Overwatch 2 debuted on Steam last week and was immediately hit with so many negative user reviews that it’s now the lowest-scoring game on the platform.

Right now, Blizzard’s first PC release outside the Battle.net launcher has over 140,000 Steam reviews, which Steam summarizes as “Overwhelmingly Negative”. While there are plenty of users criticizing the FPS for understandable reasons, many of the reviewers are simply there to add memes and ASCII art to the pile.

In a blog post reflecting on the release of its newest season. Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller said, “although being review-bombed isn’t a fun experience, it’s been great to see lots of new players jump into Overwatch 2 for the first time.”

“Many of the reviews on Steam mention the cancellation of the much larger component of PvE that was announced in 2019 as one of their primary reasons for dissatisfaction with the game,” he continued. “I get that. That announcement was about an ambitious project t…

The BBC and Minecraft are teaming up again, announcing a new collaboration between Mojang’s staggeringly popular sandbox and the Beeb’s snappily named BBC Studios Natural History Unit. This time, the partnership is based on Planet Earth 3, the latest in David Attenborough’s long, long line of increasingly elegiac nature documentaries that showcase the beauty and complexity of Earth’s ecosystems and the threats they face from, well, us.

The Planet Earth 3 Minecraft World launches today, and promises landscapes and animals based on the Attenborough series that aired last October in the UK. You’ll be able to, “experience the struggles and triumphs of survival while playing as a series of incredible creatures, including the great white shark, the Arctic wolf, a leopardess, and more.”

Putting aside for one moment how sonically pleasing the word “leopardess” is, you’ll be able to find the new mode in the Minecraft Marketplace for both the game’s Bedrock and Education versions.…

A man was recently caught at China’s Qingmao port attempting to smuggle CPUs into China. Though not the first attempt at smuggling PC parts into China, this latest attempt was a particularly gutsy try, as the smuggler was apprehended with no less than 306 CPUs strapped to his body.

Smuggling PC parts instead of drugs might make it easer to evade the sniffer dogs, but trying to pass a metal detector test would have been a bit more of a challenge. It appears that wasn’t the reason he was busted, though.

China’s People’s Daily (via Tom’s Hardware) reported that the man was apprehended attempting to cross from Macau to mainland China on June 29. Customs officers observing incoming travelers believed the man “was walking in an abnormal posture”. A subsequent search by officers led to the discovery of 306 CPUs wrapped in plastic film and tape across the man’s waist, legs, and back.

The brand of CPUs was not disclosed, but one of the pictures released by Qingmao …

This week the Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Labs announced it is withdrawing from the United States, following a June decision by the Biden administration to ban the sale of Kaspersky software over alleged links to the Kremlin. This was the culmination of a series of restrictions imposed by the US government: In 2017 the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive banning federal agencies from using Kaspersky software, while in 2018 the same rule was applied to the US military.

Further to its recent statement, Kaspersky has now announced something of a farewell gift to its US customers: six months of free security software and updates (thanks, The Register). The way it chose to announce this was via a letter addressed “To our lovely you”, which also features a green teddy bear holding a heart balloon and a “stay safe” sign, with a single tear in its eye.

Is… is Uncle Sam the baddy? The letter thanks US customers for “choosing and …

May 30, 2024 – The Sims 4’s events system has launched today. We’ve updated this story to reflect the official info provided by EA.

Our Sims 4 main menu experience is crowded enough already, but it’s now gotten more packed. Just ahead of its official announcement this week, players managed to dig up proof of the new “events” system that will dole out free rewards for logging in regularly. The first event is called “Happy At Home” and runs for the next 35 days with a total of 8 in-game rewards to unlock.

It sure looks and feels like a battle pass. It’s located on the main menu screen with a horizontal track of rewards that you can claim for logging in a certain number of days during the given event period. Rewards are things like new hair and jewelry for Create-A-Sim, new furniture and objects for Build Mode, and a new Sim trait as well. It looks like you aren’t asked to log in every day, with a set of three rewards possibl…

Warner Bros Games has announced that Simon Pegg, he of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Star Trek, and probably a bunch of newer stuff I haven’t seen, will portray the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the upcoming open-world wizarding game Hogwarts Legacy.

Pegg will give voice to Phineas Nigellus Black in the game, the great-great-grandfather of Sirius Black, portrayed in the films by Gary Oldman. Unlike that popular character, however, or the wise and compassionate Dumbledore who headed up Hogwarts in the novels and movies, Phineas Nigellus Black is pretty much a complete dick—the students don’t like him, and he doesn’t like the students.

“Phineas Nigellus Black is the least popular headmaster in the history of Hogwarts,” Pegg explains in the new trailer. “He is a sort of pompous, disinterested—he’s not a good teacher or headmaster in any way. I think he would’ve taken the role of headmaster because of the gig. You know, it’s a prestig…

Puzzle nerds, rejoice, for veteran picross makers Jupiter Corporation have finally released a picross game on PC. Logiart Grimoire, released this past week, is a cute little narrative-driven picross game about a magic book that somebody messed up by casting the spells wrong, so now you and weird buddy Emil need to untangle it by solving picross puzzles.

The only downside here is that you might have wanted a proper main-line Picross game from Jupiter, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Picross, which Jupiter describes as a “Picture Logic Puzzle,” is a puzzle genre where you use numerical clues to solve a visual puzzle: Numbers tell you how many cells are filled in each row or column, and you use logic to figure out which cells they are. They’re simple, easy-to-understand puzzle rules for some pretty fun puzzlin.

Logiart Grimoire has a pretty fat stack of puzzle types unlocked over the course of the game by combining materials gained from finishing earlier puzzles. It’s …

Spend a little time looking over our Wordle tips, take a quick peek at a clue written especially for the August 23 (795) puzzle, or cut through the word-fog and click your way to today’s Wordle answer. However you want to play, PC Gamer’s got it covered.

Somehow today’s puzzle came and went without much trouble for me. Looking back at my guesses, I can see I made a few unusual choices that just happened to work in my favour—I’ll have to remember to be a little braver the next time I’m struggling.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, August 23

The word you need to find today is another way of describing enthusiasm or positive energy, an exciting or animated reaction or display. ’90s music fans might find it helpful to remember the name of the band behind the song Bitter Sweet Symphony. 

ViewViewViewView

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

 Yes, there are two lots of double letters in today…

The Tekken 8 rumour mill has been popping off ever since dataminers began digging into the game’s files from July’s closed network test. There have been plenty of alleged character leaks, including one that found six unannounced characters tucked away in the files. 

Yet another leak sprung earlier this week when an image alleged to be Tekken 8’s base roster began circulating, and countless arguments around its legitimacy ensued. Well, this weekend’s EVO reveal appears to have proved that it’s very much real.

tekken from r/Tekken

Those who were fortunate enough to be a part of the EVO hype train were treated to two brand-new Tekken 8 character trailers on August 6. We’ve got the return of Raven—the much-loved Wesley Snipes-esque version, not the one we got in Tekken 7—and an entirely new character called Azucena. Both made an appearance in the roster leak, with their roster images being identical to their render…

Star Citizen has just updated its minimum system requirements and they appear rather easy-going: a quad-core CPU of unspecified age, a GPU with 4GB of VRAM, and 16GB of system memory. Many modern systems quite happily conform to that specification, especially with the developers noting a few examples of graphics cards that meet the requirement, including the GTX 1060, RX 460, and Arc A380. 

That’s the absolute bare minimum hardware required to run the game, as per the developers (via KitGuru). Though you probably won’t get far even if you do meet them. Take a look at the Star Citizen subreddit and recent threads would suggest anyone with a similar specification PC may run into some performance issues. In a thread noting the need for updated system requirements, you’ll find multiple mentions of how 32GB of speedy RAM is much more a requirement to enjoy the game with a modicum of performance than anything else.

The Star Citizen developers have addressed that with the …