Halo: The Master Chief Collection has now made its way to PC and Steam
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Halo 2: Anniversary is coming to PC this May 12th!
[Update]: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has now been added to the collection on PC.
If you're like me and you never really got to sink many hours into Halo 1 and 2 due to Games For Windows Live being a massive nuisance, I'm delighted to say that the dark days are now finally behind us. In other words, the significantly more compatible Halo: The Master Chief Collection has now made its way to PC and Steam!
The Master Chief Collection will eventually bring with it pretty much all of the mainline Halo games - Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo 4. However, as of right now, only Halo: Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary are currently available.
GTFO, the hardcore co-op focused shooter, is coming to Steam Early Access on December 9th
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: After a rather eventful Early Access stay, GTFO has now been fully released.
[Update]: GTFO has now arrived onto Steam Early Access, and as expected, it's both promising and unfinished.
Despite Left 4 Dead continuing to be a massive success, as well as games like Vermintide 2 carving themselves a nice piece of that pie, there is a surprisingly lack of challenging, co-op focused shooters. Sure, there are shooters that allow you to play with other people, but very few of them actually dare to present a real sense of danger or require much in terms of teamwork in order to succeed.
With that in mind, you might be interested to hear that GTFO will be coming to Steam Early Access this December 9th in order to potentially rectify that situation. According to its description, GTFO is a hardcore, co-op focused FPS that's all about gunning down overwhelming numbers of monstrosities through specialized weaponry and good ol' fashioned teamwork. How exactly all of that will work out in practice, only time will tell, but it's definitely the sort of concept that gets my ears all perked up.
Overwatch's Winter Wonderland event and Update 1.43 are coming next week
- By Ash
- in News
[Update:] Overwatch's massive shield rebalance and accompanying Winter Wonderland event have now arrived in full!
Right now Overwatch is in a bit of a slump as the current double shield meta doesn't allow much room for experimentation. There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon as the upcoming update is looking to finally address the overall balance between the tanks, though unfortunately the update has been stuck on the PTR for quite a while now.
Thankfully, this won't be the case for much longer as Blizzard has now announced that Update 1.43 will be coming to both PC and consoles next week. They haven't revealed the exact date just yet, but given that most updates arrive on a Tuesday, I think it's safe to say that Update 1.43 will be here on December 10th.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker devs have announced their new game - Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update]: Wrath of the Righteous has now been released, and as I've detailed in my review, it's a genuinely impressive CRPG!
The original version of Pathfinder: Kingmaker was rough, and that's putting it gently. The balance was all over the place, the performance was surprisingly shaky for an ARPG, and there were also quite a few bugs roaming around, and I don't mean the Bugbear kind.
To their credit, Owlcat Games quickly sprung into action and started to iron out most of the annoying problems, eventually going as far as to release a massively improved (and entirely free) Enhanced Edition. As such, the current version of Pathfinder: Kingmaker is actually pretty darn solid, though it does still bear some of the clunkiness and incomprehensible mechanics that have plagued it since launch.
Apex Legends update is finally overhauling level progression and rewards
- By Ash
- in News
Out of all the free-to-play games I've ever played, Apex Legends has surprisingly been the most stingy of them all. The amount of Apex Packs you could acquire by playing was severely limited, and unless you were particularly lucky, you would also end up at 'max' level without the ability to craft even a single quality skin. Not exactly ideal, to put it gently.
Thankfully, Respawn seems to have realized that it's probably a good idea to give players something interesting to chase after, and so the upcoming update will overhaul the level progression and rewards. The player level has been increased from 100 to 500, while the amount of Apex Packs you could earn has been increased from 45 to 199. As an added bonus, every 100 levels you will earn a Gun Charm which is essentially a small figurine you can dangle off your favorite weapons.
Classic XCOM inspired strategy game Phoenix Point has now launched on PC
- By Ash
- in News
If you're in the mood for a large-scale strategy game that emulates the oldschool XCOM, you might be interested to hear that Phoenix Point has now been released on PC. As you would expect given its inspiration, Phoenix Point features turn-based combat on procedurally generated maps, a whole bunch of deadly aliens you'll need to carefully dispatch from mission to mission, as well as the ability to manage every aspect of your base and the loadout of your soldiers.
You can get a pretty good idea of what all of this looks like in action, as well as get a Phoenix Point is really all about, through the recently posted developer tutorial series. Have a gander, it's a pretty long and detailed one:
Battleborn's singleplayer and multiplayer modes will become unplayable in 2021
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Gearbox's team-based shooter Battleborn has now closed its doors for good.
Battleborn has not exactly had the best of luck. Despite being a pretty fun concept that could've been slowly developed into something great, Gearbox and 2K Games chose to directly compete with Overwatch, to the point that their release dates were almost neck and neck. And with Overwatch having a gigantic amount of hype behind it, Battleborn never really managed to get the momentum it needed in order to continue development.
Quite a while has past then, and with the Battleborn situation never really changing for the better, it shouldn't come as too much of a shock to hear that the Battleborn's servers will be closing down in 2021. Given Battleborn's always-online requirement, both the singleplayer and multiplayer modes will become completely unavailable at this point.