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If you're in the mood for something a little bit out of the ordinary, you might be interested to hear that digital board games Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride are currently entirely free to grab. Simply visit the Epic Games Store, log into your account or create a new one, and you'll be ready to flip over the virtual table in no time.
As always, there is a bit of a catch. Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride will only remain free until February 13th, so if you're interested, do make sure to grab them before that date. You don't even need to install them. As long as you ensure they're registered to your account, you'll be good to go.
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Over the past few years, Denuvo has proven itself to be a fairly reliable anti-piracy measure. It eventually gets cracked, just like all of the rest, but the time it takes is usually enough for most major games to get past their biggest sale period.
However, as with anything specifically designed as an anti-piracy measure, there is always a chance of false positives. Same thing with performance issues that may appear due to either some mistake on the developer's side, or due to sheer bad luck on the part of the player. So while I understand why it's being used, I'm still happy to say that Capcom now appears to have removed Denuvo from Devil May Cry 5!
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[Update]: I hope you're a fan of fighting against Rajang, because Capcom has just released a preview of an even deadlier version!
The original Monster Hunter: World was no stranger to cross-over events, going as far as to include even the likes of Geralt and Ciri from The Witcher 3. Given how fun those cross-overs were time and time again, I'm happy to say that the tradition is continuing in Monster Hunter: World - Iceborne as the PC version has just received a Resident Evil 2 themed event!
The special Raccoon City collaboration will only be available for a short while, during which you'll be tasked with taking down a zombified Blackveil Vaal Hazzak. Beating him will give you materials to craft Leon S. Kennedy and Clair Redfield cosmetic armor sets, as well as some fancy pendants for your weapons, including a Tofu-themed one! Most importantly of all, you'll be able to dress up your always cheerful handler as Mr. X, with the results being about as hilarious and unsettling as you would expect!
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[Update]: The King's Shilling update has now gone live, bringing with it mostly the same changes and bug fixes.
If you've been playing Total War: Warhammer 2 without mods since the last update, chances are you've noticed something's a little bit off. For whatever reason, AI-controlled Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast and Lizardmen factions are currently unable to recruit more than one army. As such, they are basically useless on the campaign map, which only further strengthens the dreaded Bretonnia-Dwarfs-Empire alliance that seems to dominate every Mortal Empires campaign.
Thankfully, the latest beta update has now corrected this problem, as well as a couple of other major issues. First and foremost, multiplayer-focused players will be glad to hear that the massive unit stat bug is now no more. To put it simply, this bug made it so that units receiving chevrons (levels) in battle while under the effects of buffs/debuffs would have their base stats set to an incorrect value. A rather nasty problem given how often it could occur in a single match, so I'm quite happy it's getting fixed so soon after being discovered.
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[Update]: If you encountered any issues throughout the free trial, you'll be glad to hear Capcom will soon be improving the netcode!
If you ever wanted to give Street Fighter V a try and see what all the fuss is about, this would be a pretty good opportunity. As a part of a Steam free weekend promotion, Street Fighter V will be entirely free to play for the next three days. All you have to do is head on over to Steam and download yourself a copy while the promotion is still live.
More importantly, for the duration of the free weekend, all 39 of Street Fighter V's characters will be fully unlocked! So even if you're a Street Fighter veteran, it's probably worth coming back just to check out some of the characters you may have missed.
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[Update]: The patch has now been released in full, though with a couple of extra console-exclusive changes in tow!
These past few weeks have been downright amazing for Overwatch. Not only did Blizzard announce massive updates to the Workshop and their own take on hero bans, but they have also been releasing balance changes at an extremely rapid pace!
So even though the last round of changes only just arrived, Blizzard has now already unleashed another batch of tweaks onto the PTR. This time around heroes like Brigitte, Wrecking Ball and Widowmaker have been nerfed, while the often-forgotten Symmetra has received a small buff. Here's what's being changed:
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[Update #2]: Metro Exodus is now removing the somewhat controversial Denuvo Anti-Tamper technology.
[Update]: Metro Exodus' second DLC Sam's Story has now been released, while the Steam version has also been confirmed for February 15th.
Almost right before Metro Exodus released onto PC, it was revealed that the developers signed an exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store. While they still honored all pre-orders (both digital and physical) and delivered a Steam key as promised, this move caused quite a ruckus as a fair chunk of players felt that they were being forced into a storefront they simply didn't care for.
If you belong to that group, or you if simply didn't feel like leaving the comfort of Steam, you might be interested to hear that Metro Exodus will be coming back to Steam on February 15th. Naturally, the Season Pass and the upcoming Sam's Story DLC will be following it on February 15th as well.
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[Update #2]: Blizzard has now officially removed Hero Pools from Competitive Play.
[Update]: The Season 21 update has finally brought in Hero Bans, a brand new map rotation, and even more balance changes.
According to a recent developer update, Overwatch will soon be getting its own take on hero bans - Hero Pools. These Hero Pools will be manually curated by Blizzard, and will briefly remove a couple of heroes from Competitive Play in order to shake up the meta. As of right now, the plan is to remove two DPS heroes, one tank and one support each week.
If you're curious about what sort of effects on the meta this could have, as well as whether the system is even any fun, you might want to check out the newly released PTR update. Since it's the test server, Blizzard is currently rotating through the Hero Pools on an hourly basis, so you should be able to get a pretty good impression of just how heavily this new system will impact the competitive balance.
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After a couple of rounds of teasers, Apex Legends' Season 4 update has now finally arrived. It brings with it Revenant as a highly aggressive new legend, a battle pass filled with all sorts of cosmetic goodies, a new bolt-action sniper rifle, as well as some highly needed changes to the World's Edge map.
As you might guess from the original trailer, Revenant has a rather interesting set of abilities. His passive allows him to crouch walk faster and climb higher up walls, while his active ability is a grenade that deals damage and disables all enemy abilities for 10 seconds. The ultimate takes the cake, however, as Revenant drops a totem that protects both him and his teammates from death. Instead of simply getting downed, those affected by the totem will return to it with 1 health, which means you can play as aggressively as you want, as long as the totem itself is safe.
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[Update]: Blizzard is now making it significantly easier to acquire Corrupted Gear.
In an effort to respond to players complaining about the random power boosts from titanforged gear, Blizzard implemented a brand new system with the Visions of N'Zoth update - corrupted gear. In theory, corrupted gear was supposed to be incredibly powerful, yet also risky to wear as the strongest pieces would give you debilitating effects until you leveled up your legendary cloak. A pretty neat idea, all things considered.
When it comes to reality, however, corrupted gear ended up being an even worse version of titanforging. Not only is corrupted gear acquired completely at random, but certain corruption effects are so ridiculously strong that they can account for 20-30% of a player's damage. So if you got lucky and landed on the right pieces, you could absolutely demolish your competition in both PvE and PvP. And if you didn't, well, sucks to be you!