A doomsday cult, a treasure island, and wizards will be the centre of Pillars Of Eternity II: Deadfire‘s three DLC add-ons. Yup, though Obsidian’s fantasy RPG isn’t out until next month, details on DLC plans arrived today. Arriving across July to November, the three DLCs will explore new areas, quest new quests, fight new fights, and loot new loot. (more…)
Almost nine years after first announcing plans to sell some player-made custom maps in StarCraft II, Blizzard are finally following through. SC2’s first two paid player-made maps will launch in the StarCraft Arcade with the next big update, with a share of sales going to the creators. Ark Star is a new turn-based tactical RPG in the world of StarCraft, while popular free mod Direct Strike will start offering an optional premium upgrade with cosmetics and extra modes. They’ll be priced at $5 apiece, though Blizzard don’t detail quite how big a share will go to the modders. (more…)
Why didn t the Mummy go to the party? Because she had no body to oh no I ve fudged it. Forever getting my skellingtons and mummies mixed up, me. But here are four Egyptologists less likely to misclassify their cadavers. Strange Brigade was announced last summer – a pulpy 4-player shoot n loot set in a 1930s of unapologetic empire maintenance. You play a group of artefact stealers fighting against lots of dusty proto-zombos. Today, Rebellion (developers of Sniper Elite and the Nazi Zombie Army spin-offs) have announced a release date of August 28, and blown the tomb dust off a story trailer, which lurks below. (more…)
Surprise! Just when you thought Samsung’s 960 Evo and 960 Pro NVMe SSDs were going to stick around for another year, today brings news of their shiny new replacements: the appropriately-named 970 Evo and 970 Pro. I’ll be reviewing them both very shortly, but for now here’s a quick run-down of each SSD’s specs and the kind of speeds we can expect to see from them when they eventually get released in the coming weeks. (more…)
Despite society/city builder Frostpunk being on my radar for months, I somehow only just clocked that the name’s a play on steampunk. The revelations continue: steam is something that can conceivably turn into frost!> The This War Of Mine devs sure can name a good game.
Anyway, Chillypunk is now out and standing about in the cold with a launch trailer, waiting for you to come along and buy it. Xalavier Nelson’s review calls it “one of the most tense, exciting city building survival games on PC”, so you might want to take pity on the poor thing and show it the warmth of your wallet.
Sticky grenades have arrived in Fortnite Battle Royale with today’s update, latching onto people and giving them 2.5 seconds to panic before exploding. The ‘Clinger’, as the weapon’s officially named, is an interesting contrast to Fortnite’s guided missiles, which removed last week because they felt irritating and unfair to fight against. But if someone is close enough to stick you with a grenade, you’re close enough to shoot them in the face. (more…)
The vast majority of PC gamers may own Nvidia graphics cards, but when it comes to the world of gaming monitors and adaptive frame rate technologies, AMD rule the roost. The reasons for this are unknown. Perhaps it’s because AMD’s FreeSync tech (see our best monitor buying guide for more info on the Free vs G debate) doesn’t require monitor companies to pay an extra royalty fee, thereby making FreeSync monitors cheaper than their G-Sync rivals. Or maybe it’s AMD’s way of pleading with monitor buyers that they really should, please, just get an AMD graphics card.
Either way, there’s another FreeSync monitor about to hit shop shelves, this time in the form of the AOC AGON AG322QC4. This one, however, is a little different. While it’s the company’s first display to get the snazzy FreeSync 2 certification, which should hopefully mean it has similar image quality and high dynamic range (HDR) credentials to the preposterously wide Samsung CHG90, it’s also got a VESA DisplayHDR 400 rating. Here’s what’s what. (more…)
It s a podcast special! Astrid Johnson takes us through the halls of London game show EGX Rezzed, on a search for oddities and weirdness. And she finds plenty of both. There s Stereopolis, a game projected onto a disc of frosted glass, or Wobble Garden, which is played entirely by twanging a bunch of springy door stoppers (pictured above).
It s an overview of the show for those who couldn’t make it this year. We also learn about the plane tinkering of Above, two-player sausage-dog cooperation in Phogs, and Disco Elysium, an isometric RPG featuring an alcoholic detective having an unconscious argument with his lizard brain. And then there’s the tale of Fernando’s chicken… (more…)
It s a podcast special! Astrid Johnson takes us through the halls of London game show EGX Rezzed, on a search for oddities and weirdness. And she finds plenty of both. There s Stereopolis, a game projected onto a disc of frosted glass, or Wobble Garden, which is played entirely by twanging a bunch of springy door stoppers (pictured above).
It s an overview of the show for those who couldn’t make it this year. We also learn about the plane tinkering of Above, two-player sausage-dog cooperation in Phogs, and Disco Elysium, an isometric RPG featuring an alcoholic detective having an unconscious argument with his lizard brain. And then there’s the tale of Fernando’s chicken… (more…)
I was perplexed to discover that my partner, also a home-worker, was wearing earplugs as she sat at her computer. There was, for once, none of the thunderous din of new kitchens or loft extensions being built in one of the adjacent terraced houses, and nor was my own PC’s volume set high as I threw stompy tankbots at each other in XCOM-meets-Mechwarrior turn-based strategy game/boardgame adaptation BattleTech. Stony-faced, she informed me that listening to me sporadically bellow “Oh god, it’s so boring>” every few minutes is not terribly conducive to work. I didn’t even know I was doing it.
I don’t like calling things boring. It’s an aggressively dismissive criticism, and often says as much about the accuser as the accused. I’ve returned to BattleTech repeatedly, in different moods and with absolute determination to find the fun in a game made from components I usually thrill to, but I keep winding up in the same place: bored. And then hating myself for feeling that way.