You’re going to hear a lot of release dates this summer, and should probably just ignore them all


Next month we’re going to be inundated with game announcements. The number of trailers you’re going to watch—don’t pretend you aren’t—will make your eyes bleed. And you’re going to be given a lot of dates to mark in your calendar. But hold on, because release dates are mostly bollocks. 

This is nothing new: since our primitive ancestors first left their caves to visit brick and mortar stores to check out new releases, we’ve had to deal with the disappointment of highly anticipated games getting delayed. But it feels so much more pronounced these days because there are so many games, so much competition, and incalculable amounts of money being poured into marketing campaigns. 

(Image credit: Future)

Every developer and publisher is going to have a different approach to announcing a release date. But when you get to the larger publishers, who are largely beholden to shareholders, there are some common trends. And they have very little to do with when a game might realistically be ready for launch. 



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After 3 years on the Epic Games Store, the Kingdom Hearts series is finally releasing on Steam



I’m still surprised the Kingdom Hearts series exists at all, let alone that it finally hit PC back in 2021. Since then the famously convoluted meeting of Square Enix JRPG with classic Disney icons has been exclusive to the Epic Games Store, but that’s about to change.

According to the description on this yet-to-air Square Enix YouTube video (it’s also embedded below, but it doesn’t premiere until tomorrow) every Kingdom Hearts game belonging to the Dark Seeker Saga will hit Steam on June 13. I’m sorry, but that warrants a list, because there’s a lot of Kingdom Hearts games, and their titles sometimes look like occult equations from antiquity.



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A new native port of Majora’s Mask might change how we play N64 games on our PCs



A developer named Wiseguy has released a native port of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for PC, bypassing the need for an emulator and unlocking new performance and modding possibilities for the Nintendo classic. On top of that, the new method they developed to do so, “static recompilation,” will make it vastly easier for devs to do the same with other N64 games.

We’ve been able to play Nintendo 64 games on PC for a long time⁠—over 25 years, actually, as pointed out in a video by Digital Foundry⁠—but while console emulators can provide a great one size fits all tool for a given library, they’re inefficient, failing to take full advantage of our powerful new systems and occasionally introducing new glitches or errors as well. 



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Ubisoft’s XDefiant system requirements are so low that even a manky old potato will run the game



Ubisoft might be acting all fashionably late to the multiplayer shooter party, but its forthcoming XDefiant looks like it will be accessible to just about every gamer out there, thanks to having some of the lowest PC system requirements I’ve seen in years.

Let’s start with the entry point, the minimum specs Ubisoft suggests will run XDefiant. A CPU with four cores and eight threads will be good enough, as will a 4GB graphics card from eight years ago. Even 8GB of system RAM is fine and yes, it really is 2024—you haven’t drifted back in time while you were sleeping.



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Here’s the dystopian cooking simulator about frying up illegal eggs in Antarctica that you’ve always wanted



Here’s a weird new indie that has my undivided attention: Arctic Eggs, a game where you’re in a miserable future seeking to escape a dystopian prison with nothing but your wits, strong wrists, and a frying pan. You cook for others, you cook to survive, and you cook to explore the low-poly, lo-res, scanlined brutalist heckscape that is this weird frozen penal colony.

Arctic Eggs takes place almost entirely via the action of walking, talking, and frying pan flipping. You ain’t got no spatula to cook from. You got a pan, and moving it with a mouse is how you slide the food so you can roll it perfectly up and off the edge and into the air for a beautiful flip that you just absolutely must catch again because there are no sunny-side up eggs in this dystopian landscape.



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There’s a mod to fix Gale’s beard, making Baldur’s Gate 3 playable at last



Of course, the one essential Baldur’s Gate 3 mod remains the one that removes the party limit, as is true of so many RPGs. But if I was going to download a second mod for my current playthrough, Gale Edits—Piercings and Beard would be a strong contender.

There’s an issue with facial hair in Baldur’s Gate 3 that’s most noticeable on Gale’s handsome mug, and it’s that parts of beards can abruptly shorten or vanish entirely as the face beneath them moves. It’s as if the skin’s movements aren’t fully matching the hair’s movements, leaving parts of it to get consumed and temporarily disappear, resulting in a patchy beard rather than the full glory Gale of Waterdeep’s chin deserves.



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Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, May 19


Not sure how to kick off today’s Wordle guesses? Then why not take a peek at our hint for the May 19 (1065) puzzle, and give yourself a helpful clue to work with? Or click your way straight to today’s Wordle answer if you need to—win the game, your way.

Well, that was more difficult than I normally like my Sunday Wordles. I did eventually find a few key green letters, but not before I was in real danger or running out of rows to test my ideas out on. Thankfully I didn’t, but it did take the final guess and my last nerve to find today’s answer.

Wordle today: A hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, May 19



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With a month to go until Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, FromSoftware has broken its silence once more to show us a messed up new guy we’ll fight in the expansion


Truly, there are few games that could work me into a lather with a single, context-free image of a new enemy, but Elden Ring is certainly one of them. The official Elden Ring Twitter account casually dropped the new nasty boy⁠—who was not featured in the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion’s first trailer⁠—this morning.

“Fearsome foes of unfathomable power await you in the Realm of Shadow,” the tweet reads. Alright, yeah, I think I could have guessed that. The real meat here is in the image: a gold mask-wearing, grey skinned thing with Omen horns, twin round blades (think the Daedric Crescent from Morrowind, I’m not cultured enough to know what the real life counterpart might be), and stark white hair draping down over the mask and through one of its eye holes. The creature appears contorted and bent over, with its head hanging by its feet, like it’s doing yoga or, as PCG contributor Jon Bolding pointed out, maybe looking for a lost contact.

(Image credit: From Software)

The design is chock full of clues and callbacks to the main game, and from the jump my money’s on this guy being a regular enemy or repeated boss. It feels like a lesser version of the stunning Lion Dance creature from SotE’s trailer, the way Grafted Scions correspond to Godrick the Grafted or Cleanrot Knights to Malenia.



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Today’s Wordle answer for Saturday, May 18


We’ve got a hint for today’s Wordle ready to go if you need it, a fine selection of tips if you don’t, as well as the answer to the May 18 (1064) game if you need something more. The point being, however much or little trouble today’s puzzle might be giving you, we can always help you win.

I was so certain I’d found today’s Wordle answer in record time it was honestly a surprise to see the final letter turn grey. The good news was that as everything else was already locked in, it only took a quick sweep of the alphabet to see where I’d gone wrong and correct my mistake. 

Today’s Wordle hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, May 18



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Fallout is coming to Fortnite


War never changes, but Fortnite sure does, and soon it will change yet again: The Fortnite Twitter account teased today that Bethesda’s famed RPG series Fallout is on its way to the game.

The image of the Brotherhood of Steel power armor helmet is unmistakable, while the emojis in the body of the tweet are a little more subtle but still clearly a play on the famous image of a winking, thumbs-up Vault Boy.

(Image credit: Epic Games (Twitter))

There’s no indication as to what sort of Fallout stuff the crossover will include, but there’s plenty to choose from: Power armor is an obvious choice, along with the famous blue and yellow Vault jumpsuits and surely some form of Vault Boy implementation. Post-nuclear map features also seem like a good bet. And maybe some Ink Spots?



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