Persona 3 Reload won’t have the female protagonist or other additions of Persona 3’s Portable and FES editions-

As part of the bountiful season of videogames we now have instead of E3, the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase included the announcement of Persona 3 Reload, a remake of a JRPG that only just arrived on PC with the port of Persona 3 Portable in January of this year. A subsequent IGN interview has revealed the remake won’t include content that was added in either Persona 3 Portable or Persona 3 FES, most significantly the option to play as a woman instead of the default male protagonist.

“So first I’d like to mention that since the basic concept of the Persona 3 remake was to remake the Persona 3, we don’t have the FES and Portable contents included,” Persona 3 Reload’s producer Ryota Niitsuma told IGN. “We wanted to really genuinely work on recreating the Persona 3 experience.”

Persona 3 FES, short for “festival”, was an expansion/director’s cut that added an epilogue called The Answer, which fans of the series tend to consider redundant at best, but it also expanded on t…

Canadian police find drugs, firearms, and the dread blade of the Lich King in raid—which they underwhelmingly describe as ‘a sword’-

A raid by the Norway House RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) turned up “nine firearms that were illegally owned and obtained, over 130 grams of a substance believed to be crack cocaine, machetes, a sword, bear mace, and ammunition”, according to a news release posted to its website yesterday.

The raid was part of an ongoing investigation into illegal firearms and controlled substances, leading to the arrest of “Larson Cromarty, 26, and a 17-year-old male youth”. The RCMP posted a photo alongside the release, but anyone familiar with everyone’s favourite bad boy Arthas Menethil knows “a sword” is selling this bad boy short.

The replica (I hope) is of Frostmourne, the mourneblade of the Lich King of Warcraft fame. Aside from apparently being a popular means of home defence in Canada, Frostmourne has the power to shatter or entrap the souls of its victims, and can raise the dead. It’s one of gaming’s most iconic weapons, taking its place in the hall of fame alongside Kra…

Apple reportedly seeks to lock out its competitors from TSMC’s 2nm process, by booking all of its manufacturing capacity-

Apple has long been cozy with TSMC, the manufacturer of the chips that end up in ever-popular iPhone, iPad and Mac products. When you’ve got as much cash on hand as Apple does, it puts it in a favorable position to negotiate deals with the Taiwan-based chipmaker. Now it is reportedly seeking to lock in 100% of TSMC’s bleeding edge 2nm production capacity, giving it a competitive advantage when products eventually make their way to the market.

According to 9to5mac (via Extreme tech), Apple’s chief operating officer met with TSMC bosses to negotiate terms to secure 2nm capacity. The report cites ‘local sources’, so there needs to be a pinch of salt here, but given Apple’s track record of locking up TSMC’s capacity, this would certainly come as no surprise.

TSMC’s 2nm process is currently scheduled to enter risk production in 2025, with volume production set for the second half of 2025. That means the upcoming iPhone 16 family with A18 chips will stick with 3nm, but it coul…

There is an early power up in Elden Ring- Shadow of the Erdtree that basically turns the game into Sekiro, but the description is so vague I didn’t realize how good it was until 40 hours later-

I found the Deflecting Hard Tear super early in my Shadow of the Erdtree playthrough, went “well, that’s neat,” and promptly forgot about it for a good 40 hours or so. It turns out, though, that this confusingly-described Physick mix-in is an utter game-changer worth basing an entire build around. “Enhances spontaneous guard” basically means “Turn Elden Ring into Sekiro.”

I’ve never been able to nail the Souls series’ picosecond-long, intensely unforgiving parry windows, but like many people I fell in love with the perfect guard system in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Time your block to just when an enemy hits, and you’ll avoid all the damage, filling up your enemy’s stagger bar instead. The timing’s pretty generous, and if you don’t get it exactly right, you’ll still block the enemy attack at the cost of filling up your own stagger bar. It’s a system I was always hoping FromSoft would bring back, and I was delighted to see Capcom crib off From’s notes in the Resident Evil 4 Rema…

A neural network is ‘playing’ Doom by generating frames one by one and it’s pretty trippy, man-

Watch On

“But can it run Doom?” is an adage that has managed to travel through almost every piece of tech on the market. From controlling the game with a toaster to running Doom on a pregnancy test (please wash your hands after), it has almost become a benchmark of geeky creativity. 

A joint effort from researchers at Google Research, Google DeepMind, and Tel Aviv University has managed to get the classic shooter running on nothing but a neural network (via Futurism). This essentially generates a frame, based on a model that is trained on the real game. You can check out a video of it running in real-time right here but there are natural limitations to it. 

For the unaware, a neural network is an AI structure modelled after the human brain that uses machine learning to process commands and prompts. They are notably used in predictive models, due to their ability to grasp concepts more broadly than traditional AI. 

A large part of making them better i…

Today’s Wordle 574 answer and hint for Saturday, January 14-

Win today’s Wordle your way. Refresh your daily game with our guides and general tips, take a look at a helpful clue if you’d prefer a general pointer, or if you simply want to make sure you win, feel free to scroll or click straight to the answer to the January 14 (574) puzzle—it’s entirely up to you.

I love it when a plan comes together, or more accurately, when a little flash of inspiration hits me out of nowhere and turns what feels like a ridiculous idea into a solid green line of Wordle winning.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Saturday, January 14

The answer to today’s Wordle is the name of a grey, furry, and pretty cute Australian marsupial that likes to spend a lot of time in eucalyptus trees munching on their leaves. There are two vowels to find today, with one of them used twice. 

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Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If there’s one thing better than playing Wordle, it’s playin…

Today’s Wordle hint and answer #774- Wednesday, August 2-

All the Wordle help you need is waiting just below, and that’s true whether you’re after some general tips and tricks, a targeted clue for the August 2 (774) game, or today’s answer delivered in a single click. Let’s help you win Wordle the way you want to.

I thought I was lucky when I revealed two greens on my first go, but today’s puzzle turned out to be a close call. No matter what I tried I just couldn’t find any other letters of any colour for too many goes—and when I finally did, it took another guess to unearth the today’s Wordle answer.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, August 2

Today’s answer is a biblically old way of describing a man’s offspring, as well as an alternative way of saying something causes or produces a particular effect. “Violence ____s violence”, for example. There’s only one vowel today.      

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Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

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Wayfinder devs apologize as server woes lead to a poor launch reception-

Colorful fantasy action MMO Wayfinder, the latest from Ruined King and Darksiders studio Airship Syndicate and Warframe publisher Digital Extremes, has hit a very harsh reception from early adopters as sheer volume has caused server troubles and extended wait times for those most interested in the game—this Early Access release costs $20, but the full game scheduled to launch in six months will be free to play.

Airship Syndicate said it’s seeing more players every minute of uptime than played in their beta each day, and that the queue system in place failed immediately. Players are reporting hours-long queues that end with failed connection attempts and a reset, as well as playing for only a few minutes before getting disconnected after waiting in those queues.

Other players complained about missing free items from a premium Founder’s Pack bundle, as well as exploitative pricing on in-game items relative to the size of in-game currency packs. Generally speaking it’…

Power-hungry Baldur’s Gate 3 player stacks Karlach with enlargement magic until she’s a 20ft tall, 5-ton giantess who could kill a dragon by jumping on it-

“Behold the 5-ton Mega-Karlach,” states the deservedly proud lesser_panjandrum on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit as they post up a thrice-enlarged tiefling like they’re showing off a genetically engineered golden retriever. To be fair, replace “genetically” with “magically” and that’s almost what’s happening here.

TIL Enlarge effects can stack. Behold the 5-ton Mega-Karlach from r/BaldursGate3

As far as I can tell, this is an interaction between the Enlarge spell and the Elixir of the Colossus. The Enlarge spell doesn’t stack by itself, but as long as you can get buffs that are technically different—as that Elixir seems to be—well, this happens. Giga-Karlach weighs in at 5,005kg, has a carrying capacity of 440kg (which lesser_panjamdrum notes is around ‘3,500 cups of flour’) and is about 20ft tall, as noted by our friends over at GamesRadar.

Her size category is also “Huge”. As someone who’s played a lot of Dungeons …

We can finally get our hands on Path of Exile 2 when it hits early access this November-

Watch On

It’s been five years since Grinding Gear Games announced Path of Exile 2—five years that I’ve spent wondering feverishly when I’ll get to reenter the endless grind for build-perfect loot. Now, thanks to a reveal at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live earlier today, we finally know when the sequel to the free-to-play Diablo-like will be playable. Path of Exile 2 is entering early access on November 15, 2024.

The trailer accompanying the early access announcement has every aesthetic hallmark you’d hope to see in a Path of Exile follow-up: It’s got fleshy horrors. It’s got ominous religious overtones. It’s got an overzealous figure declaring their intent to “sweep aside this world and build it anew.” It’s all in there.

We also get a look at a lineup of bosses we’ll almost certainly be farming hundreds of times over. A haunting figure wearing a bizarre skull headdress emerges from a pit in an underground tomb. A four-armed, blood-smeared creature brandishes flaming …