Saddle up, Samurai. Total War: Shogun 2 is blowing the battle horn—or bashing the giveaway gong, rather. This week you can snag the war strategy sim set in feudal Japan for free because Creative Assembly (and everyone else) would like you to stay home and play video games if you’re able instead of frolicking about in public during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Alongside the giveaway, a handful of other Total War games are going on sale.

(more…)

Alien Day was actually yesterday—chosen as April 26th because in our backwards American date system 4/26 lines up with the designation for the moon LV-426 where the xenomorphs were discovered in yon olde 70s horror movie. As a tasty treat with oh so many teeth, Alien: Isolation is still on big discount today. You can snag it for just £1.50/$2 until 6pm BST tomorrow, April 28th.

(more…)

Watch out. Pirates about. Legends Of Runeterra‘s first expansion comes out this Thursday, packing a new faction, 120 new cards, 11 new champions, and a couple of cosmetic mascots I actually care about for once. Thursday is also when the game sails out of open beta, launching for realises with patch 1.0. It’s coming out for mobile phones on Thursday, too.

Developers Riot Games have already shipped out some info about how the new cards work, so let’s dig in.

(more…)

A defining part of Deus Ex: Human Revolution‘s look is a golden haze over everything, a flourish that some mocked it for. I don’t know if Eidos changed their minds about the golden wash or just got sick of the jokes, but either way it was wiped away as part of the Director’s Cut a few years later. Bit of a shame, really. Purists and goldlovers, rejoice: an enterprising modder has faithfully restored that filter in DXHR Director’s Cut. It took a lot more effort than you might expect.

(more…)

There’s no proper WWE 2K game coming this year, which isn’t too surprising after the rough landing that WWE 2K20 had last year. Instead, 2K have announced something that seems, or at least looks, quite different. Enter stage left WWE 2K Battlegrounds, a game which sounds like a wrestling battle royale but probably is not. All we’ve seen so far is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson throwing John Cena to a crocodile—or is it an alligator—and a bunch of ladies going Super Saiyan.

(more…)

One way to upgrade your agents in XCOM Chimera Squad is via the assembly. Here you can invest time and resources into improving their equipment, improving field team ranks, and tons more. It can be daunting to know what to start off with first, so we’ve prepared a table with all the available research. (more…)

When Oculus launched their original Rift headset back in 2016, I was one of those people who was firmly in the HTC Vive camp. Back then, I just couldn’t see the appeal. The Rift didn’t do proper room-scale VR, it didn’t come with any motion controllers, and it was just as much of a faff to set up due to its external sensor. Fast forward to 2020, though, and how the tables have turned. As much as I like the idea of what the current HTC Vive Cosmos is trying to achieve with its modular faceplate design, it simply isn’t as good in practice as the Oculus Rift S, making this the VR headset to buy if you don’t have north of a grand to spend on something like the Valve Index.

(more…)

One of the most impressive mod projects going is Resident Evil 4‘s HD Project, a replacement texture pack which is so dedicated to the original look that the makers have even tracked down and rephotographed some of the buildings Capcom photographed for their original textures. After six years, the mod is nearing completion and… now here come rumours that Capcom are planning a full remake of RE4. While I wouldn’t expect the mod to give up, I am still glad to hear them shrug off the rumours and say ye olde RE4 still deserves a makeover.

(more…)

I warn you now that these XCOM Chimera Squad cheats will likely ruin the game for you, whether it is the challenge of running your own team with limited resources, or even the challenge of each and every mission being nullified because your agents are all invisible gods. Enter at your own risk. (more…)

I’ve been playing Gears Tactics with every spare moment of the last week. The second I’m done with this review, I’m going back for more. It’s superb. In fact, it’s good to the extent where, as risky as it is to say such a thing, I’d argue it sets the new gold standard for turn-based tactics.

I say that as a lifelong XCOM (and X-COM) fan, too, and without disrespect to those games. After all, the formula set by 1994’s X-COM is the foundation for pretty much the entire genre, and Gears Tactics sits squarely atop it. It’s a game about assembling squads from a pool of soldiers, and sending them on missions. There, they have a set number of actions each turn, to spend on moving around the map, shooting baddies, or using special abilities. After your actions run out, the baddies have a turn. In that much at least, little has been reinvented. But just as happened when XCOM arrived in 2010, Gears Tactics has redefined just how much fun can be had with that simple recipe for squad-based xenocide.

(more…)