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Continuing with the recent trend of showcasing fun and interesting gameplay concepts, Steam has now launched the Base Builder Fest. As you might imagine from the name alone, this festival encompasses all sorts of different games - everything from the survival orientated Subnautica and Valheim to the city or colony management sims like Cities Skylines and Rimworld.
So if you ever wanted to take a dip into the wide world of base-building games, this would be a pretty good time to do so as the vast majority of the Base Builder Fest participants are currently on sale. Better yet, a fair few of them also have free demos available, so you can give them a proper try before deciding whether they're truly worth your time and money.
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After successfully combining an action-roguelike with tower defense elements in Dungeon of the Endless, Amplitude Studios are now looking to give the concept another crack with the upcoming Endless Dungeon. Once it arrives this May 18th for PC and consoles, Endless Dungeon will task you (and potentially a couple of friends) with escaping a sprawling and procedurally generated space station.
You'll be accompanied by a handy yet extremely vulnerable crystal bot, which is where the tower defense elements come into play. When the enemies start swarming you from every direction, all eager to take a nibble at your precious robotic companion, you'll need to rely on your assortment of turrets, traps and high-powered weaponry to keep you all alive. And you'll definitely want to stay breathing (if your character even can) as that's how you get to all of the fancy loot scattered throughout the misused rooms of the space station!
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If you've developed a newfound appreciation for the Persona series now that it's actually available on PC, you'll be happy to hear that one of the older games, Persona 3 Portable, has just been remastered! The new version of Persona 3 Portable brings with it HD visuals and smoother gameplay for both PC and consoles, along with always-handy quality of life features like difficulty selection and the ability to quick save.
What some of this looks like in action, that you can get a bit of a peek at through the launch trailer below. Have a gander:
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It doesn't matter if we're talking about first-person shooters or fighting games, too much latency can very easily ruin the whole experience. After all, getting kicked in the face despite perfectly blocking an enemy's attack is never a fun thing to go through, and especially not if it happens multiple times in a match!
With that in mind, I'm very happy to say that thanks to a recent update Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 will be having a lot fewer of these issues from here on out. The reason, as you might expect, it the introduction of rollback netcode.
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From the moment players got their hands on them, Battlefield 2042's Specialists were largely seen as a less interesting alternative to the oldschool Class system. Their biggest issue, at least in my eyes, is the simple fact that they can be kitted out to deal with almost every obstacle. This then leads to a whole lot of min-maxing, and eventually a situation where most players are using the exact same loadout for every scenario, which is far from ideal for a Battlefield game.
With all of that in mind, I have some good news to share! While Specialists are still going to be a key part of the game, Battlefield 2042's upcoming Update 3.2 will bring with it a return of the Class system, and with it a much greater focus on co-operation as everyone will need to help cover each other's weaknesses.
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It took nearly a year for us to get here, but I'm happy to say that PlayStation 5's third-person roguelike Returnal will finally be launching onto PC this February 15th, 2023. The PC version will bring with it support for NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR and the less powerful NVIDIA NIS alternative, along with ray-traced shadows and reflections to really help the visuals stand out... provided you have the hardware to make all of it run smoothly anyway!
What some of these additions look like in moment-to-moment gameplay, that you can get a little sneak peek at through the freshly posted PC features trailer. Have a gander:
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[Update]: Forspoken has now arrived with a free demo and an outrageous price tag.
After going through a lengthy delay, Square Enix's exploration focused action-adventure Forspoken will finally be launching onto PC and consoles this January 24th, 2023. If you're now curious about what sort of PC you'll need in order to run it smoothly, you'll be happy to hear that the Forspoken team has just released the various PC system requirements and their expected performance.
However, as you'll quickly see, there is a little bit of a problem here. The minimum and recommended system requirements are both targeting 30fps, while the most common 1080p/60fps combo isn't listed at all. While this could just be a strange set of presets and nothing else, I'm somewhat worried this might mean that Forspoken is going to be another in a long line of poorly optimized PC games.
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[Update #2]: Shadow Over Innistrad Remastered is coming on March 21, 2023, and the Alchemy: Phyrexia mini-set on February 28.
[Update]: MTG Arena's Phyrexia: All Will be One expansion has now arrived with plenty of poison and proliferation.
After a fair few months without any sort of balance updates, the MTG Arena team has now snuck in a whole bunch of new changes with the latest shop update. These include a massive to the Goblin Trapfinder combo, a variety of nifty buffs for the Samurai archetype, and even more buffs for blue/white Spirits.
What exactly these changes look like in action, that you can check out through the patch notes below. Have a gander:
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[Update #2]: Overwatch 2 will be fixing many of the frustrating aspects of Competitive Play in Seasons 3 and 4.
[Update]: Overwatch 2's likely final Season 2 update has now nerfed Roadhog, Sojourn, Kiriko and Orisa.
If you were disappointed with how little the recent Battle for Olympus update brought to the table, I'm afraid the freshly released Lunar New Year event isn't much better. Nearly all of the seasonal content is stuff from the original Overwatch, including the various Capture the Flag game modes, the free-for-all Bounty Hunter mode, as well as the usual array of old festive skins.
When it comes to the new toys, you might be surprised by how little there truly is. You can look forward to a single mediocre and store-only Mei skin, a souvenir and weapon charm you can unlock through achievements, as well as the old (yet admittedly awesome) Kkachi Echo skin recycled as the grand prize for completing four of the seasonal achievements. That really is it as far as new additions to the Lunar New Year are concerned!
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[Update]: Hogwarts Legacy has now arrived, and I'm happy to say that it's looking quite good so far!
After going through a bit of a delay, the open world Harry Potter RPG Hogwarts Legacy will be launching onto PC, PlayStation and Xbox this February 10th. So if you're curious what kind of rig you'll need in order to run it, and especially to run it well, you'll be happy to hear that the Hogwarts Legacy team has now detailed the PC system requirements and their expected performance.
Before we get into the actual details, the most important thing to mention is that even older GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce 1080 TI will be able to play Hogwarts Legacy on high settings. As such, don't feel pressured to purchase the currently absurdly overpriced GPUs as your old one will most likely do just fine. With that said, here are the PC specs: