Boneworks' successor Bonelab has now arrived with plenty of VR, physics-based action
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Just like its predecessor Boneworks, the freshly released Bonelab is a VR, physics-based action game that mostly serves as a wacky sandbox for you to mess around with. As such, one of the things you can do in Bonelab is import a custom avatar to play as, with your characters' stats reshaping themselves to match your new form! This means you can be an extremely small and nimble character that exclusively punches people in the shins, or an absolute monstrosity that more than compensates for its slow speed with sheer damage.
What all of this nonsense looks like in game, that you can get a pretty good idea of through the launch trailer below. Have a peek:
Overwatch 2's surprisingly lengthy animated 'short' is all about Kiriko and what motivates her
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Overwatch 2's October 13th update has fixed a bug that caused players to rank far lower than they deserve!
[Update]: As a small apology for the post-launch problems, Overwatch 2 is giving away a Legendary skin and planning double XP weekends
After what feels like an eternity of waiting, Overwatch 2 has now finally arrived as a free-to-play game. The sequel brings with it a brand new game mode alongside a variety of new maps, a new monetization system based around a Battle Pass and in-game store combo, as well as three new heroes to play around with: Sojourn, Junker Queen and Kiriko.
If you're wondering what the latter is all about, as well as what motivates her to fight, you'll find the answers you seek through the surprisingly lengthy animated 'short' below. Have a gander, it's a rather gorgeous one:
Guild Wars 2's October update has buffed up old elite specializations and rebalanced classes for PvP
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: The Guild Wars 2 team has now revealed the full update roadmap for Fall and Winter 2022.
[Update]: Guild Wars 2's highly popular Shadow of the Mad King event is returning on October 18th.
With the August update Guild Wars 2 unleashed a whole assortment of changes aimed at equalizing the damage potential between power (direct damage) and condition (damage over time) builds. Additionally, this update sprinkled a variety of buffs onto the old elite specializations like the Reaper, Daredevil and Scrapper to help them fit better with the more modern ones.
The recently launched October update has continued these efforts by removing most of the mechanical weaknesses built into some of the elite specializations. They were originally meant as a balancing tool to prevent the elite specializations from dominating the basic classes, but these days the average power level has advanced so far that the weaknesses mostly serve to keep interesting builds from becoming relevance. So in most cases these weaknesses have now been removed, and if necessary the affected specializations will be rebalanced in different ways later on.
Crash Bandicoot 4 is coming to Steam on October 18th, while a new game seems to be in development
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: It looks like the teaser was correct! Crash Bandicoot 4 has now made its way onto Steam, right on cue.
In a bit of a bizarre move, Activision recently sent a Crash Bandicoot themed pizza box to Youtuber Canadian Guy Eh. While the box unfortunately didn't contain any pizza, it did bring with it an important announcement - Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time will be launching onto Steam on October 18th.
That's not all, however, as the box also came with a brief teaser hinting at a major reveal scheduled for December 8th: "Hungry for more? Try out our new Wumpa Pizza for $12.08!" No further information has been given just yet, but I can only imagine it's going to be a brand new Crash Bandicoot game as building up hype for any other announcement doesn't make much sense. Then again, all of this comes from receipt for an imaginary pizza, so what do I really know.
Subnautica studio's miniature-based tactics game Moonbreaker has now landed into Early Access
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: With its very first major update, Moonbreaker has removed all of its monetization!
After spending quite a few years deep underwater, Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds Entertainment have now decided to do something a little bit different with Moonbreaker. So instead of an exploration game, Moonbreaker is a character-focused and turn-based strategy heavily influenced by tabletop tactics games.
The most unique thing about Moonbreaker is that all of your characters are adorable little miniatures in action poses that you can, in true tabletop fashion, painstakingly paint in order to have them look exactly as awesome (or as awful) as you want. How exactly this works, as well as what Moonbreaker looks like in terms of gameplay, that you can check out through the trailer below:
Overwatch 2 Review - Terrible sequel, though thankfully a terrific game
- By Ash
- in Reviews
[Update]: I'm afraid I have some bad news. Overwatch 2 will be drastically downscaling the scope and amount of its long-awaited PvE missions.
When Blizzard first announced Overwatch 2 back in 2019, their vision for the game included a plethora of co-op focused missions that would finally let us learn more about the world and its characters, an MMO-style talent tree to help us customize each hero and their playstyle to our liking, as well as more of everything we've come to know and love from the original game. It was exactly what me and a majority of the playerbase were asking for ever since the first PvE event arrived alongside the Halloween Terror update, so how could this possibly go wrong?
Well, as it turns out, in a myriad of ways as the freshly released version of Overwatch 2 is not even close to what was promised three years ago. It can barely even be considered an expansion, let alone a sequel, as all it really brings to the table is three new heroes, a new game mode alongside a couple of new maps, a new monetization system and an assortment of balance changes - all stuff that we could've received through the usual seasonal updates had Blizzard not prematurely abandoned the game.
Yet despite the disappointing amount of new content, I still found myself falling in love with Overwatch 2 as the core gameplay is so incredibly polished and varied that it's hard to stop playing once you really get into it! So if you're curious about what exactly makes Overwatch 2 so enthralling, as well as how it all compares to the original, allow me to share with you my thoughts after quite a few hours of exploring all of its game modes and characters.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero has now landed onto PC alongside numerous improvements
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure will be following suit and launching onto PC, PlayStation and Switch on March 14, 2023.
Given the rising popularity of The Legend of Heroes series in the west, it should come as little surprise to hear that NIS America and Nihon Falcom have started going through their back catalogue in order to bring the rest of the series to PC and modern consoles. As such, the previously PlayStation Portable exclusive The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero has now been re-released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch alongside an English translation.
The new version of Trails from Zero also brings with it a variety of visual enhancements, an improved UI that comes with customization options, increased draw distance, support for 144 FPS, and the list goes on. Most importantly, Trails from Zero has added some extremely welcome quality-of-life features like a message log to help you keep track of everything and a high speed mode to help you get through some of the more tedious sections.