- By Ash
- in News
Whether you like it or not, the Steam Review system plays an important role in the success of any game on Steam. Unfortunately for us all, it is also a system that is incredibly open towards abuse and 'joke reviews' that add absolutely nothing of consequence, and yet constantly hog the top position due to their brevity. Thankfully, Valve is well aware of these issues as they have just recently added a couple of new and highly requested features to the Steam Review system.
The first of these new features is the ability to separate reviews based on purchase type. In other words, the ability to only read reviews from people that purchased the game directly from Steam, rather than from other third party websites or developer giveaways. This change will not affect a game's overall score as that was always based only on customers that purchased it via Steam, but it does give you the means to focus only on the reviews you might be interested in.
- By Ash
- in News
The Dark Souls series has always had excellent DLC, so much so that I'm willing to say it was better than the games it expanded upon. This goes doubly so for Dark Souls 2 given that its DLC is some of the best Souls gameplay I've ever experienced, and I've played through the entirety of the series multiple times! With that in mind I hope you can now understand why exactly there is so much excitement for Dark Souls 3's upcoming Ashes of Ariandel DLC.
And to add further fuel onto the fire, FromSoftware has recently posted a rather lengthy gameplay preview showcasing a frozen wasteland, a giant viking, and a few snippets of the bosses we'll be able to spar against. The spoilers are minimal, but even so, do be warned if you want to have a completely 'pure' playthrough. Anyway, here's the video:
- By Ash
- in News
Paladins, a team based shooter from the developers of Smite and Tribe Ascend, entered open beta a couple of days ago. While that would usually be a great thing, I mean who doesn't love having more competition in the shooter genre, things became a bit heated when people realized that many of the Paladins characters share a similar playstyle to their Overwatch counterparts.
For example, Paladins features a medieval techno-knight that carries around a giant blue shield and charges at people, a short but bulky engineer that shoots molten lava and builds turrets, a character that flies around and shoots rockets from above, and so forth. The similarities between these characters and the ones from Overwatch are quite apparent, there's no denying that, but at the end of the day they are still their own characters with their own unique twists on the formula. And yet the backlash apparently got so large that Hi-Rez was forced to make a rather lengthy post detailing the history of Paladins throughout its development.
You can find the full post by heading over to the Paladins subreddit. While its unfortunate Hi-Rez had to go through all of this trouble to prove their point, I'm still glad they decided to do so because it gives us a bit of an insider look into the world of game design, and that is always exciting to see!
- By Ash
- in News
Continuing on with the tradition of poorly named HD remakes we have Cossacks 3 - an HD remake of the original RTS classic that released back in 2000. Cossacks 3 brings with it twelve playable nations, 70 different unit types, over 140 different buildings to construct, and naturally, a whole bunch of historical battles to fight.
Since trying to briefly explain grand strategy games is a nearly impossible task, allow me to instead show you the most recent gameplay trailer. It should give you a good idea of what Cossacks 3 looks like, and more importantly, what it plays like. Have a look:
- By Ash
- in News
For those of you that never had a chance to try it during its heyday, Bloodline Champions was a truly one of a kind arena brawler. There was no randomness, no overpowered moves or broken combinations, just you and a couple of buddies against the world. The only thing that could bring you victory was coordination and personal skill, which meant that Bloodline Champions had a practically infinite skill ceiling, and with it practically infinite replayability. Unfortunately, one of the long-awaited post-launch updates brought with it the very hammer that would strike Bloodline Champions down - the introduction of randomness and customizable stats. As you would expect, this quickly ruined the delicate balance and drove most of the dedicated playerbase away, me included.
While Bloodline Champions remains to this day as a shell of its former self, there is hope on the horizon as the original developers have just released Battlerite, a spiritual successor to the Bloodline Champions of old, onto Steam Early Access. If you're wondering what Battlerite looks like and how closely it emulates Bloodline Champions, here's one of the recent gameplay videos:
- By Ash
- in News
We're still nearly three weeks away from the release of Gears of War 4, but for some strange reason Microsoft has decided to release its launch trailer anyway. This little detail aside, fans of the melancholic Gears of War trailers will be delighted to hear that this one features plenty of action set to a dramatic, escalating soundtrack - in this case a cover of Metallica's Nothing Else Matters.
While I won't say its as good as the original Mad World trailer, it does give you a pretty damn good idea of what's happening in the story, and more importantly, what's happening with a few of the fan favorite characters. Have a look:
- By Ash
- in News
David Braben, the CEO & founder of Frontier Developments, recently announced that Elite: Dangerous will be dropping support for DirectX 10 and 32-bit Windows next year. The exact date hasn't been given just yet, but Braben did say it will take them at least six months in order to implement all of the changes.
In terms of playerbase, the loss of Win32 support will affect about 0.5% of all players, some which already own hardware capable of running 64-bit versions of Windows. On the other hand, the removal of DirectX 10 support is going to be a bit more troublesome given that around 2% of the playerbase still depend on it, many of which will need to upgrade their graphics card in order to continue playing.
Here's the full announcement message:
- By Ash
- in News
With Battlefield 1's October 24th release date just around the corner, DICE and EA have finally decided to release the PC system requirements. Given how much of a graphical powerhouse Battlefield 4 was, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that Battlefield 1 requires a similarly beefy rig.
How beefy? Beefy enough that even the minimum system requirements ask for an Intel Core i5 6600K CPU. It might not be in the upper reaches of processing power these days, but its still a damn solid CPU, so this should give you a general idea of how taxing Battlefield 1 is going to be on your system. This little diversion aside, here are the full system requirements:
- By Ash
- in News
Developer The Coalition has recently announced a couple of rather surprising additions to the PC version of Gears of War 4. Not only will it support split-screen co-op, but also the ability to play with your friends on the Xbox One via the cross-play feature!
Naturally, there are some limitations in place given that the mouse & keyboard are objectively better when it comes to precision aiming. In other words, the public multiplayer will continue to be locked down to specific platforms, but everything else is free game. You can play through the campaign together, and if you so wish you can also play the horde mode, multiplayer vs ai, or just the regular ol' versus mode in private lobbies. A rather elegant solution to a rather complex problem.
- By Ash
- in News
A little over a month has passed and Telltale has already released the second episode for their Batman series. This might not sound like much, but given how many delays we've had to endure with some of their previous games its nice to have things rolling out smoothly for once.
As for Episode 2: Children of Arkham, its focus is squarely planted on Gotham's seedy underbelly and the Wayne family's supposed ties to powerful criminal organizations. A stark contrast to the usual "Joker wrecks half of Gotham" plotlines Batman games tend to go for, and a rather welcome change if you ask me. If you're interested in learning more, here's the recently posted trailer. It should give you a good idea of what Episode 2 is going to be all about: