The TESRenewal modding group has been working on Skyblivion, a remastered version of Oblivion playable in Skyrim Special Edition, since 2018 “in earnest” though the project “officially started over 11 years ago,” as the latest progress video explains. Said video also mentions how close to completion Skyblivion is, fast approaching its scheduled 2025 release. “We are nearly ready to release an entirely remastered Elder Scrolls game,” the team says.
More specifically, they say, “We’re finalizing the world map, with only the Nibenay region on Cyrodiil’s eastern border left to complete. Massive swathes of the map are ready for the Hero of Kvatch to explore.”
While 93% of the cells that make up Skyblivion’s landscape are complete, only 44% of them have been navmeshed—a process that tells NPCs which parts of the terrain are traversable. There’s still a ways to go on that front, and that’s why the team is calling for volunteers to help them get Skyblivion over the finishing line. If you’re an experienced modder, head to the volunteers section of their website to sign up.
As previously mentioned, Skyblivion won’t include material from Oblivion’s expansions at launch. “We are currently focused on the main game experience to ensure it is released on time,” the team says. “Once the main game of Skyblivion is released we will look into how we can tackle DLCs and we will be sure to share more information on our next steps closer to the time. We’re less than a year away from our target release of Skyblivion.”
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1735788536_Skyblivion-only-has-one-region-of-the-map-left-to.jpg6781200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-02 03:05:512025-01-02 03:05:51Skyblivion only has one region of the map left to finish: ‘We are nearly ready to release an entirely remastered Elder Scrolls game’
I’m not usually one for all this New Year malarkey—time ticks over at the same rate as it ever did, and I’m no big believer in astrology, so what does the calendar date matter? (And bah, humbug!) But even I can’t help getting a little excited at what 2025 might offer us PC gamers.
The big ones to look out for will obviously be new graphics cards from both Nvidia and AMD and handheld gaming PCs featuring the latest AMD and Intel mobile processors. We’re hoping to see many of these things at CES in January, and on that front, I’d recommend checking out our Andy’s run through everything we expect to see at the show.
But I’m looking beyond all that, across the distant horizon, into the land of what the more sceptical might call pure fantasy. But actually, I think many of the things on this hardware wishlist are reasonable expectations for 2025, and some of them downright likely. So, here’s what I’m looking out for in 2025:
They might not be the most glamorous piece of kit, but SSDs keep the data flowin’. And over the course of 2024 we already saw massive improvements in SSDs, to the extent that fast 2 TB drives are now a pretty standard affair, even if some system builders still need to be given that particular memo. These improvements, however, were primarily of the PCIe 4.0 variety.
We’re still recommending Gen4 drives as the best SSDs for gaming, and that’s primarily because Gen5 drives are too hot and expensive. The controllers they use get so toasty they usually require gigantic coolers on top just to run, and they often cost an inordinate amount more than the now-reasonably priced Gen 4 drives.
So I’m really hoping 2025 is the year cheap and cool PCIe 5.0 SSDs hit the mainstream market. There’s reason to believe this could happen because we now have CPU generations and motherboards that can really make use of them thanks to more PCIe 5.0 lanes and slots, and there will surely be more such motherboards to come.
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2. AI-accelerated rendering
(Image credit: Future)
It’s no secret that Nvidia’s in the business of AI, and it’s no surprise that this business has—for good or for ill—infected the PC gaming market. AI-accelerated DLSS upscaling and frame generation has become something of a soft requirement for playing many modern titles at anything like a reasonable frame rate.
But where can we go next? Well, obviously we’re all hoping that DLSS 4 (and possibly FSR 4) will give us frame generation and upscaling improvements, but it’ll be cool if it gives us something new, too.
It turns out we already have intimations of just such a thing in the form of “neural rendering“, which an AIB manufacturer recently mentioned in seeming relation to next-gen Nvidia GPUs. If AI can do for rendering what it’s done for upscaling and frame gen, we might be in for a treat.
And listen, I’m pretty split over AI-accelerated anything. I like to own the frame rate-producing power that I pay for when I buy a graphics card, not (essentially) rent it out from Nvidia’s neural network. But hey, frames are frames, and if such tech gives a significant enough improvement, maybe I shouldn’t complain.
3. An all-Nvidia laptop
(Image credit: NurPhoto | Getty Images)
It used to be that Nvidia sat comfortably in GPU-land, Intel sat in CPU-land, and AMD straddled the boundary of both. But we’ve already seen Intel slide into the GPU market with its Arc graphics cards and Xe architecture, and we’ve also heard rumour of Nvidia joining the CPU scene for about a year decade now.
This would be an ARM chip, not an x86 one. The word on the street is that there are tons of improvements to Windows on ARM in the works—we’ve already seen that an Insider build now supports AVX and AVX2 instructions, which should help get more games up and running—so there’s reason to believe that’s true.
Not to mention the sheer existence of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips, which shows, to a limited extent, what Windows on Arm might be capable of. Now, in 2025, we just need to see what the green team (hopefully) has to offer on this front.
4. A powerful AMD Strix Halo laptop processor
(Image credit: Future)
I never thought I’d see the day when I was actually more excited for new integrated graphics than discrete graphics, but with just how good APUs are these days—I mean, just look at handhelds—I think I’m over that threshold now. And topping that integrated graphics list is a possible AMD Strix Halo chip.
“Strix Point” is the codename for AMD’s latest AI 300-series processors, which we’re expecting to see in some handhelds and laptops come 2025 (and indeed, we already see Strix Point in the OneXPlayer OneXFly F1 Pro). Strix Halo refers to an as-yet unannounced top-of-the-line “halo” product using this architecture.
The latest rumours have us anticipating up to 16 Zen 5 cores and 40 RDNA 3.5 CUs in Strix Halo. For reference, the AMD Radeon 880M—the mobile GPU found in the AI 9 HX 370—has 12 CUs, so you can see why we’re hopeful for some Strix Halo Products.
Strix Halo probably won’t hold a candle to the kind of high-end discrete graphics available in some of the best gaming laptops, but it should offer performance that far surpasses current handhelds, all for far less power consumption than laptops with discrete GPUs. Which might mean gaming laptops that can play today’s games relatively well without draining the battery in under 2 hours (as seems to be the prerogative of gaming laptops today).
5. More AMD X3D chips
(Image credit: Future)
The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which launched a couple of months ago, is far and away the best CPU for gaming. X3D chips are great for gaming because they vertically stack tons of cache, and games are quite hungry for this. The 9000-series X3D design improved on the 7000-series one by putting this cache underneath the chip rather than on top, which allows for better cooling and therefore better performance.
There have been rumours circulating for a while that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D will be followed up in early 2025 by a more powerful Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 9950X3D. If these do launch, they’ll probably be for those who want stellar 3D-stacked gaming performance but better productivity performance than the 9800X3D.
The previous-gen Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D stacked the same 64 MB of extra L3 cache on a chiplet, but there were more cores in the processors (half of which didn’t use that stacked cache) for better multi-core performance.
In the case of the 7900X3D, a 12-core chip, this actually meant that only six cores (one chiplet’s worth) rather than the 7800X3D’s full eight cores, could use the stacked cache, which meant it was actually a little worse for gaming than the Ryzen 7 chip.
If we get a 9900X3D, it’ll be interesting to see whether the same design choice is made or whether both chiplets will get access to the stacked cache. If both chiplets did get access to the stacked cache, then we could expect that same top-tier gaming performance without any software required behind the scenes to continually place workloads on the best cores.
6. Steam Machines
(Image credit: Future)
Remember Steam Machines? Me neither—they were somewhat DOA after the circa 2015 launch. But if they’d worked out, what a thing they would have been: Steam-based devices like a Steam Deck, but desktopified.
A Valve branding document (PDF) stated: “The Powered by SteamOS logo indicates that a hardware device will run the SteamOS and boot into SteamOS upon powering on the device. Partners / manufacturers will ship hardware with a Steam image in the form provided by and / or developed in close collaboration with Valve.”
We’re currently expecting this to signal the existence of non-Valve-made but nevertheless SteamOS-powered handhelds, and a recently announced January Lenovo event featuring Valve as a special guest suggests as much, albeit far from definitively.
In addition to handhelds, though, it’s hard to imagine “Powered by SteamOS” being something limited to just handhelds, especially given that Valve’s long been working towards a general SteamOS release. And if there is such a release, well, that’ll open the doors to all kinds of third-party or DIY Steam Machines running Valve’s OS. Maybe even an all Nvidia/ARM laptop. And heck, maybe even an official Valve one.
And this last option might not seem so crazy when you consider my next 2025 wishlist item.
7. A Steam Controller 2
(Image credit: Valve)
Yes, here’s another throwback to circa 2015, and again to another product that never really caught on—although it did have a substantial following of ardent defenders. It featured back-paddles, gyro movement, and two trackpads in lieu of twin thumbsticks. The idea was that, by using proper custom configs, these strange controls could allow you to easily play games that lack great traditional controller support and give you some approximation of the accuracy of keyboard and mouse control in a pad.
Now, there’s rumour that the Steam Controller 2 (codenamed “Ibex”) is already Sin mass production. That there will be a Steam Controller 2 isn’t so much of a surprise given that Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang said in 2022, “yeah, we want to make it happen. It’s just a question of how and when.” What’s surprising is that, if the mass production rumour is true, this “when” could be very soon.
We don’t know exactly what a Steam Controller 2 will bring, either, which is exciting. It could bring the same design as the first version, but Valve has also learnt a lot since then. The Steam Deck, for instance, has both trackpads and thumbsticks, so a Steam Controller 2 could opt for a similar design to this. We’ll have to wait and see, hopefully sometime in the coming year.
8. A Valve Deckard VR headset
(Image credit: Future)
We’ve heard whispers and intimations of an upcoming Valve “Deckard” VR headset for years. For those unaware, this is a rumoured Valve Index successor that might be completely standalone, meaning it’s able to be powered by its own internal hardware rather than by your PC. So no cables. Or your PC for more power.
This isn’t all whispers, either. Valve even released a patent including plans for a new VR headset back in 2021, and although submitting a patent doesn’t commit you to producing the product, this was on top of tons of other reasonable rumours surrounding the headset.
Part of the reason this is exciting is because the Valve Index was seriously stunning when it came out, offering a truly top-tier VR experience. But tech has moved on since then, and now the Index seems a little dated. In other words, Valve’s due a high-end VR refresh, in my eyes. And with all the company’s learnt about hardware production over the past few years, I’m hopeful.
9. More hidden connector motherboards
(Image credit: Future)
It might not be as exciting as new VR headsets and handhelds, but one trend that tickled my fancy in 2024 was the introduction of Back Connect / Back-to-the-Future/Back-to-Front (BTF) hidden motherboard connector designs.
People first seemed to take note of such designs with MSI’s Project Zero in 2024, but we’d already seen Gigabyte do it in 2022. The idea is pretty simple: take all those motherboard connectors (especially the bigboi 24-pin power connector) and shimmy them around to the back for better airflow (ehh, whatever) and a cleaner look (now that’s more like it). It can even mean building the GPU power slot into the motherboard itself to eliminate those garish 8-pins, as per Asus‘ ecosystem
Of course, you need room around the back for all those connections and cables, and cut-outs for them, too. That means custom design cases are required, which is one thing that has prevented these motherboards from becoming mainstream too soon. Well, that and the fact that there’s only a small handful of them out there.
But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that 2025 has these motherboards at least dipping their toes outside of the “niche” market segment. They just look so clean.
10. Cheaper CUDIMM memory
(Image credit: Future)
It seems like every couple of weeks there’s a new “world record” CUDIMM memory overclock. At the time of writing, the record stands at an eerie 12,666 MT/s, and such speeds can’t help but whet my appetite for the memory standard.
CUDIMM RAM is memory that uses “clocked, unbuffered” DIMMs, meaning it has a clock driver that regenerates the clock signal for better signal integrity, allowing for higher frequencies and more transfers per second. This allows it to run so fast that it than makes up for slower timings and ends up being well worth it. Only problem is, it’s expensive.
It would be nice if 2025 could give us more CUDIMM memory kits that can offer such speeds for a reasonable price. Then we’d see significant memory improvements without even moving up a DDR generation.
11. More CAMM2 memory
(Image credit: Future)
Okay, now this one’s more of a “hopeful” than a “likely” development, but it’d be nice if CAMM2 memory started its path towards wider adoption in desktop gaming builds.
CAMM2 memory is a memory form factor that lies flat against the motherboard, and we got a first glimpse of it in a desktop at Computex early in 2024. We’re expecting more laptop manufacturers to opt for the flush form factor to save space and allow for easier cooling, but there’s less incentive to slap them inside desktops.
But less incentive isn’t no incentive. Having memory lying flat could allow for SSD-style top-mounted cooling, which would allow clocks to be pushed further. More importantly, though, in my opinion—and perhaps most naively—it looks rather nice, and would certainly match a hidden connector motherboard. It might be a fool’s hope, but it’s a hope I’m clinging to for 2025.
I was a little late to the game but I eventually fixed my goggles on an OLED panel in the Omen Transcend 14 laptop, and I struggle to describe just how wonderful these screens look. OLED panels are genuinely gorgeous.
But my God are they expensive. We’re talking prices that could bag you an entirely new gaming PC, and not a bad one at that.
I’m hoping that 2025 is the year when OLED monitor prices drop, even if just a little. Perhaps this would mean the introduction of new Samsung or LG 1440p OLED panels with a moderate refresh rate, rather than 32-inch 4K ones.
I know such manufacturing changes can’t be embarked upon on a whim, but I reckon there’d be enough demand there for them for it to be worthwhile. And given 2024 saw a decided push into the standalone OLED monitor market (as opposed to the OLED laptop market), 2025 might be the time for this to occur. I sure hope so.
13. ARM desktop chips
(Image credit: Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The main ARM-based chips already out in the wild are Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors, which run Windows on ARM surprisingly well and offer stellar battery life. These are all laptop chips, for now, though—unfortunately, the desktop dev kit we liked the look of was cancelled.
Given the seeming upward trajectory of Windows on ARM, the prospect of ARM-based desktop chips is quite exciting. And it’s not a pipe dream, either, given Qualcomm has already teased such CPUs and said that we “should expect to see Qualcomm in every PC form factor”.
It’s not as simple as just porting things straight over to desktop, though. For one, ARM chips don’t currently have PCIe lane capabilities, which is a big requirement for, you know, connecting all your PC’s bits and bobs together. And to pair an ARM chip with discrete graphics would require driver support, too, which currently doesn’t exist.
But these problems aren’t insurmountable, thus Qualcomm’s seeming confidence that desktop chips will arrive. And if Qualcomm’s correct in its assessment, Arm itself might be considering making its own chips. Heck, as discussed above, even Nvidia’s said to be building off of an ARM architecture for its rumoured in-house CPUs.
It’s not a given, but 2025 could be the year when all these things come into fruition and we start to see the stirrings of ARM-based desktop processor competition. With ARM’s potential for great power efficiency and battery life, such processors could certainly make for some interesting gaming PCs.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1735752518_2025-PC-hardware-preview-This-is-the-tech-we-want.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-01 15:31:292025-01-01 15:31:292025 PC hardware preview: This is the tech we want in our gaming rigs from the coming year
Happy New Year everyone! Whether you’re adding to your ongoing Wordle win streak today or just starting out, you’ll find everything you need to succeed right here. We’ve got general tips to help get you in a guessing mindset, a clue for the January 1 (1292) puzzle, and today’s answer ready if you need to turn a tough game around, or just want to make sure you get the year started on the right foot.
If today’s Wordle was any indication of how the rest of my puzzle-solving year is going to go… hmm. I had a solid core to work with from my second go, the only problem was working out what the heck was supposed to fit around the edges of it. I did get there in the end though—mostly out of stubbornness. It still counts, though.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, January 1
These thin fibres carry information, instructions, and sensations from the body to the brain. If somebody metaphorically got yours, they’d be irritating you.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
Yes, there is a double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
Playing Wordle well is like achieving a small victory every day—who doesn’t like a well-earned winning streak in a game you enjoy? If you’re new to the daily word game, or just want a refresher, I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
You want a balanced mix of unique consonants and vowels in your opening word.
A solid second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
The answer could contain letters more than once.
There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by the end of the day. If you’re struggling to find the answer or a tactical word for your next guess, there’s no harm in coming back to it later on.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Happy New Year! The answer to the January 1 (1292) Wordle is NERVE.
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Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Knowing previous Wordle solutions can be helpful in eliminating current possibilities. It’s unlikely a word will be repeated and you can find inspiration for guesses or starting words that may be eluding you.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
December 31: LEMUR
December 30: STARE
December 29: MAMBO
December 28: DECRY
December 27: GRAIN
December 26: AFFIX
December 25: SHARE
December 24: EAGLE
December 23: SAUNA
December 22: BRAWN
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it’s your job to work out which five-letter word is hiding by eliminating or confirming the letters it contains.
Starting with a strong word like LEASH—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good place to start. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters 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 go should compliment the starting word, using another “good” guess 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. 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.
It’s that time of year again. No, not the holiday season, we’re over that, but the time when CES 2025 approaches. The Consumer Electronics Show will officially start on January 7 in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, and this year’s event is already full of hope and promise, and most especially for PC gamers.
After all, with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang delivering the keynote (and hopefully announcing some next-generation RTX 50-series Nvidia GPUs) and every tech company worth knowing ramping up the potential announcement dates, it’s looking like CES 2025 will be jam-packed full of delicious hardware, much of it of the gaming variety.
I’ll be packing my holiday bags and gambling money (just kidding) and heading off to this year’s show with several other members of the PC Gamer hardware team to provide on-the-ground coverage. Las Vegas here we come.
But before then, I’ve put together a run down of everything we’re expecting to see, along with a few possibilities that are of the more hopeful variety. Who says we’re cynics, ey?
Okay, you don’t all have to put your hands up at once.
Nvidia 50-series graphics cards
(Image credit: Nvidia)
At this point, I’d eat my metaphorical hat if we didn’t see at least some of Nvidia’s next-generation RTX 50-series graphics card lineup announced at CES. That’s probably no surprise to those of you keeping up with your newsfeeds in recent months, as the leaks have been coming in thick and fast for what’s likely to be the biggest GPU release in many moons.
No one was more surprised than us when CES 2025 became the hot tip for a launch location, as it’s traditionally thought of as a more laptop-focussed show. Still, the most recent rumours suggest that we’ll be seeing the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and the RTX 5070 revealed all at once. This would be another break in recent tradition from Nvidia, as it’s been the two top-tier cards that debuted before the mid-range offerings of the past couple of generations.
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Recent leaks suggest that the RTX 5090 will be an absolute monster of a card, with kopite7kimi claiming it’ll have 32 GB of GDDR7 memory across a 512-bit bus, a peak power demand of 600 W, and 21,760 CUDA cores. For those keeping count, that’d be 33% more cores than the RTX 4090, a GPU that’s still considered overpowered to this day. That tracks with an even more recent RTX 50-series specs leak, this time apparently from Zotac—and this one even lists a potential core count for the RTX 5070 Ti.
So could we be looking at four desktop GPUs launched at once? We’ve even heard rumours that mobile GPUs could be on the table, too, although at this point the speculative roar is so loud, it’s difficult to sort fact from fiction. Regardless, it looks like Nvidia GPUs are marching on the horizon, so expect to see new Blackwell-based graphics cards galore come the start of the show—with potentially some AI sorcery in the form of “Neural Rendering“.
What’s that then? We’ll be honest—we won’t really know unless it’s formally announced, as technically DLSS, Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction could all be referred to as Neural Rendering. So it could simply be a repackage of all those existing features. But Nvidia is about as deep in the AI toolbox as it could possibly be, so I wouldn’t rule out some high-faluting, all-AI-all-the-time rendering technique we haven’t seen yet. At least, in a way that actually works for gaming, rather than a tech demo.
Exciting stuff though, isn’t it?
AMD RDNA 4 next-generation GPUs
(Image credit: AMD)
It’s not just Nvidia GPU announcements we’re expecting to see at CES 2025, as AMD’s RDNA 4 graphics cards have long been tipped to make an appearance. We reported back in September that the next-generation AMD cards were expected to launch in January, although those of you looking for a potential RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 competitor will likely be disappointed.
That’s because AMD’s Jack Huyhn has gone on record saying that the high-end market isn’t the priority. This tracks with more recent reports that what’s rumoured to be the top-end card,the RX 8800 XT, will instead deliver raster performance similar to the RTX 4080 Super, and 45% faster ray tracing performance than the current top-end AMD card, the RX 7900 XTX.
And you know what? I’m kinda down with that. After all, we’re expecting Nvidia’s top-end offerings to be mightily expensive, so if AMD can launch a card that matches the RTX 4080 Super for raw grunt and fix the woeful ray tracing performance of the previous generation, I reckon it might be a bit of a winner—providing it’s launched at the right price.
(Image credit: Future)
That’s a big if, of course. Further down the lineup, there have been rumblings of a non-XT variant of what might become AMD’s new top-end card (of this generation, at least), and potentially an RX 8700 and RX 8600 as well.
So don’t cry too deeply into your cereal, AMD fans. There are more potential developments to get excited about in the team red enclosure as well, in the form of FSR 4. The scuttlebutt suggests that the upcoming version of AMD’s DLSS upscaling competitor will be AI-based, which also hints that the new cards will have some sort of NPU/Tensor core equivalent to handle the load. And if we see the new cards revealed as expected? Then FSR 4 will likely follow.
As my own testing shows, FSR 3.1 is still behind the curve when compared to the latest version of DLSS—so an AI-enhanced version is something to get excited about for those of us hoping for performant-yet-affordable RDNA 4 GPUs in our future. Fingers crossed, at the very least.
Gaming laptops galore
(Image credit: Future)
Well, here’s a return to tradition: CES is usually about laptop releases, and this year they’ve got some shiny new chips to nestle inside. We’ve already had a play with AMD’s Strix Point Ryzen AI 300-series CPUs and Intel’s Core Ultra 200-series mobile CPUs, and we’ve been thoroughly impressed. So we’re expecting to see every major gaming laptop manufacturer under the sun release new models at CES 2025, many of them taking advantage of the shiniest silicon available today.
That means Razer, Asus, Alienware—basically, think of a gaming laptop manufacturer, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t have a new model or two to reveal at this year’s show with either AMD or Intel’s most recent efforts
So January’s looking like a superb time to start thinking about your next gaming laptop. With existing efforts like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 and the Razer Blade 14 taking the form to sleeker, svelter, and more desirable heights, I reckon 2025 might be the year we see gaming laptops blossom wholesale into the ultra-desirable machines we imagine in our heads.
The cantankerous chassis designs of old are starting to fall behind us now, so I’m expecting slim, portable, and luxurious to be the order of the day.
And I haven’t even got onto the displays yet. OLEDs in gaming laptops are a proper thing now, and I’d wager we’ll see plenty more models released with screens capable of inky dark black levels and gorgeous colour reproduction. Probably the odd Mini LED unit too, just to shake things up a bit.
Oh, and higher refresh rates. It can’t just be me who’s noticed most gaming laptop displays creeping towards the 240 Hz mark and beyond, and I can’t see that slowing down anytime soon. Speaking of which…
Ultra-high refresh gaming monitors, OLEDs, and more
(Image credit: Future)
CES has also traditionally been about monitor releases. Or rather, TVs and monitors, as it’s technically the Consumer Electronics Show, so expect plenty of screens designed to sit in your front room as well as on your desktop from many of the major manufacturers.
Expect gaming monitors of all sizes, shapes, and feature sets to dominate your newsfeeds over the course of the show, many of them aiming to reach new heights of refresh rate nirvana. Esports is a major driving factor for many monitor manufacturers these days, so I’m expecting to have to elbow my way through internet megastars (the names of which I do not know) in order to get to whatever hot new monitor of the moment they’ve come to promote.
I’ll be gentle, I promise. Still, speedy screens make for great gaming monitors for the rest of us (to a certain extent), and it’s in person where that refresh rate becomes less of a number on the box and more of a lovely thing to behold. So I’ll be sure to pump myself up with caffeine and plonk myself down in front of as many of them as I can, along with our other team members. The conversation will be fast-paced and nerdy. Of this, you can be sure.
Again, OLED gaming monitors everywhere is the expectation—and perhaps even some more affordable models, if we’ve been really, really good. Plus, there are usually some laptops with fold-out screens to admire, before we all agree that it looks a bit flimsy and move ourselves on to the next booth. Anyway, monitors, lovely screens, expect lots.
Handheld gaming PCs
(Image credit: Future)
Remember what I said about new chips? Well, now that Lunar Lake and Strix Point are officially a thing, we’ve all been very excited at PC Gamer towers to usher in the next generation of gaming handhelds. The APUs in the older devices are starting to look a bit long in the tooth, so high-powered handheld gaming PCs are something we’re hoping will be the order of the day.
Personally, I’m going to be keeping an eye on Lenovo, as leaks regarding the Lenovo Legion Go S have been so frequent this year, I feel like I’ve seen it already. Providing it does actually exist (wouldn’t it be a turn-up for the books if it didn’t?) and makes an appearance (who knows?), it’ll likely find itself sitting in amongst some tough competition, given that the handheld market seems to be growing at a phenomenal rate.
The original MSI Claw didn’t exactly set our hearts aflutter earlier this year, but the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is touting some remarkably high benchmark numbers, courtesy of testing performed by, err, MSI. We’ll be sure to get our hands on one of those if we see one, although obviously we won’t be able to benchmark it ourselves at the booth if MSI has one to show off. I mean, probably. Still, it’s an interesting thing and seems much worthier of consideration than the old, Meteor Lake-based model.
Then there’s the Adata handheld prototype my beloved hardware overlord Dave got his hands on at Computex this year. A bizarre machine for sure, but we loved the creativity on display. Will it make a reappearance, potentially with some tweaks? Time will tell. Still, I’m hoping to have a play around with some handhelds that dazzle, so keep an eye out for our coverage as we scythe our way through the show floor, hunting down all the latest portable PCs.
Motherboard chipsets
(Image credit: Future)
How’s this for confusing—thanks to some leaks, we’re expecting to see motherboards using new chipsets from both Intel and AMD, and they’re said to be called the B860 and, err, the B850. Yep, two entirely different new chipsets, from two different and highly competitive companies, separated by a single-digit change.
So for clarification, the B860 is expected to be Intel’s latest Arrow Lake-S chipset. If the leaks are to be believed, it’ll sit below the current Z890 chipset in the lineup with support for 45 total high-speed I/O lanes and up to 12 USB 2 ports, and six USB 3.2 ports. It’s currently believed to be locked for chip overclocks, although RAM overclocking is said to be supported. Keen eyes have already spotted listings for Asus motherboards using the new chipset, supposedly arriving at CES 2025.
On the AMD side of things, we have what’s expected to be the B850 chipset for Zen 5 CPUs.Videocardz already has photos of what a reader claims is the Gigabyte B850M Aorus Elite WiFi6e Ice (another catchy motherboard name to add to the list), and it’s said to offer PCIe 5 support for NVMe drives, and optionally graphics. The leaked board photos show four DDR5 DIMM slots, connections for 24+8 pin power connectors, and a whole lot of board elements hidden underneath some shiny white covers.
Not the most thrilling CES expectation, I guess, but that’s what we have to go on for now. Expect to watch me become confused by chipset naming schemes at this year’s show, and in fact, probably at future ones as well.
HDMI 2.2
(Image credit: Diy13 via Getty Images)
Now we’re talking: cable and connection standards! The current HDMI 2.1 specification supports 4K resolution at 120 Hz uncompressed, and up to 10K 100 Hz with Display Stream Compression (DSC). That’s all dependent on what cable and monitor (or TV) you use, of course, but rumours suggest that we’ll see the announcement of HDMI 2.2 at CES 2025, which will support…
Actually, we have no idea. Just the potential announcement, that’s what’s been leaked at this point. Of course, if we do get a new HDMI connection standard then it’s likely to be capable of far exceeding the 42 Gbps maximum data rate of current HDMI 2.1 connections. But by how much, we really can’t say at this point.
Still, when it comes to gaming monitors we’re currently looking at a 240 Hz limit at 4K using the current top HDMI standard, so this may simply be sowing the seeds for 8K ultra-high refresh rate displays to come. Not that modern GPUs can really make use of that sort of headroom at the moment, but hey, faster hardware is coming, and that means faster connections and cables will eventually be needed to accommodate it.
I wouldn’t expect to see an HDMI 2.2 port on new graphics cards from any of the major players for a while yet, but you never know, do you?
AI everywhere, again
(Image credit: Future)
Last year’s show was all about AI. Guess what this one might be about? Yes, the AI boom is still far from bust, so it’s once again time to put on our anti-hogwash hats and delve into all the AI offerings to see if any of them are worth talking about.
I kid, I kid, AI has its uses. I mean, we struggled to find them at last year’s event, but in 2025 we’ll be once again stalking the halls to see if we can find AI products that make sense. Of course, Nvidia will likely be talking up all sorts of AI shenanigans, and I’ve already covered the potential AI integration we’re expecting to see in FSR 4 if it arrives. Perhaps we’ll get another chance to play with Nvidia ACE, the AI-NPC tech that left our Jacob stunned in 2024?
And who can forget my legendary post-show article from last year, summing up three AI features we thought we might use, and three we definitely wouldn’t? Even me apparently, because I’ve just rediscovered it. Still, AI will be all over Las Vegas this year as well I’m sure, so here’s hoping I end up writing an AI product redemption piece now the tech has hopefully matured. See, I told you we weren’t cynical. Just bitter, and that’s a different thing entirely.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1735680407_CES-2025-From-next-gen-Nvidia-GPUs-to-gaming-laptops-galore.png6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-12-31 20:00:002024-12-31 20:00:00CES 2025: From next-gen Nvidia GPUs to gaming laptops galore, here’s everything we expect to see at January’s show
One of the best things I did in a game this year was spend ten minutes riding an oxcart from one city to another in Dragon’s Dogma 2 because its fast travel system is so limited (intentionally) as to functionally not exist. The second best thing was turning off the wayfinding settings, quest log, and minimap in Dragon Age: The Veilguard so I could spend a little time getting lost in its cities.
Those experiences aren’t the norm when most games want to make sure I can fast travel, complete quests, and manage my inventory nearly without conscious thought. I love when games waste my time, just a little bit, and I hope that 2025 brings me more games that are slightly inconvenient.
I’m not here to say that accessibility settings are bad (they aren’t) or that easy modes are ruining games (they also aren’t), but I am one of those curmudgeons who thinks we’re better off on the whole without minimaps and I have a special fondness for the mundanity of manually organizing items in my array of storage chests in every crafting survival game.
(Image credit: Capcom)
The popular demand is that games should “respect the player’s time,” but anything can be taken too far: A game that’s 100% optimized for time respecting would automatically quit to desktop instead of letting me spend an hour doing menial daily quests. When games get so frictionless that clicking buttons solves all the problems for me, I check out. My live service game brain fog has conditioned me to click on those “new item” red dots in any interface without experiencing any satisfaction and now all my real joy comes from every little nod towards realism that breaks through that optimization malaise.
The best example in recent memory is the fantastic world map in Outward. There’s no player marker on it at all, so you have to navigate entirely by recognizing landmarks and learning your surroundings. Years later I still know the route from the starter city Cierzo to Berg through the Enmerkar Forest. Walking those roads by memory is one of the best feelings I may have ever had in a game. Sea of Thieves has a similar concept with its treasure maps that will give you a diagram of an island and an X to mark the spot but leave you to identify your surroundings.
I’m always thrilled when a game doesn’t give me a hand quest log entry for the loose ends of every single one of its mysteries and instead hands me a set of custom map markers and a place to jot down notes of my own. Procedurally generated murder mystery game Shadows of Doubt was particularly great at that. Sometimes clues and evidence are immediately obvious like fingerprints at a murder scene but other times I have to make a custom note on my conspiracy board noting down a name or address until I can find out where it fits into the big picture. The moment when I can finally draw a real piece of red string between my disparate jotted notes is more thrilling than a shootout with a perp.
NPC schedules in life sims are another favourite of mine. Knowing just where to intercept a character to deliver them a gift gives me a warm fuzzy feeling harkening back to the first time I ever kept a game journal tracking the residents of Clock Town in Majora’s Mask.
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Much as I loved ’90s anime-themed Fields of Mistria this year I’ll admit I was a little bummed when I realized that I could walk into a store and buy supplies from the register even if the owner was out walking around town. I’m sure many other Stardew Valley players who’ve been spurned by ranch owner Marnie’s inattentiveness to her own store heaved a sigh of relief at the convenience that Mistria offered but I felt just a little let down that it was willing to suspend disbelief just so I wouldn’t have to come back later to buy a treat for my chickens.
Aside from the toggle-able wayfinding settings in The Veilguard, I was disappointed by some of its other systems that were hellbent on not letting me mess up or get even slightly confused. It often used popups on screen during cutscenes to explain to me how characters were feeling in the middle of a conversation where a character was telling me in dialogue how they were feeling. Really wish I could have toggled that off too.
(Image credit: NPC Studio)
Less egregious but also disappointing was its gifting system. In past Dragon Age games there were all sorts of gift items to give your companions—some with obvious recipients and others less so—but in The Veilguard there’s only one gift per team member to give and a quest log entry that won’t allow you to give it to the wrong person. I sort of missed having to look up a gift guide.
At the risk of getting really existential right at the end of the year, this may in part be a sort of emotional rebellion against the way AI is getting shoved into so many parts of our lives. I really don’t want Siri or Copilot or even my games to do all of the thinking and problem solving for me. I like walking around smelling the flowers without fast travel. I like that I never know where the hell Elliot enjoys hanging out in Pelican Town. I like a little well-tuned inconvenience in my hobby.
I hope next year, even as some studios continue shaving the rough edges off their action-RPG mush and AI further invades, that some games will still be willing to waste my time.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1735644311_Next-year-I-actually-want-more-games-willing-to-waste.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-12-31 11:00:002024-12-31 11:00:00Next year I actually want more games willing to waste my time
Cult classic capitalism JRPG and shop-running simulator Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale will be getting an HD remaster in 2025, says the game’s developer and publisher. The announcement was made during day 2 of Tokyo’s Comiket convention—a surprise venue for a videogame announce, but why not?
“In 2025… prepare to re-open the item shop,” said translator-publisher Carpe Fulgur founder Andrew Dice in a post saying that original developers EasyGameStation have been working on it “for a little while now” and that “more information will be revealed in the year to come.” We don’t yet know if it’s just a nicely upscaled HD edition or if it’ll have any major gameplay changes.
Ah. Well, then.So with Comiket day 2 starting, the EGS crew have announced something they’ve been working on for a little while now.More information will be revealed in the year to come.But in 2025… prepare to re-open the item shop.https://t.co/GB6dqGndex#RecettearHDDecember 30, 2024
Recettear is such an all-time great in its genre that a casual search turned up not one, but two PC Gamer articles from the last few years explaining in detail how it has never been bested at its own schtick.
“In 2010, a Japanese indie game appearing on Steam was unheard of,” wrote Jody Macgregor in 2022, pointing out the rarity of a good JRPG you can finish in 25 hours. “I remember playing the demo in 2010 and being surprised by how much I enjoyed something so cutesy, with a protagonist whose catchphrases are ‘yayifications’ and ‘capitalism, ho!'”
Writer Steven Messner was also pretty gushing back in 2020.
“It’s undoubtedly right to assume that Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is one of the more important indie games that you’ve never have heard of,” he said—but he was quick to note how it hadn’t aged well, technically speaking:
“Ten years is a long time, especially for an indie game, and Recettear’s adorable charm and engrossing loop of dungeon delving and bartering are now buried under some archaic limitations.”
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Thus, this HD re-release should probably excited a lot of people interested in exploring a classic.
If you’re curious, you can find the original Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale on Steam. The HD remake doesn’t yet have a page, but we’re sure it’ll pop up soon.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1735608232_Iconic-shop-sim-JRPG-Recettear-is-getting-an-HD-remake.jpg6751199Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-12-30 23:11:502024-12-30 23:11:50Iconic shop sim JRPG Recettear is getting an HD remake in 2025
It feels like no time at all has passed since my last (and expansive) Summer Sale roundup. But the nights already grow long, the days short, and chunky, questionably-patterned knitwear increasingly tempting. Despite some high-profile AAA missteps, 2024 was an absurdly packed year for games. Not just in terms of quantity, but quality too: Even working within the rules listed below, I had a shortlist of over 250 possible picks for this latest Steam sale roundup.
Boiling it down to just 20 primo picks was full of hard decisions, tough calls, tearful farewells and calculated sacrifices, but I did it. This year’s list skews towards the weird and the underlooked, some of 2024’s best that you quite possibly haven’t even heard of, because sometimes you just need to expand your mind a little. Here’s the rules I stuck to while picking the 20 best hidden gems in the 2024 Steam Winter sale:
Launched, graduated from early access or otherwise ‘completed’ in 2024
Something I’ve personally played and can vouch for the worthiness of
Genuine underdogs—most below 500 user reviews, so it’s new for you
Quirky, distinctive, offbeat and under-covered—we like those deep cuts
25% discount at minimum—We’re going deeper on the savings this time
As broad a range of genres as possible. A little something for everyone
While the rules are slightly flexible, most games check off all the above.
As always, I hope you find something fresh and special. Let’s get started, and spread the word!
Price: $12.99 / £10.06 (35% off) | Developer: Sam Atlas
Let’s kick things off with a really weird one, but one of my favourites this year. Is it a Biblically Accurate Monkey Ball? Some kind of Metroidvania for Cruelty Squad sensory burnouts? Whatever Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity is, it’s great. A massive and nonlinear 3D platform collectathon where you’ll be collecting dozens of new bodies to inhabit. From abstract geometry to cars, humanoids and weirder things besides, each with their own usage, even if they might seem useless at first blush.
There’s a bit of immersive sim spirit in here too. So long as you can get to your goal, it’s a valid solution, even if it feels like you completely shattered the game’s physics to get there. At least some of the game-breaking is fully intentional, as some forms and transformation energy (the currency of Extreme Evolution) are hidden in downright wacky locations that’ll require some lateral thinking to access. Oh, and if the visual effects are a bit much, you can tone them down, but it does make the game a bit more boring to look at.
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Sequel to 2018’s excellent Lucah: Born of a Dream, Death of a Wish doubles down on the scribbly, low-fi art style but pairs it with a more refined, tighter, faster combat engine. If you missed the original game (more on that next paragraph!), the series plays like an overhead-view fusion of Dark Souls and Bayonetta. Precision dodging, satisfying combos, and high stakes. It’s also laden with heavy vibes, telling the story of empowered children surviving in a Shin Megami Tensei-esque fractured reality while escaping from the cult that raised them.
The story is still a hallucinatory snarl of time loops, psychic demons, queer religious trauma and battling for found family, but this time more focused. New protagonist Christian is a more aggressive, brash fighter, focused on creating his own openings and steamrolling enemies rather than waiting for a chance to parry. In short, it’s a little more Bayonetta than Dark Souls this time, but its story intersects with the first game, and the two feel like halves of a whole. Good, then, that for just a few pennies extra you can get a bundle with both games if you don’t have the first. Doesn’t matter which order you play them, but you should play both.
Sovereign Syndicate Available Now | Release Trailer – YouTube
While fragmented members of the original Disco Elysium team might be working on several spiritual successors, there are already a few games out now that have cribbed generously from its detective’s notepad. Sovereign Syndicate is one of the stronger offerings, borrowing much of its structure (and a distinct lack of tactical combat) and set in a fantastical Steampunk London. It’s all cogs-on-hats silliness, but embraced sincerely as you hop between four characters—a minotaur magician, a human courtesan turned rogue, a dwarven artificer and his robot buddy.
While the writing isn’t quite up to Disco Elysium’s level (honestly, what is?), it’s still a few steps above your average fantasy RPG here, and there’s an interesting mystery yarn to be unraveled. Despite the shifting perspectives, it’s a relatively linear game. While there are some big choices to be made along the way, you’re unlikely to be presented with a fractal mess of dialogue options at any given time, usually just two or three, with the occasional extra option if one of your stats is high enough. You do still have voices in your head, though; a concept I expect similarly inspired games to borrow over the coming years.
No thoughts, head empty. Sometimes you just want to turn off all those higher brain functions and play a truly videogame-ass videogame. Garbanzo Quest is a great little platform shooter about a blank-faced little guy named Garbanzo (or Pinto, or both if you want to play co-op) on a quest to make friends and overthrow a capitalist skellington named Billi Bones. You run, you jump, you spit at enemies until they give up on fighting and look grossed out (a reasonable reaction) and occasionally explore to find hidden keys to alternate exits because there’s a whole Super Mario World style overworld to putz around in.
It all sounds pretty simple—and it is—but a lot of the best platformers are, and Garbanzo Quest just feels right. The music is catchy, the level design is just smart enough, the boss fights are challenging and the writing is kid-friendly but deeply chaotic. There’s accessibility options to tune the difficulty to your liking if you want, and even a 2-player only character that just floats around instead of having to jump; great if you’ve got a less experienced (but still eager) buddy that wants to play. It’s just a big, goofy, charming package. And there’s a level editor, too!
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip – actual LAUNCH Trailer – YouTube
The best-selling, most mainstream game on this list, which should tell you just how far off the beaten track we’ve strayed. The latest from the team behind the equally chaotic 2D platformer Wuppo (which is also going dirt cheap and bundled, so don’t skip it), Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is best described as a kid-friendly Grand Theft Auto, but great fun for all ages. Tiny Terry is a weird little guy who wants to go to space. This means getting a car (so he takes a job as a taxi driver) and then making it fast enough to ramp into orbit. This means collecting trash, and the fastest way to do that is by committing crimes and not doing taxi work because work is boring.
All violence here is purely slapstick. You get a stick, and then you slap people with it, and they fall and bounce around before getting up again. No guns, no death, just cartoon antics, collecting stuff, buying questionable clothing and just generally messing around, getting distracted and causing trouble. It’s well-written and funny and a bit like the resurgent popular Simpsons: Hit & Run, but without the brutally hard races. It’s not a massive game, clocking around four hours long if you don’t get too distracted. But this is also an open world sandbox, so some distraction is a given.
Price: $8.99 / £7.49 (50% off) | Developer: Villainous Games Studio
There are a now-uncountable number of first-person horror games where you slink around a spooky forest, looking for arbitrary macguffins while avoiding some kind of wandering monster, but Harvest Hunt injects some interesting roguelite elements into a tired concept. Your goal is to survive five nights (where have we heard that before?) as a cursed village’s warden, collecting produce from the fields while avoiding the Devourer, a roaming worm-like monster that will spoil the crop (and you) if left to its own devices.
Each night you get an assortment of cards that add positive and negative modifiers to the map. Fortifications, chances to scare off the monster with fire, or maybe even weapons to fight back against it. Get some good synergy going and you might end up more of a hunter than a gatherer, or you might end up transforming the map into a quagmire of traps and obstacles for yourself. Over the course of multiple runs you’ll unlock additional cards to keep replays fresh (a real design challenge, considering it’s just you versus the monster) plus some story tidbits. It’s a compelling loop, and adds a lot to a formula that’s normally one-and-done.
Price: $13.29 / £11.12 (30% off) | Developer: Moulin aux Bulles Studio
This year’s award for Frenchest platformer goes to Decline’s Drops, without question. Looking like a particularly kaleidoscopic European comic, the world has been taken over by a cabal of industrialist serpents that are polluting the land in the name of capitalism and growth. Only a sun-hatted puppet girl named Globule can save the day, mostly by punching things with big cartoon boxing gloves. I told you it’s a bit French. It’s beautifully animated and with really catchy music too, but where Decline’s Drops really shines is its mechanics.
The platforming and level design take heavy inspiration from the Donkey Kong Country Returns series, while the combat is a surprisingly technical riff on Smash Bros. Frequent arena battles encourage you to learn combos and keep juggle chains going, while spending a limited pool of energy on powerful special attacks. It’s great stuff, and despite it not selling great at launch, the developer is so committed to this passion project that they’re planning on adding another two worlds and three more playable characters over the course of next year.
Perennial Order | OUT NOW!! | Launch Trailer – YouTube
Price: $13.99 / £11.89 (30% off) | Developer: Gardenfiend Games
It’s great to see grim fantasy style explored in fun new ways, and Perennial Order’s ‘plant horror’ setting and strange sprite-collage aesthetic feel genuinely refreshing. Everything here is made out of sticks, leaves, roots and bone, with your own character(s) standing out thanks to their bright petals against the gloomy backdrops. Rather than deliver another interconnected open world or traditional dungeon crawl, this is a hack n’ slash boss rush, playable solo but ideally with a budding buddy, local or online.
While there’s a good bit of walking and talking acting as connective tissue between battles, and the occasional threat in the spaces between bosses, the main fights themselves are a wonderfully varied lot. A personal favourite being a fight on a chessboard, played against a giant that moves pieces around to attack you. At least until you get him riled up, and he starts cheating. I won’t spoil too much, as the game is a relatively brief handful of hours long, but if you’ve got a souls-liking friend you can rope in, this is a great way to spend a winter evening.
Less is more, sometimes. Phantom Spark is a minimalist take on the zero-G racer. Think Wipeout, but entirely focused on precision time trials, beating your past ghosts and chasing high scores through nailing a perfect racing line. No powerups here, no stats or enemies to shoot. Just you, the track, and possibly a few rivals (that you can’t collide with) if you’re playing online or locally with friends, and it’s probably for the better here. If you’ve ever lost hours to mastering a map in Trackmania, it’s a similar deal here.
Of course, the best racing in the world would still feel a bit hollow without vibes to match. Phantom Spark trades Wipeout’s corporate-run sci-fi setting for a more mellow afrofuturist look. You’ll mostly be racing through monumental pastel-hued stone structures covered with ornate engravings and accentuated with neon lasers. The music is also a chill, trancey electronica mix that keeps running even when you reset a track. Surprisingly there’s also a substantial singleplayer story mode to give a little context and narrative to these races, but it doesn’t interfere with the core racing. The only real shortcoming of the game is a lack of a track editor, but the devs have mentioned that one might be a possibility in later updates.
The spirit of Day of The Tentacle shines bright in this one. The Holy Gosh Darn is the latest in the “Tuesday Trilogy”—a trio of offbeat adventures about life, Death (capitalized, as in the skellington dude) and the cosmic order all set on the same extremely messy day. This one has you playing as Cassiel, an angel trying to avert the destruction of heaven, which is about to happen in about 20 minutes. It gets messy, fast. You can roll back time as you see fit, or skip forward, but you can only bring back a single item from the future with you, making for some interesting puzzles where you might just need two of the same thing to progress.
Comedy is a tricky business at the best of times, especially in games. While The Holy Gosh Darn didn’t get too many belly laughs out of me, it did manage to shake loose a few chuckles and plenty of smiles. The game’s rude, crude cartoon afterlife walks a fine line between irreverence and restraint, and the voice acting is surprisingly solid too. Even better for you bargain-hounds: You can get The Holy Gosh Darn EVEN CHEAPER somehow when you buy this bundle including it plus the other two games in the trilogy. One of the weird cases where more is, paradoxically, less.
What’s one of my roundups without a big dumb arcade game? Angelstruck plays a bit like recently remastered score attack shooter Savant: Ascent, but with more room to move horizontally and some roguelike perks and long-term unlocks to keep things fresh between runs. Aesthetically, it’s silly heavy metal fantasy stuff—an angry red, horned lady is blasting her way out of hell, clearing out angels with a big gun on the way to the top. It would be edgy if it wasn’t delivered with all the seriousness of a Saturday morning cartoon, with the protagonist pulling silly faces during the boss intro splash screens, and on some of the perk card art too.
The bosses are stand-out moments though, with the big armored serpent that snakes around the arena cutting off movement options being a personal favourite. There’s also a surprisingly complex scoring system encouraging perfect play and long combos. Perhaps a bit redundant in a game with roguelike elements, but it’s still fun to make big numbers go up. My only real gripe with the game is that the player character run animation looks a little stiff, in a nostalgic, flash animation-esque way, but you can do a lot worse for under $5.
If you like a little roguelike in your FPS’ing these days, you’re spoilt for choice. Roboquest, Gunfire Reborn and Deadlink are just the tip of the iceberg. But one that a lot of people have overlooked is Battle Shapers, a Mega Man-inspired bright and cartoony take on the formula. It left early access just days before the winter sale began, capping off its story with a definitive ending and some fun new systems that let you tweak and tune difficulty in interesting ways. Combat isn’t a million miles away from Doom Eternal here, with a bunch of cooldown-based powers and enemies that get stunned when on low health, opening them up for a big melee finisher that restores some of your shields.
Rather than being a canned animation playing when you finish an enemy, you just punch them and send robots ragdolling, often launching them into other bots and doing damage. While there’s plenty of character-building options in any given run of Battle Shapers (I especially like the ability to freely take the perks and modifiers from unwanted weapons and slap them onto the ones you do like), there’s a surprising amount of long-term progression. The game feels a bit limiting at first, but you’ll eventually unlock perks like wall-running and the means to break cracked walls to open alternate passages after a few loops. The story is a bit simplistic (it’s no Hades, and unvoiced) but this one grows a lot over the course of multiple runs.
The ‘greatest precision platformer’ crown has changed hands a few times over the years. I Wanna Be The Guy, Super Meat Boy and Celeste have all claimed it at one point, but most have forgotten just how good Dustforce was. Its movement was technical, its skill ceiling miles high, as the top level rankings required you to maintain inertia from every slope, slide across ceilings and chain together attacks without missing.
Eden Genesis doesn’t quite stick the landing in terms of story, perhaps going a little heavy on its fully voiced cyberpunk drama, but the running and jumping here is unmistakably based on Dustforce. Every level is an obstacle course to be routed out, with rankings, leaderboards and high scores to chase, plus optional objectives encouraging obsessively replaying each stage until you can do it perfectly. No pauses, no damage, no collectible left behind. It’s not the most original game in this lineup, but the world could use a little more Dustforce.
If you’re fresh off the unsettling realness of Mouthwashing and looking for another piece of sci-fi horror designed to get under your skin, Psychroma isn’t a bad second shot of poison at all. Like Mouthwashing, it’s about the failing relationships of a handful of people in a dark but familiar future. In this case, a cast of heavily augmented people trying to make ends meet, sharing a high-tech house in future Toronto, neon-lit but crumbling and rendered in a sickly, DOS-esque colour palette.
Also like Mouthwashing (although this is almost certainly a case of parallel evolution, given that both were in development side by side, and this came out months earlier), it banks heavily on glitch effects, fragmented timelines and unreliable narrators, saving gore for a handful of scenes. Owing to the excellent sprite art used for close-ups, it’s grisly stuff when it wants to be, although the character sprites when walking around are gangly to the point of being almost abstract. It’s a short, uncomfortable ride, clocking in at around movie length, and with minimal puzzling. A great bit of sci-fi unpleasantness for those who’ve acquired the taste.
Sometimes a game just doesn’t age well. EA’s old Strike series of tactical helicopter shooters is probably best left in the ’90s, as leading a one-chopper Gulf War campaign against tired Arab stereotypes doesn’t quite sit right in the year 2024. Megacopter thankfully salvages the important part of the series—the satisfying, technical arcade helicopter combat—and replaces the jingoism and setting with lurid, bloody cartoon nonsense that feels lifted straight from a Troma movie: Evil reptiloids are invading and plan on destroying mankind’s greatest monuments; our mascot pizza and arcade complexes, and only a blood-fueled ancient Aztec gunship can fight back.
It’s a little more arcadey than Desert Strike, and broken up into smaller missions with a shop in between to buy new gear. Guns, armor, new missile types—standard enough stuff. Less standard are the cooldown-based Az-Tech powers like a partially invulnerable dash to help deal with the more bullet-hellish attack patterns you’ll encounter. There’s also some big messy boss fights where you’ll have to ration your ammo and occasionally make a dash to pick up more from elsewhere on the map. There’s some rough edges (the in-flight UI looks a little bland), but this is a generally great take on a largely forgotten formula.
Were it not being sold on Steam (admittedly for just pocket change), I could believe that UltraNothing just popped into existence one day like some kind of cursed anomaly waiting to be found and picked apart. On the surface a simple block-pushing puzzle game set in a surreal, abstract world. Shove things around until you can drop a floppy disk on a computer and move to the next level. There’s some brain-teasers, and the world map gradually expands outwards as you complete levels, but it doesn’t seem like there’s too much to it.
And then it starts introducing new mechanics. Big ones, like turn-based strategy and unit command and construction and death abuse and camping. All while still letting you do the basic block-pushing stuff. Suddenly previous areas gain strange new contexts, additional unhinged dialogue drags you deeper, and before you know it, you’re lost in the sauce. I’ve still barely scratched the surface of this one and feel I’m in too deep. Some say that it’s dozens of hours long even if you’re a puzzle freak. I am not.
Sumerian Six | Launch Trailer | Available Now – YouTube
With the success of last year’s Shadow Gambit (which I reviewed here, and the crew hailed as the best stealth game of 2023), I figured the stealth tactics sub-genre was due for a renaissance. Given that Sumerian Six has flown under almost everyone’s radars despite publisher Devolver Digital’s best efforts, I am seemingly wrong. Or maybe it’s just the game being too stealthy for its own good. In short, this is Commandos, but in a Hellboy-esque pulp adventure setting where heroic super-scientists battle the Third Reich. And the great thing about Nazis in a stealth game is that you won’t feel bad about wiping out every last guard!
It’s polished, varied fun, and despite giving you some fun powers (one of your squad is a were-bear, great for those moments where you want to be a little less stealthy) it’s a surprisingly stiff challenge, moreso than Shadow Gambit. The only fly in the ointment is the developer’s bizarre decision to use AI tools to generate a lone marching song. Presumably there was a good reason for it, but still, a mild disappointment. Still, at this price (with a further discount if you own Shadow Gambit, Shadow Tactics or Showgunners), it’s easy enough to overlook.
Price: $9.99 / £8.37 (50% off) | Developer: La Moutarde
There have been plenty of JRPG heavyweights this year, including popular GOTY pick Metaphor: ReFantazio. Here’s a relatively bite-sized adventure that you can get through in a lazy holiday weekend. Visually Terra Memoria evokes Capcom’s classic Breath of Fire series, especially the later games with their chunky, detailed sprites and evocative 3D worlds, but with a relatively low-stakes story and sense of whimsy. Interestingly, once assembled, all six party members are active at all times. The three front-line fighters never change, but you can pair each of them with one of three support characters, modifying how they behave in turn-based fights.
Despite its relatively short run time (a bit over 15 hours, according to most), Terra Memoria crams in a lot of ideas, including cooking minigames and some town-building. If there’s one criticism that can be levelled against Terra Memoria, it’s that the translation, while perfectly serviceable, has a little ‘second language’ funk to it. Specifically the kind you sometimes get when going from French to English. I’d love to hear how it holds up in the developer’s native language, but as my brain is only big enough to hold one set of words (and an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure games), I’m unable to judge. But it’s only the smallest of grumbles, and 10 bucks well spent if you’re up for a lighter, fluffier fantasy adventure.
Kitten Burst – Aerial racer/Dead internet simulator
The least discounted and most expensive game here, but you aren’t going to find anything else like Kitten Burst. Trust me, I’ve looked. It’s an aerial racing game set in the dead and abandoned ruins of the future Y2K-styled internet. You control a flying, cat-shaped program exploring abandoned digital spaces, freely exploring until you begin a point-to-point checkpoint race where you can push your luck by flying extra close to walls to boost your speed, which makes for a fun and challenging risk-reward mechanic.
While the majority of the game is exploring the strange cyber-landscapes and completing races, gradually levelling up your cat’s (freely respeccable) stats, there’s a few minigames in here and some surprisingly cool musical boss fights. Battles lock your flight path onto rails and play like a hybrid of Star Fox (minus the shooting) and interactive music video, with big baddies blasting obstacles and bullets at you to the breakbeat. It’s a pretty substantial package, with a surprising amount of dialogue channelling the internet of ages past. Remember: Scene, Emo and Goth are three entirely different things.
The one early access pick in this roundup, but even limited to just its first episode, this is a wild ride of an FPS campaign. Built on the ever-reliable GZDoom engine, Relentless Frontier is pure sci-fi power fantasy. You’re a power-armored supersoldier fighting off a colossal swarm of insectoid monsters, but rather than go the Space Marine route of having you tank your way through problems, you’re all about zipping through the battlefield’s vertical spaces at speed, herding enemies together then splattering them with explosives, a belt-fed automatic shotgun and a six-barreled assault rifle.
There’s surprising depth to the combat, like armored enemies that need to have their plating cracked before you can effectively do damage, and some Metroidy exploration and backtracking to unlock bonus permanent upgrades for your suit. The game also handles resources in an interesting way. While there’s your usual assortment of pickups around the map, using your melee nano-axe will help you build up a stockpile of space goo that can be converted instantly (even mid-combat) to give you a quick top-up of health, armor or ammo. Even with some secret hunting, you’ll probably need to as well, as this game will put you through the wringer at higher difficulties. Satisfying, technical combat: A great foundation for more to come.
This is just a tiny fraction of the interesting and undersold games from 2024 alone. It’s easy to lose perspective and focus solely on a handful of big live-service failures or absurd marketing crossovers, but the fact is that there are more great games out there than you (or I) will ever find time to look at, let alone play. And don’t forget, games don’t age like they used to—almost everything in my previous hidden gem roundups is still going cheap, and they’re as good as the day they launched. Go check some of them out here:
To all the developers behind these games: Thank you all. It’s strange and obscure indie games that got me writing about the medium in the first place, and it’s why I’m able to showcase all of this here.
And to everyone who found something to treasure here: Don’t keep it to yourself! Share what you love and tell others, algorithms be damned.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1735572206_The-20-best-hidden-gems-from-2024-to-grab-before.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-12-30 14:00:002024-12-30 14:00:00The 20 best hidden gems from 2024 to grab before the end of the Steam Winter sale
I’ve looked at a lot of new PC gaming tech this year. Looking at my Steam Replay listing, far more than I’ve consistently played new games, that’s for sure. From the RTX 40-series refresh in January, to the first proper modular gaming laptop, weird handhelds, ace gaming CPUs, and funky laptops, I’ve dabbled in every facet of the industry.
Which is why I’m still doing this twenty years after I took my first faltering steps as a PC technology journalist; there’s always some new toy to play with.
But when it actually came to sitting down and thinking about what’s been my pick of all the gear I’ve had my hands on this year, what’s been the thing that either surprised or pleased me the most, well, that’s been tougher than I really expected. Somewhat strangely, what I’ve landed on is not the thing which I’ve scored the highest, and yet it’s the thing I’ve had the most lingering affection for.
The Asus TUF A14 continues my trend of getting all excited about wee 14-inch gaming laptops, but it also leans into my frugal nature, too, being part of the Taiwanese giant’s more affordable brand. It’s a 14-inch gaming laptop I was expecting to be fine but mostly unexciting. Sure, the AMD Strix Point spec is grand—the same as in our overall pick as the current best gaming laptop—but the TUF lappies have long been the frumpy cousins to the supermodel stylings of the ROG Zephyrus machines.
We’ve been giddy over the gorgeous ROG Zephyrus G14 and Zephyrus G16 designs launched at CES way back at the start of this year, and I wasn’t expecting to see the same design notes being present when I pulled the TUF A14 out of its unassuming box and protective sleeving.
But it’s a delightfully slim little laptop, and one that is far more restrained than I’ve ever seen from the traditionally very ‘gamer’ TUF range of laptops. That, admittedly, is still evident when you flip open the lid and are greeted by the angular Asus font on the keyboard. That’s something I still find pretty damned ugly, but is really the only nod to that more aggressive styling we’ve become used to from standard Asus gear. Though that is obviously changing.
This is very much a proper gaming laptop—it has a 100 W RTX 4060 inside that slimline chassis after all—but one that also isn’t going to look out of place in a seminar, workshop, or team meeting. There is naught but a faded ‘TUF’ logo in one corner of the lid and that’s it for outward adornments.
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The super slim bezel of the 1600p screen makes the display a joy, too, and at 165 Hz it’s plenty fast enough for any gaming enterprise. The RTX 4060 might be a tough match for that full resolution, however, but with the tight pixel pitch of a high-res 14-inch panel, knocking games back down to 1200p or flipping the upscaling switcheroo, you’re not going to experience the slight blurring you can get on larger screens.
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(Image credit: Future)
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For me, it’s going to be a tough call on which laptop I take with me on my travels to CES in January, because the Ryzen AI HX 370 is a great, efficient chip in its own right—and capable of decent gaming performance away from the plug, which the RTX 4060 kinda isn’t. But the other contender is the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite machine I’ve ever used in anger, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge.
That’s something else which has impressed me this year, especially having spent six months using it as my work lappy. I’ve not experienced any real compatibility issues and haven’t modified what I do because it’s not an x86 machine. It’s coped with everything but a severely tab-heavy Chrome load, at which point it falls to its knees and cries ‘uncle!’
I’ve also loved the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, but really it’s more iterative than innovative considering AMD’s 3D V-cache passim, so I would struggle to give that my pick of the year. Especially as I would have given the CPU nod to the Ryzen 7 7800X3D on my last go around the fiery orb.
But still, it’s this lovely little slab of affordable, unassuming gaming tech that has my heart in 2024.
I am, however, hoping that I get to give the 2025 edition of this award to one fantastic graphics card from the slew of new GPUs set to land in our desktops from Nvidia, Intel, and AMD throughout the new year. C’mon, graphics peops, wow me. I’m done with mostly iterative, just a bit better, just a bit more expensive graphics silicon. I want something really new and exciting.
If you want to find out who won the PC Gamer Hardware Awards, we’ll be publishing the winners on New Year’s Day.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1735500095_Ive-tested-the-best-graphics-cards-and-CPUs-of-the.jpg6761200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-12-29 18:00:102024-12-29 18:00:10I’ve tested the best graphics cards and CPUs of the year, and yet it’s this affordable, unassuming little gaming laptop that captured my heart in 2024
However you want to win Sunday’s Wordle, we can help you out. Refresh your guessing tactics with our handy general tips, use the December 29 (1289) clue to bring some focus to your game (or finally make sense of some stubborn yellow letters), and if all else fails click your way to today’s answer. You’ve got this.
I love a good “Ah-ha” moment. I love them even more when they actually lead to the right word, and not something that’s close but not quite there. Hmm. If only Wordle could tell when I typed with enthusiasm, and gave me an extra nudge for my efforts. Still, at least I had enough rows spare to correct my mistake.
Wordle today: A hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Sunday, December 29
Today’s answer is a kind of lively modern latin dance. Not a rumba or a cha-cha, the other one.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
Yes, a letter is used twice in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
If you’ve decided to play Wordle but you’re not sure where to start, I’ll help set you on the path to your first winning streak. Make all your guesses count and become a Wordle winner with these quick tips:
A good opener has a mix of common vowels and consonants.
The answer could contain the same letter, repeated.
Avoid words that include letters you’ve already eliminated.
You’re not racing against the clock so there’s no reason to rush. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Sometimes stepping away for a while means you can come back with a fresh perspective.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
One easy Sunday win? Sure thing. The answer to the December 29 (1289) Wordle is MAMBO.
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Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Previous Wordle solutions can help to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer isn’t likely to be repeated. They can also give you some solid ideas for starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
December 28: DECRY
December 27: GRAIN
December 26: AFFIX
December 25: SHARE
December 24: EAGLE
December 23: SAUNA
December 22: BRAWN
December 21: BLADE
December 20: FLASH
December 19: STRAY
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
There are six rows of five boxes presented to you by Wordle each day, and you’ll need to work out which five-letter word is hiding among them to win the daily puzzle.
Start with a strong word like ALIVE—or any other word with a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You should also avoid starting words with repeating letters, so you don’t waste the chance to confirm or eliminate an extra letter. Once you’ve typed your guess and hit Enter, you’ll see which letters 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 first, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you might have missed on the first row—just don’t forget to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the correct word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words and don’t forget letters can repeat too (eg: 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.
Settling on the score is always the hardest part of writing a review, for me. In my NZXT Relay review earlier this year, (spoiler alert) I gave the speaker set a 75, as you pretty much have to buy all the extra accessories for the thing to work properly. However, with the whole set, this has become my daily audio driver and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
With the NZXT Relay, you are effectively buying into an audio ecosystem. If you are big into mobile phones, there’s a good chance this phrase has set off alarm bells but it’s not as restrictive as that may lead you to believe.
Starting out with the Relay speakers, they are a compact set of 80-watt desktop speakers that can easily fit onto a table. Their relatively small stature belies a strong mid and high sound, though it lacks in bass.
Having tested out a much more competent set in my Kanto Ora reference speakers review, the Relay feels comparatively lacking in the low end. By themselves, they are a passable way to listen to games and music, though nothing special.
It’s when you start adding accessories that this audio beast truly comes to life. The NZXT SwitchMix is a dedicated headset stand with a sound mixer. You pop any set on there (though the Relay headset suits the aesthetic) and you can change the mix between game sound and game chat with just a quick flick of the mixer.
(Image credit: Future)
Next to that is a wheel that can be turned up and down to change volume, or pressed down to mute the whole thing. However, it’s the pressure plate at the very top that makes this thing sing.
When you pop a pair of headphones on top of the SwitchMix, the sound automatically goes to the set of speakers. Take it off and they are in the headphones now. This means you can swap from listening to music on the speakers to talking to your friends on the headset in about as quick as it takes you to grab the thing.
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The swap is nearly instantaneous and the only thing you will ever find yourself waiting for is the speakers to wake up if they haven’t been active in a while.
The Relay headset is cheap and cheerful, but fits the look and comes with standard physical controls on the aux cable to easily customize your sound while playing games. It’s nothing special but, luckily, if your current gaming headset has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, you can plug that into the stand instead and it will work just fine.
Finally, finishing off the full NZXT set is the subwoofer. This is almost as necessary of an accessory as the SwitchMix, due to the lack of bass from the central speakers. It adds that much-needed low-end to everything that makes the sound much fuller.
(Image credit: Future)
It’s not a hugely bassy subwoofer, though, and won’t rumble the floor like the subwoofer found in the Razer Nommo V2 Pro. However, it’s just the right amount to add some depth to a battlefield as your soldier’s legs carry you across or the rumble of a car engine flying above you in Rocket League.
I did notice a little bit of fiddliness at one point with this set, where I had to unplug it and plug it back in again to work as intended, but that’s only popped up one time in nine months and could be down to user error in some form.
I’ve tested better speakers this year in a technical sense but what made me settle on the NZXT, other than the convenience of leaving them on my desk, is that everything about it just works so well. Setting up with a coffee in the morning and playing some songs has never quite been as easy as this, and being able to quickly swap to the headphones for a Discord call or a check-in from my partner is just the cherry on top. There are better dedicated gaming speakers but these are an everyday set in the truest sense, offering a decently dynamic set of cans and speakers for games, and a laid-back ecosystem for very casual use.
The SwitchMix felt like a gimmick on first use but that’s because of how easy it all is and how much it wows people when I show them. However, with time, my view has shifted from thinking it’s a gimmick to an out-and-out selling point. Just pick it all up in a set to get the most out of it.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1735427928_The-NZXT-Relay-is-a-flawed-set-of-speakers-but.jpg6711200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-12-28 18:00:002024-12-28 18:00:00The NZXT Relay is a flawed set of speakers but it’s also my favourite bit of hardware from 2024 thanks to its ingenious stand
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