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[Update]: After nearly seven years in development, the System Shock Remake will finally be launching in March 2023!
System Shock, previously known as System Shock Remastered, is a modern recreation of a classic action-RPG that had managed to revolutionize the whole genre. Besides creating a ton of confusion due to its naming, the modern System Shock aims to bring improvements to the graphics, gameplay mechanics, and most importantly, to the overall design. No more getting locked away from finishing the game because you didn't level the one skill you "clearly" should've known you would need!
After many months of in-house development, System Shock has now finally launched its Kickstarter campaign, and unlike many of its competitors, there is a fully playable demo available! You can download the demo for free on Steam, GOG, or Humble, but keep in mind that this is an early pre-alpha version, and as such there are bound to be various issues and bugs popping up here and there.
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We are currently half way through the Steam Summer Sale, and unlike the usual mid-sale lull that appeared in the past there is to be no respite this time around as the storefront is filled to the brim with a whole variety of games vying to get your undivided attention.
As before, I am here to offer you my humble recommendations on what exactly to grab during today's sale. I've chosen all of the following games based on two criteria, their quality and the depth of their discount, while the actual order of their appearance is completely random. With that said, let's get straight to it:
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Overwatch was seemingly destined to become a massive success even before it officially launched. The free Open Beta housed more than 10 million players, and if that wasn't ridiculous enough, Blizzard has announced that they have managed to sell more than 7 million copies in the first week alone!
Its popularity extends far beyond simple copies sold, however, as Gametrics recently confirmed that Overwatch has managed to end League of Legend's four year streak as the most played game in Korea's gaming cafes, a task many thought would be next to impossible given how entrenched LoL has become. According to the report, Overwatch is currently occupying ~30% of the players, while League of Legends trails slightly behind at 28%.
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While the Youtube craze has slightly died down, Minecraft still remains as one of the most popular games in the entire world, with pretty much ever kid having their own set of diamond armor stashed away in hidden chest somewhere. Given its rampant popularity, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that there is indeed a Minecraft movie in production.
There is unfortunately very little information available right now, but according to Mojang we will be able to feast our eyes on the Minecraft movie on May 24... 2019. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea why this announcement was even made this early on given that I can guarantee 99% of us will forget about it by next month, but here's the full message anyway:
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G2A is currently the most popular game key reseller, essentially the video game equivalent of eBay, and while that is completely legitimate they've often found themselves on the receiving end of some rather damning criticism as multiple developers have accused them of peddling stolen keys. The prime example of this is the recent case where TinyBuild, the publisher behind Punch Club, accused them of selling an unbelievable $450,000 worth of stolen keys. Not only did TinyBuild receive 0 profit from this, they actually amassed a hefty amount of fines from all of the charge-backs coming in from stolen credit cards, a rather dire situation for an indie publisher.
While it might be too late to help TinyBuild, G2A has announced a couple of measures to prevent these sort of problems from ever appearing again. In an email directed to Eurogamer G2A stated that they will soon begin offering developers 10% royalties from all third-party keys sold on their website, and to top it all off, also give them access to their full database in order to combat stolen or fraudulent keys. Here's the full message, stitched together from a couple of quotes:
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After a week of testing and numerous changes to how the ranked system operates, the Overwatch Competitive Mode is now fully available for everyone on the PC. As for the consoles, they will receive this update at some point during the week once it finally goes through certification.
The first season of the Competitive Mode will only last 1.5 months, after which there will be a two week pause before Season 2 kicks into gear. If you would like to participate the only prerequisite is that you need to be Level 25 or above, which is somewhere in the ballpark of 10-20 hours of playtime, nothing truly unreasonable for what is supposed to be a serious mode.
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We're currently on Day 5 of the Steam Summer Sale, and if you're hoping the end is near so that your wallet can finally rest, I'm afraid that we're not even half way through just yet.
As before, let's skip the pleasantries and get right down to it by showcasing which games I believe are worth picking up during today's Summer Sale. My recommendations are based on two things, the game's quality and the depth of its discount, while the order of it all is completely and utterly random:
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After the atrocious Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, the Sonic Team vowed to make the next game worthy of its once-prestigious title. Ever since then the team was mostly silent about this as of yet unannounced game, but rumors started floating around earlier this month that the next mainline Sonic game would be arriving in 2017.
As it turns out, the rumors were completely correct. During the recent 25th Sonic the Hedgehog anniversary celebration in Tokyo, the Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka revealed that a new Sonic the Hedgehog game will be launching in 2017. You will find the video of the celebration below, though unfortunately its entirety in Japanese without any subtitles to fall back on, but thankfully Gematsu managed to translate the most interesting part of the whole celebration - the Sonic game announcement.
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Grim Dawn has been in development for a very long time now, initially only by a couple of people in their spare time, but after the successful Kickstarter in 2012 things started to speed up significantly. The small team was expanded, and soon enough Grim Dawn landed on Steam Early Access.
While it all started off shaky and somewhat unpolished, Crate Entertainment managed to continuously update Grim Dawn to the point where it became one of the best ARPGs released in recent years. Thankfully, all that hard work and dedication ended up being well worth it as Crate announced today that they have sold over half a million copies worldwide.
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Escape From Tarkov is a Stalker inspired MMO that aims to combine FPS/TPS gameplay with RPG elements and a fully fledged story campaign based around open-ended levels. Its heading to Alpha in August, and while there is little information available right now, I have to admit that the very concept had me intrigued from the get-go.
Unfortunately, watching the 15 minute pre-alpha gameplay demo recently posted by GameSpot has significantly dulled my excitement. While I won't say anything just yet in order to not "pollute" your viewing experience, I will just mention that you should skip to around 9 minutes in order to get to the "actual" gameplay: