The HTC Vive Pro will be coming in April for $800, while the current Vive is going down to $500
- By Ash
- in News
HTC has just announced that the Vive Pro HMD (Head Mounted Display) will be coming this April at a $800 price tag, while the base version of the current Vive is going down to $500. The pre-orders have already begun, so if you're interested make sure to head on over to the official website. All orders for the Vive Pro HMD will begin shipping globally on April 5th, but if you decide to purchase it before June 3rd you will also be given a six-month subscription to Viveport, a service that grants you five games of your choice each month.
Before you do anything, however, it is worth mentioning that the Vive Pro HMD will not include the controllers or base stations. If you currently own a Vive this should be absolutely no problem since you already have everything you need, but everyone else will have to purchase them separately which is going to add quite a lot of spice to the already flaming price.
Epic has released all of Paragon's character and environment assets for free on the Unreal Engine
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Overprime is a third-person MOBA heavily based on Epic's long-canceled Paragon.
A little while ago Epic Games announced that their MOBA Paragon will be closing down its doors on April 26th. While they graciously offered a full refund to all players, I still found myself lamenting the fact that all of those high quality character models, environments and special effects will essentially be going to waste.
Thankfully, Epic has now decided to correct that huge problem in the best way possible - by releasing all of assets onto the Unreal Marketplace for absolutely no cost! So if you ever wanted to experiment with Paragon's characters, you now have a chance to do just that as each bundle contains a character's model, their animations, as well as their unique skins.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Detailed Review - 50 hours later and it's still both incredibly fun and challenging
- By Ash
- in Reviews
In my eyes Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is the best kind of sequel. It doesn't drastically change the core gameplay that made the original so enjoyable, but what it does do is improve upon it in nearly every way. It offers three new specializations per hero in order to keep things fresh and interesting, numerous new weapons and stat combinations to tinker with, a variety of new and gigantic maps to explore, and perhaps most importantly, an entire menagerie of new enemies to casually annihilate!
If you're wondering how all of this translates into actual gameplay, as well as where Vermintide 2 slips and falls straight on its face, allow me to share my thoughts after spending around 50 hours with the release version, 10 of which I've put almost exclusively into the incredibly tricky Legend difficulty. That said, let's start with the most important aspect of Vermintide 2 - the combat!
Surviving Mars, a city-building sim from the creators of Tropico, has now landed on PC and consoles
- By Ash
- in News
Surviving Mars is a sci-fi city builder that will have you attempt to not only colonize Mars, but also create a fully self-sufficient settlement. In order to do so you'll need to build drones and infrastructure, research new technologies and ways to upgrade your settlement, cultivate your own food, establish a mining outpost, and perhaps most importantly, try to do all of that while keeping your colonists alive throughout the whole process.
This might sound similar to other city-building games such as Cities: Skylines, but there is one very big difference and that is the fact that Surviving Mars takes place on, you guessed it, Mars! So while you won't be trying to solve traffic jams, you will need to ensure that your colony does not encounter critical failures, especially multiple times in a row. After all, even something as simple as a blackout could result in massive casualties since your life-support system is incapable of running on hopes and dreams.
Heroes of the Storm's next character is going to be an incredibly persistent Protoss Dragoon - Fenix
- By Ash
- in News
While he ended up being slightly overshadowed by Tassadar's heroic sacrifice, Fenix is one of the coolest characters that came out of StarCraft's Protoss campaigns. I mean, there's not that many 'people' that can boast about needing to be killed twice before they would actually stay down for good!
With that in mind, I am delighted to say that Fenix will soon be joining Heroes of the Storm as an incredibly durable and persistent Protoss Dragoon. You can check out his abilities, as well as what he looks like in-game, through the recently posted preview down below. Have a look, it's quite an interesting video:
The colorful RPG Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is coming to PC and consoles next week
- By Ash
- in News
Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is a bright and cheerful third-person RPG that will put you into the shoes of Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, a young king that got thrown out from his own castle and is now on a quest to reclaim his kingdom. Along the way you'll be able to freely explore a massive open-world, visit various towns filled with colorful characters, delve through dungeons in search of loot, and even build and manage your own kingdom.
This is a lot of features to take in all at once, so allow me to share with you two trailers in order to help clarify things. The first one is the most recent trailer that pretty much showcases everything I've mentioned above, albeit very briefly, while the second one is the original announcement trailer that will give you an idea of the tone Ni No Kuni 2 is going for. Have a gander:
Star Wars Battlefront 2's progression system will be completely redesigned next week, and all pay-to-win elements removed
- By Ash
- in News
After many years of slowly pushing more and more obnoxious 'microtransactions', EA finally ran into trouble with Star Wars Battlefront 2. On release, not only were some fan-favorite characters locked behind an absolutely insane grind, but you could also gain objective upgrades through random drops from loot boxes, loot boxes you could buy with actual money! And so, in a rare moment of solidarity, the gaming community came together and firmly rejected the whole idea, with the resulting backlash being so large and so loud that EA quickly pulled the whole microtransaction system.
However, while this stopped players from being able to buy their way to power, there was still a noticeable element of randomness that dictated how strong your favorite classes could possibly be. As such, I am very glad to say that the long-awaited Progression Update will be coming out this March 21st in order to minimize randomness and give players an option to specialize in whichever way they want.