Bungie’s taking a crack at the extraction shooter genre and so can you when the Marathon alpha test opens up later this month. Official launch day for Marathon isn’t until September this year, but it will be running an alpha and beta test before that. From what we’ve played so far, it’s all that Bungie FPS sauce in a different live service package than Destiny 2.
The first alpha will give players who get in a chance to try out four of its different characters (“runners”) and two maps in crews of three players all doing the PvPvE thing and trying to exfil with gear and completed contracts. Here’s the quick facts on the Marathon alpha:
When is the Marathon alpha test?
Marathon’s first alpha test will start April 23 later this month, with Bungie yet to disclose how long it will run for. Signups are live now over in the official Marathon Discord server.
The alpha test is private, requiring a code from Bungie, and is limited to North American players over 18 years of age.
What’s in the Marathon alpha test?
Marathon’s first alpha test will include four runners and two maps for your squad to test out.
Runners:
Blackbird: Has a tactical spiderbot and feels similar to Destiny 2’s Warlock class
Void: Has tactical invisibility and feels most like Destiny 2’s Void Hunter
Locus: Has a tactical shield and works well for Destiny 2 Titan mains
Glitch: Super speedy class with a double jump and tactical slide
Maps:
Perimeter: a woodland map for five crews (15 runners)
Dire Marsh: a more open map for six crews (18 runners)
Marathon is built on teams of three players and you’ll want to crew up with friends if possible. Bungie says you’ll have the option to fill your team with randoms or queue as a solo or duo but there is no solos or duos match mode, trios always.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1744486615_Marathon-alpha-test—how-and-when-to-play.jpg6161200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-12 19:08:392025-04-12 19:08:39Marathon alpha test—how and when to play
It’s the first day of the weekend so sit back, relax, and let us help you win this Wordle and every single one that comes after it. Treat yourself to a quick win with a cheeky little click through to today’s answer if you like, or get comfy and spend some time with our hint for the April 12 (1393) puzzle. However you’d like to play, we’ve got you covered.
What a brilliant way to start the weekend. That wasn’t the breeziest Wordle I’ve faced recently, but that was why I enjoyed it. A few clues, a few stumbles, and then one fantastic “Ah, got it” moment as it all fell into place. Don’t worry if you’re not so lucky—you can guarantee yourself a similar experience with our hints (or today’s answer).
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, April 12
Any person who cares for someone else could be this, but most often this is a trained medical professional busily treating sick people in hospitals.
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’s that word you’ve been looking for. The answer to the April 12 (1393) Wordle is NURSE.
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:
April 11: ARROW
April 10: TURBO
April 9: WHEAT
April 8: SPARE
April 7: HAZEL
April 6: VILLA
April 5: FOAMY
April 4: KRILL
April 3: SHEAR
April 2: CURSE
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.
Every now and then a game comes along that seems unassuming at first but totally blows away all of your expectations and reveals itself to be something special. Rematch is one of those games. Yes, it’s football, but it’s far closer to the likes of Rocket League and Overwatch than it is to FIFA and is all about action and teamplay.
Trailers really don’t do this game justice (although you can watch the latest one above). Watching people run around a pitch, even when extremely stylish, can’t capture just how good this feels to play. Rematch is the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’m actually playing a game of football.
Instead of playing as a whole team like in FIFA and other football games, you control just one player in a team of three to five people. You need to run and react to every pass and tackle, and really work hard to aim your shots and score a goal.
Even if you’re not a fan of football, I’m confident that the fast-paced drama will win you over. Rematch is being made by Sloclap, creators of martial arts games Absolver and Sifu, and it shows in the sense of bodily control and opportunities for reaction.
We were trying to get to that core essence of at least part of what makes football so much fun and a beautiful sport.
Pierre Tarno, Rematch creative director
“We want you to feel like an amazing athlete,” creative director Pierre Tarno told PC Gamer at a recent studio visit in Paris. “We want players to feel the high stakes pressure of football. We were trying to get to that core essence of at least part of what makes football so much fun and a beautiful sport.”
Put most simply by the developer: FIFA is a football simulation, while Rematch is a football player simulation.
(Image credit: Sloclap)
Match maker
Rematch will launch later this summer with four modes—3v3, 4v4, 5v5, and a ranked 5v5 with other modes to be added in later seasons. Matches last about six minutes, but can spill into overtime and for now things are multiplayer only, with bots for solo play being worked towards for season 3 in 2026.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
“For me, where the game strikes the best balance of action, engagement, and tactical gameplay is 5v5, and that’s why I think it makes sense to have it as the main competitive game mode,” Tarno said. “But new game modes, even fun ones, if they’re popular enough and deep enough could find their way into competitive queues. We’re very open to mixing things around.”
(Image credit: Sloclap)
I played a few rounds of 4v4 and 5v5—the pitch changing sizes slightly to create more heated games when there are fewer players. By my third match, I was hooked.
The simple act of connecting with the ball and making things happen feels amazing. Chasing it down after the opposing team fumbled a shot then passing it further upfield to line up a shot made me feel like a hero just as much as getting in a few cheeky goals.
As I got deeper into it, I started picking up more techniques like overhead passes and volleys. There’s also a stamina bar that allows you to put on extra bursts of speed to really launch yourself into every charge and a short ‘extra effort’ opportunity to push yourself to the limit.
You can also swap playing positions on the fly during a match—goalkeepers aren’t locked in and are encouraged to step out of the penalty box to become a part of offensive pushes. If things start to go a bit wrong anyone can step in to play keeper, too. It’s down to whoever reaches the backend of the pitch first to take up the gloves.
You’ll be randomly assigned a spot at the start of each game, but you never have to stick to it—if someone else prefers to play goal it’s a very quick changeover and means that no one has to feel left behind or pressured into any position.
When in possession of the ball you’re particularly vulnerable to having it stolen from you via tackles so you’ll need to try to push it ahead of you and keep passing to keep up that frenetic tempo.
(Image credit: Sloclap)
Bright future
The drawback of online play, however, and a side effect of all that pressure is that people’s ‘passion’ for the game might bubble over in unsavoury ways.
Encouraging healthy teamplay is a design problem, says Tarno, and one hope is that the setting will encourage friendly behavior. Rematch takes place in an “optimistic future” that has embraced clean energy sources such as solar and wind farms, a “colorful and cheerful” world that’s about “the joy of playing with friends.”
The developer has also noticed that teamwork tends to emerge naturally, because whoever has the ball is in danger of having it taken from them.
“There’s more of an advantage to defense than to offense,” Tarno said. “So vulnerability in possession is something that spontaneously generates team play. When we ran load tests, we were playing games—solo queuing against randoms who didn’t know each other—and they were passing the ball. It was one thing that really was a relief. Because I was a bit scared of every time somebody gets the ball, they try to be the hero and be the star of the show etc. But since it’s a risk to dribble and the winning strategy is to construct an action and a team play.”
And if all that fails there’s always mute and block options and Sloclap will be monitoring griefing techniques—they’ve already made sure that the goalkeeper can’t just catch and chuck a ball into their own goal to annoy their team.
Rematch will be out on June 19 for $30—it’s got a Steam page here—and there are opportunities to play it in invite-only betas before then. If you’re interested, you can sign up for a chance to participate on the official website. We’ll also have more on Rematch in the next issue of PC Gamer magazine.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1744414481_Rematch-blew-away-my-expectations-trailers-dont-do-Sloclaps-5v5.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-12 00:04:582025-04-12 00:04:58Rematch blew away my expectations: trailers don’t do Sloclap’s 5v5 football game justice
Final Fantasy 14 is famous for, as much as anything, its music—and its lead composer, Masayoshi Soken, is very much part of that equation. As someone with one too many hours in the MMO myself, I can testify that this man’s orchestration skills have moved me to tears more than once.
He may, however, have been burning the candle at both ends. In a recent interview with PCGamesN, Soken confesses that working on both Final Fantasy 14 and 16 at the same time was hellish—in the literal sense of the word.
“I would be very honest in saying that I never want to do anything like that again,” Soken explains. “Every day was a really horrible hell—really something beyond your imagination of hell.”
Soken explains that he believed he could take on both games because, well, he did it back in the day. When FF14’s disastrous 1.0 launched, Soken worked both on additional music for 1.0 and the tracks for A Realm Reborn, the reboot that saved the world of Eorzea from the brink. “I had the experience of working on two massive games … I just didn’t give up this time either.”
As for FF16, the composer obviously pulled it off, but he notes that the experience was “completely different .. all the things I had to make were just completely different in size”.
Soken’s determination in the face of a challenge isn’t anything new, mind. Back in 2021, he revealed that he’d been battling cancer through the majority of Shadowbringer’s patch quests, keeping his condition a secret from most of his colleagues while he worked from the hospital and underwent chemotherapy.
Which is both admirable and sort of concerning—work is important, but not at the expense of your own health. Still, Soken at least seems to’ve realised that he shouldn’t work on two major Final Fantasy titles at the same time, ever again.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
“If they said, ‘Would you do it simultaneously?’ I would just say no … If they asked me, ‘Is it that you don’t want to do it?’ I would say no. It’s a difficult, difficult question. If I had two bodies, I would do both.”
Unfortunately, as is often said, no-one can be in two places at once—and I’d rather Soken be in one place, maybe with a decent amount of sleep, continuing to make bangers for a game that is full of them. He and his colleagues have done a damn fine job with the new Arcadion raids, after all.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1744378382_FF14s-composer-Soken-says-doing-double-time-on-an-MMO.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-11 14:15:382025-04-11 14:15:38FF14’s composer, Soken, says doing double time on an MMO and Final Fantasy 16 was ‘something beyond your imagination of hell’
Don’t worry if you’re feeling a bit stumped by Friday’s Wordle, because we’ve got everything you need to win right here. Start with our general tips and see how you go, knowing our clue for the April 11 (1392) puzzle’s here to help if you need it. Need more? You’ve got it. The answer to today’s Wordle is never more than a quick scroll away.
A wild guess on my third row really sorted today’s Wordle out in an instant. It was completely wrong, but in all the ways that made the right word obvious. Now I knew for certain where everything didn’t go, rearranging them into the only places they could still fit was easy.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Friday, April 11
These are often used to point the way to a destination, such as a train platform or service desk. Also a sharp weapon, traditionally made mostly from wood.
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
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?
Need a win? The answer to the April 11 (1392) Wordle is ARROW.
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:
April 10: TURBO
April 9: WHEAT
April 8: SPARE
April 7: HAZEL
April 6: VILLA
April 5: FOAMY
April 4: KRILL
April 3: SHEAR
April 2: CURSE
April 1: JEWEL
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.
I don’t think about 2019’s sidescrolling cyberpunk samurai action game Katana Zero too often, but any time I do the thought is: “Damn that really was some excellent sidescrolling cyberpunk samurai action; I should replay it.” My excuse to do so is finally almost here, because the free DLC that developer Askiisoft has been working on for years is “finally nearing completion.”
The Katana Zero DLC—still unnamed, apparently—showed up at the Triple-i Initiative showcase today with a new trailer as proof of life. It’s light on details but it looks like there’s a lot more fighting through underground bunkers, special samurai abilities, and government conspiracy fever dreams.
(Image credit: Askiisoft, Devolver Digital)
“Featuring all new characters, levels, gameplay and story, this massive DLC promises to be worth the wait,” Askiisoft and Devolver Digital say. They add that, yes, the DLC will still be free for everyone who owns the game despite the fact that it’s now nearly the size of the base game—which was around six hours in my first playthrough if I’m remembering correctly.
As for the when, they say: “We still can’t give a date, but everything has started to come together!”
So this year, maybe?
DLC or no, it really is just about time for me to go replay Katana Zero with the benefit of the hard mode and speedrun modes that got added after launch. It’s been six years since it launched and frankly I already thought indie sidescrolling platformers were tired then, but Katana Zero is one of the gems rising above a dusty trend thanks to some really tightly-designed, puzzle-like levels and the constant threat of one-hit death.
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/2025/04/1744306244_6-years-after-launch-my-favorite-action-platformer-Katana-Zero.png6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-10 17:58:102025-04-10 17:58:106 years after launch, my favorite action platformer Katana Zero is still getting that long-promised free DLC that’s ‘nearly the size of the base game’
Black Mirror Season 7 has arrived from the all-too-near future, bringing with it the familiar combination of tech-based horror, cautionary tales, and the occasional smidge of hope. The series doesn’t feel nearly as prescient as it did when it began way back in 2011—how could it—but even when the episodes of this technological Twilight Zone don’t quite deliver on their premises, they’re still well worth watching (maybe while scrolling social media on your own black mirror).
This time around there are a few game-centric episodes: one deals with AI in a sim game that might not be quite as artificial as it seems, another returns us to space-based MMO Infinity from Season 4, and one episode deals with something we all constantly use and deeply dread: streaming subscription services.
Plus, you can even see someone playing Balatro in one scene in Season 7, which makes sense: Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker called the deckbuilder “possibly the most addictive thing ever created.”
Cancel anytime
The most relatable tech nightmare begins in the episode “Common People,” where grade-school teacher Amanda (Rashida Jones) and welder Mike (Chris O’Dowd) are a humble but happy suburban couple until their lives are upended by a serious medical event. Amanda needs brain surgery, but offering the only real and affordable chance for success is a startup called Rivermind that will stream some of her brain functions from their cloud-based servers. For a monthly fee.
We subscribe to everything these days: smartphone plans, streaming services, apps, music, news websites, videogames. It can be legitimately difficult just to buy something: it took me ages to find a fitness tracker that didn’t require a monthly sub, and when I had a plumber come to install a new bathroom fixture recently, he told me now offers a monthly service subscription.
We’re all well-versed in the pitfalls of these subscriptions, like sudden price hikes, different tiers of service, and that infuriating moment when we realize, “Wait, I’m paying for this subscription, so why the hell do I have to watch advertisements?” Now apply all that stress to your brain instead of your phone, TV, or game library. It’s an unsettling thought (especially if that thought is being streamed into your head).
(Image credit: Netflix)
There are obviously benefits to streaming services both in this episode and in life—Amanda would be in a coma if not for Rivermind (at least here in the US, where you can’t get life-saving medical procedures or even routine medications without bankrupting yourself). I complain about monthly subs but I still subscribe to a bunch of them so I can listen to any song ever made or any movie ever released without having to go hunt down a physical copy in a store.
But the episode—the best of the six this season—is a pointed reminder of how quickly we’ve gone from owning the things we pay for to renting them a month at a time, and how just to live our lives we’re relying more and more on distant servers controlled by megacorporations more than happy to squeeze every dollar they can out of us.
Simulation nation
(Image credit: Netflix)
Another episode, “Plaything,” takes us back to the 1990s as a young games journalist working for PC Zone magazine (as show creator Charlie Brooker did) is invited to preview a new game from Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), the developer we met in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. (Note: apart from Poulter’s appearance, this episode isn’t a really Bandersnatch follow-up as we’d hoped, and it’s not an interactive pick-a-path episode like Bandersnatch was.)
“They’re not some obscene puppets, like Sonic the Hedgehog.”
Colin Ritman (Will Poulter)
Ritman’s new game isn’t actually a game, he claims. It’s called Thronglets and though it looks like it’s a creature simulation, Ritman claims the critters on the screen are actually alive. “They’re not some obscene puppets, like Sonic the Hedgehog,” he says. “These are living individuals” created with code.
The cute pixelated creatures walk around in a simulated nature preserve multiplying and sometimes singing. The journalist realizes the Thronglets are trying to communicate with him, and after scavenging some gear like an Atari Jaguar, a Quickcam, and a Sound Blaster sound card (it’s fun to see all this throwback hardware again), he upgrades his rig so he can talk to them directly. His interest in these creatures quickly turns to obsession, but if your Sims were really alive, wouldn’t you be even more consumed with them than you already are?
(Image credit: Netflix)
Thronglets might be based on sims like 1996’s Creatures, which featured little animals called Norns players could pet, feed, play with, and teach to take care of themselves. The Norns would communicate with little noises, similar to the Thronglet’s singing, and Creatures used machine learning and neural networks to allow the creatures to learn behaviors, making it a precursor to today’s AI research. (It’s even on Steam.)
Unfortunately this episode can’t really live up to its setup, and it’s pretty much all setup. The idea of the sims in our games being actually alive is an interesting one, especially when they can grow and learn, but it’s not particularly well explored here. It’s great fun seeing lots of old hardware and references to games like 1994’s Magic Carpet (in the episode the reviewer says he gave it a 93%, though apparently the real PC Zone gave it a 96%) but even Peter Capaldi playing an older version of the games journo can’t make this episode memorable.
Engage
(Image credit: Netflix)
The biggest draw of the season is probably the follow-up to the Black Mirror Season 4 episode “USS Callister,” in which a masochistic game developer (played by Jesse Plemons) made digital clones of his coworkers using their DNA and inserted them into his space-based MMO so he could abuse them.
A lot more could have been done with the premise of real people trying to survive inside an MMO.
In Season 7 sequel “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” the starship crew, captained by Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti), find themselves in dire straits as the game they’re living in has been heavily monetized and requires credits just to use their hyperdrive. Since they’re not actual players but are living in the game’s universe, they’re targeted for deletion by the game’s sleazy and greedy CEO James Walton, played again by Jimmi Simpson.
Most of the episode is carried by the great performances of Milioti and Simpson, who play dual roles as the real world Cole and Walton and their digital clones inside the game. But the movie-length episode (it’s 90 minutes) just doesn’t have enough to sustain it other than a few laughs. A lot more could have been done with the premise of real people trying to survive inside an MMO, but most of the episode takes place outside the game in the less-interesting real world.
(Image credit: Netflix)
The other episodes of Season 7 I hate to describe as “fine,” but they’re fine: Paul Giammati plays a man exploring his painful past through photographs while assisted by an AI guide, Issa Rae is a modern day actor inserted (again, with AI) into an old film so it can be updated for re-release, and Siena Kelly is a chef who starts experiencing the Mandela Effect to a troubling degree when a former classmate resurfaces in her life.
Like Season 6, most of these episodes don’t feel like they’re really foreshadowing the future when it comes to technology. The series relies heavily on its “Experiencer Disk,” a recurring gadget that you stick to your temple that instantly transports you into a virtual world where pretty much anything can happen, and that always winds up feeling more like fantasy than science fiction.
But just because the show has lost some of the impact and weight of the earlier seasons, they’re still worth streaming to one of your black mirrors: at least until Netflix can beam them right into our heads.
The ongoing US tariff catastrophe that has made new PC hardware purchases (and a lot more) such an absolute nightmare got even more confusing earlier today as US president Donald Trump announced that he’s pausing the imposition of a new round of tariffs for 90 days—except for China, for which he’s increased tariffs to 125%, “effective immediately.”
“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump said in a message posted on his Truth Social network.
“At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.
“Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately.”
The message was later shared on the official White House X feed:
NEW TRUTH SOCIAL FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP:🇨🇳125% TARIFF ON CHINA 🌎90-DAY PAUSE & LOWERED 10% RECIPROCAL TARIFF FOR OTHER COUNTRIES🚨EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY pic.twitter.com/Gt5Bd6276mApril 9, 2025
This matters to us as PC gamers because the Trump-imposed tariffs have thrown the hardware market into absolute chaos. The Entertainment Software Association said in February that Trump’s tariffs “would negatively impact hundreds of millions of Americans,” and I’m starting to think that was an understatement because just look at this mess:
And that’s all just within the past week.
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News of the pause sparked a surge in markets: Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 all rose sharply, great news for Trump administration insiders who had a heads-up on the move. Oh, and they did have a heads-up on it, for the record, about four hours before the “pause” announcement went up.
(Image credit: Donald J. Trump (Truth Social))
The markets have rebounded somewhat in the immediate wake of the announcement, for now, but the walkback doesn’t mean much for the long term when no one knows what to really believe. Whether you’re a Wall Street investor or just someone trying to upgrade their gaming PC, all you’re left with today is more uncertainty and instability, the hallmark of Trump’s second term. As the CBC put it, “Is Canada included in the new tariff rate announced today? No one knows.”
(It’s starting to look like maybe not, though. Which kind of makes the point, right?)
Trump’s capricious volatility leaves manufacturers utterly unable to plan for anything, because it leaves so many questions unanswered. What happens when the 90 days are up? What happens if, in the meantime, the EU, Canada, or anyone else does a new trade deal with China that angers Trump? What happens if China decides there’s only one way this can end?
The net result for now is, well, chaos, pure, ongoing, and all-encompassing, and a reasonable assumption of so much more of it to come in the foreseeable future. As PC Gamer’s Dave James put it, tariffs “will affect pricing,” but the erratic back and forth of the US president, which the rest of the US government is apparently unable to do anything about, makes it impossible to say how they’ll affect pricing, and that leaves all of us in a spot where all we can do is roll the dice and hope for the best—not a good spot to be in at all.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/More-tariff-chaos-Donald-Trump-pauses-tariffs-for-most-countries.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-09 21:32:062025-04-09 21:32:06More tariff chaos: Donald Trump pauses tariffs for most countries at the last minute but jacks them up to 125% against China, ‘effective immediately,’ because of their ‘lack of respect’
If you aren’t a fan of Corsair’s iCUE or simply don’t like too much software on your rig, Corsair has just launched a new website that allows you to bypass it entirely for software updates.
Simply titled firmware updater, you authorise the browser to access your Corsair devices, where it then recommends firmware to download. You can find a list of supported devices at the bottom of the page to check if your equipment is on there.
If you have cooling supplied by Corsair, you will still need iCUE to control how fast the fans spin and what colours they display with their built-in RGB. The same is true of lighting in peripherals, macros in your keyboard, and other forms of customisation you may want.
You can register your Corsair peripherals to get notified every time there’s a new firmware update, which means you don’t have to manually check anytime you suspect something is wrong. This is a pretty good workaround for anyone looking to skip downloading more software.
(Image credit: Corsair)
Corsair iCUE is, at best, an okay piece of software, and actively annoying at worst. Polling the office, multiple members of the PC Gamer team directed ire at the software, though also admitted peripheral software from other companies can be worse.
I’ve had problems with Logitech and SteelSeries’ software, though I haven’t really touched iCUE for the cooling in my personal rig all that much.
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I’d love to see more of the industry follow Corsair’s footsteps. Logitech has a firmware update tool but it only works for a handful of mice. SteelSeries GG, SteelSeries’ software, is necessary for its peripherals.
This means, that if you want to use a Logitech mouse and SteelSeries keyboard (my exact setup), you need two different bits of software just to make sure they’re up-to-date. These bits of software can sometimes cause as many problems as they fix.
I’ll take any possible way to remove more software from my machine, and the new website seems like a pretty good way of doing so.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1744198045_Corsairs-new-website-to-update-firmware-means-I-can-finally.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-09 10:08:432025-04-09 10:08:43Corsair’s new website to update firmware means I can finally say goodbye to iCUE
It happened as it always does: A new Monster Hunter released, veteran hunters complained it was too easy, and those of us who’ve watched this cycle repeat for the last 14 years settled in to wait for Capcom to inevitably send along a fresh parade of powerhouse monsters to balance the scales.
Now that Title Update 1 is here, I’m pleased to report that it only took Wilds a month to start humbling me.
(Image credit: Capcom)
Before last week’s Wilds patch, I could count the times I’d been KO’d by a monster on one hand. I was still enjoying myself. For me, the satisfaction of Monster Hunter isn’t in having slain a monster, but the fantasy of fighting it—how the weapon mechanics and arcane systems all feed into a natural mimicry where you’re studying monsters just as your hunter has, until you’re capable of fighting on equal footing with any two-story behemoth of horns, talons, and occasional lightning blasts.
Even Gore Magala had become the proverbial coughing baby, and I the hydrogen bomb.
The problem is, once you’re acclimatized to Monster Hunter’s higher difficulty tiers, which are added to each game in post-release expansions, you’re not going to be on equal footing in the launch quests. You’re going to be death incarnate. The visual, kinetic splendor of a well-executed hunt is still there—swatting aside a lunging monster with an offset attack will never disappoint—but by the time I’d upgraded my Wilds weapons and kitted out my endgame armor set, the fights were simply ending too soon.
Even worse, I was starting to develop bad habits, ripsawing into monster wounds with a reckless abandon, confident enough in my ability to trigger the next stagger window that I was willing to ignore inconsequential monster attacks. For all its frenzy, even Gore Magala had become the proverbial coughing baby, and I the hydrogen bomb.
(Image credit: Capcom)
Which is why I was so thrilled on Friday when I was casually swatted off my raptor house and punted back to camp with a nuclear fireball.
Zoh Shia, the final boss of Wilds’ Low Rank story, is now a repeatable High Rank hunt, and Capcom wasn’t stingy when it gave the frankendragon the necessary combat upgrades. It’s faster, meaner. It’s gained an arena-wide instakill attack: an apocalyptic torrent of fire that’s guaranteed to cart you if you can’t quickly find a way to spare yourself.
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But that’s only an aperitif for the fight’s later stages. By the end of the hunt, the rapidly-mutating monster becomes a stress test of dodge timing and situational awareness, filling its cave with a barrage of atomic projectiles and lightning strikes, each capable of charging and detonating the crystals it leaves behind with every claw slam.
(Image credit: Capcom)
And it’s not alone: Mizutsune, returning in the title update after its last appearance in Monster Hunter: Rise, is arguably a greater threat. Between all its bubble projectiles and pressurized water beams, it’s capable of deploying a near-instant somersaulting tail slam that, in its Tempered variant, can one-shot an unsuspecting hunter. By the end of patch day, it’d cemented its reputation as Wilds’ worst terror.
Monster Hunter has a habit of turning its players into Gokus.
My gaming habits are about as laidback as they come—my thousand hours and single raid completion in Destiny 2 are proof of that. But even as a pathological casual, I’m thrilled when a monster hits me hard enough that I have to use a fraction of my full power.
(Image credit: Capcom)
Monster Hunter has a habit of turning its players into Gokus. When I was abruptly smoked by Zoh Shia, it was a signal that I was being knocked back down to a more even playing field. It was Capcom saying I’d graduated from sleepwalking through sparring matches; it was time to put me back into a proper bout.
I finished that first HR Zoh Shia fight with one life left, and immediately dove back into another; for materials to make its weapons and armor, sure, but moreso to watch how cool it would look once I was weaving through the hellfire and arc lightning to land a clean sequence of hits on its alabaster-plated dome. I’m now seeking out Mizutsune whenever it spawns for the simple satisfaction of the five-or-so minutes I’ll spend dodging its tail slams.
Luckily for me, there are even more threats coming my way. Arch-Tempered Rey Dau is arriving later this month, promising even higher intensity hunts against what might be my favorite addition that Wilds made to the Monster Hunter bestiary. And sometime this summer, I’ll get to make an overdue acquaintance with Lagiacrus once the fan-favorite monster makes its long-awaited return.
If Title Update 1 is any indication, Capcom’s lining up a healthy amount of carting in my future. Can’t wait.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1744161982_At-last-Monster-Hunter-Wilds-is-willing-to-kick-my.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-04-09 00:09:432025-04-09 00:09:43At last: Monster Hunter Wilds is willing to kick my ass
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