Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Review - Bigger, better, bolder... and buggier
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Even though Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous continues on with many of the ideas and gameplay elements from Pathfinder: Kingmaker, the two games aren't really connected on a story level. There's a few little references sprinkled throughout the world, and one major character does make a reappearance alongside a seemingly immortal pet cat, but for the most part you can have a great time with Wrath of the Righteous without even touching Kingmaker once.
That is exactly what I would recommend as well given that Wrath of the Righteous functions essentially as a bigger, better and bolder version of Kingmaker. There's a lot more variety in character builds and options, the combat encounters are expanded and the maps are more interesting, the story is better paced and doesn't take nearly thirty hours to get started, and there's a whole assortment of quality of life features to tie everything up in a nice little bow.
So if you're curious about what exactly Wrath of the Righteous does well, as well as where it stumbles and falls flat on its face, allow me to share my thoughts after rolling so many dice over the past week that I think I'll be seeing skill checks in my dreams for months to come!
World of Warcraft's next update will fully unlock Covenants and bring back Legion Mythic+ dungeons
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: After a fair bit of testing, Shadowlands' quality-of-life focused Update 9.1.5 has now arrived onto the live servers.
If you've been paying attention to World of Warcraft's little corner of the Internet over the past few months you've most likely noticed that the playerbase is getting increasingly more upset with Blizzard. While there are many reasons for this, most of them can be summed up with Blizzard stubbornly refusing to fix problems that have been pointed out to them since the early days of Shadowlands' beta.
Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Covenant system - an idea that sounds great in theory, yet is a bit of a nightmare in practice. Instead of choosing Covenants based on their personal alignment and cosmetic preferences, most players ended up being 'forced' into very specific ones due to them being significantly more powerful than the rest. Combine this with the option to swap being incredibly punishing and essentially resetting your progress to zero, and you've got yourself a system that is almost guaranteed to leave a good chunk of the playerbase disappointed.
Five years after its launch, Commandos inspired Shadow Tactics is getting a standalone expansion
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Aiko's Choice will be arriving for Windows and Linux on December 6, 2021.
Even though it arrived pretty much out of nowhere, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun quickly solidified itself as one of my favorite games from 2016. There was just something incredibly alluring about its mixture of stealth and strategy, especially when executing elaborate plans that could topple an entire enemy base in a couple of frantic seconds!
So you can imagine my surprise when Mimimi Games announced, 5 years after the release of the original, that they now are working on a standalone expansion - Aiko's Choice. The expansion will bring with it three lengthy missions set in brand new environments, three shorter 'interlude' missions, a highly specialized team of characters to tackle every problem with, and naturally, plenty of different ways to solve each obstacle.
Saints Row: The Third Remastered is free to grab for about a week
- By Ash
- in News
In honor of the recent Saints Row reboot announcement, Volition and Deep Silver are currently giving away Saints Row: The Third Remastered for free. All you have to do is head on over to the Epic Games Store, go through the 'purchasing' process, and you'll be good to go as soon as you download it.
As always, there is also a bit of a time limit to this giveaway. So if you're interested make sure to grab yourself a copy before Thursday, September 2nd, after which you'll be able to play Saints Row: The Third whenever you want.
Overwatch is changing McCree's name due to the recent sexual harassment accusations
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: I'm afraid the update was extremely uneventful. All that happened was that McCree was renamed to Cole Cassidy. There was no event, no story, and no in-game explanation as many had hoped for.
[Update]: Overwatch has added a brand new deathmatch map onto the test servers - Malevento.
As you're most likely heard by this point, Blizzard was recently hit by a massive sexual harassment lawsuit. The lawsuit specifically called out many high ranking employees, and with the evidence against them being quite damning a good chunk of them have already been let go from the company.
Among these people was Diablo 4's lead designer and Blizzard veteran Jesse McCree, which as you might imagine, has created an extremely awkward situation for the Overwatch team. So in order to distance themselves from this whole mess, as well as offer a bit of solidarity to the victims, Overwatch will be changing McCree's name in the next big update.
MTG Arena's Jumpstart: Historic Horizons expansion has just arrived with 372 new cards
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: MTG Arena has banned Tibalt's Trickery and Memory Lapse from the Historic format, as well as changed some of the digital-only Jumpstart cards.
[Update]: Innistrad: Midnight Hunt has now landed alongside the yearly Standard set rotation.
After being delayed for a few weeks due to technical issues, MTG Arena's Jumpstart: Historic Horizons expansion has now finally been unleashed. Historic Horizons brings with it 782 unique cards to collect, 372 of which are entirely new to MTG Arena and bring with them the potential to create brand new deck archetypes.
It's also worth mentioning that 31 of those new cards are designed exclusively with online play in mind, and as such they contain keywords and abilities that are simply impossible to handle in paper formats. Here's a brief rundown of what to expect:
Six years after its big reveal, Psychonauts 2 has now finally been unleashed onto PC and consoles
- By Ash
- in News
Sixteen years have gone by since the original Psychonauts, and six years since its big announcement, but Psychonauts 2 has now finally been unleashed onto both PC and consoles. Much like the original from which it draws a great deal of inspiration, Psychonauts 2 is a quirky platformer that's all about exploring the bizarre, touching and often hilarious nonsense that occurs within the minds of everyday people.
What all of this look like in actual gameplay, however, that you can find out through the recently posted launch trailer. Have a gander, it'll clue you in quite quickly: