- By Ash
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As I've said numerous times throughout my review Yooka-Laylee's biggest problems are technical in nature. The camera is wildly inconsistent and often annoying to deal with, the voice acting is profoundly irritating and extremely slow to skip, and some of the mini-games control so badly I was left genuinely impressed at how atrocious they are.
Thankfully, most of these things will be getting fixed through the upcoming Spit 'N' Polish update! The patch notes are fairly concise and to the point, so if you're interested in all of the details you will find the full list down below, along with some of my highlights points towards the most important changes. Have a look:
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The Elder Scrolls Online's Morrowind expansion brings with it a bunch of new locations to explore, a new bear-taming class to mess around with, as well as a brand new storyline filled with political intrigue and (unsurprisingly) backstabbing. The expansion itself arrived a couple of days ago to those that have pre-ordered, and after a brief exclusivity period it is now finally available for everyone.
As is tradition, there is also a Digital Collector's Edition available for those of you that enjoy fancy cosmetics. It features an 'exclusive' Grey War Bear skin for the new Warden class, an Armored War Horse mount to explore Morrowind with, a tiny Dwarven Spider pet to keep you company, a Morag Tong themed armor set, as well as a variety of character emotes. None of this has any effect on gameplay, so if you don't care about cosmetics feel free to completely ignore the bundle.
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Summer is now well and truly here: its unbearably hot and the mosquitoes are everywhere, but at least there's plenty of upcoming Summer sales to fill out our backlogs and give us an excuse to not venture outside! The reward for the very first big summer sale this time around goes to GOG as it currently has more than 1500 games on sale, many of which are on an extremely deep discount.
If you're interested in checking out all of the deals you will find what you seek over at the official website. On the other hand, if you don't know what to buy and you love RPGs almost as much as I do, here's a couple of suggestions based on the game's quality and the depth of its discount:
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ELEX is an upcoming post-apocalyptic open-world RPG from the creators of the Risen and Gothic series. As with all of their previous games ELEX is going to allow you to play in whatever way you wish, befriend or become enemies with whichever factions you choose, and most importantly of all, let you decide how to solve each and every problem.
And what better way to showcase this freedom of choice than through a disjointed, minute-long gameplay trailer set to some truly horrendous music! While the video unfortunately won't give you an idea of what ELEX plays like, it does at least showcase some of the different environments you'll get to visit, armor sets you'll get to wear, and jetpacks you'll get to pilot straight into a tree. Have a look, and trust me, turn down the volume:
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Despite launching with some severe problems Battleborn has never been a bad game. What was bad about it, however, was the marketing that closely linked it to Overwatch despite the two games being about as different as two shooters can possibly be. While Overwatch is a pure team-based shooter Battleborn is more of a hybrid between a shooter and a MOBA, with all of the mechanics and gameplay ideas based around that fact.
As such, I am very glad to say that Battleborn has finally gone free-to-play, which should hopefully revitalize its constantly declining playerbase. To be more specific, Battleborn is not free-to-play, it just has an infinite Free Trial that has all of the elements of a free-to-play game, but with a much more misleading name that might push new players away for no reason! Battleborn may have changed for the better, but its marketing remains as bizarre and misguided as it ever was...
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[Update]: The double XP event is now live!
Overwatch recently celebrated its very first birthday with an Anniversary Update, bringing in a whole bunch of new skins and dance emotes for every hero. What should have been a fun little celebration quickly turned sour, however, as people realized that all of the skins were legendary, and all of the equally expensive dance emotes locked to this specific event. Combine this with duplicate cosmetics giving minuscule amount of credits and the loot boxes being over-bloated with useless player icons and sprays, and you've got a very contentious update on your hands.
Blizzard has already said they are aware of the problem and the community response, but it unfortunately doesn't appear they will actually do anything about it, at least not for this event. On the positive side, there will be a double XP weekend running from June 8-12, so if you're getting close to 3000 credits and only need a little bit of a push, now's your chance.
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Given that Need for Speed is one of the biggest racing series around this shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but EA has just recently announced the next installment - Need for Speed Payback. What might come as a bit of a surprise is that Payback appears to be heavily inspired by The Fast and the Furious movie series, by which I mean that it seems to focus more on the spectacle than the actual racing.
If you need an example of what exactly I'm talking about, check out the recently posted teaser trailer down below. It doesn't show much in terms of gameplay, but it will give you a pretty good idea of the direction EA is taking the Need for Speed series in. Have a look:
- By Ash
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Styx: Shards of Darkness is a stealth adventure heavily inspired by the Thief series. As you might imagine given its source of inspiration Shards of Darkness features plenty of open-ended levels crawling with guards and traps, a variety of weapons and tools to either dispatch or bypass them, as well as stealth mechanics that reward patience and planning over all-out aggression.
It is by all means an enjoyable stealth game, but it is definitely not for everyone. As such, I am very glad to say that Styx: Shards of Darkness now has a free demo available on Steam! Just click on that "Download Demo" button on the right side and you'll be playing in no time. And if you find yourself enjoying what you see, Shards of Darkness is also currently on a 40% discount which brings the price to €24.
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The standalone version of Gwent recently entered Open Beta for both PC and consoles, thus opening its doors to a large amount of players. Combine this with a massive amount of balance changes and reworks that happened between the Closed and Open Beta and it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that the current version of Gwent suffers from quite a few problematic cards. The end result is that Nilfgaard decks are everywhere on the ranked ladder, Northern Realms only has one viable archetype that's incredibly predictable, most Scoia'tael decks only use three units and just throw out weather cards like they're going out of season, and the list goes on.
Well, you'll be glad to hear that all of this will be changed in the near future! According to the recently updated Chinese test server (whose patch notes have been translated by tonyunreal over at Reddit) many of the problematic cards will be slightly toned down, while the previously useless archetypes such as Consume Monsters or Machine Northern Realms will be getting some much needed buffs. The patch notes are rather large, so allow me to just share a couple of highlights with you:
- By Ash
- in News
[Update]: It took a decade, but Dragon's Dogma 2 is now finally in development!
I don't know what exactly sparked this movement, but GOG has seriously begun expanding their lineup of excellent RPGs. A few days ago they brought in DRM-free versions of Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and today GOG has also added the equally excellent Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen.
As an added bonus, Dragon's Dogma is currently not only DRM-free, but also 60% off! The special launch discount will last until June 20th, during which Dragon's Dogma and all of its DLC will set you back €10,70. For a game with around 60 hours of content I would definitely say that the price is more than reasonable.