I’ve been on the hunt for a new mechanical keyboard—ideally a cheap mechanical keyboard, if I’m being honest—for about six months now. Why has it taken me so long? It’s the choice paralysis for me. I allowed our keyboard geek Jacob Ridley to tell me way too many things about how to pick one earlier this year and instead of decisively acting on that information I’ve entered the research event horizon where I will infinitely grow closer to making a decision without ever managing to arrive there.

• We’re curating the best Prime Day PC gaming deals right here.

Do I want linear switches or tactile? Should I go for something that’s got hot-swappable switches, just in case I don’t like what I pick? I really mis…

Microsoft’s AI tool Copilot is already part and parcel of Windows 11, but at least it’s free and you have the option to completely ignore it. Copilot Pro, on the other hand, is a subscription service that was originally only available for business users. But now, the software giant is letting anyone get in on the extra AI action, for a mere $20 per month. Oddly, Microsoft’s main target audience for this appears to be 365 subscribers, because naturally they’ll all want to pay out even more money.

Before I jump into the details of the scheme (discovered via The Verge), can I just raise one thing to start with: Has Microsoft completely lost the plot? $20 per month? That’s double the current fee one pays for a Family 365 subscription. You could buy a copy of Valheim …

The relaunch of Red Dead Online as a standalone title in late 2020 was something of a false dawn for its ever-optimistic community. Rockstar maintains the title but has been in a cycle for several years of repeating content, and it could fairly be said that this playerbase has been surviving on rations ever since 2020. This led to one of the best in-game protests I’ve ever seen, where a ton of RDO players gathered together in summer 2020 dressed up as clowns to protest the lack of substantial updates.

Well, dust off those red noses and fetch the greasepaint: Rockstar has announced RDO will be receiving Halloween-themed content for the holiday period, called Halloween Pass 2, which was originally released for Halloween in 2021, and then repeated in 2022. It’s fairly t…

PowerWash Simulator is one of the most unexpectedly popular games of the last few years. On the face of it, it is exactly as the title indicates: A simulation of using a powerwasher, which—much like using a real powerwasher—sounds like it would be fun for a minute or two, and then quickly turn into drudgery. 

Yet somehow, it’s become this whole thing: PCG guides writer Sarah James picked it as her personal game of the year for 2022, news writer Joshua Wolens called it the best Far Cry game he’s ever played, and it’s had crossovers with other games and properties including Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, and Spongebob Squarepants. It’s also got an “overwhelmingly popular” rating across more than 34,000 user reviews on Steam. And now it’s going back to the future for ye…

Fallout 4’s 14.4GB “next gen” update dropped at the end of April, dovetailing neatly with the very popular Fallout TV show on Amazon. It promised all sorts of bells and whistles to bring the (nearly decade old, my god) game up to date to the standards we expect from videogames in 2024.

And then, forgive me, it bombed. Hard. Very little visibly changed, mods went haywire, and the changes that were noticeable were mostly the parts of the game the patch broke. But fear not, because Bethesda has now put out Next Gen Update 2, featuring “fixes and improvements to address some of the feedback you provided us with on the previous update.”

But, well, that’s about all the good news I have for you. For the most part, the community has responded to the patch with an emphatic s…

Choose your weapon: AMD’s last-gen Radeon RX 6700 XT or the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti? On pure raster performance, there isn’t much in it. So, it’s almost certain that the RX 6700 XT will have a hefty lead over the upcoming RTX 4060, which isn’t quite out yet but Nvidia just brought forward to June 29th.

After all, for the plain RTX 4060 Nvidia has hacked the CUDA down from 4,352 in the 4060 Ti to just 3,072. Yuck. Anyway, the point here is that ASRock’s take on AMD RX 6700 XT can now be had for just $310 on Newegg. That’s just a whisker more than the RTX 4060’s $299 launch price.

OK, Nvidia’s DLSS scaling tech remains superior to AMD’s FSR. But as we found with the RTX 4060 Ti, the Frame Generation bit of DLSS 3 doesn’t work quite as well with smaller GPUs as it does o…

When everyone said they wanted Sims to have more interesting lives, I don’t think any of us meant incest. Nor did EA intend it, so a Sims 4 patch yesterday has addressed the sudden tendency for Sims to try pursuing a romance with their relations.

A few different bugs cropped up after the romance-focused Sims 4 Lovestruck expansion and a base game update last week but the two most prominent were Sims being way too mean to each other for no particular reason and Sims deciding to develop illicit relationships with their family members. It was happening through the “Neighborhood Stories” feature which allows Sims outside your played family to have life milestones of their own like marriages, pregnancies, job changes, or accidental deaths without your direction. Nice, in …

First spotted by AlphaBetaGamer, Van Hellswing’s free demo already gets my hearty recommendation. It’s basically like Devil Daggers⁠—horde mode PFS survival against floating, swarming enemies⁠—except you’re trapped in a vertically complex arena and given a sick grappling hook.

That movement’s really the star of the show here. Despite the name, Van Hellswing’s signature move is more of a Zelda hookshot deal than a Titanfall, Spiderman swing one, but it’s a joy to use. It caps off a moveset that also includes a double jump, dash, wall run, and bunnyhopping, and developer Codeclue has really made the perfect bedrock for almost any kind of shooter they wanted, not just a survival arena.

Your sole weapon is a double barrel flintlock, which you use…

Don’t worry if you’re close to running out of guesses in today’s Wordle, because all the help you need is right here. You’ll find a fresh clue for the September 11 (814) just below, alongside our general tips and advice. And if you need something stronger, today’s Wordle answer is never more than a click away.

Well I got today’s solution, but I wish it hadn’t taken an embarrassingly long time, as well as every go on the board, to do so. I had everything I needed right in front of me quite early on, I just seemed to miss the woods for the trees today.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Monday, September 11

Someone or something that had been around longer than something else could be called the _____ of the two. Or to put it more simply: the opp…