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harder

How many roguelikes can you identify in two minutes? Our latest quiz is harder than a no-hit run

by admin October 4, 2025

The roguelike genre is one of my favourite ever. I love that it’s like a special sauce you can mix with countless other genres to create bold new flavours—from card games, to bullet hell, to survival, to RTS, and more.

That’s why I’ve put together a quiz testing my fellow fans on their knowledge of roguelikes. All you have to do is check out the screenshots, and type in the name of the game for each one—within a two minute time limit, naturally.

I had to make it difficult, of course—that’s only being faithful to the genre, right? Don’t worry, if you lose, you can always start again.

Before anyone rushes to the comments with a “Well, actually” in hand—we’re going by the broad, modern definition of roguelikes here. We don’t need to get into a debate about roguelikes vs roguelites, and we’re definitely taking it as read that the genre includes more than just decades-old turn-based dungeon crawlers. So be prepared for a wide variety of very different games below, testing your knowledge across the whole roguelike spectrum.

But do rush to the comments to let us know your scores! We want to know how you did—and which of the 20 games below is your favourite.

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October 4, 2025 0 comments

The main character of Silksong holds a sword against a red/orange background.

Game Updates

Silksong Devs Talk Difficulty As Fans Debate If It’s Harder Than Elden Ring

by admin September 19, 2025

Hollow Knight: Silksong ratchets up everything from its predecessor. The world is bigger, more detailed, and more dangerous. Team Cherry co-founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen recently spoke about some of their thinking behind making the Metroidvania Soulslike sequel harder, and what players can do to navigate the higher difficulty.

“Hornet is inherently faster and more skillful than the Knight–so even the base level enemy had to be more complicated, more intelligent,” Gibson said during an interview at the ACMI Game Worlds exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, according to reporting by Dexerto. Even basic enemies in Silksong hit harder and can be much more aggressive. That’s because the hero Hornet is much more agile, and Team Cherry wanted to balance that out with more effective adversaries.

“The basic ant warrior is built from the same move-set as the original Hornet boss,” Pellen added. “The same core set of dashing, jumping, and dashing down at you, plus we added the ability to evade and check you. In contrast to the Knight’s enemies, Hornet’s enemies had to have more ways of catching her as she tries to move away.”

If you keep dying, go somewhere else

That was essentially what Gibson’s advice seemed to be from the interview. He argued that Silksong is much less controlling than its predecessor when it comes to where the player can go and explore at various points in the game. “The important thing for us is that we allow you to go way off the path,” he said. “So one player may choose to follow it directly to its conclusion, and then another may choose to constantly divert from it and find all the other things that are waiting and all the other ways and routes.”

The logic is reminiscent of Elden Ring which, despite its punishing enemies and brutal boss fights, was arguably more inviting than previous FromSoftware Soulslikes because the open world allowed players to approach each challenge in unique ways. In addition to being able to grind additional levels, they could also explore off the beaten path until they found a weapon or spell that would tip the balance of power in their favor.

“Silksong has some moments of steep difficulty–but part of allowing a higher level of freedom within the world means that you have choices all the time about where you’re going and what you’re doing,” Gibson said, adding that players “have ways to mitigate the difficulty via exploration, or learning, or even circumventing the challenge entirely, rather than getting stonewalled.”

A clash of design philosophies

There was recently a mini-debate about whether Silksong is actually harder than Elden Ring. The Washington Post‘s Gene Park came down on the side that it is. I would agree, though I think that’s in part because Elden Ring isn’t necessarily one of the harder games out there. Elden Ring is just a hard game that happened to sell over 30 million copies, meaning that its reputation is partly derived from tons of people who wouldn’t normally play a Soulslike actually giving it a try.

Ryan Thompson, an assistant media studies professor at Michigan State, teased out what I thought was an interesting observation about one of the core differences between Silksong and Elden Ring. It’s not just that one is a 2D side-scroller and the other is a 3D open-world RPG; it’s also the way the roots of those genres diverge. “3D games are designed for you to win eventually,” he argues. “2D platformers are originally designed to take your quarter and tell you to piss off.”

That’s an oversimplification, but a helpful one when it comes to a Metroidvania Soulslike like Silksong. As the genre name denotes, it has its feet in two related but distinct traditions. One is 8-bit action platformers of the NES era that seemed to be perfectly content if the kid they were sold to was never able to beat them. The other is a baroque RPG adventure in which the expectation is you’ll be able to level up or learn your way out of any challenge.

Silksong is as much a 2D bullet hell game as a Metroidvania, maybe even more so. The margin for error on screen is more circumscribed than in its 3D counterparts, and its arsenal is more streamlined. It’s borrowing from Castlevania III: Dracula‘s Curse more than Dark Souls, and the result can be more uncompromising. That might be easier to accept if Silksong didn’t also tell an evocative and whimsical story that’s constantly dropping devilish obstacles in your path. But I’ll take that challenge over the original Mega Man any day.

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September 19, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Meta Goes Even Harder Into Smart Glasses With 3 New Models

by admin September 18, 2025

It takes time to realize you don’t have to hold your hand out in front of you for these gestures to be recognized, but a surprisingly short amount of time to find yourself using them with very little second thought.

Of course talking to Meta AI remains a key way of interacting with the glasses, but Meta hopes that adding the visual elements will enhance the chatbot experience. For example, live speech captioning and language translation is still switched on by voice—but with Meta Ray-Ban Display, you can see the translations and captions appearing in real time on the glasses rather than on your phone’s screen. This is the same with commands like “Hey Meta, what am I looking at,” which can now offer more visually rich information about whatever the front-facing cameras are pointing at. Asking Meta to navigate to a local attraction results in the glasses displaying turn-by-turn directions directly on top of the real world as you walk.

For times when talking might be difficult, Meta also showed off a feature that tracks handwriting input as an alternative to voice commands. Aimed at quick messages, the user can “draw” letters with an outstretched finger on a flat service (or your leg), and the Neural Band will turn it into text. Though the feature was part of the demo we received, Meta says it won’t be available to users at launch, but will arrive soon. Who knows, maybe this will be the thing that helps save handwriting.

Meta has acknowledged some limitations with features at launch. For example, the built-in Spotify integration is only able to show what’s playing on your phone and give you basic playback controls, and Instagram is currently limited to just Reels and messages. Meta intends to broaden out the capabilities soon.

Also notable: The Orion prototype we saw last year required an external puck to power its most computing-intensive capabilities. But that prototype design provides a full range of augmented reality features. The AR feature set of this new Display model is more limited, so the puck isn’t needed. Also, this means the Display’s frames are slimmer. Meta does eventually plan to offer a full slate of wearable options to consumers: smart glasses, display glasses, and full AR glasses.

The Ray-Ban Displays will be available in either black or sand colors starting on September 30 for $799 and will initially only be available as in-store purchases in the US. Meta says you need to buy them in person because the wristband has to be fitted correctly to the wrist of your dominant hand. Also, the folks selling you the system will show you the hand gestures that control the glasses—though there will be a tutorial walkthrough when you first power on the glasses too.

Be ready to move quickly if you want them though. Meta says there are limited quantities available, and other countries won’t get them until early 2026.

Oakley Meta Vanguard

The Vanguard.

Photograph: Meta

Louder speakers are built into the arms.

Photograph: Meta

The ultrawide camera is right in the middle.

Photograph: Meta

Following on from the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses announced earlier this year, Meta’s newest Oakley collaboration evokes the timeless look of a pair of wrap-around Oakley Sphaera Glasses—but with a twist. That twist of course is a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera with a 122-degree field of view that’s positioned smack in the middle of the lens, right on the bridge of your nose. This is the optimum placement for recording POV action sports videos at up to 3K, as well as for capturing scenes in the glasses’ new slow-mo and hyperlapse modes.

The Vanguards are very much being marketed to sports enthusiasts—those who might be inclined to choose the Meta glasses over a GoPro, for instance. To that end, the Vanguards have an IP67 waterproof rating, the best waterproofing on any pair of Meta glasses. The speakers built into the arms of the frames are 6 decibels louder to make up for any loss of clarity caused by wind noise, and a new 5-mic array lets your commands be clearly heard even when an arctic gale is blasting you in the face while you careen down the slopes.

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September 18, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Which KYC is Harder to Pass?

by admin September 5, 2025

The verification process on adult platforms can be more cumbersome than Know Your Customer (KYC) checks on cryptocurrency exchanges — though added difficulty doesn’t necessarily reflect stronger compliance.

Signing up as a model on OnlyFans or Pornhub isn’t all that different from opening an account on a crypto trading platform. The process often begins with a Google login (or other online accounts, depending on the exchange), followed by the familiar ritual of selfies and ID uploads.

Both adult platforms and crypto exchanges are under mounting scrutiny over how they verify users — one to prevent minors from selling explicit content, the other to stop criminals from laundering money.

To test how those systems work in practice, Cointelegraph attempted to pass identity checks on both types of platforms. The results show that adult sites often frustrate creators with repeated rejections and arbitrary hurdles, while crypto exchanges impose more structured checks tied to financial regulation.

Cointelegraph’s OnlyFans creator account application was ultimately rejected. Source: OnlyFans

KYC in crypto vs. OnlyFans and Pornhub

On OnlyFans, verification went beyond a standard ID and selfie to include an address, multiple resubmissions and social media handles. The application was denied after the platform claimed the profile image and selfie did not meet its standards, even though they followed the stated conditions. OnlyFans later said the provided social media links were invalid even though they were legitimate.

Cointelegraph refiled the details, but the application was rejected again. When approached for comment, OnlyFans’ media team did not address specific questions. Instead, they referred to the transparency center, which states that the platform invests heavily in technology and moderation teams.

Cointelegraph’s application rejection is not a unique case. OnlyFans creator profiles have a low acceptance rate. In July, the platform received 184,844 creator applications, of which only 35% were approved.

Pornhub also rejected Cointelegraph’s application, citing only “other” as the reason. A second attempt using a passport was later approved, coincidentally after a media inquiry. Pornhub did not respond to a request for comment.

Pornhub ultimately approved Cointelegraph’s creator application. Source: Pornhub

Joshua Chu, an asset recovery lawyer and co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association, also independently conducted these tests. His OnlyFans creator application was similarly rejected.

“I looked into joining as a performer, only to find the verification process significantly more rigorous than expected,” Chu told Cointelegraph. “I ultimately didn’t succeed.”

“During the same period, I’ve opened and verified multiple crypto exchange accounts, including ones not even officially supposed to be operating in Hong Kong, and trading there proved less challenging,” he added.

Related: Stripper index doesn’t apply to Bitcoin, OnlyFans models say

Crypto exchanges Coinbase, Bybit and Bitget focused their checks on financial documentation, source of funds and proof of address. Cointelegraph attempted to pass KYC on each of these platforms to measure how their processes compared.

On Coinbase, registration began with a Google login and SMS verification, followed by questions about employment and the expected source of funds. The exchange required proof of address through documents such as a bank statement or utility bill. The test was conducted on Sept. 1, and a bank statement with minimal transactions submitted by Cointelegraph was rejected several times. The application was locked for 24 hours. Cointelegraph returned to the application after the time expired, and a July bank statement was accepted and approved. A small 6-euro deposit was made to Coinbase via its banking partner, Estonia-based LHV Pank, to test the on-ramp.

Coinbase KYC freezes Cointelegraph’s application as documents fail to meet standards. Source: Coinbase

Bybit redirected European Union users to its licensed subsidiary, where verification was completed through standard ID checks. A video of a tilted passport had to be taken to display its hologram. The process was completed within minutes.

Bitget offered the fastest approval: A simple ID upload and selfie unlocked crypto transfers in about 10 minutes. Additional verification was needed to trade crypto against fiat, requiring phone and email codes and a linked bank card.

Coinbase and Bybit did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request to comment on the story.

Bitget, when asked how the platform’s KYC verification occurs almost instantly, responded by saying it relies on its eKYC service providers and its review team.

“Adult content platforms, on the other hand, often rely on more conservative, sometimes manual or third-party age checks — think uploaded scans, liveness tests or credit card checks,” Hon Ng, Bitget’s chief legal officer, told Cointelegraph.

“It’s not that adult sites are intentionally more rigorous; often, it’s that the requirements themselves are murkier,” Ng said.

“For crypto exchanges, KYC is a well-charted, globally familiar process; for age verification in adult content, the rules are newer, interpreted differently across jurisdictions and tangled in privacy debates.”

How OnlyFans and crypto ended up with stricter verifications

Identity checks were not always strict in either adult platforms or cryptocurrency exchanges. Both industries tightened their processes only after scandals and regulatory pressure made the status quo unsustainable.

Pornhub was forced to overhaul its system in 2020 after a New York Times opinion article revealed underage and non-consensual videos on the site. Visa and Mastercard quickly suspended payment services, while the platform deleted millions of unverified uploads and required all content creators to pass government ID verification.

OnlyFans faced similar scrutiny in 2021 as the platform exploded in popularity during the pandemic. A BBC News investigation found that minors were selling and appearing in explicit videos on the platform. The BBC found cases of minors using fake IDs and social media profiles of relatives to bypass the platform’s restrictions.

China eventually banned OnlyFans in 2025 after a set of crypto bans in 2021. Source: BBC

In March 2025, UK communications watchdog Ofcom fined OnlyFans’ parent company, Fenix International, 1.05 million British pounds (about $1.4 million) for providing inaccurate information about its age-verification system. The regulator said it had twice requested details in 2022 and 2023 about the platform’s “facial age estimation” tool, which was supposed to block minors.

Crypto exchanges followed a parallel but separate path. For years, platforms such as BitMEX and Binance allowed users to trade with little or no verification, drawing the ire of financial regulators.

Related: FATF’s crypto checklist hints at the next regulatory crackdown

BitMEX first settled with US regulators in 2021, agreeing to pay $100 million due to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and registration failures. In 2024, the exchange pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, and in January 2025, a federal judge imposed another $100-million criminal fine along with probation. KuCoin was a more recent example, pleading guilty in 2025 to operating as an unlicensed money transmitter and agreeing to pay nearly $300 million in penalties for optional and inconsistent KYC.

OnlyFans, Pornhub and crypto learned the hard way

In both industries, identity checks only became stricter after a scandal and enforcement made inaction impossible.

Pornhub and OnlyFans toughened their standards after revelations of underage users and child protection failures. Crypto exchanges did so only after regulators imposed heavy fines and criminal charges for weak AML safeguards.

From 2021, the Financial Action Task Force updated its global guidance to apply AML standards to crypto, meaning exchanges had to adopt KYC rules similar to banks.

“KYC is crucial for identifying and pursuing bad actors; it’s really the foundation of effective asset recovery work. However, in practice, I’ve observed that some exchanges have gaps in their KYC data or fail to properly verify key documents like address proofs,” Chu said.

“With the rise of AI-generated fakes, these weaknesses have become more pronounced. Although there are improvements, crypto KYC standards still lag behind traditional finance in integrity and thoroughness.”

Today, onboarding as a creator on an adult site can involve more hoops than opening an account on a crypto exchange, but that doesn’t mean their systems are more secure or accurate. OnlyFans has not expanded on why Cointelegraph’s application was rejected despite the submission of accurate documentation and social profiles.

Both sectors ultimately share the same trajectory: Systems tightened only after crises exposed their weaknesses, and today’s stricter checks are the product of those lessons learned the hard way.

Magazine: Astrology could make you a better crypto trader: It has been foretold

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Inside the Chinese PC gaming industry as it gets ready to dominate the next decade: ‘We have to work harder, we have to make the games even better’

by admin August 25, 2025

Phantom Blade Zero: Are Chinese games about to take over the world? – YouTube

Watch On

In 2019, PC Gamer published the in-depth feature PC gaming in China: Everything you need to know about the world’s biggest PC games industry. At the time, our goal in covering what our shared hobby looks like in a country that Western players still have little insight into.

“China’s PC gaming industry is the largest in the world by a wide margin. The entire US games industry, including PC, mobile, and console games, generated only $30.4 billion in revenue in 2018—China’s PC gaming scene alone is equal to about half of that,” reporter Steven Messner wrote at the time. “In spite of those numbers, you might be hard-pressed to name a Chinese-made PC game.”

One year later, Chinese developer Game Science announced Black Myth: Wukong, and everything changed.

“The past 10 years was a crazy, historic decade for the Chinese gaming industry,” the founder of Chinese studio S-Game told me in Beijing last month. That may even be an understatement from Qiwei “Soulframe” Liang, who’s directing Phantom Blade Zero, which I think has the potential to be the next action game to leave a Black Myth-sized impression on players. I’ve already talked and written about Phantom Blade Zero a lot, but it’s not the only game picking up the torch from Black Myth and running with it.

In 2019, Chinese PC gaming was its own ecosystem that we wanted to help PC gamers outside China wrap their heads around, but most of biggest hits—League of Legends, PUBG—were imports, rather than games developed in China. And the relatively few hit games being developed in China were unlikely to be translated for other parts of the world.

In 2024, Black Myth: Wukong proved that big budget PC games developed in China could kill it on the world stage.

By 2030, we’re going to be inundated by games of that same caliber.

What we’re seeing now is a wave of games inspired and emboldened by Black Myth, as developers there take profits they made in mobile and start putting it towards what we more often think of as AAA games—like when Netflix started producing TV and films and gave Martin Scorsese $150 million dollars to make a 3-hour gangster drama. Chinese devs are hungry for that same prestige, and big publishers like Tencent and NetEase have the deep pockets needed to fund their blockbusters.

“All the focus is on making triple-A games. You can see a lot are coming,” Liang said. “It’s different. For Americans, it’s not a new concept, because you guys are making huge games. GTA or something like that is quite familiar. Black Myth: Wukong has created this possibility for Chinese games, but I would say for most, the quality is still your basement, your foundation. Making the games better is very important.

“I think there’s a pride for the gamers who played Black Myth, because they feel: We can make such a game. So we are very careful as Chinese developers to fulfill the requirements, the hype of the Chinese gamers. We have to make the games even better.”

This is going to be a defining story of the next decade in PC gaming. So when I was invited by S-Game to fly to Beijing for an event focused on Phantom Blade Zero, I also saw it as a chance to really get a sense for where the Chinese industry is right now, and maybe peek over the horizon at where it’s going.

The video above is the result: a detailed look at how the Chinese gaming industry has evolved since the 2010s, and the games like Delta Force, Wuchang, The Bustling World, Blood Message, Where Winds Meet, and more bringing about that new era.

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August 25, 2025 0 comments

Elden Ring Nightreign Libra on purple background looking at camera with goggle eyes

Product Reviews

15 attempts in, I actually love that Elden Ring Nightreign’s Everdark Libra is the first FromSoftware boss who’s harder to beat in co-op than solo

by admin August 19, 2025

The handshake deal in FromSoftware games, the obfuscated difficulty option that’s always been there since Demon’s Souls, is co-op: Summoning phantoms controlled by other players or the computer⁠. In OG Elden Ring everybody’s best friend was the Mimic Tear, a powerful summon to make a copy of yourself to fight by your side.

This has held true in the co-op centric, roguelike spinoff Nightreign, with the sturdy tripod of a full party clearly being what the experience was catered towards. The new duos mode is nice enough but still slightly compromised, while even with post-launch patches, solo is still the worst way to play.

But now they’ve gone and turned all that on its head: The latest Everdark superboss, the ultra instinct version of Baphomet dealbroker Libra, only gets more challenging the bigger your posse is. I managed to take him down solo after just three runs, while I’m somewhere north of 15 attempts deep in duos and trios, a W still evading me at every turn.

Everybody hates Everdark Libra. My peer, Austin Wood at GamesRadar, thinks he’s “100% getting nerfed.” Just like with the similarly loathed Everdark Augur, I disagree. I love this sick freak of a boss and how he turns all the rules on their heads.

To make Everdark Libra easier would compromise the beautiful vision at his core, the product of a sensitive, poet’s soul that’s clearly been hurt by this cruel world of ours and wants to inflict that pain right back. We’re all letting Libra down. Champions adjust. Spoilers for Everdark Libra below.

Make your choice

Yeah man, we get it. (Image credit: FromSoftware)

Libra’s already a real piece of work in his base form, tied with end boss Heolstor as the hardest in the game by my reckoning. He has an arsenal of unusual, difficult-to-read projectile attacks that all build up the madness status effect, which does huge damage and a stun if you manage to survive the initial burst.

His signature move is a delayed blast sigil that brutalizes you with madness build-up after a quick beat. It comes out fast enough that you can’t exactly respond to it carefully and can get royally screwed if you’re in the middle of an animation, while a slight delay punishes immediate panic rolling. It is deliciously evil.

Libra’s Everdark form ups the ante by summoning invader clones of the player party with all the same abilities and a number of potential weapon loadouts thoughtfully constructed to inflict the most pain and frustration. Some of my favorites:

Mini Malenia Executor: Equipped with the Hand of Malenia Sword and can perform a weaker, but still potentially instant-death version of Waterfowl Dance. Yes, that Waterfowl Dance.
Terminator Ironeye: Possesses the Jar Cannon and One-Eyed Shield (which has a built-in cannon), as well as a seemingly-permanent buff resembling the Ironjar Aromatic: He walks extremely slowly but is extra tanky and can’t be interrupted.
Sniper Wylder: Uses a greatbow to spam the Rain of Arrows ash of war, doing crazy damage in a huge AoE from long distance.
Rot Duchess: Dual wields Scorpion’s Stinger daggers for fast Scarlet Rot buildup.

Much like the player-style NPC enemies of FromSoft’s previous games, they don’t play by the same rules that you do: Malenia-Executor is particularly difficult to interrupt out of his signature move, while all of the clones are capable of dodge rolling out of attack combos a normal player could not.

The pièce de résistance is how they shuffle in: It does not feel like Libra has a consistent timer for summoning a fresh wave of evil twins. Wiping them out is not a guarantee of breathing room to DPS the boss, while it’s far more likely for them to start piling up as you fail to clear out old ones before the new clones spawn in.

The final indignity is that Libra summoning a new wave heals any surviving invaders, buffs their defense and damage, and the buffs stack. A veteran six rounds deep Executor spamming Waterfowl Dance is who I wish I was playing as.

All of this while Libra has new, more aggressive madness-inflicting AOE attacks to fling at you. A mature Everdark Libra fight is pure chaos, a field of evil clones glowing gold with layered buffs, some attacking each other, but most chasing you around like it’s Yakety Sax while Libra turns the field into a bullet hell screen. It’s utterly deranged. I don’t know how a group of randos with no coordination is supposed to beat it. It’s hilarious.

The time is ripe

The Gamer’s Gambit. (Image credit: FromSoftware)

Whether fully intentional or not, FromSoft’s classical deferred difficulty system works in reverse with Everdark Libra. It’s like a martial arts movie thing or Bruce Wayne climbing out of Bane’s house without the dang rope or something: If the enemy draws its strength from you, make yourself weaker.

Not only is one evil twin far more manageable than triplets, the singleplayer mode’s adjusted health values mean they go down quicker too. Even in the solo runs I failed, I didn’t experience the chaotic pileups of a three-player slugfest.

This inversion is another example of how flexible and surprising FromSoft’s well-worn systems can still be. Yet another boss in Nightreign is challenging in a way that took me off-guard, that wasn’t just another really tall, sad guy with a sword who moves super fast.

That has me even more excited for what the studio does next: After Promised Consort Radahn in Shadow of the Erdtree, I was worried there might be a ceiling to FromSoft’s arms race with itself to make ever greater twitch reflex challenges in its bosses. In Nightreign, the studio sidestepped this issue, proving there’s nothing stopping it from delivering spectacles, challenges, or sheer curveballs we just won’t see coming.

As for the fight itself, it’s a new favorite. Everdark Libra feels like a joke at my expense, a prank played on us players. That’s one of my favorite things to see in a game, and FromSoft is the master when it comes to this rare art.

Could they ease off the gas with the clone spawns just a touch? Maybe, it depends on how soon you ask me after a failed run. Is it kinda bullshit that Vyke’s War Spear, the only melee weapon Libra is weak to, is such a rare drop that I’ve only seen it twice in 111.8 hours (but who’s counting)? Perhaps.

I hope they never nerf Everdark Libra. He’s so stupid. It’s all so meanspirited. I love him like a son.

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August 19, 2025 0 comments