Battleborn has recently added three competitive maps and a brand new sneaky hero is coming soon
- By Ash
- in News
While its unfortunate given that Battleborn is by no means a bad game, there is no denying that it has fallen quite heavily behind when it comes to playerbase, at least on PC where such numbers can be observed. Thankfully, it does appear that Gearbox is still not giving up on Battleborn as they have recently added three new competitive maps, and soon a brand new hero as well.
The second of the post-launch heroes is going to be a sneaky aquatic assassin that likes to call himself Pendles. He hails from the same water-world as Alani, the previously released hero, and while she mostly focuses on supporting her team Pendles is a much more proactive character given that he can sneak behind enemy lines and use either poison or big ol' knives to simply dispatch any high priority targets. If you enjoy preying on the weak and hate seeing other people have fun, you'll be happy to hear that Pendles will be entering Early Access tomorrow, with an official release set for August 4.
Humble Bundle has detailed their methods for fighting online fraud
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Online fraud has been a thing for as long as the Internet has existed, and due to the massive world-wide appeal of gaming it shouldn't surprise you to hear that the issue has spread here as well. Just last month the indie publisher TinyBuild has claimed that G2A, an online key reseller, sold $450k worth of keys without them seeing a single cent from any of the sales.
The way this is usually done is by having a third party buy or otherwise acquire a database of stolen credit cards, use those credit cards to purchase massive amounts of popular game keys, and then resell them on various online markets such as G2A for half the price, or even less. To put it simply, its a race to sell as many keys as possible before anyone becomes even remotely aware of any potential shadiness.
Its not an easy problem to solve, but according to Humble Bundle's latest blog post they seem to have eliminated the majority of the offenders. If online security is something you're interested in, I fully recommend you give it a read as its all fairly simple stuff that comes together to form a complex system that appears to do its job rather well.
System Shock Remastered's RPG elements have been revealed
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[Update]: After nearly seven years in development, the System Shock Remake will finally be launching in March 2023!
The original System Shock was an excellent game that brought about a revolution in the RPG genre, but as I've come to realize last year when I tried to replay it, the RPG mechanics aren't actually that well balanced. The biggest issue is the relative power level of the various weapons and cyber-upgrades as some of them are nearly mandatory, while the others are mostly pointless, leading to long stretches of gameplay with basically no improvements to your character.
Thankfully, it does appear that Nightdive Studios are aware of these issues with the original since they have recently posted a Kickstarter update on how exactly they aim to make the RPG mechanics compelling in the upcoming System Shock remaster. Here's what they had to say:
The Reaper's Due, an upcoming DLC for Crusader Kings 2, brings with it the black plague
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Crusader Kings 2 has always been a bit of a niche experience, a strategy game designed for those that wish to delve deep into the politics behind a kingdom, but the upcoming DLC is really starting to stretch how niche CK2 can truly become.
The Reaper's Due, as you might expect given its ominous title, brings with it one of the deadliest phenomena the world has ever seen - the black plague! Here's the rather... bizarre trailer to get you in the right mood, as well as a brief overview of what to expect with The Reaper's Due:
Necropolis devs are promising numerous free updates in order to address community criticism
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The Dark Souls series is my favorite bunch of games in all of existence and roguelikes are my favorite way of passing the time, so you would think that a combination of the two would result in a game so amazing I would never leave the desk again, but unfortunately Necropolis fell short from such a lofty goal.
Thankfully, there is a bit of hope on the horizon as Harebrained Schemes has promised to release an entire series of free updates in order to address community criticism and turn Necropolis into the game everyone wanted it to be. All of this was detailed in the recently posted announcement, so if you're interested in the full picture I'd recommend you head over there, but for now here's the short version of what to expect in Necropolis' near future:
The Eyes of Ara is a newly released puzzle-adventure inspired by Myst
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
With Obduction, Myst's true spiritual successor, delayed from its July release all the way to August 24th due to the need for further bug fixing, there is currently a bit of a vacuum when it comes to puzzle-adventures.
This is where The Eyes of Ara, a newly released adventure with some truly devious puzzles, comes in to play as it offers almost exactly the same type of experience as Myst, and this includes the frequent moments of bewilderment when you encounter some of the more... obscure puzzles. If you're wondering what all of this looks like in terms of gameplay, here's an extended trailer showcasing just that:
South Park: The Fractured But Whole's latest dev video is a "behind-the-scenes" interview with the creators of the show
- By Ash
- in News
Even though it might not seem like it given the show's intentionally crappy art style and crude humor, each episode of South Park has a lot of thought put behind it, especially when it comes to the writing and timing for the various jokes.
Now imagine how complicated things get when you have to retain the show's quality and still somehow make all of it into an entertaining game that can last upwards of 10 hours, longer than an entire season of the show! If your imagination is a bit faulty due to the summer heat, however, here's the most recent South Park: The Fractured But Whole development video with Trey Parker and Matt Stone discussing how the game slowly took shape: