Id Software kicks off QuakeCon with a surprise release of Heretic + Hexen, an ‘enhanced’ bundle with cross-platform multiplayer, mod support, and more

One year after surprise-launching Doom + Doom 2, id Software and Nightdive have done it again—this time with the classic fantasy shooters Heretic and Hexen, which have been bundled together and updated with performance improvements, an “enhanced” soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult, local and online multiplayer, built-in mod support, and more. The new Heretic + Hexen…

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Deliberately giving AI ‘a dose of evil’ may make it less evil overall, reads headline on ragged newspaper in the rubble of the robot apocalypse

AI is supposed to be helpful, honest, and most importantly, harmless, but we’ve seen plenty of evidence that its behavior can become horribly inaccurate, flat-out deceptive, and even downright evil. (Yes, that last link is the MechaHitler thing.) If you think I’m being hyperbolic by using the word “evil,” I’m not: a new paper on…

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It looks like Microsoft’s cuts got another one: Avalanche has stopped work on its 1970s smuggling sim Contraband to ‘evaluate the project’s future’

A month after Microsoft laid off 9,000 employees, cancelled multiple game projects, and closed The Initiative, Avalanche Studios says work on its 1970s-themed smuggling sim Contraband—which was being developed in partnership with Xbox—has been halted. “Over the past several years, Avalanche Studios Group and Xbox Game Studios Publishing have collaborated on Contraband,” Avalanche wrote. “Active…

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I’m so tired of being advertised at, man

Listen. I understand the irony of using this headline given the state of this page for anyone on a mobile browser without an ad blocker. That’s the world we have. It wasn’t always like this. It can be hard to remember, but it was once possible to know peace. There were ads, sure. The pop-up…

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Embracer brings original Guitar Hero publisher RedOctane back from the dead for ‘the next evolution in rhythm gaming’

15 years after being shuttered by Activision, original Guitar Hero publisher RedOctane is back, with the slightly changed name of RedOctane Games and now a part of catastrophe conglomerate Embracer Group. The revived studio is being headed up by Simon Ebejer, the production director on numerous Guitar Hero games developed by Neversoft, and also has…

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Acer Predator GM9000 2 TB NVMe SSD review

Acer’s not exactly a name that comes up often in the SSD sphere, is it? If I sat you down right now, brand-new shiny GM9000 PCIe 5.0 SSD in your hands, and asked you exactly who it was that held the lion’s share of the storage market today, I suspect Acer probably wouldn’t make the…

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As tag fighters face a resurgence, Tekken’s director says it won’t be joining in on the fun: ‘There’s just so much more knowledge that’s necessary to enjoy the game’

Anyone hoping for a Tekken Tag Tournament 3 as the genre’s popularity ramps up once more is going to be disappointed, since Bandai Namco has unfortunately shredded any hope of it happening. I never got around to playing Tekken Tag Tournament until I picked up the second one a couple of years ago and had…

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