The opening hours of Monster Hunter Wilds are a shotgun blast of new information for returning hunters. Before I had even a handful of hunts under my belt, Capcom had dazzled me with cool quality-of-life upgrades like Seikrets, base camps, weapon holsters, makeshift camps, and seamless quest creation. “This is so much faster,” I thought. “Capcom really gets what longtime players want!”
But around the eight-hour mark, I started to ask a question I was afraid to know the answer to: These on-map base camps are neat, but does that mean Wilds has no centralized village? That kinda stinks. The benefits of Wilds’ streamlining are easy to spot, but its victims are smaller details that gave the series, and especially World, its personality. Wilds has no one place my hunter calls home—no dedicated headquarters for all things questing, crafting, melding, farming, gathering, and cooking. It’s that last one that stings worst of all.
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Some fish I heated up.(Image credit: Capcom)
Miss you, chef.(Image credit: Capcom)
Stationed dead in the center of the Windward Plains base camp is a cat surrounded by fresh ingredients. I’d assumed since the first open beta that in the full game he’d be this Monster Hunter’s version of the Meowscular Chef, always on deck to aggressively cook a nutritious meal before a hunt. Not so much: Turns out he’s just there to hand out free rations every once in a while. That’s how I learned Wilds’ “expanded” BBQ grill that lets me throw together a quick meal in a pan wherever I am isn’t just another way to feed myself pre-hunt, but the newway.
Cooking in Wilds is undeniably convenient. Not only can you do it anywhere, but Capcom pared World’s complex ingredients system down to a simple formula: Ration + Ingredient + Topping = Meal with buffs. Similar to the dango in Monster Hunter Rise, you’re almost guaranteed to get the bonus associated with the special ingredient and topping thrown into the cook, like enhanced healing or fire resistance. I also appreciate that the special ingredients themselves are harder to get. Wilds is pretty stingy about handing them out, and I spent a lot of Low Rank making naked steaks that gave me nothing but a standard HP and stamina fill. I like the intentionality this adds—the best meal for my next hunt isn’t a given, I have to go out and actually seek the ingredients.
A couple of times during hunts, the ability to cook anywhere has been a godsend—instead of turning tail and riding all the way back to base camp to inhale a steak, I can just throw on the stealth mantle, hide behind a rock, and feast.
Struggle meal
But am I feasting? As expected, Capcom goes above and beyond to make my little makeshift steak topped with mushrooms and honey look delicious in the cooking cutscene, and I love that every ingredient I cook with is now a visible part of the meal, but I can’t kid myself here—my hunter eats like a single dude in his 20s who owns one pan and three forks. A head of lettuce with some cheese melted on top? I don’t believe for a second that the same struggle meal I’d make when I had $78 in my bank account in college contains the nutritional value needed to slay Rey Dau, apex predator of the Windward Plains.
Sorry to use the d-word, but aesthetically, it’s a downgrade. The Meowscular Chef and his assistants were masters of their craft, taking all of twenty seconds to prepare and serve up a gourmet roast chicken and veggie platter that’d safely feed a family of four, and my hunter would eat the whole damn thing. Wouldn’t you? Food made with that much care and love can give you real-life buffs.
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Wilds technically does have Meowscular Chef-level cooking, but it’s way too rare. After a certain point in the story, villages will occasionally offer to cook a big meal accompanied by a lavish, mouth-watering cutscene (if you used the Monster Hunter Wilds Benchmark tool, you saw one of these). These are great, but in 44 hours I’ve only gotten the offer a couple of times.
The magic of the Meowscular Chef was the ritual: He was the last stop before starting a quest, dutifully feeding his hunters like a parent waiting by the front door with a lunchbox. The solo cooking of Wilds is practical, convenient, and serves Wilds’ new sandbox approach to hunting. But it’s not warm, fun, or social.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Monster-Hunter-Wilds-new-cooking-system-is-a-win-for.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-25 21:19:402025-02-25 21:19:40Monster Hunter Wilds’ new cooking system is a win for balance, but there’s a Meowscular Chef-shaped hole in my heart
AC Valhalla que jogo gigante, adoro a história nórdica do pouco que sei e o mundo nórdico.
Agradeço a todos os que acompanharam esta saga fantástica de Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 😁
Mas não percam a partir de 20 de Março Assassin’s Creed Shadows 😁
Acompanha os próximos episódios de AC Valhalla AQUI 👉 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDowRCnCZ6UICNtMhndmxwW6Yjy5FjUXj
Espero que gostem, deixem o like, subscrevam, partilhem e ativem as notificações para não perder nenhum episódio!!!
Segue-me nas redes sociais 📲
LINKS TEMPORARIAMENTE APENAS NA PÁGINA PRINCIPAL DO CANAL!
In recent years, it’s become common knowledge that Intel’s CPUs run nicely with highly overclocked RAM, such as DDR5-7200. Not every chip does, of course, as it’s not just about the processor, but having the right motherboard and RAM combination. Going much faster than 7,000 MT/s typically required buying special ‘hand-picked’ RAM modules and having an ultra-expensive motherboard.
With the launch of Arrow Lake, however, Intel introduced support for a new type of memory. Well, the DRAM itself is still good ol’ DDR5, but these new kits sport something extra on their circuit boards—a clock driver chip or CKD for short.
This tiny integrated circuit takes the memory signals transmitted by the motherboard and stores them momentarily in order to tidy up and realign the signals, so that each RAM module on the circuit board gets its signal at the right voltage and timings. This ensures everything is stable, when the clock speeds are ramped up.
Such RAM kits are called CUDIMMs (Clocked Unbuffered Dual Inline Memory Modules) and they’re the hottest thing in the RAM market right now. Corsair’s first dip into this sector is its Vengeance CUDIMM series, starting with an RGB-less DDR5-8000 CL38 set, with the fastest and fanciest being an RGB-equipped DDR5-9200 CL44 kit.
Those speeds are overclocked ones, of course, and they’re achieved by enabling the XMP 3.0 profile in the motherboard’s BIOS. But that’s all one needs to do—it’s literally a case of slap ’em in and click on the option to get ‘ludicrous’ speed.
It’s worth noting that Corsair’s new CUDIMMs will work with non-Arrow Lake PCs, using a mode where the CKD is bypassed, limiting the speed to 6,000 MT/s or less.
There are a few caveats to this, though. One is the fiscal outlay required—Corsair’s cheapest and slowest CUDIMM kit is $278, whereas its fastest is $389. All kits are 48 GB in capacity, thankfully.
The next barrier is the motherboard. All Intel Z890 and B860 should support CUDIMMs in theory, and while I have yet to come across a motherboard that doesn’t accept them, those that I have tested do not show the same consistent performance gains with using this high-speed memory.
Last, but by no means least, is the fact that Intel only ratifies its Arrow Lake processors as supporting CUDIMMs rated to 6,400 MT/s at best. Anything faster than this is classed as overclocked and there are no guarantees your Core Ultra 200S chip will be happy with RAM above this speed.
I’ve examined a set of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-8400 CL40, a model that’s right in the middle of the CUDIMM speed range. In terms of looks, though, the series is identical, with them all sporting a very classy, if very shiny mirror-like heatspreader. It catches the light really well but it also catches finger marks like nothing else I’ve used. Basically, you’ll need to buff the hell out of them once they’re installed.
As mentioned above, one can buy these CUDIMMs with or without RGB lights, and the set I’ve tested falls into the latter camp. Adjustable via Corsair’s iCUE software, the LEDs are exceptionally bright and the plastic lightbar does look really nice when fully lit.
Benchmarks and performance
(Image credit: Future)
Reviewing RAM is somewhat similar to reviewing CPUs or motherboards in that one needs to isolate the benchmarks from factors that will influence the test results, beyond those associated with the memory. That means not only ensuring the workload is demanding but also demanding on the right hardware.
To that end, I experimented for many hours with multiple test setups, games, and other pieces of software, until settling on three games and three applications. In some configurations, Corsair’s DDR5-8400 CUDIMM kit showed absolutely no gains over a standard set of DDR5-6000 RAM. In others, there were huge gains to be found in one game test, but none of the others.
Part of this is down to the fact that Intel’s Core Ultra 200S chips still aren’t nailed down in terms of performance and motherboards vary a lot in how well they run with Arrow Lake chips, not only between different vendors, but different models and BIOS revisions, too.
While every Z890 or B860 motherboard should support CUDIMMs out of the box, relatively few vendors have such RAM kits in their QVLs (Qualified Vendor List). I expect this will change in time, but if you do run into problems with CUDIMMs, then your motherboard’s vendor may not be able to offer any guidance.
To ascertain the relative performance of Corsair’s new CUDIMMs, I’ve pitched the kit against a set of Corsair Dominator Titanium DDR5-7200 CL36 and a set of G.Skill Trident Z DDR5-6400 CL32 Neo RGB. The latter was used in its default DDR5-4800 CL40 setting, the baseline performance for DDR5, and then in its faster iEXPO profile.
To ensure all the game tests were as non-GPU limited as possible, DLSS Balanced upscaling was enabled at all times, along with the resolution set to 1080p. I can’t imagine anyone would want to play with such settings, as it looks very fuzzy, but it’s the only way to highlight the differences in the tested RAM kits.
Compared to the baseline DDR5-4800 set, the use of Corsair’s Vengeance DDR5-8400 CUDIMM kit only improved the 1% low frame rates by 10% on average. The mean frame rates were just 7% better. Worse still is the fact that the DDR5-6400 kit performed just as well.
While the clock driver chip is required to achieve such stable DRAM speeds, it does add a modicum of latency, and in games, once you’re above a certain amount of bandwidth, timings become increasingly more important.
As already mentioned, I validated these figures across multiple setups comprising two Core Ultra 200S chips (265K and 285K), three GPUs (RTX 4070, 4070 Ti, 4080 Super), and four motherboards (MSI MEG Z890 Ace, MSI MAG Z890 Tomahawk, Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming, ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite), the latter being the only one with the Vengeance DIMMs in its memory QVL at the time of writing.
The above results were as good as it got. Now, I am certain that with an even more powerful GPU, such as an RTX 4090 or RTX 5090, one will see better gains, especially in games that really work the system memory, but this just means this CUDIMM kit is only going to have a very niche market. Well, niche-r than it already is.
I tested more productivity and content creation benchmarks than those shown above, but these were the only ones that demonstrated any noticeable benefit from using high-speed RAM. Even then, Blender only improves by a small amount and certainly not by enough to warrant spending lots of money on expensive memory.
File compression does benefit from having access to more memory bandwidth, though once again, the difference between DDR5-8400 and DDR5-6400 is so small that the RAM kits are practically the same.
The only benchmark that really shows off Corsair’s CUDIMM kit is the Handbrake test and that’s only because I enabled NLmeans denoising. Non-local means algorithms improve the quality of an encoded video by sampling every pixel in the frame, rather than those neighbouring a given pixel.
It’s exceptionally demanding on RAM. To give you an idea of how much so, the average frame rate without NLmeans denoising is 110 fps on a Core Ultra 7 265K, versus around 10 fps with it enabled.
A 42% faster encoding rate is certainly nothing to be sniffed at, but that’s compared to DDR5-4800. The CUDIMM kit is only 9% quicker than the DDR5-6400 set, despite having 31% more bandwidth. The potential of CUDIMMs is clear to see, but it’s arguably wasted on Intel’s Arrow Lake processors.
The final stage of the testing involved a 20-minute run of the memory stress test in AIDA64. While it’s not a particularly realistic scenario, it’s a good way to examine memory stability and, in this instance, the performance of the RAM kit’s heatspreader.
All four memory sets were tested from a cold boot situation, with the room’s ambient temperature being the same each time. At the end of the 20-minute run, the average and peak temperatures were recorded, and it’s clear to see that the Corsair Vengeance set runs significantly hotter than the others.
The actual temperatures are within operating limits, but the fact that the DDR5-7200 kit runs so much cooler shows that the CUDIMM’s heatspreader isn’t as good. It doesn’t help that it’s so shiny—heatsinks rely on airflow over its surface area to dissipate the majority of the heat through convection; the colour and texture of the surface also impact how well it radiates heat.
Smooth, mirror-like heatspreaders are worse at dissipating heat than dark, roughly textured ones, and while the Corsair Vengeance DDR-8400 CUDIMM set looks very classy, it doesn’t do a great job at handling the thermal load.
I did explore how well the CUDIMM kit handled speeds above 8,400 MT/s and it was stable up to 8,800 MT/s in Gear 2 mode and 9,333 MT/s in Gear 4 mode. Gear refers to the CPU’s memory controller clock speed ratio—2 means half the speed of the RAM and 4 means a quarter.
Given how small the gains were at 8,400 it should come as no surprise to learn that they were no better at the faster speeds and in Gear 4 mode. In fact, they were marginally worse, due to the memory controller running much slower.
PC Gamer test bench CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 265K | Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360 | Motherboard: MSI MEG Z890 Ace | GPU: Asus ProArt RTX 4080 Super OC | Storage: 2 TB WD_Black SN850X | PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 1000 W | OS: Windows 11 24H2 | Chassis: Fractal Design North XL (w/ four Noctua NF-P14s redux fans) | Monitor: Acer XB280HK
Conclusion
(Image credit: Future)
Buy if…
✅ You absolutely must have the fastest RAM for your Arrow Lake chip: Intel’s CPUs do love speedy memory so if the cost doesn’t matter at all, then a CUDIMM kit is a must.
Don’t buy if…
❌ You don’t want to pay over $300 for a few more fps: The price just doesn’t make sense when you can get Corsair’s Dominator kits that are still very fast, for far less money.
For everything that’s great about this Vengeance DDR5-8400 CUDIMM kit, two aspects stand in the way of it potentially being recommended, and they both involve the price tag. At $350, it is very expensive, even for a 48 GB RAM kit. But what really doesn’t help is the fact that Corsair’s 9,200 MT/s RGB-less version is $378—that’s just $28 more than the 8,400 kit reviewed here.
If you’re going to spend that much money on memory, you might as well spend the 8% extra on something even faster. Of course, the DDR5-9600 set might not work at that rated speed in your Arrow Lake, but there’s a good chance it will if your motherboard fully supports Corsair’s CUDIMMs.
But neither is a sensible option when you can buy a 48 GB kit of Dominator Titanium DDR5-7200 for $244 at Corsair’s store. Sure, it’s a good deal slower in terms of clock speeds, but as the tests in this review show, the real-world difference is surely not worth paying an extra $100.
Not only that, but Corsair’s Titanium DIMMs run significantly cooler, thanks to their better heatsinks and design. That said, they are much taller which will cause issues with some CPU coolers, whereas the Vengeance DIMMs are quite low in profile.
All things considered, though, this specific Corsair Vengeance CUDIMM kit can’t be recommended. If you really must have the fastest possible RAM for your Core Ultra 200S setup, then buy the 9,200 MT/s set. Or wait and see what other CUDIMMs are available on the market, because it’s a huge amount of money to pay for something that might not improve your gaming rig by any noticeable degree.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1740483428_CUDIMMs-are-the-latest-big-thing-in-the-world-of.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-25 11:11:242025-02-25 11:11:24CUDIMMs are the latest big thing in the world of RAM but now that I’ve tested it, I don’t think it’s worth buying
That’s a heck of a badass trailer for Andor Season 2, which streams starting April 22 on Disney+. To the strains of Steve Earle we see explosions, fires, gunfights, ships hurtling through space, stormtroopers on the march, lasers blasting everything in sight, and Diego Luna blowing up something with a detonator while he walks away, simply too cool to even look back at it.
Sweet, yeah, but, like… this is still Andor, right? I’m not opposed to some action, but we’re not tuning in to see Guardians of the Friggin’ Galaxy. We mostly want to see well-crafted characters having meaningful conversations with each other. Andor Season 2 still has that, too, right… right?
Despite the action-packed trailer, I’d say chances are good Andor Season 2 will still have scene after scene of complex characters just talking to each other. The first three episodes are written by Tony Gilroy (co-writer of Rogue One and Andor Season 1), and Dan Gillroy and Beau Williamson, who both wrote episodes in Season 1, have also returned for this season. Another three episodes were written by Tom Bissell, writer of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, several Gears of Wars and the book Extra Lives: Why Games Matter.
Along with Diego Luna, Adria Arjona returns as Bix Caleen, Stellan Skarsgård is back as Luthen Rael, and Kyle Soller reprises his role as Imperial middle-manager Syril Karn, who I would not mind watching an entire spinoff about because he’s the most believable and complex character ever created in the Star Wars universe.
We won’t have to wait all that long once the season starts: the 12 episodes of Andor Season 2 are going to be parcelled up in “four weekly chapters of three episodes each,” according to starwars.com. The season will span four years, leading up to the events of Rogue One, so I think it’s safe to say—unfortunately—the second season of Andor will be its last.
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https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1740447321_Andor-Season-2-trailer-is-action-packed-but-hopefully-the-show.jpg6761200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-25 00:41:172025-02-25 00:41:17Andor Season 2 trailer is action-packed, but hopefully the show is still actually packed with interesting people quietly talking to each other
Monster Hunter Wilds is both a return to meat-and-potatoes monster combat and a dramatic revision of the hunting format. It’s a more approachable lizard-slaying sandbox, and it’s a tangle of multiplayer quirks that still feels like something out of 2007. It’s the cleanest Monster Hunter has ever played, and it’s a temperamental piece of software that might crash if you tab back in at the wrong time.
NEED TO KNOW
What is it?: An action game about fighting giant lizards and turning them into pants. Expect to pay: $70 / £60 Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Reviewed on: NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super, Intel Core i7 14700KF, 32 GB RAM Multiplayer: Yes Link:Steam
More than anything, Wilds is an action game in a class without contenders. It’s a new height for haymaker hammer blows and the pounding drumbeat of gunlance blasts—for watching your trio of seeker arrows spear a fleeing wyvern out of the sky, sending it plummeting down to earth as your cheering teammates kick their raptor mounts into a charge. Wilds signals a new era for Monster Hunter, one that pares down anything that stands in the way of diving into battle with creatures 10 times your size. It’s an impressive reinvention, but Monster Hunter’s carved a bit more of itself away than I’d have liked.
If there’s a word for Wilds, it’s streamlined. Sword fighting with tyrannosaurs and stitching their bits into belts is no longer chopped up between quest-sized chunks. Following a more straightforward, cinematic story, Wilds gives way to a seamless wilderness of rotating seasons and roaming beasts, where any hunting prep can be done in the moment and on the fly. It can feel like a wonder, but it’s not a wonder without a cost. In providing as much monster hunting as possible, Wilds has given up some of Monster Hunter’s charm.
But god, it feels good to fight those lizards. Throughout my almost 70 hours with Wilds, I could feel the 20 years of iteration behind its combat design. Hunting, as a rule, is a well fed occupation, but the latest round of tinkering with Monster Hunter’s 14 weapon types is a feast for every style of wyvern-slayer. Next to the flashy new attacks, fundamental bow and bowgun revisions, and Focus Strike finishers, there’s a subtler artistry in design here that’s easy to overlook. Small, considered tweaks—like new windows for adjusting your footing at the tail end of attack animations—make Wilds the smoothest Monster Hunter fighting has ever felt without sacrificing its meaty texture.
Each weapon feels like it’s been through its own shonen training arc. My beloved hammer has never been more of a mobile wrecking ball. It’s been blessed with Mighty Charge, a heavy charge attack that provides both a brutal finishing blow for capping off combos and a smooth pivot point for sliding into my next sequence of hits. A few of its golf swings have also been made into Offset Attacks, a new mechanic that gives heavier weapons a sort of pseudo-parry. The timing is tricky, but the thunderclap of knocking aside a behemoth Doshaguma’s lunge is worth the effort.
The steady ramp up of the switch axe has reached a new intensity, where morphing into sword mode offers blistering new whirling attacks that carve trails of explosive energy where they connect. When I venture out with the bow, I’ve got a suite of tracer arrows and homing shots that can needle even the most nimble monster.
Just seeing another player’s weapon in action is enough to test my loyalties: One look at a Dual Blades user twirling around the field like a blood-crazed Beyblade had me making some abrupt changes to my gear crafting plans.
Feeding into all those weapon updates is the new Focus Mode and wound system. Even melee weapons now have access to a reticle for guiding their hits home. Targeting and destroying wounds with Focus Strikes is a satisfying new layer for moment-to-moment hunting. Opening a glowing red weak spot provides some clear direction if you don’t know where a monster’s most vulnerable, and the hefty chunk of guaranteed damage gives me a reason to break up my bread-and-butter attack combos.
It’s a refreshing return to boots-on-the-ground monster hunting.
Frankly, destroying wounds is so effective that it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s fated for a nerf. Between hammer KOs, wound destruction staggers, and an occasional paralysis from my Palico’s weapon, many of the monsters I’ve fought haven’t been left with much room to breathe.
Even if Wilds combat makes hunters slightly too capable, it’s a refreshing return to boots-on-the-ground monster hunting. World’s expansion Iceborne and the last Monster Hunter, Rise, both introduced new mechanics that felt like disruptions. Landing a Focus Strike is a more seamless complement to the moment-to-moment dodging, attacking, and countering.
Plus it looks and feels sick. That helps.
But what good are weapons without monsters to fight? Having spent more of my formative years than I’d like to admit sketching dragons in my middle school notebooks, I consider myself something of a connoisseur of fantasy lizards. For my money Capcom sits firmly at the pinnacle of making impossible creatures look, sound, and move believably, and Wilds brings some spectacular additions to the Monster Hunter bestiary.
Wild world
Rey Dau is an early highlight: a barbed, bristling apex predator that carves molten arcs in the desert sand with its lightning-charged wing blades. Fighting Arkveld, Wilds’ flagship monster, is like dueling an avalanche; it’s an onslaught of lashing chains and eruptions of blood-red energy.
Compared to the more sedate monster designs in World, Wilds sees Capcom return to being delightfully weird. A couple hours into the game, I’m fighting in the oil-drenched ruins of some massive derelict engine against a monster that’s one third mosquito, one third velociraptor, and one third thrombosed hemorrhoid. There’s a giant pink fart ape, a returning Monster Hunter classic. There’s the Hirabami: flying, pack-based wormsharks with tails full of scythe blades.
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(Image credit: Capcom)
(Image credit: Capcom)
(Image credit: Capcom)
(Image credit: Capcom)
They’re not just fun to look at. They’re fun to learn. When I give a Doshaguma extra space after it slams the ground because I know it’s just the start of a worse attack, Capcom’s quietly tricked me into a kind of automatic roleplay. Like my hunter, I’m not just fighting monsters—I’m studying them. It’s that old Monster Hunter magic: Just by familiarizing myself with the game, I’m deepening the fantasy.
Wilds is a leaner, streamlined Monster Hunter despite its pitch of wide open environments, and nowhere is that more clear than in Low Rank, the opening difficulty tier that comprises the game’s core story. It forgoes the traditional Monster Hunter progression of climbing Hunter Ranks between priority quests. Instead, the first dozen hours of Wilds is a tight, cutscene-driven hunting tour of the Forbidden Lands, following the Hunter’s Guild as it reenters a region that’s been closed off for a thousand years. It’s a smart change of pace for settling into the rhythm of monster hunting, steadily doling out the basic systems of crafting, cooking, and gathering through an escalating sequence of story hunts.
Just by familiarizing myself with the game, I’m deepening the fantasy.
Monster Hunter’s sudden cinematic turn isn’t a narrative masterpiece, but the impressive action choreography in story cutscenes leaves no shortage of spectacle. I couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow at how Wilds imagines the indigenous peoples of the Forbidden Lands, though: It suggests that they’ve never invented weaponry, despite living next to giant carnivorous sandworms for generations. And their eagerness to offer up their resources to the Hunter’s Guild feels a little fraught, even if Capcom tries to make it clear that the Guild is totally not doing colonialism.
That said, there’s a lot I like about the writing. Unlike previous Monster Hunters, the Wilds protagonist is a fully-voiced character, and a veteran hunter already in the prime of their career when the game starts. They’re familiar with monster ecology and Guild procedure, meaning that in their cutscenes and conversations Capcom can show how the Guild operates and positions itself in the world. Previously the Hunter’s Guild was an excuse for silly puns, charming goofballs, and exploring the curious psychosexual hangups of your friendly Guildmarm. In Wilds, it’s an organization with an ethos that extends beyond turning dragons into gloves (though honestly, I’d welcome a few more of the goofballs back).
(Image credit: Capcom)
I was particularly fond of seeing the dynamic between the player hunter and Alma, their guild handler. No matter how lethally competent the hunter is, they refuse to engage a monster without Alma explicitly issuing Guild authorization, sometimes even as they’re in direct peril. It’s an interesting glimpse of the Guild’s culture and philosophy of restraint: A monster issue might require the application of violence, but that’s not a call for the guy with a gunlance made of reconstituted dinosaurs to make unilaterally.
Seasonal affect
What baffled me about Low Rank, though, is how it handles the new season system. In Wilds, each region cycles through three seasons that influence monster spawns, endemic life, and resource availability: a Fallow season where the environment is depleted and hungry predators roam in greater numbers, an Inclemency period where massive storms sweep the landscape, and a season of Plenty where the ecology is renewed and revitalized.
The seasonal cycle produces some stunning scenes. When Inclemency hits the Windward Plains, the onset of a raging, sky-blackening lightning storm makes any desert battle with a Doshaguma feel climactic. When the Scarlet Forest blooms into Plenty, it becomes a lush, vibrant eden—if eden had a healthy population of violent megafauna.
(Image credit: Capcom)
Problem is, you see very little of those seasonal shifts during Low Rank, because they’re initially tied to story progression. You spend most of your story hunts in each region’s Fallow season, only getting a taste of Plenty before being bounced to the next locale. As a result, most of my first dozen hours with Wilds were spent seeing its environments at their dingiest, delaying any chance to roam and feel out how the seasons meaningfully change each area and each hunt. It’s a shame, especially when the detail in Wilds’ monster designs really pops in vibrant Plenty lighting conditions.
Finishing a quest without being booted back to the hub feels a bit like witchcraft.
Once you roll credits and hit High Rank, however, Wilds becomes a freeform hunting playground. High Rank pairs the traditional Hunter Rank progression with seamless hunt transitions, deployable pop-up camps, and a mobile guild handler—all designed to remove as many barriers as possible between me and my next target monster. Starting a hunt can be as simple as walking out of camp and landing a few hits on the nearest beast. If I want to roll right into another hunt after bagging that Balahara, or if I’d rather do some light exploring and scoop up some lizards in my capture net along the way, I can stay out in the wilderness indefinitely.
If I need to top up my item pouch, I can pop over to wherever I’ve set up my nearest pop-up camp. If my meal bonuses run out, my portable grill means I can cook up a fresh round of stat boosts next to an oasis or on a craggy cliff edge. As someone approaching my tenth year of playing Monster Hunter, finishing a quest without being booted back to the hub feels a bit like witchcraft.
Those seamless hunting systems make the Forbidden Lands a festival of back-to-back monster battles, and I’ve been more than happy to indulge—but at the same time, it’s that streamlining where I worry Monster Hunter is in danger of sanding down too much of its own identity. Take the Seikret, for example. I love my raptor horse and the lovely green plumage I gave it. The mid-hunt weapon switching it lets me do—again, witchcraft—is great when I want to sever a tail that my hammer can’t cut. But the Seikret underlines how much of the actual hunting has fallen out of Monster Hunter.
(Image credit: Capcom)
There’s no need to find a monster anymore. As soon as I hop in the saddle, my Seikret will start ferrying me to my quest target, even if I haven’t seen it. With immediate access to high speed raptor autopilot, Wilds’ new biomes—Monster Hunter’s most open regions yet—feel smaller than the Worlds maps I traversed on foot. One of the joys of Monster Hunter is developing an intimate familiarity with its environments, and that’s a familiarity that’s hard to build for the stretches of the Windward Plains I’ve only crossed on Seikret-back.
Lost tracks
My opinion might change when I’m on my sixth hunt for Rey Dau parts in a row, but I can’t deny that I find myself yearning for the days of combing the Ancient Forest for Anjanath tracks. Likewise, each region’s base camps don’t feel like home in the way that the hub villages and gathering halls of years past could. And no matter how good the gooey cheese tech is during villager feast cutscenes, it can’t make up for the Meowscular Chef-shaped hole in my heart when I’m otherwise left to grill my own food.
My hunting tastes might’ve been defined by an earlier era, but that won’t keep me from appreciating Wilds’ multiplayer improvements. Playing with your friends still has a clunkiness to it, but being able to form “link parties” that simplify hopping into each other’s hunts, regardless of what lobbies you’re in, is a welcome update.
Unfortunately, even though Wilds made it easier to join up with friends, my hunting party sessions have been interrupted by repeated crashes. I’m lucky to be playing on a recent PC build that’s comfortably within the recommended specs, and in terms of frame rate, the game runs great on my rig. But that hasn’t prevented it from crashing during loading screens with frustrating regularity. I’m not the only member of the PC Gamer team to deal with crashes, though I’ve had the worst luck with them. Until a patch arrives, I’m seemingly at risk of smash cutting to desktop whenever I try to join a friend’s hunt.
Monster Hunter Wilds feels like a turning point. Updates like Focus Strikes add promising new dimensions to a magnificently indulgent combat design, and its seamless hunts and shifting seasons push the series closer to realizing a living ecology for its monsters. Without more room for Monster Hunter’s history, however, it’s a wilderness that’s missing some of its soul.
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Give your daily Wordle the best possible start with our helpful range of tips and tricks, designed to improve every guess you make. And if you need something more, our hint for the February 24 (1346) Wordle’s ready and waiting to go, with today’s answer just a click away if you need to see today’s winning word right now.
My opening row was a perfect combination of green letters in key places and a helpful yellow to find a slot for. Even the greys were useful, quickly focusing my attention and ruling out hundreds of words. I really thought I had this one in two guesses. Instead, I had to make do with three. Still, not a bad way to start my Wordle week.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Monday, February 24
Today’s answer is a type of internal body part used to secrete anything from hormones to sweat. These can become swollen if you’re ill, such as when you have a cold. Every single letter is different today.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
No, there is not a double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, but once you’ve got the basics, it’s much easier to nail down those Wordle wins. And as there’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day, here are a few tips to help set you on the right path:
A good opening guess should contain a mix of unique consonants and vowels.
Narrow down the pool of letters quickly with a tactical second guess.
Watch out for letters appearing more than once in the answer.
There’s no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don’t need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Here, for you. The answer to the February 24 (1346) Wordle is GLAND
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Past Wordle answers can give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh. They are also a good way to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer is unlikely to be repeated.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
February 23: OTTER
February 22: CREAM
February 21: CLOVE
February 20: ROACH
February 19: MADLY
February 18: INDIE
February 17: TRAIL
February 16: SUAVE
February 15: CROOK
February 14: DITTY
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and you’ll need to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them to keep up your winning streak.
You should start with a strong word like ARISE, or any other word that contains a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You’ll also want to avoid starting words with repeating letters, as you’re wasting the chance to potentially eliminate or confirm an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which ones you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.
After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
Hyper Light Breaker may not have enjoyed the smoothest early access launch, but developer Heart Machine has been diligent in listening to feedback and striving to update the game since its initial release last month. The studio issued numerous hotfixes in the wake of launch, addressing players’ most grievous complaints, and provided a more thorough roadmap of its future plans for the action roguelike last week. Now, it has debuted the first “monthly update” for the game, which among other things introduces a whole new playable character.
According to the update’s patch notes, this new character is called ‘Ravona’ and can be unlocked on the character selection screen. Like most characters, Ravona comes with two different ‘SyComs’—floating robots that aid her in combat—which players can choose between when entering the fray. The ‘Reaper’ SyCom is a “high-risk, high-reward” perk which has “high damage potential for both rails and blades”. Meanwhile, Ravona’s ‘Ranger’ SyCom is apparently designed “for Breakers who want to shoot fast and shoot a lot”, which speaks to me on a deep and intimate level.
Alongside Ravona, the update adds three new weapon ‘affixes’, all of which increase damage to targets afflicted by specific conditions like rot, burn, and stagger, as well as two new enemies, a “bullet leaper” variant and a “croc brute” elite. Coupled with these additions are some significant adjustments to play, with Heart Machine rebalancing the “danger meter” so that it now “triggers less regularly but drops more powerful compositions with more waves” and tunes “attack magnetism” to prioritise enemies in front of you (presumably so you get ambushed from behind less).
The most significant change outside of adding Ravona, however, is a surgical overhaul of the parry mechanic. The parry’s unreliable, hard-to-read nature was one of the most common complaints among players on launch. In response, Heart Machine has adjusted its design in several ways. There’s a new visual effect to demonstrate that the parry is omni-directional, (i.e. it will parry an attack regardless of where the enemy is attacking you from). Moreover, parrying one enemy now interrupts attacks of all nearby enemies, with a perfect parry increasing the duration of the interruption.
These major changes are accompanied by a much longer list of balance tweaks, specific bugfixes, and performance optimisations, the latter of which was another sticking point for the community. To address performance issues, enemy spawns have been capped so the game will no longer buckle your GPU by overloading it with critters, while Heart Machine has also fixed several jarring camera hitches and improved level-of-detail transitions for “a large number” of environmental assets, which should make the game smoother and reduce pop-in.
You can read the full changelog here. From rocky beginnings Hyper Light Breaker is quickly becoming a prime example of how to handle an early access launch. Let’s hope all this effort culminates in an excellent game whenever Heart Machine feels it’s finished.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1740339142_A-month-into-early-access-Hyper-Light-Breaker-has-already.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-23 15:00:002025-02-23 15:00:00A month into early access, Hyper Light Breaker has already added a new playable character, with a perk designed for players who like to ‘shoot fast and shoot a lot’
Shatterscarp is the third region you can visit during your journey in Avowed. It’s home to Thirdborn, a town full of misfits, pirates, and outlaws. Shatterscarp is arguably the most dangerous region in the Living Lands, as the Dreamscourge has completely taken over the inhabitants and there’s a dangerous Archmage at work that’s devouring whole sections of the map.
Through all of this chaos, though, there are some gorgeous locations and plenty of content to consume in addition to the main story quests. To make your time easier in Shatterscarp, we went through the trouble of fully uncovering the entire map, allowing you to see where everything is and how to get there. The guide below will showcase the uncovered map as well as some key points of interest that you’ll want to visit in Avowed.
Full Shatterscarp Map in Avowed
Unlike other regions in Avowed, Shatterscarp is centered around its hub city of Thirdborn. Instead, Thirdborn is a small settlement that borders the ocean on the southern border of the map. At the center of Shatterscarp is a massive mountain that you can’t really traverse, forcing you to go around it if you want to visit the sprawling locations in the region.
In total, there are five major areas you can explore in Shatterscarp, and they are:
Thirdborn
Great Sand Sea
Ancient Lakebed
Shark’s Teeth
Deadfall Highlands
There are plenty of other larger locations you’ll visit throughout the story, but those are the main five sections of the map. All of them surround the massive mountain in the middle of Shatterscarp, so it’s wise to follow the main road (indicated by the red dotted lines on the map) if you want to efficiently make your way around.
Here are two shots of the fully uncovered Shatterscarp map:
As always, Thirdborn remains covered as it has a separate map that appears when you enter its front doors. The only other part of the map that’s covered is the central mountain, but as you can see, there are some small areas you can find that allow you to explore a little of the large rock.
Shatterscarp Key Points of Interest
Shatterscarp doesn’t feature nearly the same amount of fast travel beacons and party camps as Dawnshore or Emerald Stair in Avowed. As such, you’ll have a difficult time making your way around the map quickly. There are only five fast travel beacons and four party camp waystones.
This might deter you from exploring the map, but trust us, there’s plenty to see and do in Shatterscarp. Below, we’ll list off some of the major points of interest and where they’re located on the map.
Strangled Adra
At the top of the Broken Crown Rock to the north of the Great Sand Sea
The Voice
On the top of a cliff at the Twin Offerings Overlook, located in the southern part of the Great Sand Sea and to the west of the Sand Sea Oasis
Pargrun Cache
If you want some unique rewards in Avowed, head to the Pargrun Cache in the southeastern part of the Shark’s Teeth area. This is also where one of the Totem of Revelations pieces is located
Treasure Maps
Mapping the Living Lands Cartographer
That’s all for this map guide in Avowed. Shatterscarp might be tedious to explore at times, but it holds some tremendous rewards.
Obsidian is no stranger to crafting compelling RPGs. For more help on the team’s latest effort, use our Avowed guides hub.
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