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World of Warcraft currently has 120 levels, with most of the interesting abilities and talents being given out during the first 30 or so. As you might imagine, this makes the leveling process feel less and less engaging as you go higher, which only makes the rather ridiculous amount of levels feel even more tedious to go through. Not exactly ideal, especially when it comes to new players that don't know how to blaze through some of the more boring stretches of leveling content.
Thankfully, it appears that Blizzard is now finally taking this problem seriously. During the most recent developer Q&A, they have revealed that they are heavily discussing a 'level squish' because of how bloated the leveling process has become. Naturally, they didn't reveal anything in terms of concrete details, but the good news is that they are seriously looking to solve the issue once and for all.
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[Update]: I'm afraid there is no new Bulletstorm game on the horizon. The game they were teasing was simply a Switch port of Bulletstorm.
After a rather lengthy period of silence, Gearbox has now returned to the spotlight with a rather interesting teaser. Instead of revealing Borderlands 3 which has been rumored for quite a few years now, Gearbox has instead decided to release a teaser for something related to either Duke Nukem or Bulletstorm.
If you're looking for a few more tidbits of information, I'm afraid that makes two of us as Gearbox has revealed pretty much nothing so far, choosing to instead announce the new game at the upcoming PAX. That said, I would be lying if I tried to pretend I wasn't slightly excited about either series making a glorious return!
Gwent's Crimson Curse trailer highlights some of the new mechanics and rather excellent card artwork
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Crimson Curse, Gwent's very first expansion since its official release, is set to arrive this March 28th to both PC and consoles. It'll bring with it over 100 new cards, both neutral and faction-specific, as well as a variety of new keywords and abilities to explore.
If you're wondering what these abilities might do, as well as what sort of vampire-themed artwork you can expect to see, you'll find the answers you seek in the recently posted teaser. Have a gander, it's quite a pretty one:
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World of Warcraft's Patch 8.1.5 arrived a little while ago, bringing with it the long-awaited Kul Tiran Humans and Zandalari Trolls, as well as a variety of other content to mess around with. If you would like to check out all of the new stuff yourself, but you aren't exactly keen on reactivating your subscription, you might be interested to hear that World of Warcraft will soon be having a free weekend.
From what I can tell, players who own Battle for Azeroth will be able to access all of the content throughout the free weekend, from March 21-24. Everyone else will only be able to play in Battle for Azeroth zones for three hours, or until they complete the "We Need Each Other" quest on the Horde side, or the Alliance alternative "A Nation Divided". You will be able to repeat the trial on multiple characters, however, so even with a harsh time limit you should get a pretty good idea of what Battle for Azeroth has to offer.
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After being briefly teased yesterday, Apex Legends' very first Battle Pass has now arrived alongside the new character Octane and numerous balance changes. As for the Battle Pass itself, it will set you back 950 Apex Coins and offer you the ability to acquire a variety of cosmetics for both your characters and weapons (including an evolving Havoc skin), as well as an option to essentially refund your purchase by climbing through all 100 of the experience-based Battle Pass levels.
While I don't exactly consider the Battle Pass to be anything special, the new character Octane is definitely something I am having a ton of fun messing around with. You can find all of the details over at the official website, but long story short, Octane is all about speed, to the point that he is even capable of sacrificing his own health in order to zoom around the battlefield! It's about as fun as it sounds, as you'll quickly see in the recently posted trailer right below:
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[Update #2]: Google is shutting down Stadia and issuing refunds for all purchases.
[Update]: Google has revealed some new details, as well as games that are partnering with them, over at the official website.
After spending quite a bit of time testing the concept with Assassin's Creed Odyssey under the code name "Project Stream", Google has now finally announced their new gaming focused platform - Stadia. As you might imagine from the title alone, Stadia will not be a physical box you put under your television, but rather an online platform that will allow you to stream games to whichever device you want.
The details are still few and far between as Google is planning to have a more elaborate reveal in the future, but from what I can tell you so far Stadia will be capable of playing games at a 4K resolution and 60FPS, with the possibility to upgrade to 8K at some point in the future. Naturally, the higher you go in quality, the better Internet connection you will require in order to actually play the game without any major issues.
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Despite being officially announced all the way back in 2015, there is very little you can currently learn about System Shock 3 and its development process. In fact, the silence was so deafening that many have started thinking System Shock 3 ran into trouble, much like the System Shock remaster, but I am very glad to say that this is not the case.
Not only is System Shock 3 still on track, but the developers have now also released its very first teaser trailer highlighting the ever-present SHODAN and some of the new enemies. Have a gander, and don't worry about any sort of spoilers as it's only a small teaser:
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If you've been paying attention to the Overwatch competitive scene, chances are you've noticed that the GOATs composition (triple tank and triple support) dominates all others, to the point that most of the DPS heroes are barely ever picked. In order to correct this rather serious issue, as well as bring life to some of the underplayed heroes, Blizzard has now unleashed an absolutely massive balance update, as well as a brand new hero by the name of Baptiste.
For those of you curious about what the new combat medic has to offer, allow me to share with you the recently posted hero overview. He's a pretty fun character to mess around with, and a deadly one as well! Have a look:
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Before PUBG and Fortnite made the whole Battle Royale genre explode in popularity, there was a small but rather successful Battle Royale game called The Culling. Unfortunately, due to some extremely questionable balance changes and overall tweaks, The Culling ended up slowly losing most of its momentum and playerbase, a problem it never really managed to recover from.
Usually that would be the end of the story, but after seeing how successful PUBG and Fortnite were, the developer Xaviant decided to give the concept another try and released a a sequel called The Culling 2. To say that it ended up being a failure would be quite an understatement, especially considering that even on launch it could barely fill a single server. However, even this massive setback did not stop Xaviant.
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After an insane amount of leaks and quite a few teasers from Respawn themselves, Apex Legends' very first Battle Pass has now finally been revealed. Once it arrives tomorrow (March 19th), it will set you back 950 Apex Points (around $10) and offer you the ability to earn a variety of cosmetic skins for both characters and weapons, as well as a chance to refund your entire purchase by fully climbing through all of the experience-based ranks.
Besides the Battle Pass itself, there will also be a couple of free items to unlock, a brand new character by the name of Octane to play around with, and perhaps most importantly of all, balance changes that will hopefully make some of the bigger characters less fragile. The patch notes are still unavailable, but you can read a little bit more about the Battle Pass, as well as check out the rewards, over at the official website.