PC Gaming

Shader compilation woes are, to my mind at least, one of the scourges of modern gaming. Nothing brings you out of the experience quicker than unwanted hitches and stutters as a game struggles to compile shaders in the background before they’re needed. Microsoft thinks it might have the solution, however, by providing pre-compiled shaders, downloaded…

Nvidia’s H20, an AI and compute chip specifically modified for use in the Chinese market, has reportedly stopped production in the midst of security concerns from Chinese officials. As reported by the Information, and citing “two people with direct knowledge of the communications”, Nvidia has reportedly “told some of its component suppliers to suspend production…

Ah, I almost feel nostalgic. Remember ‘meltgate’, in which 16-pin 12VHPWR connectors were regularly in the headlines for, well, melting under heavy usage or incorrect installation? The problem appeared to be limited to certain Nvidia cards like the RTX 4090, as they were the ones making use of the connector standard at the time, before…

Legends tell of a videogame. A cursed videogame. One which, once it crosses paths with another, puts a year-long ticking timebomb on its victim. And the worst part? They never saw it coming. Sorry, it’s Persona 5, I get at least one Last Surprise joke. There’ve been a pretty wild number of collaborations announced across…

If you are familiar with AI, there’s a good chance flickers of I, Robot, Blade Runner, or even Cyberpunk 2077 flash up in your mind. That’s because the philosophy and ethics of what AI could be are more interesting than the thing that makes AI overviews give you the wrong search results. In a recent…

Google has released a new study [PDF warning], detailing what it claims is the environmental impact of “delivering AI at Google scale”. The study estimates that a median Gemini AI text prompt uses less energy than watching nine seconds of television, and consumes “0.26 milliliters (or about five drops) of water”—but some experts have disagreed…

More details about Critical Role’s next campaign have dropped. We knew it was being run by Dimension 20 mastermind Brennan Lee Mulligan, whereupon I joked that he’d be losing a lot of sleep juggling two massive D&D projects. Folks, I am now seriously concerned for the man, because the pitch for Critical Role Campaign 4,…

Everyone wants to be Ghibli and almost no one can pull it off. Hell, even Studio Ghibli sometimes struggles. So when I set eyes on Opus: Prism Peak—with its lush anime palette, verdant natural settings, and chatty animals—I confess I sucked air through my teeth. Sigono’s previous Opus games are much-beloved, but none of them…

Grow a Garden is home to a huge number of different crops, and berry plants make up a very small part of that list. But, they are a subcategory of seeds you’re bound to want to buy at some point. There are nine different berry plants in total, and the vast majority of them are…

As I passed 480 hours of playtime in Baldur’s Gate 3, messing around with a solo druid run, I realised that maybe it was time to put the best fantasy RPG of all time down. Simply put, I was getting serious déjà vu, and not in a good way. While there are absolutely some things…