Overwatch will soon be getting 90 Olympics themed cosmetic items
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: The cosmetics are now available. Visit this Reddit post to get a good look at all the new content.
Blizzard has stated multiple times now that the next batch of cosmetic items would be releasing near the end of summer, and with August now upon us we finally have a glimpse at the various new skins. As you might expect given the title, they are all themed around the various events from the upcoming Olympics, so you have skins such as track racer Tracer, Weightlifter Zarya, footballer Lucio and so forth.
Besides the various skins, there's also going to be a whole bunch of new voice lines, heroic intros, poses, and naturally, taunts. All in all, these new Summer Games Loot Boxes will come with 90 brand new items, and best of all, they won't contain any of the previous ones.
Little King's Story, a critically acclaimed Wii RTS/RPG, is coming to PC this week
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Little King's Story is an RTS/RPG hybrid that released for the Nintendo Wii 7 years ago, or a couple of centuries in Internet years given that it has been largely forgotten despite having overwhelmingly positive reviews from both the critics and the general public.
If all of that has now piqued your interest, and you've somehow skipped reading the title, you'll be glad to hear that Little King's Story is coming to the PC this week, on August 5th to be specific. Here's the recently posted PC trailer to hopefully give you an idea of what Little King's Story is all about and why it has garnered such reviews:
The Bioware forums will be closing down their doors on August 26
- By Ash
- in News
The Bioware forums were never exceptionally popular, but that's exactly why I enjoyed visiting them. There are very few other places you can go to in order to see what sort of insane theories the community has come up with in order to explain the various plot holes, character motivations, and other little elements only true RPG fanatics could ever find interesting.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and the same applies to the Bioware forums. In a recent announcement Bioware has stated that the official forums for the majority of their games will be closing down on August 26th as the team found themselves spending more time on social networks than in their own home turf. Here's the most interesting part of the message:
Demons Age Preview - A modern take on the classic RPG formula
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Demons Age is a classic isometric RPG heavily inspired by old school Dungeons & Dragons games such as Baldur's Gate and Temple of Elemental Evil. As you might expect given its pedigree, it features a wide variety of spells and abilities to use against your enemies, numerous followers to recruit and travel with, a wide open world to explore, and naturally, a whole bunch of absurd items to collect and peddle to some poor innkeeper.
Its still under heavy development, but I've recently gotten a preview copy to try out, which as a massive fan of classic RPGs I was more than willing to take for a spin. Since making a proper review based around 2 hours of alpha gameplay would be a pointless venture, I'm mostly going to be focusing on what exactly Demons Age does right and which areas still need improvement.
Rising Islands, a fast paced adventure/runner hybrid, is releasing tomorrow on Steam
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Rising Islands is an upcoming adventure game that will task you with combining high-speed movement, jumping, wallruning, and straight-up flying through the air in order to complete a series of challenges. To make things even more... interesting for the players, there is also a shifting mechanic that lets you move between dimensions and bypass obstacles that way.
The concept itself is fairly simple, but its a tricky one to describe adequately in words alone, so here's the recently posted gameplay trailer to give you a better idea of what Rising Islands is all about:
Life is Strange devs have announced a new studio and started work on Battlecrew Space Pirates, a competitive online shooter
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
For an indie company Dontnod seem to have no fear about branching into a whole variety of genres. They started out with a cyberpunk action-adventure (Remember Me), moved on to a time-warping narrative driven game about a bunch of teenage girls (Life is Strange), and are now working a serious, character focused RPG about vampires in old England (Vampyr).
If that wasn't already broad enough, their recently revealed Dontnod 11 studio is now working on Battlecrew Space Pirates, a competitive online shooter with plenty of cheesy humor and Awesomenauts inspired action. Since the whole thing is a bit off the rails, perhaps it would be best if you just look at the announcement video:
Battlerite, the spiritual successor to Bloodline Champions, is coming to Early Access in September
- By Ash
- in News
Bloodline Champions was once a truly unique and amazing game. It featured a cast of characters perfectly balanced against each other, and with no randomness in any aspect of gameplay every match was decided purely through player skill and team coordination. Unfortunately, one of the post-launch updates brought with it the very antithesis of balance, a whole bunch of stat boosting items and effects that ended up utterly destroying the delicate counterplay between the various characters and eventually drove the majority of the playerbase away.
While Bloodline Champions might be well and truly dead now, the studio behind it has decided to create a spiritual successor based on what everyone has come to love about BLC, the intricate balance and completely controlled environment. The good news, if the recent gameplay trailer is any judge, is that they have managed to do so quite successfully because outside of upgraded visuals this is exactly the same as the BLC as I remember. Have a look: