- By Ash
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I have to admit, I never understood the raiders in Fallout games. Instead of simply robbing trade caravans and farms, or just picking up a shovel and doing some gardening in their spare time, all they seem to do is attack random settlements in order to pillage their meager supply of scrap-metal or some other nonsense. Why take such a massive risk for a comparatively minuscule benefit?
This continued to puzzle me until I finally played Fallout 4 and got to experience the wonderful life of a settlement manager. After seeing how incompetent everyone is, and how they seem to somehow lose a battle against two ghouls even though there are 20 gun-turrets guarding the place, I've come to realize that I hate settlements and all they stand for. Yet even though we share a common enemy, and an equal fascination with explosive weaponry, the raiders still continue to attack me on sight, and simply refuse to invite me to their overly-angry club!
If you've ever found yourself in a similar situation, and given that Preston Garvey is a character I have a distinct feeling that you probably have, you'll be delighted to hear that the upcoming Nuka-World DLC is all about being a wasteland bandit, conquering settlements, and bending the Commonwealth to your iron will.
- By Ash
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Planetside 1 was one of the first "MMO" games I've ever laid my hands on, and as such it will forever hold a very special place in my heart, but there's no denying that its heyday has long since past. With almost no active players and the last important content update being nearly a decade ago, I don't think anyone should be surprised to hear that Planetside 1 is closing down its doors for good.
According to the recently posted announcement, the Planetside 1 server will be taken down on July 1st, at 4:00 PM PT. Here's what the brief message reads:
- By Ash
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Battlefleet Gothic: Armada features one of the best "early adopter" systems I've seen in recent years. Rather than lock away DLC behind pre-orders or other such nonsense, every single person that buy the game by June 21 will be granted the Space Marine and Tau factions for free once they are finally complete.
June 21 doesn't just mark the cut-off period for this promotion, however, its also the date when the venerable Space Marines will be joining the fight against the mutants, the xenos, and the heretics. Here's the recently posted trailer showcasing their grand cathedral ships, massive weaponry, and the five Chapters that will make up the majority of your forces in the Gothic Sector:
- By Ash
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Unlike the Steam Machines, which were dead in the water before they've even had a chance, the Steam Controller is still receiving regular updates and support from Valve. Most surprisingly, the team behind it is still somehow managing to squeeze out a couple of new and impressive features almost every single month.
This time around its the addition of Activators, or in other words, a way to bind multiple types of input onto one single button. For example, you can use a singular press in order to jump, double tap the very same button to toggle crouch, and if you want, also add the ability to crouch as long as you hold the button down. There's a bit more to it than that, so here are a couple of examples Valve provided:
- By Ash
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Even though its not a traditional horror game, Killing Floor can be downright terrifying at times, especially when you're left alone and surrounded from all sides by bloated, tortured monstrosities. Did you ever wonder how that lone survivor must feel when he's stuck in some dirty old corner, with the only way out being straight through hell itself?
Well, wonder no more as that is exactly what Tripwire is attempting to find out with Killing Floor: Incursion, a VR shooter for the Oculus Touch. Here's the recently posted E3 trailer, it should give you a clear idea of what to expect:
- By Ash
- in News
After spending years watching Blizzard do one boneheaded move after another, always completely silent while doing so, its rather refreshing to see Jeff Kaplan, the Game Director behind Overwatch, come out and personally deliver news about the upcoming features. If there ever was a way to deepen my respect for a game, stellar community interaction would be a damn good place to start!
As you can probably guess from the title, today's Developer Update is all about the competitive mode. Through the video below you'll be able to see Kaplan talk about the team's goals with the competitive format, their thoughts on the current balance, what sort of rewards you can expect, and how exactly the ladder will work. If you don't have the 10 minutes necessary to go through all of it, I'll also include a brief summary:
- By Ash
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While I definitely enjoyed Lords of the Fallen its not without its flaws, and its by no means equal to the juggernaut that is Dark Souls, but it got far closer than many other games. With some more experience under their belts, and perhaps a bit more time, I could easily see the developers crafting a worthy offshoot for all Souls fans to enjoy.
Whether The Surge, their upcoming sci-fi RPG inspired by the Souls formula, is going to be the breakthrough we're all looking for, I don't know, but its certainly interesting enough to keep an eye out for. If you're wondering what it looks like in action, here's 10 minutes of robot-smashing gameplay IGN recently recorded alongside some of the developers:
- By Ash
- in News
Free weekends used to be a somewhat rare occurrence on Steam, but these days Valve is offering at least one or two samples to pique your interest each week. Best of all, they've decided to mostly focus on games that are currently under development, and as such would benefit the most from people being able to try them out before unsealing their wallets.
As you can probably guess from the title, this week's offer is Killing Floor 2, a zombie slaying shooter that underwent a fair share of controversy over the past couple of months due to a rather slow development schedule, even by Early Access standards. With the most recent update being only a couple of days old at this point, now would be the best time to give it a try and see for yourself if all of the complaining is justified or not.
If you're wondering what the latest patch brought with it, here's the short "Bulls-Eye" trailer that should get you up to speed:
- By Ash
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Throughout my 20 or so hours with Blood and Wine (you can read my review here) I can't say I ever encountered any serious bugs, but as is to be expected with open world games there were a fair few "land mines" people ended up stepping on. While I haven't heard any reports of game-breaking issues, there were still some that completely stopped quest chains from progressing, caused Roach to flip out even more than usual, and other such unpleasant things.
Thankfully, most of these problems should now be resolved for the PC version as Patch 1.22 has recently been made available. For those of you playing on the console versions, worry not, the update will be coming your way in the near future as well.
- By Ash
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As I've mentioned in my review of Blood and Wine, Gwent is a card game I am still puzzled by. On one hand its a well polished (and addicting) mini-game that has managed to achieve such levels of popularity its frankly astonishing, but on the other its a complete train-wreck in terms of balance, with the best player most often being decided by the deck itself. So why on Earth have I spend over 10 hours playing it and collecting every single card!?
If you're like me, and I know for a fact that this group boasts quite the membership, you'll be both delighted and horrified to hear that CDPR has officially announced Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. Here's the recently posted trailer that showcases some of the gameplay, but also highlights a couple of much needed balance changes: