I dove into Descenders for the first time knowing absolutely nothing about it, assuming it was a racing game with bikes. Imagine my surprised glee when it turned out to be a roguelite. A very solid one.
Look, competitive Counter-Strike is nice and all, but on the 20th anniversary of v1.0 I do find myself consumed with dreams of a wholly different CS skill: surfing. It’s the freestyle skating to proper CS’s baseball, using a movement glitch to skid, glide, and soar through maps filled with abstract shapes. It is stylish as all hell. And people race surfing! Or you could go freestyle and hit cool tricks to wow judges! Maybe you could even do synchronised routines! Or, like with the X-Games, you could think it seems too much effort and just watch YouTube videos and coo approvingly. So let’s do that, for now.
FPS spy romp No One Lives Forever turns 20 today but alas Cate Archer is still confined to her room, unable to come out and play. The secret agent shooter has been tied up in legal gridlock for years. You’ll not find it for sale online aside from second-hand, but that hasn’t stopped RPS singing its praises all this time. A remaster still seems unlikely, but Nightdive Studios say they aren’t done trying to make it happen.
It was 20 years ago today that version 1.0 of Counter-Strike launched, boasting iconic maps like Dust and Italy. But what about the maps that didn’t make it out of beta? CS had over twenty which bounced around betas but were cut by the full release, including all the maps representing one entire mode. I revisited the cut beta maps today and was surprised by quite how many I remembered, a lot of weird fond memories mixed in with a few moments of “Oh yeah obviously I see why this was cut”. Come, let’s revisit them.
Even for folks who think they’re tired of games being remastered, I reckon there’s one personal favorite that can thaw a jaded heart. I’d also be willing to bet that this Sam & Max remaster will be the one for a good lot of you. Some former Telltale developers have reconvened under the new name Skunkape Games, snagged themselves the rights to their old episodic Sam & Max games, and have remastered season one, Sam & Max Save The World. If that weren’t enough, it’s less than a month from launch.
The year 2020 sure has been full of game delays and surprises, but one thing we’ve been able to count on is the man in the big green getup arriving every couple months. That’s right, The Master Chief Collection will finally be complete when Halo 4 launches next Tuesday, November 17th.
After seeing the stonking gaming speeds of AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X at the end of last week, the Ryzen 7 5800X was always going to have a difficult mountain to climb if it was going to prove its worth as a top-notch gaming processor – especially after the rather middling gaming performance of the even more expensive Ryzen 9 5900X didn’t really leave it much wriggle room to make its mark between that and its mid-range sibling. Now that I’ve finally been able to test one for myself, the Ryzen 7 5800X succeeds to some extent, but not without hitting a few stumbling blocks along the way.
You. Hey you. Come here. Closer. You look like someone interested in unorthodox game updates? What are you looking for? Stellaris? Right, right. Shhh. Keep walking. You don’t know me. See that guy up there, with the three arms and glowing eyes? Tell him you’re here for Stellaris mods. He’ll hook you up with some prime grand strategy space gear. We’re talking total conversions, quality of life updates… we’ve even got some aggressive new AI. Go on, you’ll like it…
And that’s how I was introduced to the Stellaris mod scene.
All is not well in the land of The Witcher season 2. Production of the Netflix series has reportedly been put on hold after four people working on it tested positive for Covid-19. It seems they’ve had a pretty rough going of it with the pandemic – they were forced to stop production back in March due to the first lockdown, after actor Kristofer Hivju (who plays a bloke called Nivellen) also tested positive for the virus.
is gearing up for its next season Neon Dawn and calling up a new operator for defense. Ubisoft have shown off Aruni and her tricky shock gates that will throw a wrench in attacker’s plans while letting fellow defenders pass through. You can catch an overview of her abilities and a bit about the rework for the Skyscraper map in a new video.
