The Sims 4’s new infants update for the base game launched yesterday and I was fully expecting the bug du jour to be some kind of AI tomfoolery—infants autonomously setting fires somehow or being unintentionally eligible to “have a science baby” with their own parents or something. Like that time everyone’s Sims were assholes for no reason. But no, The Sims 4 is instead experiencing an “infant stretching” epidemic.

It’s exactly what you think. Here are a bunch of poor babies who’ve been afflicted with Slenderman legs:

M̷̢̛̠͕͕̜̞̮̦̟̩̌̅̀̿̔̈́̇͂o̸̖͉͝ţ̴̫̯͖͇͎̰͌͊̀̕…

I didn’t have my expectations set too highly for Parking Garage Rally Circuit going in. I like the PS1 (or, as the Steam page invokes, Sega Saturn) style of graphics a lot. I find them charming, nostalgic, and pleasing to the eye. But it’s also very fashionable at the moment, which means there’s no guarantee that a game using them is going to be interesting.

I’m pleased to report that Parking Garage Rally Circuit (which I’m gonna start calling PGRC for my own sanity) is, however, really quite good. It’s a very stripped-down racing experience: there’s eight tracks, each of which you can go through three times via the three weight classes of car you can unlock. You have an accelerate button, a brake button, and a drift button. That’s the game.

The meat, which I was starting …

I’m sure that many of you who love to find a precious perfect baby character and learn ever-more about them are occupied with Baldur’s Gate 3 right now, but Steam’s rolling out a distracting sale and accompanying event on its visual novels category. 

These are those games which let you twist, tweak, and bend the narrative to find and form a story of your own. Except for the Phoenix Wright games, which are also featured. Those have an objectively correct ending. Sorry, not sorry.

Less correct are games like Coffee Talk, where you barista your way through others’ lives, or Monster Prom, a powerful little dating game that takes the absolutely absurd and amazing tack of being multiplayer.

Those of you who enjoyed the recent Pentiment might also be interested in the vi…

The Callisto Protocol’s concluding chapter story DLC is finally almost here. Entitled Final Transmission, the “heart-pounding final chapter” of Striking Distance Studios’ Dead Space-like horror game promises to “dig deeper into the horrifying secrets of The Callisto Protocol.”

That’s not much to go on as far as what players can expect from the DLC, but at this point it’s all we’ve got. For now, The Callisto Protocol’s Steam page still describes it simply as “story protocol,”and Striking Distance hasn’t said anything more about it on social media—although the teaser rather strongly suggests that whatever it’s about, it won’t be good.

It’s great that The Callisto Protocol will have a proper conclusion, but more important are the updates that have been rolled out since th…

Give today’s Wordle an instant boost with Wednesday’s brand-new hint. It’ll help give your guesses a nudge in the right direction, but still leave plenty of fun puzzling for you. Running out of rows? Don’t worry about it—the answer to the July 3 (1110) game’s here too if you want to take a peek.

One, two, three green letters… I really thought I had this one on my second go. Then I was sure I had it on my third. Fourth? That’s done it. Finally. What an odd Wordle. I rattled through it pretty quickly, but those almost-rights made it feel a lot longer. 

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, July 3

You’ll need to think about body parts to win this Wordle. What’s the name of the bit of the leg above someone…

We live in an era of fakes and frauds. With the proliferation of AI, it’s harder than ever to figure out what’s true and what isn’t. Is the Pope dripped out in Balenciaga? Has Tom Cruise met Gorbachev? Am I AI? Are you?

There’s only one way to respond to the crushing psychic torture inflicted on us by modernity: Turn it into a game. So here’s Human or Not, a kind of Chatroulette-like that challenges you to decide whether your conversation partner is human or AI after a two-minute chat.

Billed as a “part of a larger scientific research project by AI21 Labs,” Human or Not actually came out last year before becoming unavailable. Lucky for us, it’s now back and taking over most of my Twitter feed as people find themselves thoroughly befuddled by its mix of tricksy large language…

Helldivers 2 threw out the first game’s top-down camera perspective, bringing us closer to our soldiers to make us feel extra vulnerable as we face off with extraterrestrial killer bugs and robots, Arrowhead Studios CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt told PlayStation Blog.

“Helldivers 1 took a lot of inspiration from real life and military-sim experiences—merged with combat against extraterrestrials,” Pilestedt said. “The distance in top-down viewpoints, however, does not allow for more immersive experiences.”

By pulling the camera in closer to the action, Arrowhead could make everything in the world, including your own teammates, feel dangerous. “We always knew we wanted the juxtaposition between the fragility of humans with overpowered tools versus physically …

Diablo 4’s many high-tier drops were not created equal. Yeah, there are the Barbarian gloves that turn the game into a kind of euphoric slot machine, and there’s the Necromancer gear that renders the Corpse Explosion ability completely ungovernable, but they’re just one side of the coin. The other side has, well, stuff like this.

Greatest legendary known to man from r/Diablo

That, reader, is the Boneweave Helm of the Crowded Sage. Uncovered by a Diablo player who goes by LavusVincere on Reddit, the helm is a largely unremarkable bit of legendary headgear in every aspect but one: Its, um, Aspect. That’s the text in orange next to the star, if you’re not sure, and in this helm’s case it reads “You Heal for 0 Life per second for each Close …

Valve’s been going pretty hard on Dota 2 this year, and the latest is targeting those who start fresh accounts in the free-to-play game so that they can play easy games and stomp rookies. Valve has also traced the accounts back to their main accounts, and says that from now on “a main account found associated with a smurf account could result in a wide range of punishments, from temporary adjustments to behavior scores to permanent account bans.”

Smurf accounts, for those of you who don’t know, are brand-new accounts used by experienced players to avoid playing at a proper matchmaking level—or to just cheat, grief, troll, and be broadly toxic without permanent consequence. 

For many players in competitive, free-to-play games, and for mobas in particular, smurfing …

Legendary super-soldier squad G.I. Joe made a surprise appearance at the PC Gaming Show today in a new trailer for G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra, a retro-style beat-em-up that pits Duke, Scarlett, Snake Eyes, and other members of the team against the nefarious forces of Cobra.

Fists are clearly the weapon of choice in Wrath of Cobra, but players will also be able to take advantage of guns, explosives, and other implements of violent do-goodery as they battle evil across Cobra Island, G.I. Joe’s headquarters, Cobra’s secret underwater base, and other familiar locales. Fighters can string together combos, dodge and parry enemy attacks, and take advantage of special abilities as they fight solo or in groups of up to four in online or couch co-op play to “overcome the odds and save the wor…