Siffies

OLED technology took its sweet time making the jump from TVs to PC monitors. The only snag is that the best OLED gaming monitors seem to be taking just as long to become affordable.

The good news is that this year’s Prime Day deals have taken a big step in that direction. Are they actually cheap? Not exactly, but you’re looking at savings upwards of $1,000 and prices that are certainly more accessible than when OLED monitors all had four-figure price tags.

Quick links

• LG UltraGear OLED | $599.99 @ Newegg (save $400)
• Alienware 34 AW3423DWF OLED | $699.99 @ Dell
• Gigabyte Aorus CO49DQ | $899.99 @ Amazon (save $200)
• …
  

Have you heard of the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14? Founding father of the Final Fantasy franchise Hironobu Sakaguchi sure has.

After leaving the company in 2004 to found developer Mistwalker, Sakaguchi kept Square Enix broadly at arm’s length, though the ice has melted in past years, with Sakaguchi joining forces with Square to re-release his mobile RPG Fantasian. He’s also really been getting into FF14, playing it for 12 hours a day and, occasionally, trolling the game’s director Naoki Yoshida live on stage.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Sakaguchi reflects on the eerie feeling of going to work with Square after over two decades, saying “It was almost like going to a 20-year high-school reunion”.

As for his new habit, an event he was asked to a…

Surely everyone knows this extremely specific frustration: a game expects you to accompany an NPC while they lead you to the next part of the quest, talking the whole way, but they travel slower than your running speed and faster than your walking speed. You have to alternate awkwardly between a stroll and a jog the whole way, instead of just being able to walk alongside them like a normal person.

While some games let you match the pace of NPCs when you need to, Skyrim does not. Which can be a real hassle when Esbern or some other mouthy plot-related character has to guide you to the next bit of story. Here’s modder wSkeever with the solution: Simplicity of Stalking—Automatically Follow NPCs.

It’s a straightforward mod. Simply hold shift and mouse over an NPC to make t…

Manor Lords is out today and it’s going gangbusters, having now surpassed 150,000 concurrent players on Steam. It’s also sitting atop a “very positive” user rating, with 90% of the more than 1,600 user reviews posted so far. That’s a pretty good first day, and at this point I’m left with just one burning question: Why the hell is the developer called “Slavic Magic?”

In all honesty it’s not really something I’ve been pondering for any length of time, but it did come up in a recent interview with Unreal. Manor Lords is actually being made by a solo developer, Greg Styczeń (with some outsourced work enabled by his Patreon and an Epic MegaGrant), but a cool studio name looks good in press releases. 

And in this case it’s not just a good (if somewhat odd) name, but ther…

There’s a hint for today’s Wordle just below, ready to help out if you need it. You’ll also find our quick tips if you’d like to give your puzzle-solving a more general boost, and the answer to the April 24 (1040) Wordle is further down if you really need that win.

Today’s Wordle became a heck of a lot easier once I stopped chasing the wrong answer. I’m kicking myself right now. If I’d been a little bit more careful, a little more aware, after my second go, I could’ve finished today’s Wordle in a flash.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, April 24

You’re looking for alternative ways of saying something is obvious, or in plain sight today. If something is _____, then it’s clear for all to see. There are two different vowels hid…

When you think about it, hasn’t every letter you receive been on its own epic quest, all the way from its sender to your door? What do you mean “No”? If you’re going to be like that, you can come up with your own seamless introduction to a story about Dungeons & Dragons stamps.

That’s right, even Royal Mail is getting in on D&D’s 50th anniversary celebrations this year, with a collection of limited edition stamps up for preorder now, featuring new art from iconic fantasy artist Wayne Reynolds. Aimed at collectors rather than people actually trying to sort out their post (though presumably they’re legal for that purpose too), they can be bought as a simple set of eight, as enlarged framed portraits, or even printed on metal, among other options. I particularly like the trea…

The answer to today’s Wordle is ready and waiting for you below—just click or scroll the short distance down to Tuesday’s solution. If that’s too much for your tastes, you’ll find a clue for the June 6 (717) game on this very page, as well as a range of tips, past answers, and guides to help make every Wordle a winner.

Thanks to a fantastic opening guess, I found two key greens immediately, which set me up for… row after row of absolute agony, with every follow-up almost right. I did eventually narrow it down to today’s Wordle answer, but it took far longer—and did more damage to my nerves—than I’d hoped it would. 

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Tuesday, June 6

Today’s word has a few possible…

In a legislative attempt to stave off the inevitable demise of humanity at the hands of roaming hunter-killer robots, US President Joe Biden has issued an executive order establishing a new set of standards that will guide the development of AI. The order includes requirements to “develop standards, tools, and tests to help ensure that AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy,” and to share relevant data about AI models with the US government.

Worries about potential negative outcomes of artificial intelligence development have grown in lockstep with the rapid rise of AI development itself. Skynet scenarios are fun to contemplate but the more immediate problem is the use of AI in the generation of exceedingly realistic audio and video clips that can be put to nefarious use, as…

At this year’s Gamescom event, two forthcoming games heavily feature ray tracing as the means for producing the best possible graphics. Star Wars Outlaws and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle both have graphics features, either exclusively developed by Nvidia or are so demanding that only high-end GeForce RTX cards can really handle it.

Nvidia was the first GPU vendor to bring real-time ray tracing hardware to the gaming masses at another Gamescom in 2018, with its GeForce RTX 20-series graphics cards. But since then, AMD and Intel have both followed suit, and all new gaming PCs and consoles are more or less capable of ray tracing. Most PC gamers are well aware that Nvidia’s GPUs can do ray tracing faster than the competition but three games show that Nvidia is doing its best to …