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[Update]: Gears Tactics has now landed onto PC and Xbox One, and while it's good, it's pretty darn expensive right now.
If you're a fan of XCOM, April is looking to be a pretty darn good month. First the action-packed spin-off XCOM: Chimera Squad will be landing on April 23rd, and then on April 28th, Gears Tactics will be joining the fray on PC and Xbox One with its very own take on turn-based action.
As you might expect given its inspiration, Gears Tactics will be all about leading teams of highly customizable soldiers against overwhelming numbers of enemies. You'll need to upgrade their skills and outfit them with better equipment as they advance through the ranks, help them fight against massive bosses that defy usual strategies, and naturally, get slightly depressed when your favorites inevitably die to a stray bullet.
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[Update]: The Artifact 2.0 rework is now heading into Closed Beta!
After being incredibly silent about the fate of Artifact for over a year, Valve recently came out to say that they are not only in the process of reworking Artifact from the ground up, but that they will be keeping the community involved throughout the entire process. And given the amount of developer updates released so far, they really weren't joking!
The latest update, as you would imagine from the title alone, is all about the various mechanical changes coming with Artifact 2.0. I unfortunately can't tell you much about them as I haven't invested enough time in the original Artifact to have something solid to compare them to, but what I can say is that the new progression system seems downright lovely, especially when you contrast it with the current and extremely expensive one.
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In order to encourage players to stay at home, as well as check out some of the content they may not yet have access to, Elder Scrolls Online has now unleashed a free trial for its paid subscription. As such, all of the benefits of ESO Plus membership and its accompanying DLC packs are entirely free to mess around with until April 27th.
For those of you curious about what exactly the subscription even has to offer, you'll find the full list of features and bonus content in the list right below. Have a look:
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[Update #2]: Blizzard is now making it significantly easier to acquire Corrupted Gear.
[Update]: World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will be removing the reputation requirements for flying in Warlords of Draenor and Legion content.
Blizzard has recently extended the 100% experience bonus for all players, so if you ever wanted to level a brand new character in World of Warcraft, this would be the ideal time to do so. To further help this process along, as well as make unlocking Allied Races on the opposite faction much more manageable, Blizzard has now also introduced a double reputation event.
This new event will run from April 20 through May 18, and will grant you double the usual amount of reputation for most Legion and Battle for Azeroth factions. Unfortunately, Battle for Azeroth's newest and probably most relevant factions, Rajani and the Uldum Accord, are both excluded from this event given that they are directly related to player power, especially in PvP.
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[Update #2]: After some delays, Death Stranding has now finally made its way to PC.
[Update]: Kojima Productions have now announced the minimum and recommended PC specs for Death Stranding.
Death Stranding was originally supposed to make its way to PC this June 2nd, but unfortunately that is no longer going to be the case. According to the newest Twitter announcement, Death Stranding has now been delayed until July 14th in order to give the team enough time to adjust to their new situation.
"Following the temporary closure of KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS, we have had to delay the PC launch of DEATH STRANDING to July 14, 2020, to allow more development time amidst the current work-from-home orders in place," reads the brief update. "Thank you all for your patience and continued support!"
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[Update]: XCOM: Chimera Squad has now made its way to PC alongside generally positive reviews.
In a bit of a surprising announcement, Firaxis revealed that there is a brand new XCOM game on the way. However, instead of the expected XCOM 3, the upcoming XCOM: Chimera Squad will be a bite-sized spin-off with a focus on explosive action, unique pre-made characters, as well as a variety of interesting abilities.
Rather than try to explain all of this through words alone, allow me to share with you two of the recent trailers. The first one sets up the overall story and showcases some of the characters, while the second one goes in-depth about the gameplay and tactical options present in Chimera Squad. Have a look, they're pretty fun:
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[Update #2]: As expected, Blizzard has now announced some major changes to the Hero Pools system.
[Update]: It seems that the Overwatch team is a bit preoccupied with other matters given that they just released an experimental update that's trying to nerf Crowd Control effects across the board.
Overwatch recently changed how the Hero Pools (or hero bans) system works for both Competitive Play and the Overwatch League. Instead of being entirely separate, one curated by Blizzard and the other based on pro pickrates, the new system randomly chooses 1 tank, 1 support and 2 DPS heroes based only on play rates in high-level ranked matches.
Unfortunately, this system has already hit a bit of a snag. As a part of the next set of bans, Competitive Play will be entirely devoid of Orisa, Moira, Tracer, and oddly enough, Echo. So even though she arrived a mere week ago and people still haven't gotten over the novelty factor, Echo will be unavailable from Competitive Play for an entire week.
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While Final Fantasy XIV is a brilliant MMORPG, it unfortunately has an absolutely dreadful early game that simply serves to push new players away. Not only does it take far too long to get through the base game's quests, but the storylines just aren't all that interesting until you reach Heavensward.
In order to correct this, the developers announced a while back that they will be doing a massive rework of the base game's story, as well as greatly reducing the amount of quests you'll need in order to progress towards the expansions. All of this was supposed to come in the near future as a part of the next major update, Patch 5.3, but unfortunately it would appear that the update is getting delayed due to the ongoing pandemic.
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[Update]: The newest update has brought in the legendary Gates of Ahn'Qiraj event and two accompanying raids!
Soon after World of Warcraft: Classic was first announced, Blizzard revealed that they would be using Layering technology in order to essentially have servers within servers. While a wildly unpopular idea among the community, the Layering system was unfortunately necessary in order to combat insane queue times and overpopulation in certain zones.
However, as Classic's playerbase shrunk in size, and those that remained spread more evenly across the world, Blizzard slowly but surely began removing the whole Layering system. And for a while, everything was working pretty much perfectly.
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Ashes of Outland, Hearthstone's newest expansion, arrived recently with a whole bunch of new toys in tow. Not only did it add the usual assortment of new cards for both the classic game modes and Battlegrounds, but it also brought in the very first new class - the mighty Demon Hunter.
However, as is often the case, any sort of massive additions are likely to result in equally massive balance problems. Ashes of Outland was no exception here, with Demon Hunters and combo decks running amok in constructed, and Millhouse Manastorm rampaging across the Battlegrounds mode. In order to correct this, as well as rebalance a few other outliers, Blizzard has now announced the patch notes for next week's update. Here's what you can expect to see: