After two years of silence, the rogue-lite Serious Sam: Tormental has now been suddenly unleashed
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Ever since its last major update in July 2020, the top-down action rogue-lite Serious Sam: Tormental has been completely silent despite being under development in Early Access. By all accounts it looked like an abandoned project, so you can imagine my surprise when it suddenly received a major update and released in full!
The freshly launched version 1.0 brings with it new enemies and variants, an assortment of new perks and powers to play around with, as well as a brand new character by the name of Ugh Zan Jr. You can also expect to see 450 new level layouts, a variety of new quests, new music tracks, and as is tradition, a whole bunch of quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes to help spice everything up.
Kingdom Hearts 4 has been announced alongside a realistic, modern-day setting
- By Ash
- in News
Instead of going with the usual barrage of spin-off games across multiple platforms, it looks like Square Enix will be diving straight into Kingdom Hearts 4! Similarly, while the usual suspects like Sora, Donald and Goofy will be making a reappearance, Kingdom Hearts 4 will be a part of a brand new adventure and storyline labeled the "Lost Master Arc".
The setting will be quite different as well, because instead focusing on a variety of Disney inspired worlds, Kingdom Hearts 4 has so far only revealed a large and expansive modern-day city! A bit of a surprising direction for the series, though certainly a welcome one as the Kingdom Hearts formula could use a little bit of a shakeup after Kingdom Hearts 3.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous' standalone DLC campaign is coming this April 21st
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous third expansion, The Treasure of The Midnight Isles, is a standalone roguelike adventure.
[Update]: The Through the Ashes expansion has now arrived, and unsurprisingly, it's done so alongside quite a few bugs.
After the somewhat disappointing Inevitable Excess DLC, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous studio Owlcat Games will soon have a chance to set things right with the second big expansion. And when I say soon, I really do mean that as the freshly unveiled Through the Ashes DLC will be launching on April 21st, 2022 for PC.
According to the brief description from the Season Pass, Through the Ashes will be a standalone campaign following a group of characters from Kenabres as they attempt to survive in the demon infested city. Two of these characters have been revealed so far: a no-nonsense thiefling by the name of Rekarth, and a light-hearted and easily distracted gnome mage Sendri. An usual duo, but I suppose a demon god appearing in the middle of your city has a tendency to get people to band together regardless of their differences!
Beginner's guide for the Total War: Warhammer series (1, 2 and 3) - Tips and advice to get you started
- By Ash
- in Tips and Guides
With a myriad of unique races, factions, units and playstyles, the Total War: Warhammer series represents some of the finest strategy games released in the past decade. However, everything that makes these games so incredibly fun to play is also something that makes them incredibly tricky to get into for beginners.
So if you would like your first experience with either of the three games to be a smooth and enjoyable one, allow me to give you some simple tips and advice to help set you on the right path. I'll be using screenshots from Total War: Warhammer 2 here since that's the game I'd recommend you begin your journey with, but all of this is generally useful information that applies to all three games. Without wasting any more time, let us begin!
Procedurally generated and AI animated roguelite Source of Madness is launching this May
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Source of Madness has now been unleashed, and it's a fun though flawed experience.
While randomized locations and enemy placements are a common sight in roguelite games, Source of Madness has decided to push things to the absolute extreme. Not only are the locations procedurally generated and rendered in a bizarre AI-assisted art style, but the monsters themselves are also randomly created and animated using a neural network!
The end result is a complete and utter nightmare of a world, which as you might imagine, works really well with Source of Madness' Lovecraftian themes. Since words alone can't really do the concept justice, allow me to share with you the recently posted trailer. Have a peek, it's quite the sight to behold:
Guild Wars 2's return to Living World Season 1 episodes will be starting on April 19th, 2022
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: After nearly a decade, Guild Wars 2's Living World Season 1: Flame and Frost has now returned!
The original Living World Season 1 updates were never designed to be replayed, and so once each of the episodes was over all of their content and storylines would simply disappear. Needless to say, this ended up being quite a problem over the years as some of the main characters and plotlines ended up having their introductions removed from the game entirely, thus leaving new players in a very awkward position.
A whole decade has gone by since then, but I'm happy to say that ArenaNet has now finally decided to bring back all of Living World Season 1, and permanently at that! You can expect the very first episode "Flame and Frost" to make its glorious return this April 19th, 2022.
Overwatch 2 will be reworking classic maps to make them function with only one tank per team
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Overwatch 2 devs have detailed the Doomfist and Orisa reworks ahead of the April 26th Closed Beta.
[Update]: Blizzard has unveiled Sojourn's origin story in preparation for the upcoming Overwatch 2 beta.
Since finding enough tanks to start a match has been a consistent problem in Overwatch for the past few years, Blizzard has opted to make Overwatch 2 a 5v5 affair. Naturally, since each team will only have one tank, all of the current tanks have undergone reworks in order to beef up their survivability, utility and even damage output.
According to the freshly released developer update, it also looks like the classic Overwatch maps will be going through a similar process! While the exact details are still few and far between, you can expect to see a bunch of new cover added to the various maps, as well as potentially even lighting changes to make certain areas easier or more difficult to see.