Dynasty Warriors 9 has now made its way to PC and consoles alongside a variety of technical issues
- By Ash
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[Update]: Dynasty Warriors 9 now has a Complete Edition that combines all of the DLC and Season Passes into one package.
After many teasers and previews, the long-awaited Dynasty Warriors 9 has now made its way to both PC and consoles. The reviews are currently a bit of a mixed bag, even more so than what is standard for the Dynasty Warriors series, but the one thing that is truly worrying are the widespread reports of technical problems on the PC version.
I haven't played it myself so take the following with a few grains of salt, but even a single glance at the Steam reviews section tells a very unfortunate story. Some players are reporting crashes and terrible performance, others are having issues with the AI being completely inept at moving around, and the list goes on. As of right now Dynasty Warriors 9 sits on an utterly abysmal 23% approval rate on Steam with 430 reviews in total, the lowest I've seen in quite a while, which does lend credence to the severity of the problems.
Overwatch will be fully free-to-play this weekend for both PC and consoles
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If you ever wanted to give Overwatch a try, but you weren't exactly sure if its the type of game you'd even enjoy, you're in luck as Blizzard has just announced a free weekend! From February 16-19, Overwatch will be entirely free-to-play across all three platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
As always, the free weekend will give you access to Overwatch's full roster of 26 heroes and 16 maps, as well as all of the various game modes. You will only be restricted from the competitive mode for obvious reasons, though as a new player you probably don't want to blindly stumble in there anyway. Naturally, any progress you make, and this includes achievements and all of the numerous cosmetic unlocks, will carry over if you ever decide to purchase the full version.
Sega's "Make War Not Love" event is coming tomorrow with a variety of daily prizes to unlock
- By Ash
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Make War Not Love is Sega's annual celebration that pits their various strategy games and studios against each other, with the community being the ones that decide the victor. Unlike the past few years, however, the popular vote is not going to be the deciding factor for which game gets to receive bonus content. Instead, there will be pre-determined rewards set for every single day, and in order to unlock them the community will need to hit a certain amount of play time each day.
This might sound like a bit of an anti-climax, but given how last year the less popular games got more votes due to what appears to be some shady business, I'd say it's probably a good thing Sega is going with the "give everyone new stuff" approach. And speaking of new stuff, the rewards for the fist day are going to be Viking: Battle for Asgard, Total War: Warhammer's The Grim and The Grave DLC, as well as a 75% coupon for Dawn of War 2: Retribution. Not a bad start by any stretch!
Gwent's recent balance update has brought in a breath of fresh air to the previously Dwarf-dominated meta
- By Ash
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Gwent's Midwinter update brought in 100 new cards last December, though unfortunately this massive influx of new cards and balance changes did not end up panning out as expected. Instead of having even more archetypes to play around with, the update resulted in only a couple of ridiculously overpowered decks dominating over everyone else, to the point that Scoia'tael represented more than 50% of the ladder!
With that number in mind, I am very glad to say that Gwent's latest update has gone to great lengths to rebalance some of the overpowered cards and bring about a more interesting meta. In other words, most of the problematic Dwarves have been slightly reduced in power, the various Create cards have received minor nerfs to make them less overbearing, and perhaps most importantly for the future, Nilfgaard's Impera Enforcers now no longer deal 2 damage for every spy already on the board.
The naval strategy/adventure game Abandon Ship is coming to Steam Early Access next week
- By Ash
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Abandon ship is an upcoming naval strategy/adventure game that on first glance appears to be quite similar to FTL. You will have to take command of a single ship and its crew, explore a massive and randomly generated world, solve a variety of quests that may or may not end with your crewmen getting eaten, and naturally, fight off pirates and other nasties that might roam the high seas. Unlike FTL, however, if the worst comes to worst and a giant kraken decides to nibble on your boat, you will have the option to abandon ship and see if you can float towards safety in order to start your adventure anew.
Trying to explain all of this through words alone is not exactly an easy task, so allow me to instead show you one of the recent developer previews. Its a fairly lengthy video, so you should get a pretty darn good idea of what to expect from Abandon Ship. Have a look:
Overwatch devs will soon be nerfing Lucio's wall ride in the Capture the Flag game mode
- By Ash
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Overwatch's recent Lunar New Year update brought with it a whole bunch of new cosmetics and bug fixes, as well as a freshly retuned Capture the Flag game mode. Unlike last year, this new version of CTF does not allow players to use most movement abilities while carrying the flag, and perhaps more importantly, ensures that matches can no longer end in a draw because both teams have decided to turtle up.
While these changes have resulted in a noticeably more enjoyable game mode, there are some problems that have managed to get through testing. Most notably, Lucio's ability to keep increasing his speed while wall riding, as well as the possibility for him to wall ride outside of the playable area where very few heroes can actually contest him. As you might imagine, this quickly resulted in most CTF games being decided by which team has the more experienced and better supported Lucio.
The PC version of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2 is coming to Steam this week
- By Ash
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[Update]: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III will soon be making its way to PC, and it'll bring with it some rather useful improvements like auto-saves and the ability to speed up gameplay.
The original The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel released onto Steam back in August to some overwhelmingly positive reviews. As such, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that its sequel Trails of Cold Steel 2 will be making its way to PC via Steam on February 14th as well.
Much like its predecessor, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2 will bring with it a variety of improvements including 50% more voice acted lines, support for ultrawide resolutions, the ability to play with either mouse & keyboard or a controller, as well as a couple of great quality-of-life changes. Most notably, there will be a Turbo button that allows you to speed through some of the more tedious fights, while the instant resume function will let you launch your most recent save file directly from Steam.