If you’ve played Destiny 2 PvP this season, you have almost certainly been cut down by Hard Light. And then again. And again. The Exotic auto rifle became real strong after buffs this season, and has been statistically the most-used gun in Crucible. It’s a recognisable problem too, because it spits colourful lasers bouncing off walls and all over – not a subtle gun. Thankfully, Bungie last night tweaked this superweapon in a little hotfix patch. Initial reports are that it’s still good, just not monstrous. Nice.

(more…)

Look, maybe I’m overreacting, but seeing this did genuinely just make me do a high-pitched yelp at my screen, so I’m going to run with that emotion. Call Of Duty: Warzone‘s latest update has removed Bounty Contracts from the game. These were optional in-game missions where you had to hunt down a player from an enemy squad. You were told roughly where they were, and they were told you were coming. They were great. I wrote a whole article specifically praising them.

They’ve been replaced by “Most Wanted” Contracts, where your location gets revealed to everyone on the map. If you survive, all your dead squadmates get respawned. They sound neat, but… I want both. Why can’t I have both?

(more…)

Not even an apple a day can prevent mutations in Fallout 76. While the mutations here are hyper-unrealistic, you’ll still need to take precautions to prevent them appearing or reverse any mutation you may contract. Some mutations are worth keeping though. (more…)

Building your own base in Fallout 76 requires you to use your “C.A.M.P.” or the “Construction and Assembly Mobile Platform” (henceforth abbreviated to CAMP). As long as your CAMP is on a flat surface and not near any established buildings, you can build anything you have a recipe for. Workbenches are used to make and repair items, while boxes can be crafted to store all that junk you’ve picked up all around Appalachia.

(more…)

We had expected Spelunky 2 to arrive in 2019 but, y’know, it didn’t. Now creator Derek Yu has given a small update on progress, saying the plan is to launch it in 2020. Spelunky being one of the best PC games of all time, yeah, I’ll happily wait for it for roguelikelike platformer’s sequel to be properly finished. After Spelunky 2 is out, Yu says, UFO 50 will follow. That’s the compilation of retro-styled games ‘made by’ a fictional 80s company, which are really being made by a handful of different indie devs.

(more…)

Me and Legends Of Runeterra had been drifting away from each other, like lovers on flotsam tugged apart by cruel ocean currents. We’d ran out of surprises. The spark, as far as there was one, had gone. But now Riot have released Runeterra for realises, and the 120 new cards included in patch 1.0 have spiced things right up. It’s free-to-play, and now is a very good time to check it out.

The new faction is neat. I’m a pirate now! A pirate who is terrible at Expedition mode.

(more…)

Not long after the Wastelanders update dropped, Fallout 76 players started noticing that some of their weapons were disappearing after they died. But it wasn’t that they were vanishing into thin air – it turns out some opportunistic new human NPCs were looting players’ corpses, and nicking the best guns from their bodies. Then would just wander round using the stolen goods right in front of them like nothing happened. The perfect crime.

Thankfully this was definitely a bug, not a feature, and Bethesda have released a hotfix to sort it out.

(more…)

I first learnt about the Nazca Lines when I was quite small. There were a couple of Nancy Drew books knocking around at home, and one of the mysteries involved the Nazca Lines as a pivotal part of the solution. At the time, and because they were in a book, I assumed that they couldn’t possibly be real – that nobody would make huge works of art in a desert in Peru, so large that they can only truly be appreciated from a helicopter. And yet, they are breathtakingly real.

Now, Reddit user “papabanano” has devoted the entire space of their farm in Stardew Valley to recreate one of the most famous of the Nazca Lines. No wheat yield or intensively farmed pumpkins to be found here, no: only the Hummingbird. (more…)

Just 45 minutes of Outpost was enough to make me angry seven times about seven different things that the game does wrong. That’s roughly one wrong thing every six and a half minutes. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s pretty impressive.

It’s a shame, because reading up on Outpost before I started playing, I found about one promising thing every six and a half seconds. A cute little free-to-play top-down survival game, with pared-back resource gathering and tower defence elements, set in a pretty low-poly procedural world filled with angry nocturnal chickens? There’s not a single word of this that doesn’t appeal to me. So where does it all fall apart?

(more…)

The Showdown Effect

is what action movies would look like if they were multiplayer platform fighters. It’s a straight up deathmatch, where you’re trying to dive, stab or shoot your way to the top of the leaderboard. It has some clever ideas that create very funny moments. Above all, though, it is slick>. John Wick slick.

(more…)