- By Ash
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Blood Bowl 2, in the most basic terms, is an insane combination of American football and Warhammer brutality. Each match features about as many murders as it does touchdowns, mostly because half of the 'athletes' are Orks, Chaos abominations, or other such lovely inhabitants of the Warhammer universe. As it turns out, when you have two groups of highly aggressive and incredibly deadly creatures staring each other face to face, "playing ball" isn't really the first thing that comes to their mind!
Things are soon going to become even more interesting as Blood Bowl 2 has just added the Chaos Dwarfs and the Egyptian themed undead warriors of Khemri as playable faction. If you own the Team Pack bundle the two factions will be instantly unlocked for you, while everyone else will need to spend €7 per each new faction in order to see them spill blood on the field of... football?
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If you're anywhere near the next skill tier in Overwatch you might want to do one last push as the end of Season 3 is drawing ever-closer. More specifically, Season 3 of Competitive Play will be concluding this February 21st at 4:00pm PST / February 22nd at 0:00 UTC. As for Season 4, it will launch after a week-long interlude on February 28th at 4:00pm PST / March 1st at 0:00 UTC.
Your rewards, much like how it worked in the past, will be based on the highest rating you've achieved this season, so don't be afraid to continue playing even if you've reached your goal for this month. And if you're wondering how much Competitive Points awaits you in the future, here's a brief breakdown of what each skill tier brings to the table:
EA's Origin Access service is now running a limited free trial with full access to all "Vault" games
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Origin Access is EA's subscription based service that provides early previews of new games, discounts on all purchases done via Origin, and most importantly, full access to a whole bunch of games found within the "Vault". The service is normally priced at $5 per month or $30 per year, but for a limited time you can give it a free try with the newly introduced seven-day trial. You can find everything you need to know about the free trial over at the official website.
As for the games themselves, you can find a full list of what's available over at Origin. But as the Vault has grown in size the list has become fairly unwieldy to read, so here's a slightly smaller list of what I consider the most interesting games in there:
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For those of you that might not know, NieR: Automata is Platinum Games' upcoming action RPG set in a vast, open-world environment. It will be arriving on March 7th in North America and March 10th in Europe and Australia, though its still unknown whether the PC and PS4 versions will be launching simultaneously.
Now that we're on the same page, you'll find the most recent gameplay video right below. It features around 30 minutes of open world gameplay, tons of roaming around, and naturally, plenty of combat as well. There are absolutely no spoilers as far as I can figure out, so feel free to give the video a look even if you want to have a completely fresh experience. Anyway, here's the video:
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If you're up for grabbing some high quality games you might want to check out GOG's "From Wishlists, With Love" sale. It features over 70 of the most-wishlisted games ever (as well as their DLC packs apparently), and it will run for the next five day, or until February 20th to be specific.
You can grab The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition, Darkest Dungeon, and Dying Light: The Following - Enhanced Edition at a 50% discount, while classic games such as Psychonauts and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura feature 90% and 75% discounts respectively. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg, however, so make sure to check out the sale for yourself - you might just find something of interest.
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If you're tired of Hearthstone and you feel like giving another card game a try, now would be a good time to dive into Shadowverse. In order to commemorate more than 7 million downloads across all platforms, Shadowverse developer Cygames will soon be giving out seven free Rise of Bahamut card packs to all players.
All you need to do is log in from February 15th until February 27th and the packs will be yours. The only catch is that new players will need to first complete the in-game tutorial in order to receive this gift, but that shouldn't take very long, even if you're completely new to the genre. And if you're wondering what the whole "Shadow of Bahmut" thing is even all about, here's a brief trailer explaining the lore behind the expansion:
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If you're looking for some new games to play, you're in luck as the Humble 'Freedom' Bundle has just recently arrived with a whole boatload of them. By paying $30 or more you can instantly unlock 47 games and books, some of which are downright amazing. There's The Witness, Stardew Valley, Super Meat Boy, The Stanley Parable, Invisible inc, Day of the Tentacle Remastered, and the list goes on and on.
Unlike most of the previous bundles, however, you won't be able to choose where your money goes with this one. Its nothing sinister, don't worry, its just that all proceeds will go straight to the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Rescue Committee, and Doctors Without Borders. And as an added bonus, Humble Bundle will also pitch in their own $300,000 should we manage to reach that goal ourselves... something that happened within the very first day! And if you're wondering why exactly Humble Bundle chose these specific organizations, the following quote should clear everything up:
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If you haven't been paying attention to Hearthstone the past few weeks, all you need to really know is that the game is currently in a terrible state as far as balance is concerned. According to Ben Brode himself 50% of all ranked decks use the incredibly aggressive pirate package, while around 40% of all Legend players are piloting Shaman decks! Things have gotten stale in Hearthstone before, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time the game has ever become this homogenized.
Thankfully, there is hope on the horizon as Blizzard has announced some much needed nerfs to Small-Time Bucaaneer and Spirit Claws, two cards that are in pretty much every deck that can run them. And as an additional bonus, they have also announced that they will soon implement stop-gaps on ranks 15, 10, and 5, so once you reach them you will not be able to drop below them for that season. If you're interested in all of the details, you'll find the brief announcement post down below:
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Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr is an upcoming action RPG that aims to combine the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40k universe with the open-ended gameplay of the Diablo series. What I mean by this is that it will come with randomized levels, a massive focus on replayability, and naturally, a constantly rising difficulty curve.
If this sounds like something you might enjoy, and you don't mind trying out games in their unfinished state, you might want to check out the recently unleashed closed alpha, also known as "The Founding". It is by no means a fully finished or polished experience, but its there to provide the most dedicated fans with a way to try out the game ahead of time, and also share feedback on features and content moving forward. The catch, as you would expect from a game in alpha, is that early access will set you back a sizable chunk of money. In this case its $40 for the most basic version, with the option to go truly crazy with some of the some of the larger packages.
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Deus Ex: Breach was originally released as a part of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as a sort of "arcade" take on the standard gameplay. It recently became its own standalone free-to-play game on Steam, though judging by the user reviews its still about as far removed from Deus Ex as it gets.
However, it appears that Eidos Montreal has a lot more faith in Deus Ex: Breach than the community given that they have just released a rather sizable update. It has brought with it randomly generated Ghost Networks that rotate on a daily basis, 11 all-new Picus Corporation maps for players to toy around with, a new conspiracy surrounding the very same Picus corporation, and naturally, a whole bunch of cosmetic items as well. The only catch is that you will need to solve all previous cases before attempting to do the Picus conspiracy, but that shouldn't come as much of a surprise given that its the continuation of a preexisting story.