I work from home, so I typically listen to audio through headphones or AirPods. But I’ve always wanted a desk speaker that doesn’t take up too much space, which made the new Sonos Play a fitting first Sonos product to review.

The Play, launched in March, is Sonos’s first new device in more than a year. The $299 speaker is a hybrid: part home speaker, part portable. It sits on your desk in a pill-shaped dock, but at 1.3 kilograms, with a “utility loop” on the back, it’s easy to carry around the house or take outside.

While testing it, I often started a podcast at my desk and carried the Play to the kitchen while I cooked or made coffee. The advantage over wearing AirPods is that you remain aware of your surroundings — no more missing what someone across the room is saying. And you don’t need to rely on voice commands to control playback; the Sonos Assistant and Alexa are both built in.

Physical controls are another advantage. Skipping tracks or adjusting volume with greasy hands is awkward on AirPods; the Play’s buttons are more forgiving. That said, the controls themselves are easy to miss — they’re the same color as the silicone top and barely raised above the surface. After a few days I had memorized their positions, but the learning curve is a minor frustration that better contrast or more tactile buttons could have avoided.

The speaker is sturdy and IP67-rated, meaning it can handle rain and brief submersion — I ran it under a tap without issue. It can also charge your phone in a pinch, doubling as a power bank, which is a welcome feature for outdoor use.

For sound, the Play relies on dual-angled tweeters, a mid-woofer, and three digital amplifiers, with two passive radiators to reinforce bass outdoors. The result is balanced and detailed at moderate volumes — instrument separation is particularly good. The soundstage is narrow, though, meaning the music can feel somewhat contained rather than expansive, and at higher volumes the mix loses some of its clarity.

The Play is well-suited to a desk or a patio; it isn’t trying to fill a room. For that, Sonos’s Era 100 SL — which launched alongside the Play — is the better choice. Two Play units can be paired into a stereo configuration, either through the app or, more cleverly, by holding the play/pause button on both speakers simultaneously. It’s a useful feature that makes a noticeable difference for music, though less so for television audio — which these speakers aren’t really designed for anyway.

Sonos has also built in Trueplay, which uses the speaker’s microphones to automatically calibrate sound based on the room. Earlier versions of this feature required waving your phone around the space to tune the audio — an awkward workaround that would have made little sense on a portable speaker. The new implementation handles it automatically.

Sonos has had well-publicized struggles with its app — disappearing speakers, glitchy volume controls — and while the company has made meaningful improvements, a few rough edges remain. Sync between the Play and my MacBook was occasionally laggy, for example, and playing or pausing audio on YouTube sometimes produced a noticeable delay before the speaker responded.

Switching audio between speakers worked reliably through AirPlay but failed repeatedly in the Sonos app until I installed the Apple Music integration — and even then, the process is more cumbersome than it should be.

The “Apply” button in the Sonos app, required to confirm speaker changes, feels like an unnecessary extra step. AirPlay handles the same action with a single tap.

Pocket Casts integration has a resuming bug: podcasts restart from the beginning rather than picking up where you left off.

Overall, the Sonos Play is a solid speaker that largely delivers on its premise. The app issues are real but not dealbreakers, and Sonos has shown it is willing to iterate. If portability isn’t a priority, the Era 100 ($219) or Era 100 SL ($189) offer more volume for less money. If you want something more rugged and truly portable, the Sonos Roam 2 or JBL Charge 6 are worth considering. But if you want a speaker that works equally well on a desk and a back porch, the Play makes a convincing case for itself.

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Right, if you were hoping to play a single copy of the same game online across two Nintendo Switch 2s, it appears you’re out of luck. Nintendo’s rolled out its new Virtual Game Cards to the classic Switch via an update that lays the groundwork for the new console, and it’s reportedly gotten rid of the ability play the same digital copy online on two systems simulataneously.

This was first identified by folks on ResetEra, who clearly downloaded the Switch software version 20.0.0 that Ninty’s just released and immediately decided to have some fun with a mate. The change itself is seemingly a bit of murky one – the method it’s nixed was viewed by some players as a cheeky “loophole” and its striking from the record looks to just be down to the different way that Game Cards handle Switch games.

Basically, what people had previously been doing in order to play Switch games online with a mate is logging into the game owner’s account on two different Switch consoles – a ‘primary’ one and a ‘secondary’ one. The primary one would see the game owner set up their copy of the game, then hand over to the second player who’d sign in to their own account and still be able to fire up the instyalled game to play online.

Then, the game owner would turn on the ‘secondary’ Switch, log into their account to install that same game, then be able to play it online. Boom, two people on two Switches playinmg the same digital copy of a game online together, via a method that’s a lot easier to do than it to explain without twisting your tongue and tonsils together.

However, with the deployment of these Virtual Game Cards, it’s reportedly no longer possible to follow that and play online, because the Game Cards treat digital games like a single cartrige. However, simultaneous offline play looks like it’s still on the table, even if it’ll require you to set your Switch as offline via a new Online License option in the settings.

Naturally, folks who love a good bit of online play with a mate and don’t want to have to buy two copies of a game are pretty unhappy with Nintendo having gotten rid of something they’d been doing on the reg just before it drops its new console. The word “downgrade” is being chucked about in the thread I linked earlier

Now, the Switch 2 isn’t here yet, so there’s a chance Nintendo sees the backlash and comes up with a solution – or at least makes it clear whether features like Gameshare, which has also been rolled out with this Switch update and currently will let you play some games online together via local wireless, will become a fully-blown catch-all replacement for the method that’s been taken off the table.

Were you regularly using this method to share your Switch library and play online with your mates, partner, or Grandma? Let us know below!

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Nintendo sure are treating us to a cavalcade of double-subtitled games at the moment, though slapping Switch 2 Edition on the end of many of them is more descriptive than thematic. The latest addition to this long-winded club is Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition – Switch 2 Edition, taking the beloved JRPG and sprinkling it with a bit of high-def fairy dust and a few new features to warrant charging people more money for it.

Let’s get this out of the way: the Switch 2 Edition of Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is the best that this game has ever looked. That’s even more evident if you’ve played your way through the Wii original, possibly with a detour to the New 3DS version on your way to the now six-year-old Definitive Edition on the original Switch. The strength of the game hasn’t always been the visuals, but here, with a draw distance that stretches away into the background, and some lovely crisp textures, this is now the best looking version of the game by a long way.

That’s tied to the 60fps refresh rate and an upscaled 4K resolution. The Definitive Edition was a much stronger performer than the earlier Switch entry Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but it still suffered from some dropped frames from its 30fps target and slowdown out in the open world areas. There’s still a small amount of that here, though its effect has been much lessened, and the new 60fps frame rate feels much, much smoother.

Definitive Edition was also quite a blurry-looking game on Switch, with resolutions below native output and coming out a couple years before temporal upscaling was added to the game engine for Xenoblade Chronicles 3. But this release has come in the wake of the Switch 2 version of Xenoblade Chronicles X, with the upscaling added to that game by Monolith Soft able to make the graphics feel smeary and unstable – something they haven’t even tried to fix with a patch, by the way. Thankfully, this Switch 2 upgrade comes across much better with much better image quality both docked and handheld.

Unlike the Xenoblade Chronicles X upgrade, there is more here than just a resolution bump, and comes with a bump in price from £4.19 to £8 as well. Perhaps the most obvious addition is the Ether Jet, a vehicle that allows you to whizz across Chronicles’ landscapes with ease. There’s a new quest to complete to unlock it, with a new character lurking at the Bionis’ Leg Refugee Camp who’ll give you the lowdown at Chapter 4. If you’re past this point, it’s an easy fast-travel hop back here, and the Ether Jet is well worth hopping on board, since it speeds up getting around Xenoblade Chronicles’ massive open areas.

The Nopon Engineer is hanging around just outside the refugee camp, up the rise on the way out, and they’ll give you the spiel about coming up with an excellent new method of transportation that they don’t have a power supply for. Guess who’s got to go fetch them one? That’s right, Shulk and co. have to venture back to Tephra Cave to procure some Ether Cylinders – I don’t know why it feels like Luke Skywalker having to go to Tashi Station to pick up some power converters, but that’s all I hear now in my brain.

Thanks to the wonder of fast travel, it’s not much of a time sink – just head for the Rear Entrance to Tephra Cave and then head back outside, rather than into the cave. This was also a great way to get a look at Colony 9 from way up on the mountainside, emphasising just how clear the upgraded visuals are in the Switch 2 version – it really does look stunning. There is a short battle to grab your cylinders, but if you’re above Level 15 it’s going to be an absolute walk in the park – or a brisk stroll in the Bionsis.

Once you’ve got the Ether Jet – ignoring its inventor’s muttering that it’s a total death trap – you also unlock the Nopon Grand Prix, which turns Xenoblade Chronicles into a kart racer, with a touch of Fast RMX/Kirby Air Ride about it. There’s Score Attack and Battle Race modes, both of which have a bunch of prizes available if you do well, including the brand new gear that’s mentioned in the Switch 2 edition’s blurb. Each character has their own racing stats, and it actually feels a lot more fully featured than I was expecting.

I’m not sure whether I like the look of the new gear, but there’s more to it than just its appearance. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock more tracks too, which is a nice little addition of its own, and enough to keep you coming back. The only weird thing is how you access the Nopon Grand Prix, which is to head into the menu and press Y, a fact that isn’t obviously mentioned.

Monolith Soft have actually put some thought and effort into Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition – Switch 2 Edition. After the disappointment of Chronicles X Definitive Edition, this sets a good benchmark for the other two Xenoblade Chronicles upgrades as they arrive later this year. At £7.99 it feels like a reasonable asking price, and it’s now the best way to experience this JRPG classic.

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Sony Santa Monica has revealed their next project, and the next chapter in the God of War saga, taking the rather unexpected direction of letting you play as someone other than Kratos. How about… Kratos’ dead wife?

That’s right, the rumours were true and the next God of War game lets you play as Kratos’ dead wife, Faye, aka Laufey the Just (portrayed once more by Deborah Ann Woll), who is surprisingly nimble for someone we last saw being barbecued. In fact, it opens with Kratos and Atreus laying her to rest in the woods, but as her spirit floats off, she awakens not within the Norse afterlife, but somewhere completely different. This is the Everywhen, the afterlife of the gods, where all magic comes from and where it returns to.

But she doesn’t get a greeting befitting of a god. No, the plantlife starts to attack her, and she soon comes face to face with Sekmet from the Egyptian pantheon of gods, and Begtse, the god of war from Tibetan mythology, who have her thrown into captivity. There she meets a talking gelatinous cube called Phranque (Jack Quaid), and the ribbons of a sword called Rue (Perlina Lau), which is a turn for the even more bizarre. They are the ones who reveal that this is the afterlife of the gods, as opposed to one specific mythology, and spur Faye on to rediscovering control of her powers and breaking out.

Wwith Rue’s sword in grasp – for better or worse, given the repeated warnings about this – she unleashes some fantastic fighting abilities, including a ribbon-whipping move, the ability to punch someone’s soul of their body with the Golden Hand of the Jötnar, and then stab that a bit instead, and great finishers. She’s fast and nimble, able to combine ground attacks with aerial ones.

Here’s more on how Santa Monica has created the character of Faye for her very own game.

There’s some truly titanic battling from this point in the reveal, really showing the scale and scope of what the PS5 can achieve in the battle with Begtse.

It looks excellent and we can’t wait to see more!

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If you’re yearning for sunnier climes as the winter drags on, Ubisoft might just have the answer, offering digital tourists on PC and consoles a limited-time trip to the fictional Caribbean island of Yara as part of its Far Cry 6 free trial this weekend.

From this Thursday 16th February to Monday 20th February, players on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC can slap on the sun cream, step into the boots of Far Cry 6 protagonist Dani Rojas, and embark on an gun-toting open-world adventure to help overthrow Yara’s charismatic dictator Antón Castillo.

You’ll get access to a big old chunk of Far Cry 6 over the duration of the event – including the base game, and its crossover missions inspired by Rambo: All the Blood and Stranger Things – and Ubisoft is enabling co-op for anyone wanting to team up with pals. Additionally, players that participate in co-op will receive the in-game White Lotus Sniper Rifle.

That – along with any progress made over the duration of the free weekend – will carry over to the full game should you decide to make a purchase when the event concludes. Is it worth a punt? Eurogamer’s Ian Higton found Far Cry 6 to be a solid if unadventurous instalment in the series when he reviewed it back in 2021, so perhaps that’ll be enough for you.

To sweeten the deal Ubisoft is offering significant discounts of between 50% and 70% percent for a “limited time”, depending which of Far Cry 6’s many different versions you opt for.

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Here is the full guide on how to play Aurelion Sol in League of Legends season 13 like high elo Challenger players.

Image Credits | Riot Games

Aurelion Sol mid Guide – Everything you need to know

Aurelion has finally gotten the long-awaited CGU to the live servers. Considered one of the most difficult and challenging champions to play, he was never a fan-favorite and only a few people were maining him. Now that he has gotten his update, we should be able to see his play rate consistently higher in the following weeks. While he’s certainly more interactive to play, Riot preserved his theme as a fearsome dragon and challenging kit.

To help you out, we’ve compiled the best current builds and runes setups that are played at the highest elo on the solo queue ladder.

Asol mid Build

Players already seem to have found Aurelion Sol’s optimal build. Given that he needs lots of bonus mana on top of ability power, the three core items for him are Rod of Ages, Rylai’s Crystal Scepter, and Archangel’s Staff.

Rod of Ages and Archangel’s Staff grant him enough mana to spend for his abilities, while Rylai’s applies a slow which is essential for Asol to deal damage. Always build the items in this order, but remember to buy a Tear of the Goddess earlier on to start stacking it in preparation for the item completion.

Image Credits | Riot Games

After closing out the trio of core items, you have to assess whether you need defensive stats or you can stack more ability power to destroy the enemies. Rabadon’s Deathcap, Shadowflame, and Void Staff are all great choices: Shadowflame is usually the most balanced one since it grants both ability power and magic penetration. For defensive items, instead, you usually want to get a Zhonya’s Hourglass. Banshee’s Veil is highly situational: build it only if enemies have lots of magic damage.

Overall, this is the usual build seen in most Aurelion Sol games:

1. Rod of Ages
2. Sorcerer’s Shoes
3. Rylai’s Crystal Scepter
4. Archangel Staff
5. Radadon’s Deathcap/Shadowflame
6. Zhonya’s Hourglass

READ ALSO: Play Ryze like Faker - Ryze mid Guide

Aurelion Sol’s Runes

There has been some testing on Aurelion Sol when it comes to his runes. Most people are going with First Strike since it helps him generate extra gold to allow him to get to the item spikes. That being said, there are matchups where he cannot proc it consistently, so players also have started using Arcane Comet as an alternative. Try out both to see which one you’re most comfortable on.

By going First Strike, you usually want to pick the following minor runes:

• Magical Footwear to avoid spending 300 gold to get boots;
• Minion Dematerializer to safely clear cannon minions;
• Cosmic Insight for the lower summoner spells and item cooldowns.

For the secondary tree, go for Manaflow Band and Gathering Storm for more mana and adaptive force later on.

Otherwise, if you go for Arcane Comet, these are the minor runes to pair it up with:

• Manaflow Band for the extra mana;
• Transcendence for the ability haste;
• Scorch for early game harass.

The secondary rune tree is Domination, with Taste of Blood and Ultimate Hunter as the two choices. The first is for higher sustain during the laning phase, while Ultimate Hunter is for the late-game so you have the ultimate ready more often.

If you want to play Aurelion Sol like Challenger players, sticking to this guide will allow you to get the most out of the Star Forger.

READ ALSO: Play Sylas like Zeka - Sylas mid guide

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