I like to use Have You Played to highlight games that are interesting, even if they don’t always meet the mark. Phantom Doctrine is a flawed tactics game, true, but it has a very fun premise.
For the next two weeks, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is swapping out hostages and bombs for safeboxes full of… well it doesn’t actually say what they’re full of. I imagine it’s money, or gold, or something that old-timey English gangsters like, because it’s all part of the Grand Larceny event, inspired by 1920s British mobs.
Ubisoft have reimagined the old Hereford map to create a mobster hideout for a brand new game mode, The Stolen Goods. In it, players will need to defend their fortunes against attackers who know exactly where to look to nab that loot.
The weirdest thing about Lumberjack’s Dynasty – in a very long list of strange things – are the overheard snippets of conversation as you approach the game’s various NPCs. As you round the crest of a hill you might eavesdrop on a neighbour muttering something about how “everyone is talking about it”. Stroll up the drive of your aunt’s house and she’ll be whispering “yes, it will all be out in the open soon” to your uncle, before they both stop mid-conversation and slowly rotate on the spot like a pair of rotisserie chickens to face you.
We’ll see Assassin’s Creed Valhalla gameplay and learn about other upcoming games in a Microsoft stream on Thursday. With E3 off and everything topsy-turvy, Microsoft are planning to hold monthly showcase streams in the run-up to the launch of their new Xbox Series X later this year. Which effectively means they’re also hosting monthly streams showing off PC games, in these blessed days when Microsoft care about PC gaming again.
If you’re in the market for a gaming laptop and have your card details perilously saved to the Best Buy website, then this deal might well be for you, American readers. This 15.6in Asus TUF FX505DV gaming laptop is down 25% in the Best Buy sale, going for $830 rather than its usual price of $1100. For that, you get a Ryzen 5 3550H processor backed by 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 graphics chip for ray tracing fun. The 15.6in screen is a 1080p IPS number, with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz.
is a game drowning in details, with its attempt to capture a simulated vision of an American west that’s been gone for 120 years, down to every last shell casing, spittoon stain and sweat-crusted saddlebag. Probably my favourite thing about it all, however, is the obsessive, noachian fervour with which the natural world has been catalogued. There are some 234 animals in the game, with surprisingly few of them sharing the same models, and many interacting with each other in an impressive (if surface level) facsimiles of natural behaviour. 234! That’s nearly three times> the number in Planet Zoo, which is a game entirely about animals. Not a bad job at all.
Anyway, I’m going to review all of them. Let’s go.
Legends of Runeterra is now out of beta and there’s some new stuff to entice players back. A new region by the name of Bilgewater introduces pirates and sea monsters, as well as some new keywords to the rest of the Runeterra regions. The game offers something for everyone, whether that is the competitive nature of building constructed decks or the unique drafting experience that is Expeditions. There’s a lot of things to learn about the game, even if you’re a Magic the Gathering veteran or have sunk many hours into Hearthstone.
Legends of Runeterra has just come out of open beta and it has heavily expanded on its roster of champions. Champions are the strongest units in every deck and the ones you’ll be mostly forming your deck around. Each one of the seven different regions, or colour combinations, that you can build your deck around have four champions. We’ll be listing exactly what every single champion card does.
Legends of Runeterra is a card game and that means there’s a lot of cards that are all sorted into different groups. Here they’re called “regions”, which are like the colours in Magic the Gathering, or similar ways to categorise decks in other collectable card games. There are a ton of cards for each region, so we’ve put together a full list of cards that are found in the game.
Legends of Runeterra has a lot of skills and abilities hidden on each of their cards via the use of keywords. They range from being able to prevent damage to a unit, to ensuring an enemy can’t block your attackers. With so many keywords though, there are some interactions that are not obvious to those who haven’t played much of the game, with the consequence being that you could lose the game due to a misunderstanding of what an ability does.
