NASCAR bans real-life wall-riding- ‘We will penalize for that act going forward’-
NASCAR driver Ross Chastain caused quite a stir last year when he used real-life wall-riding—a trick he apparently learned on his GameCube in 2005—to move up five spots and set a lap record in the final turn of the Xfinity 500. It was a bold, foolhardy, and absolutely spectacular maneuver, and today NASCAR (via Kotaku) announced that nobody ever better try something like that again.
“Chastain’s dash around Turns 3 and 4 at Martinsville Speedway last October made for an enthralling finish as the No. 1 Chevrolet gained five positions in one set of corners, earning enough points to advance to the Championship 4,” NASCAR said in a statement. “While the move was thrilling and largely lauded for its creativity, it also came with an increased safety risk.”
That’s a fair…
Mortal Kombat 1 players discover that crash logs are eating up massive amounts of drive space- More than 1GB per crash in some cases-
Are you playing Mortal Kombat 1 on Steam? Have you noticed that your free drive space has been disappearing without obvious cause and at a potentially alarming pace? If so, there’s good news, or at least an explanation that will help you deal with it: It turns out that Mortal Kombat 1’s crash logs are really big.
A crash log is a file generated when a game craps out that provides a record of data like when it happened, what you were doing, and what else your PC was running when it happened. Developers use crash logs to figure out why a game isn’t working like it’s supposed to, so they can track down and fix whatever problem ails it. These files are typically very small, because in most cases they’re just a dump of raw text, largely indecipherable to non-programmers.
In the c…
Blizzard refuses to say what Diablo 4’s new class will be, but its own leak gives us some clues-
Blizzard refuses to say what new class is coming to Diablo 4 when its first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, launches late next year. But datamined text from a leaked build of the game makes it pretty clear what it will be.
Officially, Vessel of Hatred will continue the story in Diablo 4’s campaign, and will have you chasing down demons in Nahantu, a region last seen in Diablo 2 under a different name: Torajan. There you’ll find the new class, which, as Blizzard says, has never been seen before in the series.
The new class won’t be a Witch Doctor or a Paladin, Diablo 4 associate game director Brent Gibson told GamesRadar at BlizzCon. The team wanted to go with a class that nobody has played before in a Diablo game.
That class has to be the Spiritborn. Blizzard hasn’t ackno…
Not only is Rainbow Six Siege free to play for the next week, it’s also just $4 to keep if you like it-
We are already two days into a free week for Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft’s long-running multiplayer take on its even longer-running tactical shooter series. The free week runs until Thursday, March 21, while you can get the game for keeps for just $4 (85% off) until Wednesday.
We are on year nine of this shooter—a methuselah in live service terms—but to hear PCG’s multiplayer FPS expert, Morgan Park, tell it, Siege has never been better. Changes to favor disadvantaged attackers, tastefully nerf environmental destruction to limit defenders peeking through bullet holes, and streamline a still quite complicated weapon attachment system all contribute to a version of the game that’s still lean, exciting, and surprisingly unique all these years after launch.
Our 2022 game of the year runner-up, the criminally underrated Marvel’s Midnight Suns, is free to keep on the Epic Game Store-
It is once again time to slam that “forgot password” button and log into your Epic Game Store account, because the new free game of the week is a heater: Our runner-up game of the year from 2022, the tactical RPG Marvel’s Midnight Suns, is free to keep until June 13.
It’s a game that didn’t quite get the sales love it deserved—some of Midnight Suns’ developers argue its card-based systems might have put people off, but that also doesn’t seem to be the whole story. Regardless, the PC Gamer team loved it. Midnight Suns takes the essence of modern XCOM, soups you up to superhero power levels, and adds on that aforementioned deckbuilding mechanic, as well as a BioWare-style “hang out with and befriend your companions” system. Instead of listening to Tali’Zorah bang on abo…
Samsung’s 3nm process is shaping up very nicely, and that’s good news for gamers-
When it comes to advanced semiconductor technology, there’s one name that sits above all: TSMC. But there are others seeking to challenge the Taiwanese behemoth. Intel is spending billions in order to claim a larger slice of the chip making pie. GlobalFoundries and UMC are often cited as competitors too. Then there’s Samsung, a name everyone knows.
Though it hasn’t been able to compete with TSMC at the bleeding edge of semiconductor manufacturing in recent years, Samsung has made no secret of the fact that it wants to challenge and surpass TSMC. Though Samsung and TSMC’s 3nm nodes are not equal, the differences don’t matter much if yields aren’t up to par, and Samsung is reportedly doing well on that front.
According to Korean-based newspaper Kukmin Ilbo (via @harukaze…
Critical update expected this month to fix Samsung 990 Pro’s unusually rapid decline-
Last week we noted Samsung has rolled out a firmware update for its 980 Pro SSDs that must be installed to ensure the longevity of that drive. In it, we also noted that it can’t be long until Samsung patches its 990 Pro SSDs too, as multiple anecdotal reports suggested these are suffering from an unusual and rapid decline in drive health.
Lo and behold, Samsung says a patch for the 990 Pro is loosely set to arrive sometime this month, and one that should reportedly put an end to the issue.
In a response to a customer support query, a company representative confirms that Samsung is aware of the issue.
“Samsung is currently reviewing customer inquiries about anomalies related to the SMART Percentage Used (on Samsung Magician) and/or Health Status (on Crystal Disk Info) o…
Star Wars- Bounty Hunter remaster is coming in August, and fans are more than a little nervous after the disastrous Battlefront Classic Collection-
Watch On
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, originally released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, is finally coming to PC. Aspyr Media announced today that an updated version of the game is set to arrive on August 1.
2002 was the year of Attack of the Clones, the film that made an instant Star Wars star of Jango Fett, father to Boba and “Prime Clone of the Grand Army of the Republic.” (Star Wars fans just can’t get enough of the Fett fam.) Appropriately, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter follows his adventures in the time before Attack of the Clones, and actually sets up the events that lead to his genetic template being used to create a clone army.
I never played Star Wars: Bounty Hunter myself, but reviews from back in the day cited on Mobygames seem middling. It sounds like a per…
Google spits out results for Book of Genesis and the band Genesis when searching for Sega’s Mega Drive because it’s trying to be clever-
A very specific quirk, but an entertaining one: Google spits out results related to the Book of Genesis from Wikipedia and the website of The Holy See and the band Genesis when you search for some terms related to Sega’s Mega Drive console.
It looks like Google’s picked up on the fact that Sega’s Mega Drive videogame console from the late ’80s was named the Sega Genesis in North America, and uses the terms Mega Drive and Genesis interchangeably for results. However, as Twitter user CaptainBalkon found out, it gets its Genesises (Genesus?) confused.
If you search for the specific term, “Book of Megadrive” (Megadrive needs to be all one word, weirdly), you end up with the Wikipedia page for the Book of Genesis on the first page, and The Holy See’s webpage for the holy te…
The Last of Us star Nick Offerman swore off videogames forever after becoming obsessed with this Nintendo 64 game-
Nick Offerman made a huge splash as Bill in the third episode of HBO’s The Last of Us, but it turns out that he doesn’t actually play videogames himself. In a recent appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, Offerman said he tried his hand at it once, long ago, but decided to give up after just a couple of weeks.
“About 25 years ago, I played my last videogame,” Offerman said. “And I’m very indulgent. I lost a couple weeks to a videogame called Banjo Kazooie. Two weeks went by, and I mean, I was like, oh my God, the slow dopamine is so delicious, then it’s over, and you’re like, yes, I won! And immediately I’m like, what have I done with my life?
“So I decided I’m never going to do that again. And so thankfully, because games have gotten so good, like The Last of Us, that I think…