System Shock (Remastered) has been fully funded on Kickstarter
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: After nearly seven years in development, the System Shock Remake will finally be launching in March 2023!
System Shock, previously known as System Shock Remastered, is a modern recreation of the classic action-RPG that brought about an evolution in the genre. The remastered version, besides bringing in modern graphics and audio, also features improved gameplay mechanics, level design and even enemy behavior, all in an effort to create the ultimate version of System Shock.
The project launched on Kickstarter around two weeks ago and from the very beginning it was obvious that the gaming community is more than ready for a brand new iteration of System Shock. After gathering well over $400,000 during its first two days, the project has now breached its initial $900,000 goal as well, and with 18 days left its time to start thinking about stretch goals!
Valve is working on fixing Team Fortress 2's messed up Casual Mode
- By Ash
- in News
Team Fortress 2 was recently updated with a proper competitive mode, a feature that has taken Valve around 7 years to finally complete, but a welcome feature nonetheless. However, while the competitive side got some much needed improvements, the bread and butter of TF2, the insanity-fueled Casual Mode, ended up not only getting the short end of the stick, but the stick was also on fire.
Queue times went sky-high, a leaver penalty was implemented, players could no longer join matches in progress to fill out slots, autobalance was disabled so an undermanned team would continue getting stomped on until they all finally left, and a whole bunch of other nasty stuff. The point is, Casual Mode turned out to be neither casual, nor fun!
Thankfully, it does appear that Valve is well aware of these complaints and that they are currently working on correcting every single one.
Prey for the Gods, a Shadow of the Colossus inspired adventure, is now on Kickstarter
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Its funny how the world works sometimes. Even though Shadow of the Colossus still gets showered with praise, 10 years after its initial release, not a single studio has taken it upon themselves to create an adventure with the same scope and grandeur.
Thankfully, there is a bit of hope on the horizon as Prey for the Gods, a rather stylish indie game about exploring an unknown land and crawling all over large enemies, has recently landed on Kickstarter. Here's the trailer to give you an idea of what Prey for the Gods is all about:
Dwarf Fortress has recently been updated with 64-bit support
- By Ash
- in News
[Update #2]: Dwarf Fortress' new and improved version has now landed onto Steam, and I'm happy to say that it has done so alongside overwhelmingly positive reviews!.
[Update]: Dwarf Fortress devs have revealed the upcoming mouse-driven UI improvements!
Despite looking like a rejected game concept from the 1980's, Dwarf Fortress is incredibly complex as it runs simulations for nearly every event that happens within the game world, even the absurd stuff such as drunk Dwarves staggering about. Naturally, all of this is quite taxing on the performance and its not unusual for the frame rate in longer campaigns to dip down considerably, hence the constantly ongoing efforts to modernize the Dwarf Fortress client.
While the recent update to 64-bits most likely won't result in much of a speed boost just yet, it will allow you to create bigger and older worlds, though at the cost of even longer loading times, but such are the sacrifices you make when you want to create the greatest fortress in the world! Since the patch notes for Update 0.43.05 are quite brief, here's the whole thing:
The First Tree, a stylish exploration/adventure game, is coming in early 2017
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
While games based around exploration often get criticized for their lack of "true" gameplay, I find the genre to be quite fascinating as the lack of combat requires the developers to get clever with both the storytelling and the visual design.
A good example of this would be the recently announced exploration/adventure game, The First Tree, which offers up a rather intriguing premise and some striking visuals to go along with it. Here's the trailer to hopefully give you an idea of what I'm blabbering about:
New Overwatch hero, a support sniper named Sombra, will be revealed this month
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: Turns out its actually Pharah's mom, Ana! You can read all about her here.
While she was never officially confirmed, the Overwatch community has known for many months now that Blizzard is working on a new support sniper named Sombra. There's even an in-game voice line where Reaper specifically mentions her: "Where is Sombra when you need her?"
If the already overwhelming pile of evidence isn't enough to convince you, Blizzard has recently teased an image of a sniper rifle that has the capability to heal people from range, but also to cause a serious amount of harm. As you can see from the image above, Blizzard still hasn't released any actual information on this upcoming hero, but the full reveal will be coming in the near future.
Just Cause 3's multiplayer mod is progressing along quite nicely
- By Ash
- in News
The Just Cause series seems like it would be a perfect fit for co-op multiplayer, just you and a couple of buddies causing chaos and wanton destruction for no reason other than to look at pretty explosions, yet its a feature that never came to be. Not in an official fashion anyway!
Nanos, the folks behind the rather excellent Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod, have recently posted an update on their progress with Just Cause 3's variant, and I have to say, its looking pretty damn impressive already. Here's the video showcasing a whole bunch of people flying around without any lag or issues with synchronization, and most surprisingly, no collisions with those pesky trees: