- By Ash
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As with all competitive games, Overwatch is no stranger to people trying to mess with the rating system in order to gain even the smallest of bonuses. In most circumstances this isn't a big deal as the rating system is fully capable of figuring out where someone belongs, even if it takes it a little bit longer. However, when you have multiple people trying to play high-impact DPS heroes regardless of team composition, all in an effort to game the system and earn the most bonus rating due to performance, things start becoming a bit problematic.
With that in mind, I am delighted to say that the developers will soon be removing performance based rating adjustments for Diamond tier and above! In other words, nothing you do within the match itself (outside of winning or losing anyway) will impact the amount of points you win or lose at the very end. This should hopefully result in more people doing whatever it takes to win, even if they might not fully comfortable with the hero they're swapping to in order to better fit the team's strategy.
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In celebration of the holiday season Ubisoft has decided to give out a couple of free games to anyone that might be interested. Last week they were giving away the fairly excellent RTS World in Conflict: Complete Edition, while this time around they're offering the equally amazing Assassin's Creed: Black Flag for free!
If you're interested in sailing the high seas, and occasionally interrupting your shanties with a bit of stabbing, you should head on over to the official website. It is worth mentioning that this offer will only last until December 18th, so make sure to grab Black Flag as soon as possible, just to be on the safe side.
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Fe is an upcoming action-adventure game set amidst a rather beautiful Nordic forest full of colorful critters and unseen dangers. In order to bring the forest back to its former glory you'll need to unravel the mysteries of the Silent Ones, run, jump and glide from location to location, use songs to convince fellow creatures to help you out, and naturally, combine stealth and agility to escape your pursuers.
Rather than continue explaining what Fe is all about, allow me to instead show you the recently posted developer interview and gameplay preview from PSX 2017. If you want to skip all of the introductions and dive right into the gameplay, start the video from 2:25. Anyway, have a look:
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It has only been a few weeks since Destiny the Sky Ranger has been added as a new champion, and already the Battlerite developers have cooked up a brand new one! That said, "cooked up" might be a bit of an award phrase here considering that Alysia the Ice Weaver is all about freezing her enemies into a solid block of ice.
The official website still doesn't have a full list of her spells and Battlerites, but you can get a good idea of what Alysia is all about through the recently posted Champion Preview video. Have a look, its a relatively short one:
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Only a couple of months have passed since Path of Exile's absolutely massive The Fall of Oriath expansion arrived, and already the developers have unleashed another batch of content. While The Fall of Oriath was mostly focused around expanding the leveling content and making the difficulty curve more pleasant, the recently added War for the Atlas is all about bolstering the end-game.
As such, you now have 32 new maps to explore, 10 new gems to play around with, a completely reworked end-game progression system that's much easier to understand, numerous new unique items and modifiers, a variety of bosses and enemies, and naturally, a brand new league to give everyone a fresh start. In other words, the War for the Atlas is a very significant expansion, and a very good reason to create a new character and see what Path of Exile has to offer!
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This shouldn't come as much of a surprise as we're retracing the events from last year, but Blizzard has now come out to announce that Overwatch's "Return to Winter Wonderland" event will be starting up on December 12th. What might come as a surprise, however, is that we won't just get the same event from last year like what happened with the recent Halloween update. Instead, we will be getting a bunch of new cosmetics (Hanzo, Roadhog and Junkrat have been confirmed so far), a holiday reskin of the Black Forest map, as well as brand new 'boss' game mode by the name of Mei's Yeti Hunt!
The details are still in short supply, but the new mode seems to play very similarly to Evolve. What I mean by this is that five Mei players will be attempting to hunt down Winston while he scours the maps for power-ups, after which the tables will turn and the super-powerful Winston will try and smack down the Mei players instead. Here's the brief developer update explaining the concept further:
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In the early days of Guild Wars 2 every single class used Berserker armor and Power-related builds, while Condition builds were widely regarded as a joke given how easily their damage-over-time effects could be overwritten. As expected, this problem eventually got fixed, though unfortunately it just resulted in most players shifting to Condition builds and propagating the same problem under a different name. Time and time again the developers tried to balance the two sides out, but they were never really successful, especially when it comes to PvP where Condition builds can be immensely powerful.
This is going to change in the very near future, however, as ArenaNet has announced that the December 12th update will even the playing field between Condition and Power damage, as well as slightly tweak how vulnerability is applied. If you're interested in a few examples, here's the brief developer summary:
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After weeks upon weeks of teasers and slow card reveals, Hearthstone's Kobolds & Catacombs expansion has now finally arrived. It has brought with it 135 new cards to play around with, including a Legendary weapon for all nine classes, as well as a repeatable singleplayer adventure!
There isn't a full list available just yet, but you can read about some of the new cards over at the official website. As for the new singleplayer mode, its essentially a mini-RPG. Each run through the dungeon will help you strengthen your hero and your pre-build deck, all in order to defeat eight progressively more challenging bosses. Most importantly of all, the new game mode is completely free for all players, so if you're even remotely interested in it simply head on over to Hearthstone and give it a look!
- By Ash
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The third and final episode of Life is Strange: Before the Storm is set to arrive this December 20th. I can't tell you much about the story without going into spoiler territory, but you can expect Chloe to get herself involved in a highly dangerous situation that will force her to make "some of the toughest decisions of her life". Fairly standard fare as far as Chloe is concerned, but the stakes are a lot higher this time around.
If you would like to learn a little bit more, and you don't mind some minor Episode 3 spoilers, you'll find what you seek in the recently posted trailer down below. That said, I wouldn't recommend watching the video if you haven't already played through Episode 1 and 2, simply because some of the major events from those episodes make an appearance in Episode 3 as well. With all these warnings now out of the way, here's the video:
- By Ash
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According to one of their recent tweets, the contents of which are entirely in Japanese by the way, FromSoftware announced that they are not done with the Armored Core series. They didn't share any actual details, but they did politely ask their fans to wait for a little while longer, which as you might imagine has gotten a lot of people excited about an upcoming announcement.
Well, that announcement has now arrived, but what might come as a bit of a surprise is that its not for a new Armored Core game! To be perfectly honest, nobody actually knows what this new game even is, but you can get a tiny little sneak peek through the recently posted trailer. Have a look, but I'd recommend keeping your expectations in check: