I don’t watch TV. Not in a smart guy way, more of a “I have 200 hours of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous logged on Steam” kind of way. Still, despite such a cultural diet, even I know about Love is Blind, the Netflix show where emotionally unwell people agree to get married before they’ve even met. It turns out love may be blind because it’s afflicted with scarlet rot.

As reported by Huffpost, on a recent episode contestant Zack Goytowski decided to run some curious baby names by his shotgun bride, Irina Solomonova: “What about Godfrey,” he proffered, with Solomonova simply responding, “Ew.” While she was nonplussed at the name of the First Elden Lord, maybe Goytowski would have had better luck with “Hoarah,” as in, “Hoarah Loux, Warrior, Chieftain of the Badlands and Alter Ego to Godfrey.”

Undeterred, Goytowski then hits her with “Godrick,” referring to the first Great Rune holder most players are likely to encounter, a mythic coward who rides around in a me…

New co-op survival game Enshrouded has been picking up Steam in the past few days, as the survival-crafting action RPG has not just pretty compelling combat but a really nice, rather in-depth building system. Per our predictions last year, Enshrouded’s impressive system of terrain alteration and building is giving rise to some truly delightful community creations. I’ve rounded up some of the best I’ve seen in the handful of days since release.

Hobbit Hole (WIP) from r/Enshrouded

In a hole in the ground there lived a Flameborn. Not a nasty, dirty, we hole, but one that was pretty neat because on the exterior, creator Guntoucher gave it that nice tudor style look, but on the inside it’s hall of hardwood flooring with detailed stonework atop the walls. 

It’s important to have a cozy place to stay in Enshrouded, because as we recently discovered sleep is one of its coolest features.

Mah House…

Life By You looked set to be the game that finally gave The Sims a run for its money, until it was beset by delays and then, in June, a surprise cancellation followed almost immediately by an unsurprising closure of developer Paradox Tectonic. Now, as so often happens in cases like this, previously unreleased images from the game are starting to come to light, giving us a look at what might have been—and it looks like it might have been really good.

The images come from the online portfolios of former Life By You artists Richard Khoo, Eric Maki, and Chris Lewis, and were helpfully put together on Twitter by Sims enthusiast and content creator SimMattically. Many of the images are basic shots of the character creator, but others showcase more visually impressive indoor and outdoor locales.

The sad irony is that many of these shots look better than the official Life For You screens shared by Paradox prior to the game’s cancellation, and that hasn’t gone unnoticed in …

This graph seems so unbelievable it makes the thing a little hard to parse. But basically, cryptocurrency mining in the US sucked down more energy that every computer in the entire country. Every. Single. Computer. 

Yes, even Macs.

Hell, at 50 billion kWh, crypto mining in the US almost used more power than all the televisions. And there are quite a few TVs in the States, in case you’d forgotten.

I’ve seen all the stories about cryptocurrency mining using more power than [insert country here], and those stats are always pretty astounding. But they always relate to the entirety of the global crypto network, or just the bitcoin mining around the world. And it’s quite easy to insulate yourself against such broad terms.

But when it’s just about the output of a single country—albeit the single largest contributor to the bitcoin mining industry—to me it seems to hit home much harder.

This all comes from a White House report on the proposed Di…

Watch On

A first look at Splitgate 2‘s gameplay shows off how the idea of an arena shooter, but with portals, is still just as wild and interesting a concept as when we first saw it. The 4.5 minute gameplay reveal features a few skilled streamers as they pour over Splitgate 2’s combat, what sets it apart from the original Splitgate, and its three new classes—called factions. 

They especially note what’s new about Splitgate 2, particularly the introduction of factions. The original Splitgate had a traditional Halo setup with weapon pickups on the map and periodic power weapons, but Splitgate 2 pivots in a Call of Duty-shaped direction with classes and loadouts. Streamers also noted faster-paced movement, including a new sliding mechanic that punches up firefights. They also emphasize the new variety to matches, with abilities and utility powers like a deployable shield and self-boosting stim.

There are now three factions of Splitgate competitors to choos…

Embers of Neltharion, the first big update to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, has brought a new zone, raid, and dungeons to Blizzard’s long-running MMO, and of course a whole bunch of new and interesting items—one of which requires a very old and uninteresting item to acquire.

As Starym on the Icy Veins forum (via GamesRadar) explains it, there’s a Blazing Shadowflame chest located at coordinates 28.8, 47.5 of the new Zaralek Cavern zone. The problem is that the Shadowflames surrounding the chest cannot be bypassed unless you have an Onyxia Scale Cloak. And the problem with that is that the Onyxia Scale Cloak is an item from Vanilla (read: old) WoW, and not many people have kept one lying around.

That, predictably, led to a surge in demand for relevant crafting materials, and a commensurate spike in prices for said materials. “Thanks to a recently discovered secret requiring an old cloak, farmed ingredients for the cloak which includes scale of Onyxia is now going…

We haven’t heard much about the upcoming Subnautica 2, apart from the devs reassuring fans that it won’t be a live service game, so fans are understandably excited at the discovery of secret new screenshots of the sequel. 

An eagle-eyed Subnautica player spotted what looked like a strange new creature in a time capsule. The picture includes a few new rainbow tadpole-like creatures, which we haven’t seen before. “Hey um, found this on my way to the rocket,” the image’s description says. “Is this thing new? Never seen it before! :O” 

This kicked up quite a fuss as even veteran players couldn’t identify the odd sea creature leading some to believe that this has to be from some kind of mod: “That looks quite similar to that screenshot they shared a few months ago,” one player says. “Could just be mods and a weird perspective tho.”

However, it turns out that this isn’t from any mod, it’s actually a new screenshot from the upcoming Subnautica 2. While a couple …

You know how Steam is famously strict about certifying new updates? No? I’ve just been handed a note, apparently Steam doesn’t give a hoot and the only explanation for Square Enix being so tardy with updates for the PC version of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters (and the mobile versions too) is that they forgot the rest of us exist.

Well, not any more. A light lit up on a board somewhere in Square Enix headquarters that said “maybe it’s time to fix the fonts on PC” and here we are in 2024, finally seeing the first six Final Fantasy games update to version 1.10.

The option to select the original “classic” font rather than the “modern” font is an important upgrade, but so are the assistance features added to the config menu. As the patch notes put it, “They offer options such as applying a x0 to x4 modifier to the amount of EXP, gil or Magic AP obtained or turning enemy encounters off.” Movement speed can also be adjusted on the same menu, which “allows you to switch the …

Continuing a long legacy of co-op games with wacky themes, Unrailed 2: Back on Track returned to today’s PC Gaming Show to share one of its coolest new features: the “terrain conductor” mode that lets you build your own levels. 

When we previously saw Unrailed 2, the team at Indoor Astronaut gave us a look at abilities and different wagons available—and the fact that everyone is an animal, an obvious upgrade over humans—but now we can see just how easy it is to use its level maker mode. Filling the blank canvas with grassy fields, thick groves of trees, and rocky mountain ranges is easy enough that it looks like a sort of voxel-based MS Paint. Being accessible and quick to use is a big plus, regardless of whether you want to create a cool puzzle for your friends or just draw rude pictures out of trees.

One of the examples shown includes a map separated into two halves by mountains, which are in turn bisected by conveyor belts. You can see the play…

The venerable online shooter Tribes made a surprise comeback in late 2023 as Tribes 3: Rivals, and with a launch set to happen later this year developer Prophecy Games has announced the first Rival Rumble tournament, an open-to-all competition that’s set to get underway on January 27.

The tournament could be a big one: Entry is free, there’s no cap on the number of signups, everyone who joins will play, and while there will be separate competitions for North America and the European Union, anyone can jump in, even if they don’t live in those regions. 

Signups will be open until January 25, after which team captains will be “determined based on interest,” according to Prophecy. Captains will then draft their teams—the exact drafting process is still being nailed down but probably won’t be too different from your average fantasy football league, except that captains presumably won’t know anything about who they’re signing up.

That promises to make things i…