Overwatch 2's Anniversary Event 2023 has arrived with 'free' cosmetics and reruns of popular events
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Overwatch 2's next hero, the dual chaingun wielding Mauga, is fully playable until November 5th. After that, he'll be launching alongside Season 8 on December 5th.
[Update]: Overwatch 2's Season 7 is launching October 10th with a new Control map, Sombra rework and mythic Hanzo skin.
Overwatch 2's first anniversary is nearly upon us, so in order to get everyone into a festive mood Blizzard has now released the annual Anniversary update. As you would expect, it brings with it reruns of popular events like Lúcioball or Catch-A-Mari, as well as some fancy cosmetics that can be acquired without cracking open your wallet.
First things first, in order to make sure the various event game modes end up having a healthy playerbase, Blizzard has split them up into three weeks. Here's a quick rundown of what to expect during each one:
Lies of P is a Bloodborne inspired Souls-like RPG starring Pinocchio of all people!
- By Ash
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Instead of going with the usual medieval fantasy themes like knights, dragons and wizards, the freshly released and Bloodborne inspired action-RPG Lies of P has instead decided to give you control of Pinocchio (yes, seriously!) and set you against an assortment of mechanical monstrosities! While the premise seems incredibly silly, I'm delighted to say that the game itself is by no means a joke. In fact, from what I've seen it's actually quite good!
The combat flows well, the difficulty is nicely tuned, there's a real sense of atmosphere to the places you explore, and most importantly of all, there don't appear to be any major glitches or performance issues. So is Lies of P better than Bloodborne then? Almost certainly not, but very few games are able to reach that level of excellence. That said, there's a lot of potential here and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the Neowiz team moving forward as I'm curious to see what else they're capable of.
Northgard studio's Dune: Spice Wars strategy game has now launched from Early Access alongside mixed reviews
- By Ash
- in News
After spending a little over a year in Early Access, Northgard studio Shiro Games' real-time strategy Dune: Spice Wars has now finally been unleashed alongside a sizable update. Version 1.0 brings with it House Ecaz as a brand new faction, numerous mechanical reworks, the often-requested ability to scale the UI, and naturally, a whole bunch of bug fixes and balance tweaks to help tie everything together.
What all of this looks like in action, as well as what Dune: Spice Wars is even trying to do, that you can check out through the freshly posted launch trailer. Have a gander, it's a fairly short one:
Owlcat Games' massive CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is coming to PC on December 7, 2023
- By Ash
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If smashing through Baldur's Gate 3 has only gotten you hungrier for more large-scale RPGs, you'll be happy to hear that Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, a CRPG from the Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker team, now has a proper release date. Best of all, it's actually quite soon! You can expect to see Rogue Trader land onto PC this December 7, 2023, while the Xbox and PlayStation versions are likely to follow after a short delay.
Besides the release date, the Owlcat Games team has also shared a brand new trailer showing off what Rogue Trader is all about, some of the companions, as well as some of the drastic choices you might make throughout your campaign. Have a peek:
MTG Arena devs have shared the Format Popularity Stats and their Plans for the Future
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[Update #2]: It took a while, but MTG Arena has finally added the ability to favorite card styles!
[Update]: MTG Arena's mini-expansion Alchemy: Eldraine is launching on October 10 with 30 brand new cards.
With the Wilds of Eldraine expansion now live and the end of the year quickly approaching, the MTG Arena team has decided to do a short rundown of everything they've achieved over the past few years, as well as what waits ahead. As a part of this, they have also revealed the overall popularity of the 'main' formats: Standard, Historic, Explorer, Alchemy and Brawl.
Given that Standard is... well, standard it should come as little surprise to hear that it's at the top of the pile, though it does seem to be losing a bit of its lead as Historic is slowly gaining more and more ground. Brawl and Alchemy are next in line as both seem to hover around the 15% mark, which makes sense given that they're both mostly casual-focused formats, meanwhile the hyper-competitive and thus more niche Explorer is slowly making its way towards 7-8%. Long story short, things are looking quite good for all of them!
Slay the Princess, a horror-adventure starring a definitely-not-an-eldritch-monstrosity princess, is coming this October
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Slay the Princess has now arrived, and I'm pleased to say it's looking quite good!
Following in the footsteps of games like The Stanley Parable, Slay the Princess is a comedy/horror adventure where you simply have to slay the princess in order to save the world. Naturally, things don't remain very simple for very long as the story quickly spirals into a myriad of different directions, time loops and utterly bizarre series of events.
Trying to talk about all of this through words alone is basically impossible, so instead allow me to share with you the recently posted trailer. It should give you a pretty good idea of what Slay the Princess looks like and what it's trying to achieve. Have a gander:
1995 action-platformer Gargoyles is getting a remastered version on October 19th
- By Ash
- in News
If you're in the mood for a bit of nostalgia, and you don't mind feeling ancient, you might be interested to hear that the 1995 Sega Genesis action-platformer Gargoyles is getting a remastered version. The aptly named Gargoyles Remastered will be landing onto PC (via Steam and GOG), PlayStation, Xbox and Switch on October 19th.
As you would expect, Gargoyles Remastered will come with enhanced visuals, animations and sound. There's also going to be a couple of optional modern features in there as well - things like achievements, the ability to rewind time, the option to swap between the old and new versions on the fly, "and more".