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Dark Souls, my personal favorite game of all time, will be getting a remastered edition on May 25th for PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4, while the Switch version will be coming at some point this summer. In terms of content, Dark Souls Remastered will bring with it slightly improved visuals, better performance across the board, and perhaps most importantly, a smooth 60 fps even in the depths of Blighttown.
If you're curious about what the visual improvements are going to look like, you might be interested to hear that Bandai Namco has now released a brief gameplay trailer. You'll find the video right below, but I would advise tempering your expectations as the graphical upgrade appears to be quite subtle, which is to say I can barely notice the difference. Anyway, have a gander:
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World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth has been available for alpha testing for a quite a while now, though only to a small portion of the playerbase. Now that Blizzard has officially moved it to beta, however, you can expect to see a lot more invites flying out in the relatively near future.
If you would like to participate, simply head on over to the Blizzard website and opt-in to the World of Warcraft beta. There is no guarantee you'll get in, but the whole process takes less than a minute, so you might as well give it a try. It's also worth mentioning that Blizzard sends these invites out in waves, so if you don't get in instantly, worry not as you'll have a chance all the way until the beta closes near the Battle for Azeroth's August 14th launch.
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As I've mentioned in my review, Vermintide 2 is an exemplary sequel and a highly enjoyable game in its own right, but unfortunately its Legend difficulty has also been the source of much frustration for me these past few weeks. Not because of the difficulty, mind you, but rather because of bugged enemy spawns that would result in nearly unwinnable scenarios simply appearing in front of my party and killing us instantly.
With that in mind, I hope you can understand just how delighted I am to say that today's Update 1.0.7 has now fixed the vast majority of these problems! Patrols will now spawn further away from players in order to give them time to react, special enemies will now spawn with a slightly longer delay between them, Globadiers will no longer instantly throw their poison the moment they spawn, and the list goes on for a while. Long story short, most of the unfair and quite frankly cheap attacks have been changed in order to make them more consistent and counterable.
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Square Enix has announced that Final Fantasy XIV will be getting a major update later this May - Patch 4.3, or "Under the Moonlight" if you so prefer. While all of the details have not been revealed just yet, you might be interested to hear that Square Enix has now released a brief list highlighting some of the biggest features.
As such, you can expect to see a brand new Main Scenario Quest that continues onward from the Stormblood storyline, a new Alliance Raid set in the Ridorana Lighthouse, as well as a new Dungeon called the Swallow's Compass. You can find the full list right below, but again, don't expect much in terms of details:
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If you haven't done your placement matches, or if you need a little bit of rating to reach the next skill tier, you might want to get it done as soon as possible given that Season 9 of Overwatch competitive play is coming to an end. According to the latest announcement, Season 9 will conclude on April 27 at 5pm PT, while Season 10 will arrive a few days later on Monday, April 30 at 5pm PT.
As always, the end-of-season competitive point rewards will be distributed based on your highest season rank. So if you've managed to reach diamond only to fall to platinum during the last few days, worry not as you'll still get your 750 points. You can find the full list of rewards over at the official forums.
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While For Honor might not look like one, it's gameplay is incredibly similar to that of a fighting game. As such, if you decide to jump in without doing a fair bit of research beforehand, you can expect to get completely annihilated over and over again by much more experienced players. So in order to help introduce beginners to the gameplay basics, as well as bridge the skill cap between the playerbase as a whole, Ubisoft has now finally released a comprehensive training mode.
The whole thing consists of four different sections: training media, apprentice trials, warrior trials, and the training arena. The first one is fairly self-explanatory - it's just a place where you can watch all of the various tutorial videos. The second two sections, however, are in-depth guides that will teach you how to perform and counter every single thing For Honor's players could possibly throw at you. A relatively simple concept, but also one that has proven itself quite effective in many fighting games before, so chances are it's going to be pretty darn useful in For Honor as well.
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[Update]: It took over four years, but PUBG has now gone free-to-play on all platforms.
As you're probably well aware, PUBG has a bit of a problem with weapon balance. Since fights can happen at any point and at any distance, there is simply no reason to carry around ultra-specialized weapons when you can instead always be ready for action with something like an assault rifle. Thankfully, it would appear that the developers are also well aware of this problem and are already working on a solution.
"We’ll save the exact numeric balance changes for the patch notes, but today we want to pull back the curtain a bit and explain our goals," reads the Steam announcement. "According to our research, only a few specific types of weapons (ARs) are used in most situations. We believe the choice about which gun to use should be based on personal preference and its effectiveness in any given situation, rather than simply 'which gun is strongest.' Our goal is to make it so no one gun will feel objectively better than the others."
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[Update]: Serious Sam 4 has now been delayed and will be launching in September, 2020
This will likely come as no surprise to some of you given the amount of rumors circulating the past few months, but Croteam has now officially announced Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass. The are currently very few details to pick through, but I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that it's going to take you on "an adventure full of bullets, guts, and one-liners".
If you're up for seeing two of those, and also trying to guess which one they would leave out from their first teaser, you'll find the brief trailer down below. It's not the most informative video I've ever seen, but it'll at least give you a general idea of the sort of style Croteam is aiming for. Have a gander:
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When it comes to learning how to fight in Fortnite, there is no better place than the utter madness that is the 50v50 game mode. The stakes are low, the action is plentiful, and perhaps most importantly of all, it doesn't take ages to get into a large-scale firefight! As such, I am very glad to say that Fortnite has now reintroduced the 50v50 mode, though with quite a few improvements over its last iteration.
First and foremost, each team now starts with their own bus that approaches from opposite directions of the map. This alone would go a long way towards concentrating the action in a few key areas, but thanks to the fact that the final storm circle is now visible on the mini-map from the very beginning, you'll be able to find fights with remarkable ease. Just don't rush ahead alone as that will very rarely end well for you!
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After a brief stay on the test servers, Hollow Knight's Lifeblood update has now finally arrived. It brings with it a variety of optimization and performance tweaks, a brand new boss and a "serious upgrade" for one of the already existing ones, numerous balance changes, custom map markers, a bunch of bug fixes (which is infinitely amusing to me since all of the characters are bugs), and the list goes on.
It's not the biggest or most comprehensive update Hollow Knight has ever received, but the plethora of quality of life changes and additions is still a welcome sight. After all, Hollow Knight was already so packed with content that it took me around 50 hours to fully finish, so it's definitely a good thing the developers chose to dedicate this update to polishing all of it up. However, if you are itching for even more areas to explore, you'll be glad to hear that the massive Gods & Glory update is still under heavy development.