Paradox is set to acquire Harebrained Schemes, the studio behind Battletech and the Shadowrun series
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Harebrained Schemes, the studio behind the recent Battletech and the three modern Shadowrun games, is set to be acquired by Paradox Interactive. Once the purchase goes through, Harebrained Schemes will act as an internal studio and will be responsible for its own management and creative teams, which also includes the ability to choose which games it's going to work on.
“Mitch and I started Harebrained to create the kind of story-rich tactical games we loved,” said Jordan Weisman, CEO of Harebrained Schemes, “and for the last seven years, our studio has been fueled by our team’s passion and by the generous support of our fans. As the scale of our games has grown and the marketplace has gotten extremely noisy we felt that HBS needed to team up with a company that could provide us the financial stability and marketing expertise that would allow us focus on what we love doing - making great games and stories.”
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Overwatch's recent Anniversary 2018 update brought with it an absolute ton of cosmetics to collect. Not only are there new legendary and epic skins to pick up, each of which cost quite a few in-game credits, but all of the previous event cosmetics, emotes and voice lines have made a return as well!
Given the sheer amount of items currently on offer, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that Overwatch will be holding a double XP event this weekend for both PC and consoles. It will begin at 11am PDT on Friday, June 8th (6pm UTC on June 9th) and last until 11:59pm PDT on Monday, June 11th (6:59am UTC on June 12th). If you're wondering how exactly this translates into your local time, Blizzard has provided a rather handy infographic showing just that. Have a look:
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Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr is a newly released action-RPG that combines the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40k universe with the randomly generated levels and loot of the Diablo series. What this means in gameplay terms is that you will spend most of your time wondering across large levels filled to the brim with enemies, blowing said enemies apart with a variety of weapons, and naturally, collecting more loot than the human body could ever hope to carry.
The recently posted cinematic launch trailer won't exactly show you much in terms of gameplay, but it will give you a pretty darn good idea of the tone and atmosphere Inquisitor - Martyr is going for. So if you're up for a bit of completely over-the-top action, you'll find the video right below:
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Xenonauts is a fairly hardcore strategy game that will have you use small squads of persistent soldiers to fend off a massive alien assault. If this sounds exactly like XCOM to you, that would be because Xenonauts takes heavy, heavy inspiration from the original UFO: Enemy Unknown. It's still its own game with its own unique quirks, but you can definitely see XCOM's influence all over it.
If you feel like this is something you might enjoy, you should hurry on over to GOG as Xenonauts is completely free to grab for the next ~9 hours. Simply go through the whole 'purchasing' process, claim your copy, and you'll be able to play it at any time you want. You don't even need to install it right now, just make sure you claim it before the deadline is up.
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After being teased for quite a while now, the massive Symmetra rework has finally made its way to the Overwatch test servers. There are far too many changes to cover in detail, so if you're curious about what the new Symmetra is going to be like, you'll find the developer preview over at the official forums.
If you're just interested in the short version, however, then you should know that Symmetra is now going to be doing a lot more damage, but she will actually need to aim like Zarya in order to do so. The shield generator is being completely removed and the teleporter is being changed into a standard, short-ranged ability that can transport even objects like D.Va's bomb. If you're feeling particularly frisky, you can also teleport your Reinhardt directly behind the enemy team for a sneaky earthshatter!
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Vampyr is a newly released and vampire themed RPG from Dontnod, the studio behind Life is Strange and the unfortunately rarely remembered Remember Me. It tells the story of a doctor trying to prevent a deadly plague from spreading throughout all of London, all the while wrestling with his vampiric curse that forces him to feed on those he's trying to save. A fairly solid premise for an RPG, I'm sure you'll agree.
If you're curious about what all of this might look like in gameplay terms, however, allow me to share with you the recently posted launch trailer. It's not very long, but it'll give you a decent idea of the sort of atmosphere and tone Vampyr is going for. Have a gander:
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[Update]: Slay the Spire devs are working on a fourth and entirely free DLC character!
After spending a rather considerable amount of time on the beta servers, Slay the Spire's third character "The Defect" has now finally made its way to the live version as well. Since this is Slay the Spire we're talking about, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that The Defect is not your standard mage character, but rather more of a robot wizard that needs to juggle orbs in order to unleash his spells!
There is a bit of a difficulty curve to learning The Defect's mechanics given that you can cycle through your orbs in order to change up your tactics, but also maintain only a limited amount of them at the same time. Furthermore, each of the orbs provides both passive and active bonuses, so careful planning is greatly encouraged if you want to get the most mileage out of your cards. Most importantly though, The Defect is a whole bunch of fun to mess around with, so I'd definitely recommend spending a bit of time getting familiar with its mechanics.
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If you ever wanted to give the Warhammer or Warhammer 40k universe a closer look, or if you're like me and you're itching to pick up the rare few games you don't already own, you might want to head on over to Steam. There is currently a massive Skulls for the Skull Throne sale going on, and as you might imagine from the name alone, it's filled with all sorts of Warhammer games on deep discounts, both new and old.
The one catch is that the whole sale will only last for another ~24 hours, so if you're interested you might want to dive in as soon as possible. If you're not sure what to grab, however, allow me to give you a couple recommendations, each one from a different genre:
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After being delayed for around half a year now, the savage Norsca has finally made its way to Total War: Warhammer 2 as a playable faction in both the Vortex and Mortal Empires campaign. The patch has also brought with it Total War: Warhammer 2's second piece of paid DLC, The Queen and the Crone, as well as an absolutely massive list of changes for both the new and old races alike.
First things first, The Queen and The Crone DLC brings with it two new Legendary Lords with unique campaign mechanics, Alarielle the Everqueen and Crone Hellebron, as well as a new Hero type for the High Elves and a new Lord type for the Dark Elves. There's also a new and rather powerful campaign 'resource' to fight over in the form of the Sword of Khaine, a variety of new units for both the Dark Elves and High Elves, and naturally, a whole host of new Regiments of Renown. You can get a brief glimpse of all of them in action through the recently posted trailer. Have a look:
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If you're looking to make your Vermintide 2 heroes as fancy as possible, now would be the time to crack open all of your chests because the massive cosmetics update has just arrived. The rather plainly named Patch 1.1.0.1 brings with it more than 100 new cosmetics, a new quests and challenges system that rewards both chests and unique cosmetics, the Green dust fix, as well as the long-awaited mod support and Steam Workshop integration!
While the recently posted trailer does not showcase some of the most interesting cosmetics out there, it should still give you a bit of an idea of what to expect from this patch as a whole. Have a gander, it's a fairly short video: