Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has flashy, thrilling battles, but the best thing about them is how you can twist the game's many systems to your advantage. The turn-based RPG combat might feel familiar, but it offers a lot of ways to customize your approach to battles so that you can do absolutely devastating amounts of damage.In Expedition 33, you play as a group of Expeditioners who aim to destroy The Paintress, a mysterious being that erases everyone of a certain age every year. In battles, you can have up to three of your party participating in a fight, and should they all die, you can call in your teammates who are in reserve to try and finish off the enemies. To show you how deep the rabbit hole can go in customizing your team, here's my approach to building out just one character, the fencer Maelle. Every character can equip three "Pictos," which offer passive buffs like giving you the defense-boosting Shell status at the start of a fight. But after you win a few fights with a Pictos equipped, other characters can also equip the Pictos as a "Lumina" by using "Lumina Points," which you accumulate through leveling up and by using a resource you can find in the game.When yo …Read the full story at The Verge.

It's always weird when an update magically "adds" a new sensor or feature to a piece of hardware. Of course, it's never actually magic; it's just the manufacturer finally adding the driver code to identify a specific feature that has already been there. But boy, does it feel like it.

I've got a few PC gaming handhelds, and love them all, but for very different reasons. The Windows-based ones let me use Xbox Game Pass and play games with anti-cheat measures that don't run on Linux, and the Steam Deck runs everything else. Even while watching my colleagues install Bazzite on their handhelds for a SteamOS-like experience, I've not been tempted to join them.

3D printing lithophanes is where you turn 2D images into 3D models, which, when you 3D print and backlit, it reveals the image. To create a lithophane, you begin by uploading a photo to a lithophane maker or a 3D modeling program, then convert it into a 3D model. The next step is to slice the file in a 3D printer slicer before 3D printing. Once printed, view it against a light source to reveal the image. You can use them for personalized night lights, glowing lampshades, and custom photo frames. The possibilities are endless. Before you start 3D printing lithophanes, consider the following points.

A battery that goes for days at a price that’s nice.The OnePlus 13R is a particular kind of midrange phone for a particular kind of person. It's a pared-down version of the OnePlus 13 - which is a full-on flagship and a good one at that. And even though it shares a lot of the flagship DNA, the 13R lacks peace-of-mind features present on the Google Pixel 9A, like full water resistance and new OS versions for seven years. It's also not exactly cheap, with an MSRP of $599. But if all that reduces its mass appeal, the 13R makes up for it in two key places: battery life and screen. Is it worth buying over the $499 Pixel 9A? That depends on the particular kind of person you are.The 13R offers a big 6.78-inch OLED panel with a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz, and its 1264 x 2780 resolution is enough to keep things sharp. You'll have a hard time finding another screen this big and fancy on a midrange phone, at least one sold in the US. It's plenty bright in direct sun, and it maintains its peak brightness well. The always-on display is hard to see in the sun without waking the screen, but that's a minor complaint.The 13R has an IP65 rating, meaning it's fully dust resistant and can withstand some serious splashes. But it's not guar …Read the full story at The Verge.

MacBooks are among the best laptops for media consumption. The MacBook Pro, in particular, has a gorgeous display and large stereo speakers that fire upward. Both the 14 and 16-inch variants have stellar 2K displays with HDR support, making them some of the best laptop displays in the industry. Yes, they're not OLED like laptops from some other brands, but the overall package is fantastic. Now, all MacBook Pro computers starting with the M1 Pro have a peak brightness of 1,000 nits. However, this level of brightness can only be achieved when consuming HDR content -- that, too, only in a particular section of the display.

For years, I maintained a dual‑boot setup to enjoy both Linux and Windows on a single machine. Obviously, dual-booting allows you to use all the hardware resources at one time, but while I tried experimenting with features on both OSes, I found myself going back and forth to each one, losing precious time in the process. That made me embrace a Type‑2 hypervisor instead, and I’m using VirtualBox for this purpose. Here are the reasons why I made the switch and how virtualization transformed my computing experience for the better.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 80, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you had better luck than I did preordering a Switch 2, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about The Telepathy Tapes and extremely online parenting and translation glasses, watching The Men Who Built America, cackling at this incredible star-studded live reading of the original Star Wars, playing the whole archive of 4×3, doing some writing in the new Easlo Journal app, testing some headphones I impulse-bought on the TikTok Shop, and seeing if the Kagi Assistant fits into my search-engine world.Oh, also: Thanks to everyone who sent me notes with thoughts about wallpapers! You've given me a bunch of fun ideas about how to expand the Screen Share section, including showing off more of your setups. More on that to come really soon.I also have for you a terrific new entry in the Star Wars universe, a flip phone worth a look, new apps from Instagram and Perplexity, two games you'll love, and much more. Pricey week, this one… sorry in advance. Let's dig in.(As always, the best part o …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you've been keeping up-to-date on your Raspberry Pi news, you may remember the handheld console that fits within an Altoid tin released back in March. It was an excellent project and showed off the power of the Pi when squeezing hardware into teeny-tiny cases. While you could use a real Altoids tin to put everything in, you also had the option to 3D print the enclosure, making it an excellent way to put your Pi Picos to good use.

There are many front-facing features on Windows, like the desktop, Start menu, File Explorer, and others. These are essential features you’re familiar with and use regularly. However, there are some hidden features I wish I’d been using from the beginning.

The Control Panel has been a staple in Windows for decades now, and it has garnered its fair share of fans. However, Microsoft would rather people use its shiny new Settings panel. The problem is, the Control Panel still contains some features that Settings doesn't. As such, people are forced to continue using the Control Panel for specific features.

Synology makes some of the best network-attached storage (NAS) for personal and business use, though you'd be forgiven for not knowing about Synology C2, the company's cloud platform. It's through C2 that Synology can offer cloud-based solutions for password management, backups, and long-term storage. There are some cool things you can do with Synology C2, even if you've never touched a branded NAS before, and here are some highlights to get you started.