Last week we got our first hands-on time with PlanetSide Arena's massive 240-player battle royale mode. It was chaotic and fun, and today the multiplayer shooter enters Early Access on Steam so you can try it yourself.
PlanetSide Arena is free to play in Early Access, but there's a Recruit Edition selling for $20 that comes with 80 standard crates and an alpha strike banner. We've got 30 Steam keys for the Recruit Edition, and we've giving them away, raffle-style!
To enter the raffle, just enter your email in the widget below. We won't see the email address you enter and Godankey won't save it—it's only used to send the key to the winners. (Here's a direct link if you don't see the embed below.) The raffle will be active until 9 am PDT tomorrow, at which point it will close and we'll send out keys to the winners. Good luck!
I've collected my share of mushrooms in videogames: they're used for everything from potion-making to nourishment to crafting poisons to making an Italian plumber double his height. But Morels: The Hunt is a game specifically about collecting mushrooms. Explore the wilderness of the United States, hunt and gather different mushrooms, experience different regions and seasons, and use the in-game camera to photograph wildlife. Check out the serene and beautiful trailer above.
According to the official site, Morels: The Hunt will feature realistic weather conditions across seven different US maps. Gathering mushrooms and photographing wildlife will earn you points you can spend in the in-game store for items like a headlamp for night-hunting, a raincoat, first-aid kits, an ATV, and bug spray to keep the ticks off you.
There's even an unlockable exploration mode that lets you play as an animal, and there are lots of animals shown in the trailer: birds, foxes, wolves, raccoons, and even an alligator. And the moment I saw the Polaroid-style camera I knew this was a game I'd have to play. Morels: The Hunt is currently listed on Steam with a release date of October 15.
The Epic Game Store giveaways have been especially good lately, but today they're just spoiling us. Six whole Batman games split across two trilogies, free to snag here for the next week and keep forever. The complete Batman Arkham series, full of bone-crunching violence and rainy neon streets, and the more comedic and family-friendly Lego Batman series.
The Arkham trilogy by Rocksteady are all excellent third-person brawler adventures. Yes, even the third game, Arkham Knight, which has a bit of a bad rap. Even after a botched PC launch forced them to pull the game from sale for additional porting work, most gaming PCs at the time struggled to run Knight at a consistent 60fps at the time. Fortunately, most gaming PCs (even laptops) now have enough muscle to deliver a smooth and pin-sharp bat-experience, and it's still one of the prettiest games you can play on PC today.
Pro tip: Arkham Knight's default Batmobile driving controls are borderline nonsensical on gamepad, and you're stuck using them at first. This presents a problem, as you'll be spending a sizeable chunk of the game driving it. Fortunately, the moment you complete the Batmobile tutorial, a new line—"Battle Mode Toggle"— will appear in the options menu.
Flipping that switch completely changes the control layout to behave more like a traditional driving game (accelerate and brake with the shoulder buttons), which makes navigating around the city far easier. When you hit the button to transform into tank mode works, it more like a third-person shooter. I highly recommend doing this.
If the Arkham series is a bit grim for you, there's always the Lego Batman series, developed by TT Games. Perfect for playing co-op with younger relatives, or just goofing around in for the young-at-heart, as they're gleefully slapstick nonsense and lean into a lot of the weirder parts of Batman lore. You'll meet plenty of lesser-seen villains, and the third game has Batman fighting cosmic threats alongside the Justice League. Unlike the earlier Lego Star Wars games which pantomimed their way through every dramatic scene, this series is fully voiced. Sadly they couldn't rope in Mark Hamill as The Joker again, proving that there's no such thing as a perfect game.
You can grab the Batman games here on the Epic Games Store up until September 26th. It's worth noting that—while Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are the GOTY editions bundling all DLC—Arkham Knight's DLC is not only not in the bundle, but also not available through the Epic Games Store.
There's more to look forward to next week as well. If you tune in at the same Bat time, same Bat channel, Epic are giving away surreal cosmic oneness simulator Everything and claustrophobic and intense FPS Metro 2033 Redux, both of which contain bats of assorted sizes too.
There are few scenarios in games as inherently doom-laden as being told you're a (mostly) expendable clone. Granted, in Crying Suns—released today from new studio Alt Shift—you're an important clone. A famous admiral, even, rolled out along with a ship and crew as a last ditch effort to restore power to an entire (ostensibly evil) galactic empire that has mysteriously gone dark. But you're still a clone, and that means that you're probably going to be exploding at some point.
With your expendability confirmed, it's not too surprising that Crying Suns bills itself as a "tactical rogue-lite", and bears no small similarity to the high-stakes spaceship management sim, FTL. Where it diverges is its focus on narrative. It's a large, strange universe out there, inspired by Dune, the Foundation novels (which I admit to not having read), and I can't help but feel a bit of Warhammer 40,000 and Lexx inspiration in here, too. Understanding what makes the factions prowling this dead empire tick is essential for survival, and your clone's memory is a bit fuzzy on the specifics, at least until you have a chance to ask some questions.
As with FTL, there's a mixture of large-scale navigational decisions to be made, tactical real-time ship battles (commanding wings of support craft instead of individual crewmen, as in FTL) and away team actions. Planetary excursions in particular are a lot more fleshed out, with the status of each crewman involved being broadcast back as they explore the map below. While having certain officers assigned to a mission can option up more options and improve the odds, it's your life and death call in the end. From what I've played of an earlier version, it feels like it expands nicely on previously established concepts.
All this death and suffering is at the behest of Kaliban, a sardonic and intimidatingly squid-like robot. He's an OMNI, and machines like him were servitors for the entire empire. They kept everything running, from maintaining volatile reactors to growing food for the people. As far as you know, he's also the only one still functioning, throwing the colonies into chaos and murder. The good news is there's backups of him too, and he'll restore your memory of past excursions (as well as delivering plot recaps) when you die and have to start again. Even when you're dying, there's a sense of constant forward motion as you uncover more mysteries and meet more characters.
I've had my eye on Crying Suns for a while, and I admit that I've been a little smitten with it since its Kickstarter debut, accompanied by a dark and brooding trailer. Now that it's complete, I'm eager to dig deep into its dark and hostile universe.
Crying Suns is out now on Steam and Humble for £19.49/$24.99/€20.99 along with a recently-expanded free demo.
Remember Maelstrom, the last-ship-standing game of naval combat that entered Early Access last year? The one where you can be captain of an orc ship pulled by giant sharks, and the shrinking battle-royale circle is a section of Dead Water hiding a colossal sea monster that will just straight-up eat you?
Back when it cost $20, our own Christopher Livingston said, "The toughest part of Maelstrom, from what I've played, has been getting a full match." When you could get a match it was pretty fun swinging around whirlpools launching broadsides at your enemies, and going free-to-play will presumably give player numbers a bump.
"All gameplay and progress can be unlocked by playing the game for free", say developers Gunpowder Games. "No additional purchases are needed to enjoy the game to its fullest extent. There are no ways to purchase a competitive advantage in game."
You can however buy boosts to accelerate progression, and of course there's a variety of cosmetics and a battle pass in the store. "There are no loot boxes", they add. "All Items are directly purchasable in the store."
Those who bought the game during Early Access receive a bunch of freebies, including all ships, the seasonal battle pass, 10,000 gunpowder (that's the premium currency), and a bunch of mates and exclusive stuff.
Resident Evil 2 Reborn was a shortlived fan project that aimed to recreate Capcom's classic in Unreal Engine 4. Capcom inevitably shut it down, in no small part because it was working on its own Resident Evil 2 Remake. But out of the ashes of Reborn, studio Invader Games commenced work on its own third-person survival horror, Daymare: 1998. As of this week, it's available on Steam.
With three playable characters (an elite soldier, a helicopter pilot and a forest ranger), Daymare: 1998 is predominantly set in small town that has transformed into a dangerous hellscape riddled with all manner of horrible foes.
According to the Steam description, the game isn't for the faint-hearted: enemies tend aren't of the variety you can just mow down, and there are hardcore survival mechanics to contend with too. "It requires a strategical approach to combat and puzzles and offers a multi-character point of view on the story, revealing a deep and obscure lore," the studio writes. "Backtracking, managing ammo, collecting lore items, solving environmental puzzles and the overall difficulty will help players jump a couple decades back and get chilled to the bone in their first real daymare."
It's a homage to the '90s, both its film and game traditions, but it definitely looks like a modern Unreal Engine 4 game. There's a free demo to try out, and you can check out the Steam page here.
Two months ago things started getting really scary in EVE Online. First, the player-controlled territories of null-sec fell victim to an unprecedented alien invasion. Soon after, CCP Games disabled a key feature of EVE Online's in-game chat interface, leaving players in a much more dangerous world. Now the changes, which CCP says were "planned as a temporary event," are being reversed.
Before the "Blackout" went into effect, most star systems in EVE Online would show you a list of players who were currently in the same solar system as you. Given that space is really big and mostly empty, it was a useful way of knowing who might be nearby.
For those players who brave the lawless regions of EVE Online's null-sec space, where there are no rules in place to protect you, knowing who was nearby was invaluable. Miners could tell when enemy pilots had slipped into the system and knew to run for safety, or alliances could muster a defense if a scout spotted a large number of enemy players entering or exiting a star system.
On July 12, developer CCP Games removed that feature, making it impossible to know who was in a system with you unless they actually spoke in the local system chat. It made the null-sec regions of EVE (which heavily outnumber safer star systems) way more dangerous. To survive, players were going to have to adapt.
It was all part of a larger experiment in what EVE Online's developers are calling The Chaos Era. During the Blackout, I traveled to Finland to participate in a very naked version of its annual Fanfest—only this one was held inside of a random Finnish player's house. It was during that strange weekend that CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson told me that after 16 years EVE Online was beginning to feel a bit stale and CCP were looking to mix things up with bold new experiments—alien invasions and Blackouts being the first of presumably many more.
But now the Blackout has ended and, understandably, many players aren't sad to see it go. Announced earlier this week in a blog post, CCP Games said the Blackout gave it "an incredible amount of insight in terms of player behavior, sentiment and ability to adapt to rapid short notice changes."
"This will help to better inform us on where to take the direction of New Eden in future," the blog post concluded.
As one can imagine, such a radical change to EVE was contentious among its playerbase. While the Blackout initially seemed to be positively received, many of the big alliances affected by it quickly began to bemoan the change. The Blackout also coincided with EVE Online's lowest concurrent player levels since 2006, according to EVE-Offline, which reports on EVE's active player populations.
Though it's not clear if the two are related (but the causation seems likely), that led many to believe that CCP Games was capitulating to players upset over the change. But, as Pétursson explained on Twitter, the Blackout was always intended as a short-term experiment.
Regardless, EVE Online players are breathing a little easier now that they know what threats might be nearby.
Little Misfortune is an oddball, oddly creepy adventure game from Fran Bow studio Killmonday Games about a little girl and her friend, Mr. Voice, who convinces her to embark upon a quest in the woods to discover Eternal Happiness. It looks and sounds kind of cute, as long as you don't pay too much mind to the underlying concept of a young girl being led into the forest by a voice in her head. That's pretty clearly disturbing—and, as far as I can tell, far closer to what the game is actually like.
The list of individual features hints at more weirdness. You can pet a doggy, a fishy, a wolfie, the Kraken, the kitty and the foxy; you can also visit a pet cemetery with a shovel. Fall in love. Commit petty crimes. There's a monster! Despite the often unpleasant strangeness all around her, Little Misfortune herself seems quite nice: She seeks Eternal Happiness not for herself, but as a gift for her mother, who doesn't talk to her and drinks too much "juice."
And remember: There is no right or wrong. Only consequences.
It looks like there will be moments of humor and sadness, and a pretty dark tone throughout, but the art, music, and voices are excellent, and as an exploration-adventure that careens off into unexpected (and also sometimes unpleasant—Little Misfortune's home life is really not good) places, I think it looks promising.
For those who don't share my confidence (or would just like a better idea of what exactly is going on here), a demo is available from Steam and Itch.io; the full game can be had at Steam, GOG, Humble, and Origin.
Dota 2 is getting ready for the next ranked season, kicking off tomorrow, which also means getting rid of some of the game's naughtier players. Valve announced that it would be banning people in various waves, which started yesterday. What it didn't mention was the length of the bans, and some players are now discovering their account is in jail for up to 19 years.
The Steam forum and subreddit are full of people complaining about getting banned for nearly two decades, and even more people revelling in their comeuppance. It's an oddly specific date, but Valve didn't choose it. January 19, 2038 is the latest date that can be set using 32-bit time representation, it turns out, so if you've received a 19-year ban, you're probably banned forever.
Valve is planning to start issuing weekly bans in the coming weeks, too, which will strike without warning. Banned accounts will also have the associated phone number blacklisted from being able to access ranked matchmaking. Valve also hopes to reduce the amount of smurf accounts, recently fixing a loophole that let them play without a unique phone number.
Check out the Dota 2 blog for more details on the update.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds 4.3 update is coming to the PC test server soon, bringing with it another progression system. While the Weapon Mastery system let players level up their guns by scoring kills and doing damage, Survival Mastery focuses on all the other stuff.
Looting, using items, getting into scuffles and reviving your mates will earn you XP, netting you rewards whenever you level up, mostly for the new PUBG ID. The ID lets players "express themselves", which means showing off stats and gussying the ID up with backgrounds, emblems and poses. For levels where you don't get a PUBG ID reward, you'll get BP instead.
I usually forget about all that stuff after I tweak it once, so I'm more interested in the match summary timeline and playstyle data. The timeline recaps all the survival activities players performed in a match, and it's possible to view previous matches, so you can track your habits. An analysis of your recent matches can also be viewed from the Survival tab, revealing your most prominent traits.
The update will also introduce a new shotgun, the DBS, which will only be available via care packages at first. PUBG Corp has also made tweaks to shotguns generally, as well as the S686, S1987 and the sawed-off shotgun.
