Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Gamescom proper doesn't technically begin until tomorrow night, but Xbox are sliding in early with their very own announceathon stream today. While it doesn't seem like they have any new games to show, they have said we're in for some "in-depth updates" on previously announced things. So, perhaps some more Halo: Infinite or Forza Horizon 5 are on the, uh, horizon? Come and join us when the stream kicks off at 6pm BST (12pm PT) to find out.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Razer is a familiar name on our best gaming mouse and best gaming keyboard lists, but it turns out these serpentine peripherals have a rather unnerving hiden talent: simply plugging one in, and installing the Razer Synapse software, is apparently enough to grant admin privileges on any Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC.

Twitter user jonhat discovered the exploit, which was easily replicated by Bleeping Computer. The issue is largely down to how Windows Update automatically downloads the Synapse software: because Windows Update has SYSTEM (i.e. admin) privileges, it grants that same level of access to Synapse.

Where things can really get dodgy is during Synapse installation. You, or someone trying to mess with your PC, can open a PowerShell window from within the installer – and because Windows effectively gave Synapse admin powers, this gives the PowerShell window admin powers too. Thanks to that daisy chain of iffy security, anyone who knows how to run commands in PowerShell will essentially have admin control over the PC.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You've been bread, and now it is nearly time to be fish, because Bossa Studios' upcoming physics-based platformer I Am Fish will launch on September 16th. Similarly to I Am Bread, you'll be flip-flopping around in all sorts of precarious situations, except this time you're a sea creature who's trying to get to the ocean. You can play as a goldfish, flying fish, puffer fish, or,my personal favourite, the piranha. He looks so angry in the image above, like he's about to send that van to a watery grave.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I, like others, played the open beta of Diablo II: Resurrected at the weekend. It's Diablo II, but nicer! Although, this post isn't strictly about Diablo II, it's just it reminded me of an issue I run into when choosing classes in games, which is that I go off the Rule of Cool. If one character looks awesome (according to my own tastes, at least) I will usually pick that character, regardless of how that character plays or whether I will be good at it.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Last night, Respawn updated Apex Legends to apply some much-needed nerfs to Seer. He's the most recent Legend to arrive in the battle royale, introduced at the start of the current season, and honestly he's been a bit of a pain. Seer's abilities revolve around tracking other players in incredibly disruptive ways, and now the devs have made a few changes to make him a little less annoying. Unfortunately, the changes don't seem that noticeable - I played Apex for three hours last night and didn't actually realise there'd been a patch.

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The first peek of Destiny 2's next expansion, The Witch Queen, has the Internet engaging in its favourite activity: fawning over monstrous tall women who might murder you. Ahead of the big reveal-o event later today, Bungie released a wee teaser video introducing us to its incarnation of Savathûn, and yes of course she's a giant lady with a sexy voice. To placate/tempt/rile pervs, Bungie have confirmed that the Hive god of trickery, in this form, stands about 21 feet tall. This is going to be the horniest fan reception yet, isn't it.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Want to learn how to create the best build for Lisa in Genshin Impact? Lisa is one of the four playable characters you unlock during Genshin Impact's Prologue questline. She is both the first Electro element user and the first Catalyst weapon wielder you'll get a chance to play as in the game, so even if you choose not to keep her in your party for long, she's a very useful tutorial character to play around with.

Lisa is a powerful mage turned librarian who, for reasons best known to herself, is always dressed in a sexy Halloween witch costume. Combined with her charismatic and flirtatious personality she is, unsurprisingly, quite fun to have around. But it can be a bit tricky getting to grips with her combat style after you've spent a few hours in the shoes of the more traditional fantasy RPG sword-and-bow users Kaeya, Amber, and the Traveler. Read on below for everything you need to know about making the most out of Lisa's unusual combination of abilities.

As a Catalyst user in Genshin Impact, Lisa's weaponry works slightly differently from most other characters. Rather than wielding a traditional weapon (the game's other categories are sword, bow, claymore, and polearm), Lisa carries a Catalyst — a book that increases her elemental abilities when equipped. This can leave Lisa somewhat vulnerable in close-combat situations, since she has no handheld weapon with which to push enemies back out of melee range; but can also make her scarily powerful given the right build.

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Having previously announced Arc, the upcoming gaming models in its Xe graphics card range, Intel have explained more of what to expect from their attempt at Nvida GeForce/AMD Radeon-style GPUs. That includes a look at XeSS, or Xe Super Sampling, Intel’s framerate-boosting upscaling tech.

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Electronic Arts have offered to let other developers use five of their technology patents for accessibility features for free, saying they hope this will encourage "to build new features that make video games more inclusive". The patents they're offering include the ping system from Apex Legends and colour blindness tech they use in Madden NFL. It's unpleasant that they patented them in the first place, and that companies even can patent features that make games more accessible, but I guess at least they are sharing now.

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"In the past," says Age Of Empires 2 project lead Bert Beeckman, "if we wanted, say, the AI playing the Holy Roman Empire to stay in the game even if they lost all their units, there was... a little trick we had to do". On remembering this, he sounds somehow nostalgic and faintly harrowed at the same time. "We had to create an invisible unit, somewhere out of the way. And the way to do that was to take a horse. And then garrison it inside another horse. Which would then become invisible". He pauses for a moment. "No, we had no idea either. But it worked."

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