mundt also said, "When it comes to illegal cartels, what first comes to mind are agreements at the same market level, for example between manufacturers or between retailers. However, price competition is also significantly hindered to the detriment of consumers if manufacturers and their retailers conclude agreements on fixed retail prices. Over a long period of time, Sennheiser hampered the free pricing of premium headphones."

Perhaps €6 million is just a drop in the ocean for Sonova, but perhaps it's not naive to hope this federal fine sends a message. If nothing else, maybe my next headphone purchase will be slightly less dear—or maybe I shouldn't dare hope for premium audio at a slightly less than premium price. Ah well, back to the best audiophile headset guide for me, then.

Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend... Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audio

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Six years after the release of the most excellent sci-fi camping game Outer Wilds, developer Mobius Digital is working on something new, a fact it let slip in a recently-released update—which is also the final "major update" planned for the game.0.

It's unusual, you see, because typically when a studio begins work on a new game, and especially when it's following up on a big critical and commercial hit, there's noise about it: Game sites get a press release, an announcement goes out on social media, the dev team drops a teaser of some sort, all that sort of thing.

In this case, though, there was none of that. Instead, there was an off-the-cuff comment in the Outer Wilds' patch 16 changelog.

"This is a minor patch mainly for adding a couple folks to the credits and fixing two PC-only bugs: clicking out of the game disabling certain inputs (such as the key for the ship’s lock on), which affected streamers in particular, and diagonal movement being faster than normal with mouse and keyboard," the studio wrote, explaining that the patch would launch on Steam first and follow for other platforms later in May."Why stagger the releases like this? It’s to increase the chance that, if any bad bugs on Steam slipped through testing, they’ll get caught and fixed before the release of the other platforms. This is no shade to our QA testers, we’re just trying to be extra risk averse and conservative with the resources we put toward Outer Wilds since our new game is our priority!"

Lest there be any confusion, the studio repeated the statement at the end of the patch notes: "There are no more major updates planned for Outer Wilds or Echoes of the Eye because we are hard at work on our next game."

Now personally, I could not swear to you that this is the very first time a new game from Mobius Digital has ever been announced, but I believe it is. RPS says it is, for one thing (that's who tipped me off), and there also appears to be genuine surprise about the development on social media.

That's also where Mobius Digital warned that, even though the word is now out, people shouldn't expect to hear anything more about the new game anytime soon.

"It's gonna be a while, on the order of years, before we have any details to share about it," the studio wrote on X in response to one inquiry about the new project. "Good things take time."

[

(Image credit: Mobius Digital (Twitter))](https://x.com/Mobius_Games/status/1920541438284025873)

The full patch notes for the latest Outer Wilds update, since that's what brought us here in the first place, are below.

Gameplay

The Scout no longer clips through a planet and into space after being tossed into a certain black holeLeaving the Scout in certain volumes on an astral body no longer deorbits that astral bodyThe player can no longer hold two items at once in a very specific situation in Echoes of the EyeGabbro's technique can now be used to make the credits roll in more situationsFixed a peephole-related softlock in Echoes of the EyeUsing Gabbro's technique just before your light source goes out no longer puts the player into an incorrect state in Echoes of the EyeFix for raft lights remaining interactable after vanishing in Echoes of the EyeCertain stones can no longer be dropped on certain rocks (prevents them from floating after a sudden change in scenery)Fix for the Attlerock locator playing audio when only two of the three rings are alignedCertain items are now returned to their shelves when the player exits certain dark areas in Echoes of the EyeThe Scout now correctly sticks to the ship's cockpit if the player flies into it while seated at the flight consoleCertain Nomai computers now deactivate when a charged platform is usedVarious fixes to collisions

Art & Visuals

Slightly improved the resolution of the glow effect on a certain probeRemoved a small blue square that could be seen floating in space in certain circumstancesDark Bramble fog lights are now visible while walking around the ship's cabinFixed missing peephole eyelid animations in Echoes of the EyeUpdated some images on a certain satellite Various fixes to missing or low resolution textures

UI

Fix for the Scout HUD marker appearing when it shouldn't be visible in specific situationsFix for the UI of the Signalscope not appearing in some circumstancesFix for some button prompts covering up the pause menuFix for the Lock-on UI not disappearing when a targeted meteor gets destroyedVarious UI fixes

Text & Localization

Fix to the Signalscope's "Unidentified Signal Nearby" prompt having a confusing meaning in ChineseThe projection stone used at Brittle Hollow's north pole now displays correctly colored textA couple minor credits updatesVarious text and localization fixes

PC Only

Diagonal movement is no longer faster when playing with mouse and keyboardClicking out of the game (or otherwise changing window focus) no longer disables certain inputs, such as the ship's lock-on function

That’s the End of This Update

As mentioned before, there are no more major updates planned for Outer Wilds or Echoes of the Eye because we are hard at work on our next game. There may be smaller updates like this from time to time, but no guarantees. Nevertheless, always feel free to report issues or reach out for help on our support page.

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There's a very strange thing that happens when an industry starts to become incredibly relevant to national security: There's talk of spy movie-sounding tech like tracking and remote disablement. And no, I'm not talking about PC gaming—this is, of course, about Nvidia's AI chips and the potential that they could end up in China's hands.

According to Reuters, such remote tracking and disablement might actually be on the cards, if a bill planned by Democrat Representative Bill Foster comes into effect. The bill would have AI chips like Nvidia's be made in such a way that the country could keep a rough track of where they end up, and potentially even prevent them from booting if they're tracked to a restricted country.

Foster tells Reuters that the technology for such tracking (even if not the disablement) already exists and much of it is already built into Nvidia chips. Apparently, "independent technical experts" that Reuters interviewed agree. There's supposedly already some bipartisan support for this bill, too.

It must, of course, be China that the legislators primarily have in mind with this bill. The race for AI supremacy between the US and China has had the former country's administrations over the past few years attempting to curb powerful AI chips entering the eastern superpower's hands. That's primarily taken the form of export controls.

The US set restrictions for exports to China back in 2022. It then planned to split the world into three tiers: those that can have US chips, those that can have some, and those that can't have any. This was on track to come into effect this month, but President Trump is reportedly considering a different approach which would have each individual country require a license for US chips.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Despite Nvidia's pleas for the country to "accelerate the diffusion of American AI technology around the world," it seems unlikely the US will ease up on restrictions. This, of course, will eat into the company's profits; it's already said that, as a result of chip licensing restrictions, "first quarter results are expected to include up to approximately $5.5 billion of charges associated with H20 products for inventory, purchase commitments, and related reserves."

Despite Nvidia's denial of 'tall tales' of China's extravagant smuggling operations, there does seem to be reason for the US to worry. We've already seen that restricted chips have ended up in China's hands, a fact that might, for instance, already cost TSMC over $1 billion after one of its chips was found in a Huawei processor. And when Nvidia is saying that "China is right behind us" in the AI race, it's no wonder US lawmakers are concerned.

Whether to restrict exports is a policy issue, however. What's in question here is implementation: How can the US ensure export restrictions are adhered to?

Peak Storage

(Image credit: Future)

Best SSD for gaming: The best speedy storage today.Best NVMe SSD: Compact M.2 drives.Best external hard drives: Huge capacities for less.Best external SSDs: Plug-in storage upgrades.

The latest planned bill would propose tracking as a solution to this problem, which would apparently mean having the chips communicate with a server that measures how long it takes for the signal to travel back to it. This would then give the US a rough idea of where the chip is, ie, which country it's in.

Remote disablement would, of course, be a different story. It's hard to imagine how such a thing could work in practice in a way that couldn't be circumvented. But I'm also sure the state's technological capabilities when it comes to national security are far beyond what we would normally assume, so perhaps it wouldn't be impossible.

While part of me is sceptical that any measures such as this, even if implemented well, could make it impossible for China to get its hands on working chips, I suppose the US would just have to make it difficult enough that the country stops bothering trying to do so. Which might work out the best all-round, considering China seems to want to move away from reliance on US tech anyway.

Nvidia might be the only loser in the arrangement. But somehow I think the chip behemoth—currently the third biggest company in the world after Apple and Microsoft—will be just fine. Jensen Huang won't have to give up his shiny jackets any time soon.

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It's something we've seen happen so many times previously it's now an expected part of gaming: the launch of a highly-anticipated multiplayer game and the immediate failure of that game's servers to handle the massive influx of players on day one.

Survival MMO Dune: Awakening has a weekend beta beginning tomorrow and a full launch planned for June 10. Will it suffer the same server issues as so many other games before it? Developer Funcom wants to preemptively settle your nerves.

"We’ve seen several comments expressing concerns about server load and queues," Funcom said in a post on Steam. "We certainly expect heavy loads at launch, and that is why we are preparing accordingly."

Noting that full servers are "impossible to completely avoid," the developer said "there will be thousands of servers grouped together in hundreds of Worlds available at launch," spread out across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, adding that it'll be able to "spin up more" servers if necessary.

"This is not our first rodeo, we’ve launched several MMOs and survival games over the past 25 years, and we have a robust set of tools and processes in place, managed by an experienced live operations team," Funcom said.

I love the confidence, but I feel like I've heard other developers and publishers claim they have systems in place that can handle things if more players show up than expected. And to my memory, no matter how good the plan is for day one, things can and usually do go awry.

In fact, day one server woes seem to be getting more common instead of less over time. We even deemed 2024 "the year of server issues" because it happened again and again: the launch of a big game followed by players gnashing their teeth because they couldn't get online. We saw it with games like Helldivers 2, Last Epoch, Palworld, Nightingale, and Microsoft Flight Simulator: they all quickly faltered under the strain of a massive influx of players and had to scramble to get the problems fixed.

That can take time. It was a couple of weeks before Helldivers 2 sorted itself out. Microsoft Flight Simulator was completely unplayable for nearly everyone for its entire launch day. Last Epoch had been playable in early access for years and was still caught off guard when one of its services unexpectedly failed during its 1.0 launch.

Even with a plan in place, Funcom is already warning players of potential issues, particularly one that every player dreads: "you will join a server queue when logging in" if a player concurrency cap is reached, Funcom said.

Funcom also suggests maybe that isn't a bad thing? "Commonly, survival games don’t offer this, and you are left having to wait and hope you are able to click fast enough when a slot opens up," Funcom said. "By adding a server queue functionality, you can simply click once and rest easy knowing that you will get in when a slot becomes available to you."

We'll see how the beta goes this weekend: Funcom has released "tens of thousands" of beta keys which sounds like a healthy amount for a real stress test. But even that probably won't come close to the full launch in June, which could attract potentially hundreds of thousands of players. Even if it's not your first rodeo, you can still get thrown off your horse.

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Despite a brief blip of hope that a way forward may be found, the ambitious Counter-Strike mod Classic Offensive has been officially cancelled.

"After eight years of development, and despite being officially Greenlit by Valve in 2017, we are devastated to announce the cancellation of Classic Offensive," the development team wrote in a message posted to Reddit. "This decision follows abrupt actions by Valve that prevent us from releasing or continuing development on the project."

Initial work on Classic Offensive, an effort to recreate the classic Counter-Strike 1.6 experience in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, began way back in 2015: We first reported on it in 2016, and it got the official go-ahead from Valve in 2017 in the old Steam Greenlight program.

All seemed well until January 2025, when the team announced that Valve had "retired" the mod—removed it from Steam, basically—without warning or explanation. Developers said at the time that the takedown felt worse than a conventional cease-and-desist order because they'd been allowed to work on the mod right up until it was ready for release, with no indication of trouble, and even after the mod was taken down they weren't told why.

Following that, the Classic Offensive team decided to release the mod via ModDB instead, which is apparently what prompted Valve to reach out in March 2025. The simple fact that the two sides were talking seemed like a good sign, but it went nowhere: Valve informed the team that "releasing Classic Offensive would be distributing 'derivative content' based on [Valve's] intellectual property, which is not permitted under the Steam Subscriber Agreement."

The mod team is clearly (and understandably) not happy about how this has all worked out, saying Valve's position on Classic Offensive represents a sharp turn away from "three decades of modding tradition that shaped many of their successful games"—not to mention the fact that Classic Offensive was at one point officially approved by Valve.

"This situation has implications far beyond our project, raising serious concerns for the future of modding within Valve's ecosystem," the team wrote.

"Modders should reconsider how they see Valve: A company that benefits from community creativity while being able to shut down years of work without warning, despite going through their defined process which they can drastically change at any time."

(Image credit: Classic Offensive)

That's harsh and perhaps a little overstated, but fair play to the Classic Offensive team, I think a little bitterness is warranted here. Not that anything shady or underhanded has happened, and Valve is well within its rights to protect its property as it sees fit, but eight years is a long haul and to have it shut down mere hours before release has to be a heartbreaker.

One rather persistent rumour for what's happened is that Classic Offensive was using Valve's own leaked code, which would at least make Valve's stance a little more understandable. But the team vehemently denies this in the project's FAQ:

"No, Classic Offensive does not use any leaked code and never has," reads the FAQ. "We have built it on top of the latest CS:GO release through file editing and scripting, similarly to Portal 2 mods without a license. This seems to be a recurring rumor spread by either misinformed or purely malicious individuals that are trying to discredit our work."

The dev team has now launched a website as classic-offensive.net, which includes the FAQ noted above as well as a timeline of events, contributor credits, and media from the mod. "We are immensely grateful for the incredible support, enthusiasm, and patience shown by the community throughout Classic Offensive's support," the team wrote. "Thank you for believing in our project."

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