As part of its CES Press conference earlier today, Nvidia announced it will be adding a new feature for its GeForce Experience software, called Freestyle, which allows players to add more than 30 image filters to whatever game they’re playing.

In essence, these function like the filters used on Instagram where users can use a filter of their choice to spruce up their own pictures; and Freestyle allows users to do the same thing except with their PC games. For example, players can apply sepia to fade the colors and give the game a more dated feel or apply black and white to skip the colors altogether.

Of course, not all of these filters are purely aesthetic, as some can be used to improve vision under certain conditions, such as a dedicated mode that will help colorblind players see a clearer picture and a Night Mode that reduces blue color in order to make games easier on the eyes during the nighttime.

There are 15 filters with 38 different settings in total, which include:

— Black and White
— Color
— Colorblind
— Contrast
— Details
— Exposure
— Half Tone
— Mood
— Night Mode
— Retro
— Sepia
— Vignette
— Depth of Field
— Special FX
— Adjustments

In addition to Freestyle, Nvidia revealed more than 100 games that it will be compatible with during the beta. Though many are somewhat mundane, there are some interesting ones such as StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void and The Evil Within 2 whose offered experience could change significantly depending on the filter the player uses.

Before you can access Freestyle, however, you’ll need to make sure you’re updated to the proper version. In this case, you’ll need to download the new version of GeForce Experience (3.12) and the new Nvidia driver (release 390), when they become available on Jan. 9. Furthermore, you’ll also need to activate the “Experimental Features” option in GeForce Experience‘s settings.

Overall, these filters look pretty cool, and while they might not match the scope of standalone mods in most instances, it’s great that Nvidia is providing users the chance to get multiple filters in one place.

Check out a trailer showing Freestyle in action below:

LawBreakers, the hero shooter developed by Cliff Bleszinski’s Boss Key Productions, is one of those unfortunate games that only ever makes headlines nowadays when something bad occurs, and once again it has, this time due to the game’s publisher, Nexon, declaring the game a failure and blaming its poor fortunes on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

This declaration came following the publisher’s latest financial report which revealed a deficit of $32.6 million, which was supposed to be primarily filled by LawBreakers.

As one might expect, investors weren’t all too thrilled by this performance and sought answers.

Here is the answer they received, per Nexon Chief Financial Officer Shiro Uemura:

“Our results in North America in the third quarter were below our outlook, mainly due to the sales from LawBreakers being below our expectations.”

“LawBreakers is a unique FPS developed for core users. We had very high expectations for its launch. However, the timing of its launch turned out to be unfortunate, specifically the blockbuster PC online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds came out right about the same time, making the market environment very tough for first-person shooters in general and for LawBreakers.”

So, as Nexon’s argument goes, the reason why LawBreakers failed is because of PUBG. However, when looking at the game’s history, it becomes clear that this argument is not entirely valid.

From the very beginning, LawBreakers seemed like a game that would be doomed to obscurity. As we highlighted in a previous article back in August, the game was supposed to launch as a free-to-play title, but it was changed to a retail release during development. This change ended up hurting LawBreaker’s life expectancy significantly, as while it did enjoy a one-time peak of 7,482 back in June 2017, that figure was reached during the game’s open beta.

Once LawBreakers actually hit retail in Aug. 2017 , those numbers took a nosedive. Peak players fell from 7,482 to 3,003 and dropped to below 1,000 by October. There has no been no sign of it recovering either. Even with a content road map in place, the playerbase has continued to dwindle and is now in the double digits.

However, even with that unfortunate decision, timing did play a factor in all this — just not in the way Nexon describes.

Rather than PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, it was the decision to release LawBreakers during a time when the hero shooter genre was (and still is) dominated by the likes of Overwatch and Paladins. Compared to those two, LawBreakers never sparked widespread interest nor did it do enough to lure potential players away from other titles. As many will tell you it borrows far too much from already established hero shooters, without doing enough on its own to separate it from the pack.

There is no greater evidence of that fact than by checking how much attention it garners in the media. The last time anything about this game was widely reported on was back in December when it had a special holiday event. Before that? More stories about the game’s dwindling player count. As I said before, LawBreakers is one of those games that only really makes headlines when something bad occurs — primarily because there is rarely anything good to say about it.

Even on a personal level, despite having no love for the hero shooter genre, I can still at least tell you about Overwatch and Paladins thanks to word of mouth. On the other hand, I can do no such thing for LawBreakers unless I go out of my way to research the topic (such as finding Steamchart numbers).

So, yes, while PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the game on Steam right now and there’s no doubt that it hurt LawBreakers to some degree, to cite PUBG as the singular cause of the LawBreakers’ poor fortunes (neither Overwatch or Paladins are mentioned in the report) seems off. The bottom line is that even with PUBG around, other games on Steam — even those within the same genre — still managed to be successful, whereas LawBreakers was never doing entirely well to begin with.

LawBreakers has many problems, but PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is just one.

Following rumors last month which suggested that an Injustice 2 PC port was on the way, Warner Bros. has given those rumblings validity, announcing today that NetherRealm Studios’ popular DC Universe fighting game will arrive on Steam and the Windows Store this fall.

Here is a brief overview of the game via Warner Bros.:

Developed by the award-winning NetherRealm Studios, Injustice 2 features a massive roster of DC Super Heroes and Super-Villains and allows players to build and power up the ultimate version of their favorite DC characters. Players can fight their way across an epic Story Mode, ever-changing Multiverse and online multiplayer guilds – all while earning rare and valuable gear to fully customize their characters.

The Injustice 2 PC port will be handled QLOC — the same studio responsible for taking over the development of Mortal Kombat X’s PC version. NetherRealm Studios’ titles are known for having lackluster PC ports at launch, but this will likely not be the case this time around. As those familiar with MK X on the PC may recall, High Voltage Studios were the ones responsible for developing it at first before QLOC came along later to patch things up. Overall, the community was satisfied with QLOC’s efforts, so hopefully they’ll find Injustice 2’s PC port to be adequate right off the bat.

Technical details for the PC version have not been announced.

In addition to the fall release, an open beta will start tomorrow which users can participate in through Steam.

Injustice 2 is available now for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been having a lot of server issues lately. It seems like everyday that PUBG players are experiencing downtime, connection issues, login problems, and server crashes when trying to play the game.

Apparently this is because Bluehole didn’t expect the game to become so popular, so quickly and are having a hard time deploying enough server resources to handle so many concurrent players during peak hours.

In a developer blog, the PUBG team says that they’ve been “continuously upgrading the service architecture to address the increasing concurrent player numbers,” but that there have been “unexpected issues during peak times.”

“The number of users increased faster than our development speed,” says PUBG developers.

Going forward, the PUBG development team says that they’ve “doubled” their efforts to improve the quality of the service to avoid these types of connection issues while also trying to continuously work on optimizing the game and make gradual improvements.

While the most recent address may allude to this being a new problem, those that have been playing PUBG since it launched will know that this has been a recurring problem. Server issues have been plaguing the game since launch and with the player base growing exponentially it’s easy to see why they’ve failed thus far to provide a satisfactory experience.

But this is the problem with Early Access games, you can’t really blame the developers here. Players who purchased PUBG in Early Access willingly should expect that the experience is not going to be perfect.

The developers of Hawken are shutting down the servers for their first-person Mech combat game on Steam.  It’s only been three years since the game released, but apparently the developers are moving on to new things.  In a Facebook post to fans, the Hawken dev team says that they are shutting the servers down to “refocus our development efforts.”

The PC version of Hawken will be removed on January 2nd, 2018.  All of the downloadable and purchasable content for the game will also be unavailable starting today October 2nd, 2017.

“It’s been an incredibly rewarding experience working alongside such a dedicated PC player base,” reads a note from the developer.  “We look forward to creating more great games based on what we’ve learned.”

Hawken had a ton of buzz heading into its intial release as the premise of fast paced, first-person, Mech combat is a fascinating premise.  Despite its upbeat tone, the message does fall on a community that is somewhat baffled by the decision to shut down the servers completely without offering any other way to play game via LAN server.

There’s been no mention of the Hawken team shutting down the PlayStation or Xbox version of the game.

An offshoot game mode of Fortnite that apes the popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has prompted a response from Bluehole Inc.  The company recently issued a statement regarding the community concern about the similarities between Fortnite and PUBG.

In a press release from the company, they describe an ongoing relationship with Epic Games in which they license the Unreal Engine 4.  However, Bluehole says that they are concerned that Fortnite “may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known.”

The press release also states that “The development team for PUBG has no relationship to Fortnite’s development as concerns around User Interface (UI), gameplay and structural replication in the battle royale mode exist.”   The company also lodges complaints against Epic Games in that they’ve used references to PUBG in their promotion of the game which is set to arrive as a free download in the near future. 

Chang Han Kim of Bluehole claims that the developers of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds may be looking to take action against Epic for these reasons.  “The PUBG community has and continues to provide evidence of the many similarities as we contemplate further action.”

What this further action is is anyone’s guess.  Could Bluehole be gearing up for a legal battle with Epic Games?  The wording of their recent statements certainly sound like it.  The popularity of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is undeniable, but this game is certainly not the first of its kind.

With Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA just one day away from release, NIS America has dropped a bombshell that is sure to devastate a good portion of fans: the PC version of Ys VIII will be delayed from its Sept. 12 release date to an unannounced one.

As you might recall, the latest of Adol’s many adventures was set to debut tomorrow for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PC. However, due to some setbacks, NISA opted to delay the PC version of the game in order to “improve gameplay quality”.

Here is the announcement as seen on the Ys VIII Steam page:

——

Hello Everyone,

We regret to inform everyone that the release date for Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA on PC has been pushed back due to continued efforts in improving gameplay quality.

We sincerely apologize to our fans who have been looking forward to this release. Ultimately, our goal is for fans to enjoy a high-quality game. We are providing the extra care in the PC development of the game by taking time to enhance the overall quality of gameplay.

If you have made a pre-purchase on Steam and would like to get a refund, please use the link provided below for instructions on requesting a refund:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6695-QIKM-7966&l=

For any purchases or pre-orders made outside of the Steam channel, please contact the corresponding refund support for that channel.

A new release date will be announced as soon as it is available.

Thank you for your time, support, and patience with this matter.

Best,
NISA Team

——

Though this is clearly a setback for fans on the PC who had been waiting for the game to come, its a better than NIS America releasing the game in a buggy state and pissing off players who paid money well in advance. This would be the case for any game, really, but Ys ranks among the best RPG series in history and it deserves to be played in its absolute best state.

Fortunately, this delay has no impact on the PS4 an PS Vita versions of the game, which launches tomorrow in North America and Sept. 15 in Europe. As for those on the PC, the best they can hope for is that the delay isn’t too long.

LawBreakers will only be a month old by the end of the week, but it appears its future is already set in stone thanks to a content roadmap for Q4 2017 that Cliff Bleszinski and his studio, Boss Key Productions, teased on Twitter recently.

As seen in the image, future content for LawBreakers on the PlayStation 4 and PC will comprise of new maps (Namsan and Gateway), various new features, Boss Leagues, and a new class. And, of course, run-of-the-mill updates will also be rolled out throughout the year. The image does imply that this content will come out sequentially (from left-most image to right), but the game’s Twitter account does also note that video game development and its changing nature is always subject to change.

This announcement comes at a time when LawBreakers isn’t doing particularly well on the PC (and potentially on the PlayStation 4). As stated in a previous article, despite receiving favorable reviews and being introduced to a seemingly receptive market, the game has simply been unable to find a solid foothold. At the time of publishing that earlier piece, the game only had a peak of 354 players within the last 24-hour period and that number has only dropped — albeit marginally — since then.

At the very least, Bleszinski doesn’t seem all too worried about the low numbers and has suggested on at least one occassion that LawBreakers has what it takes to be a major player in the gaming world.

“It’s a marathon not a sprint,” he said in an interview. “I’d rather be the underhyped game that slowly ramps up into something that people adore than something that comes out with way too much hype that there’s a backlash for, which is why I think the Steam reviews are so positive.”

For the time being, however, whether this optimism alludes to better times for the title or is simply blind remains to be seen.

LawBreakers is available via PS4 and PC.

Love it or hate it, League of Legends has been one of the biggest titles in the gaming world ever since it burst on the scene in 2009. No place is better evidence of that fact than Twitch, where it was the top game for 3 entire years straight. However, it seems that streak was broken in August due to the surging popularity of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

This turn of events was revealed on Twitter by GAMOLOCO, a site that tracks and records Twitch live streaming viewership data. By registering on the site and choosing to display the data by month, you can see the various parameters that were used to conclude that PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds did indeed beat out League of Legends as the most-viewed game on Twitch in August.

Here is a quick breakdown:

*For reference, Max CCV’s refers to the highest number of concurrent viewers, AVG CCV’s refers to the average number of concurrent viewers, AVG Channels refers to the average amount of channels streaming the game and ACC refers to the average amount of viewers per channel.

As you can see, PUBG managed to beat out LoL in every single category except for ACC (average amount of viewers per channel) and that can be owed to the fact that despite having a similar amount of average concurrent viewers, there were was nearly 1000 more channels streaming the game on average.

Some of you will surely be wondering why this development is such a big deal, so here’s the deal: from Oct. 2014 to July 2017, League of Legends has been on an absolute tear on Twitch, consistently posting higher numbers than any other title to be released within that period. Now, imagine some of the most hyped-up titles that have come out within that period, such as various CoD titles, Dark Souls 3, No Man’s Sky, Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5, and consider that even at their peak, they couldn’t beat out a game that came out in 2009 for even a month. Regardless of whether it was an AAA title or not, League of Legends couldn’t be beat. Hell, even Blizzard’s Overwatch — which many assumed would become the definitive eSports title — couldn’t even touch it.

Yet despite all that, a game that lacks the support of any major publisher and is still very much in its testing phase managed to do what no other title on Twitch could.

Now, of course, the question that needs to be asked is why this occurred in the first place. The answer likely has to do with the nature of each game.

League of Legends, with all its amazing plays, comebacks and entertaining moments at various tournaments, is still a very predictable game. A viewer who is familiar with the game can often correctly predict who will win in a lane based on the match-up and can sometimes even tell who will win the entire match based on each team’s overall composition. Its just an inescapable fact that some champions have an advantage over others and a person in the disadvantageous position will almost always lose unless their teammate renders the appropriate amount of aid — though, of course, this course of action will be predictable as well. There are definitely outliers and plenty of surprises to be had, but LoL often finds itself in an unchanging state for an extended period of time unless Riot (or a professional player) shakes things up.

Conversely, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, as a battle royale, is in a state of constant chaos. Though the general rule — be the last one standing — is always the same, how that goal is achieved changes on a game-by-game basis. For example, the safe zone shrinks as the match progresses, forcing players to come into contact with one another, as well as encouraging them to employ various playstyles and tactics within a single match. Similarly, knowing that anything can happen at any given time causes an extreme amount of tension that is unmatched by almost any other genre. Each action needs to be planned out or deliberate or you might find yourself being gunned down for no good reason. On the flip side, there’s nothing stopping you from being immediately gunned down upon entering a house, making any amount of planning and tactics useless.

Though this obviously doesn’t speak for everyone, it’s simply more exciting to watch a game that finds new ways to excite you with every match, than one which will play out the same outside of extenuating circumstances.

So what does this mean?

For League of Legends, not much. It sounds cheesy to say this, but second place is perfectly fine — especially if it’s still posting incredibly strong numbers. Nothing has suggested that the game is in decline and there’s nothing stopping it from regaining first place once the next major patch comes out. Love it or hate it, LoL looks like it will be here for the long haul.

On the other hand, this means a lot for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. As stated before, this game hasn’t even been officially released yet and it still managed to beat out League of Legends — even if only for one month. There has been several games of its ilk before, but nothing quite like PUBG. Many have sung its praises and it has been breaking records left and right, with some saying it is a shoo-in for Game of the Year.

At this point, even naysayers have to admit that PUBG is not a flash in the pan, but a genuine cultural phenomenon.

Is LawBreakers on the PC dying or merely in the midst of regaining some lost footing? This is the question that needs to be asked when looking at the stats for Boss Key’s anti-gravity shooter.

As you may recall, LawBreakers arrived on the PC on Aug. 8 to what appeared to be a receptive market. There was plenty of marketing for the game beforehand and the majority of its reviews were positive, earning a score of 77 on Metacritic. Things seemed decent enough following its official release as well, with its peak amount of concurrent players peaking around 2000. Obviously, these weren’t the highest numbers, but it could do worse.

And, unfortunately, it has started to do worse — much worse.

Based on numbers from Steam Charts, what was once a decent 2000 has dwindled to a meager peak of 354 within the last 24-hour period. In fact, as of writing this, there are only 186 people playing.

So what’s going on? Perhaps it has something to do with the current payment model. Initially, LawBreakers was planned to be free-to-play, but it changed to a retail release during development. It appears that going that route might not have been the best option, especially if you consider that the highest numbers the game ever received was during its beta periods. Of course, even if that is the case, then making it free-to-play might not be the best option right now, unless BossKey is content with upsetting early adopters who put down $30 and are playing the game. There is precedent, however, such as what happened when Evolve became a f2p title on Steam.

On the other hand, LawBreakers present struggle could simply be a result of entering the scene at the wrong time. In a genre that is dominated by Overwatch (and Paladins to a lesser degree), perhaps Boss Key was too optimistic in believing it could establish a solid foothold in the market. What’s more, the fact that it borrowed Overwatch’s loot box mechanic, yet didn’t do enough on its own to lure players away from other titles, clearly hasn’t done the game any favors.

That said, even if LawBreakers is in a tough spot now, that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way (and for all we know, the PS4 version could be golden right now). There is still plenty of opportunity for the game to regain some lost footing, but it has to act now. Failing to do so would mean it would earn itself a similar status as the many MMORPG’s that have fallen prey to World of Warcraft over the years.

Earlier today, Capcom released a new trailer for Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, revealing the final characters that will be available on launch and the final Infinity Stone: Soul Stone. The characters didn’t leave much to the imagination, but the Soul Stone was anything but, as the trailer didn’t fully explain what the heck was actually going on when the stone’s various abilities were used.

Fortunately, popular FGC personality Maximilian has had plenty of opportunity to learn the nuances of the Soul Stone ahead of its official reveal and was kind enough to release a video breaking down everything that the stone is capable of based on his time with the Gamescom build of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.

In an earlier article, I questioned various functions about its effects, such as how much health players would be able to drain, how much life resurrected teammates would come back with, as well as how long they’d remain alive after their resurrection. Many of these questions were answered in the video, but it turns out there is far more to the stone than what the trailer let on. Quite honestly, I thought the stone was insane at first glance, but its actually even crazier than I imagined.

First off, the Infinity Surge functions like a whip that can be used to drain both the yellow and red health of the opponents health and recover some of your own. The amount of health gained isn’t particularly large and you can’t expect to often hit someone who is alert and not prone to randomly pressing buttons. Overall, it’s strong but not necessarily crazy.

The Infinity Storm, on the other hand, is quite nuts. I wondered about whether the teammate would come back permanently at full health and it appears that one of the cases I considered came to pass: KO’d teammates do come back permanently, but they only revive with roughly 20 percent health.

Amusingly enough, that isn’t even the craziest part about the Soul Stone’s Infinity Storm. Viewers might have noticed during the trailer that both teammates were active on the screen at the same time and it turns out this wasn’t some special ability belonging to either character or dynamic camera work — this is another function of the stone’s Infinity Storm. Regardless of the reserve teammate’s status, both characters will become active on screen to wreak havoc on their opponent. During this time, the player is free to unleash whatever attacks and hyper combos that the game allows, presenting an exceptionally difficult situation for the opponent.

With such a strong ability, it stands to reason that there would be a major downside to using the stone and Max reveals that there is. As he explains, upon activating the stone’s Infinity Storm, the reviving character is left in a vulnerable state. As such, since the field doesn’t actually impact the abilities of any character, its possible for the activating player’s characters to get caught in a happy birthday (when both characters on a team get hit and subsequently caught in a combo). Furthermore, since the reviving character only has about 20 percent of their health, it won’t take much for them to get KO’d again.

Based on this new information, the Soul Stone looks like it could be devastating if used in the right hands. I was expecting Reality Stone to be the most used Infinity Stone (during the game’s infancy at the very least), but it seems the Soul Stone could also see an equal amount of usage.

Check out Maximilian’s complete breakdown of the Soul Stone in the video below:

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is coming out in a few short weeks and Capcom is looking to keep the hype at maximum levels before then, unveiling the Soul Stone and its fifth character trailer, showing off Firebrand, Jedah, Dormammu, and Ghost Rider in action.

The Soul Stone is the final Infinity Stone to be revealed and the wait was well worth it. Unlike other stones which had special properties when using its effect, this one is fairly one dimensional, though still seemingly impressive as it allows players to steal the opponents health when activating its Infinity Surge. The Soul Stone’s Infinity Storm looks to be equally impressive as it allows the player to revive a fallen character.

Unfortunately, the trailer — perhaps intentionally — doesn’t do a particularly good job in showcasing the nuances of the Soul Stone. The life bars are hidden so we don’t get to see how much health is drained, nor do we get to see whether it affects the yellow or red health bar. This is an important distinction because while draining yellow health is still a strong ability, draining red health means the opponent can’t regain as much health overall when they substitute their character. Similarly, we don’t see how much health a character gets or how long they remain alive when they’re revived by the stone’s Infinity Storm effect. Unless the stone’s meter takes a very long time to charge when compared to the others, then the ability to permanently revive a fallen character at full health is overpowered. It seems likely that the effect only lasts for the duration of the Infinity Storm, but the trailer ends before such speculation could be confirmed.

In either case, from a preliminary glance, the Soul Stone looks pretty strong, albeit somewhat wonky in implementation — a player who is doing well and is using the life drain effect properly will probably have both characters alive and have no one to revive.

Meanwhile, the trailer also showed off four characters of the demonic variety: Firebrand, Jedah, Dormammu, and Ghost Rider. The only character among the four new to the series is Jedah and we already saw gameplay of him at Evo 2017. Similarly, Capcom previously confirmed that Firebrand, Dormammu and Ghost Rider would be making an appearance at Gamescom 2017, so their inclusion shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows this game.

As for their movesets, the series veterans all seem to have at least one new move. Firebrand can create a violent gust of wind that launches opponents up into the air, Dormammu can swing his arms to instantly faceplant an aerial opponent and can use his Power of the Creator ability to summon fiery vines along the ground which bring opponents to him, and Ghost Rider has an attack where he repeatedly hits an enemy with his chain before ending the onslaught with a punch.

All in all, the Soul Stone, Jedah and the new moves for the veterans all look really cool, but we’ll have to wait until September to see how they play out in full.

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite arrives for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on Sept. 19.

Check out the trailer below:

Earlier today, Bandai Namco revealed the vaguely named Projekt1514 to be Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, the latest entry in its long-running list of Sword Art Online inspired games. And if you were to look at the reveal trailer and the new gameplay video, you might notice it bears a striking resemblance to a popular PlayStation Vita title from 2014: Freedom Wars.

Freedom Wars for the PlayStation Vita is one of the major Monster Hunter variants along with Soul Sacrifice, Ragnarok Odyssey, God Eater and Toukiden. Despite the crowded pool, it managed to carve out its own niche by having an interesting design and setting, along with unique combat mechanics. Just like in the other games in the genre, players are frequently tasked with taking down larger enemies that require more finesse than the average opponent; and that finesse came in the form of thorns, which are essentially grappling hooks which players could use to move around the field or latch onto enemies and attempt to cut their limbs or external weapons off. What made this mechanic so entertaining, is that not only would destroying these parts cause damage to the enemy, it would force them to change their movement or attack patterns (an enemy without any viable means to attack will resort to charging or jumping on players, for example).

Of course, the thorns in of themselves helped add to the complexity of the game, as there were three different types of them: red, green and grey. Red thorns could be used to trap and immobilize enemies, green thorns could be used to heal and revive allies and gray thorns could be used to boost a teammate’s defense or create barriers which blocked gunfire. When combined with six fully-customizable groups of weaponry and a customizable support unit with its own batch of weapons, there were plenty of ways to tailor your character to a given situation and there was little chance of finding a player who had the same setup as you online.

The game was very successful, attaining the second highest all-time opening sales for Vita software sold in Japan at the time and found a solid fanbase in other regions. Many had hoped that it would get a sequel, especially considering how the story ended; and while nothing was ever concrete, producer Junichi Yoshizawa did state during an interview in 2015 that a sequel would be possible depending on fan demand. Unfortunately, its the latter half of 2017 and there still has been no official mention of a Freedom War sequel.

Yet with the hopes of a sequel almost completely dead, there is still a lot for Freedom Wars fans to look forward to in Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet. Obviously, SAO: FB is not a straight-up replacement for a Freedom Wars sequel, but its hard not to notice the similarities between the two games after looking at some gameplay which recently surfaced on Dengeki Online’s YouTube Channel.

Just from this bit of gameplay, we see that players will be able to split into groups of four in order to carry out missions in multi-layered levels. Additionally, we see that players have two sets of weapons and there are multiple types of them (so far there are swords, pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles and sniper rifles). There’s no indication that any of these weapons will be customizable to the degree that was seen in Freedom Wars, but weapons with different effects have been a facet of the series for the past several entries, so there’s a chance it could reappear in Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet too.

There’s also the presence of grappling hooks which function somewhat similarly to the way thorns worked in Freedom Wars, though we only see it being used for movement in the video. It’s still possible that they could still be used for other purposes, such as support or latching onto giant enemies, and if that’s the case, then it might be tied into the game’s class system (for example, Kirito might be able to use the hook in a more offensive manner than Sinon because he is a melee class instead of a sniper).

Of course, there’s still the chance that placing such high hopes on Fatal Bullet might be a little too hasty and this point. Yes, the gameplay does resemble Freedom Wars so far, but its still an SAO title and they’re known for not having particularly large budgets. What’s more, developers now have to worry about using that budget to develop a game for three platforms — PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC — instead of just the PS4 and Vita.

Reservations aside, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet does still mean good things for Freedom Wars fans. Anything resembling a title as entertaining as Freedom Wars is greatly appreciated; and regardless of how well it does, Freedom Wars will be at the top of fan’s minds when they think of this game (it already is for some) which might cause them to become vocal for a sequel again. Hopefully, the right people listen will listen this time.

Stardew Valley, the popular farming-sim RPG is getting a multiplayer component added to the game in 2018.  The developer took to their blog recently to outline their plans for multiplayer in the game, which includes a beta test in the near future.

It’s also been revealed exactly what to expect from multiplayer in Stardew Valley.  As explained by the developers, once the multiplayer update is rolled out in 2018, you’ll be able to build up to three cabins on your farm.  Each cabin will be able to house a farmhand that can be controlled by one of your friends.

Essentially, Farmhands can do anything that the main player can do.  This includes fishing, farming, mining, marrying NPCs, and other activities in the game.  Each individual character on the farm will have their own inventory, but when a farmhand isn’t online their inventory can be accessed through a special chest in their cabin.

Friends will be able to be invited to any Stardew Valley game via Steam.  The details and process of which are yet to be revealed.  The developers also say that they’re working on other features for the game, which include player-to-player marriage.   However, they’ve made it clear that local multiplayer, split-screen multiplayer, and player versus player multiplayer are not in the works for the game.

A beta for Stardew Valley multiplayer is tentatively scheduled for the end of the year.  After which is complete, the game will get a patch on Windows, Mac and Linux in early 2018.  Following the PC release, the patch will then be rolled out to consoles starting with the Nintendo Switch.

The controversial crate system that was recently announced by the developers of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been explained in a little bit more detail ahead of the Early Access Month 4 Update for the game. In his explanation to players, Brendan Greene reveals what’s at the heart of the forthcoming crate and key system for Battlegrounds and why they’re choosing to roll these features out prior to the game being complete.

“The idea of testing, prior to full implementation, is at the heart of adding every new game feature in our game, and this includes the crate and key system which we believe will serve as the foundation of a healthy economy after launch. This is an economy that would and should benefit all players – both who are willing to pay and who are not willing to pay for vanity items. It is important that all our players are able to enjoy the various items that will be provided for customization, and it is even more crucial that we have a stable self-sustaining economy that maintains the value of the items you have purchased or gained,” according to creator Brendan Greene on Steam.

Green reiterates that the crate system in PUBG is completely optional, and that the game will be “fully featured” regardless. Or in other words to the community of the game “f*** you, we’re doing it anyway.”

There are many points of contention in the new crate and key system for Battlegrounds. The first is that buying keys to open crates for random items is an anti-consumer move that could potentially push PUBG down the road of Counter Strike in the near future. As it stands, players are currently enjoying a game that is still rough around the edges in many spots and eagerly anticipating features for it that would seemingly have a higher priority than what is essentially further monetization of the player-base.

PU Battlegrounds recently posted the highest peak player count for a non-Valve game on Steam.

When EA revealed that Star Wars Battlefront 2 would not only feature a full-fledged campaign mode and free DLC, many fans whooped and clamored at the notion of the Worst Company in America Award winners finally having a change of heart. Could it be that EA have finally changed their ways? Do they care about their fans? Well, they’ve published indie games recently, that’s good! They gave Mirror’s Edge a second chance! It was a bit pooey, but that’s not necessarily their fault. Have EA finally taken a miraculous turn from fiddle-playing robot Satan to a sparkling Jesus Christ? Hahaha, no.

You see, EA is like that guy on Fiverr who dresses up as Jesus Christ and calls your mate’s mum some form of profanity for a few quid. You can pay a pretty penny for him to give you a laugh and a tickle, but if you want the really good stuff, you’ll be wanting to pay double, if not triple, the price. EA’s dress-up Jesus is an act, a mirage of sparkling heavenly goodness, and nothing has shown this more than their treatment of microtransactions in Star Wars Battlefront 2.

In order to try and wring every penny out of their customers, EA have obviously introduced loot boxes into Battlefront 2. Like everyone is now. There are loot boxes in Activision’s Modern Warfare Remastered for God’s sake! In Modern Warfare Remastered, however, the items found in said loot boxes are purely cosmetic and while it may be repulsive to inject microtransactions into the remaster of a decade-old game to fill Activision’s insatiable corporate gluttony, they don’t harm those who play the game normally.

Battlefront 2, on the other hand, is a different tale. In what could only be considered a massive punch in your Marksman-H training remote, (Get it? It was a Star Wars joke.) Electronic Arts have decided to put Battlefront’s unlockable Star Cards inside the game’s loot boxes.

“Why does that matter?”, you say. Well, let me tell you. The Star Card system in the original Battlefront game was an unlock system that allowed players to equip weapons or extra abilities that they would otherwise not have access to. Purchasable through credits earned from completing matches, the items available in higher tiers were some of the most unbalanced weaponry seen in recent multiplayer shooting and, judging from DICE’s record with weapon balancing, the sequel will probably be the same. While the last unlockable gun in a game is never the best weapon per se, Star Wars Battlefront proved that combinations of Star Cards could lead to an immensely overpowered build, and Battlefront 2 has locked all of that behind microtransactions.

It goes without saying that when unbalanced items are locked behind a high virtual paywall, players are going to have to earn their way to become scummy little game-breakers. As soon as you remove that skill or time barrier and replace said barrier with the option to pay, it immediately becomes pay-to-win.

Loot crates will be available to buy with real world money, and as they add more weapons through updates and DLC you can be sure that they’ll also be locked behind loot boxes, too. With loot rarities and being able to purchase more expensive boxes with chances of better loot, Battlefront 2 will quickly become a battle for who has either the most time, or who has the most money they can lob into EA’s bursting bank account.

I’m personally not against the inclusion of loot boxes and microtransactions in games, in fact, for the most part, I’m all for it. Overwatch’s myriad of skins, voice lines, and sprays are all part of what makes that game so fun, addicting and endearing; Blizzard could learn to stop locking huge chunks of skins behind specific schedules though. Injustice 2 is a game that does a very similar thing to Battlefront 2 by giving you pieces of gear for characters, although not only are their effects not active during ranked play—and can be turned off in casual—but NetherRealm’s fighter throws countless amounts of loot boxes at you so often it can be exhausting to open them all.

If anything, Battlefront 2 shows that EA are likely never going to change. While they may not be as transparently money-hungry as the voracious change-thieves Activision, EA will keep finding ways for consumers to throw money at their feet like desperate men at a seedy strip club. From Ultimate Team to Dead Space 3 and now to Star Wars Battlefront, EA are the best in the business at grabbing your wallet and slapping you with it.

Only time will tell if Battlefront 2 will end up as bad as it’s starting to look like. After all, between now and launch day there’s definitely time for the company to make substantial strides towards making their game consumer friendly. As it stands right now however, EA are some very Hungry, Hungry Hippos, but their marbles are your paychecks.

TinyBuild’s Party Hard and TinyBuild’s Party Hard Tycoon are two very different games. The former is a game where you absolutely loath parties and instead of head-spinning until your brain drowns in blood, you “rationally” decide to coat the floor in it by murdering any and all partygoers you can get your hands on. Party Hard Tycoon is the exact opposite. As its title suggests, Party Hard Tycoon is a party management game where you set up and manage the events that all these spunky victims attend, and who knew it would be such a hard job?

Party Hard Tycoon is a game of investment. With your starting budget of $25,000, you have to pick one of two starting locales, a theme, entrance fees and some personnel before getting straight to work on pouring money into your party. Any items you purchase from the game’s three item categories—Equipment, Décor, and Trade—are there to stay; revisiting locations will still have items from previous parties remaining in their place allowing you to spend less of your hard earned dollars to get the party started. In the initial stages of the game, you can choose to either spend a lot on improving one location that you’ll be returning to often or spend a small amount to widen your coverage to across the city. Both choices have their own benefits and consequences, but even in this early Alpha Build, Party Hard Tycoon already caters well to multiple play-styles.

Items from each groups have their own uses and restrictions. Equipment items use up your electricity budget which differs by location but includes tech objects like speakers, DJs and smoke machines. Décor items range from mats and sofas for guests to hang out at to chat all the way to burning trees for building that ever-important hype. The last section, Trade, covers the essential consumables or any party: alcohol and food items. Depending on the party’s theme, you’ll want to have different amounts of items from each category to suit your guests’ expectations. For example, the 70’s and 80’s themed parties will have more focus on music and lights, whereas other genres might lean more towards food and drink.

Planning parties isn’t the only job that you’ll be doing as Party Hard Tycoon is quite an active game when the raves get going. While your guests are dancing, making out and trying to bottle each other, you have to make sure that the food and booze are constantly topped up, check that your personnel aren’t slacking off and turn on various electronics, all of which are on a cooldown timer. Even when the party is nearing its conclusion, you can risk investing more cash to keep the fun times rolling. Be careful though, as artificially extending the lifetime of the party may have diminishing returns overall; longer parties may end up decreasing your gross profit margin and heightening your party’s disappointment rating, decreasing the total amount of likes you can gain.

After the party’s conclusion, the total amount of likes you’ve gathered goes towards filling up your experience meter. Upon the meters fulfillment, you get to choose a reward. In its current Alpha build, Party Hard Tycoon’s available level rewards are on the bare side. Offering a choice of locations, party themes, and personnel. Right now, there are bountiful options to choose from but many—especially the personnel—don’t provide many differences from each other to make the rewards feel satisfying. Hopefully, as we come closer to release, PHT’s rewards will offer more of an incentive to keep playing through the full game’s campaign, extra maps and additional modes.

Party Hard Tycoon is an incredibly unique and entertaining party planning game. With the same style and comedic style of the original game, this spin-off has the potential to be another hit from TinyBuild. As of right now, the game is purely an amusing proof of concept that, when bulked up and fleshed out more, could be a great entry into an unventured subgenre of Tycoon gaming.

If you want to try out the Party Hard Tycoon Alpha for yourself, check out the official site here.

The ability to refund games protects consumers against scams and regretful purchases, but some would be surprised by just how frequently games get refunded. Garry Newman, the creator of Garry’s Mod, revealed that Rust has been refunded over 300,000 times since its release, adding up to a total loss of over $4 million. These stats were revealed on Twitter as Newman told fans that sales statistics were recently added to their backend.

While that may seem like a large number, PCGamesN spoke to Newman who said that refunds only equated to 6% of Rust’s total sales. This is similarly comparable to refund stats of other developers who he has spoken with.

Newman attributes these refunds to the game’s difficulty and mechanics which aren’t easy to learn. The most common reason for Rust’s refunds is that the survival game was “not fun.” He also believes that players use the refund system as a safety net so they can essentially try out the game as a demo.

“I put that down to people using the refund system as a demo,” Newman said. “I think in the long run, people knowing the refund system is there probably gained us more sales than it lost us.”

As Newman pointed out, it’s not all bad news. Rust has already sold over 5.5 million copies since it launched in 2013.

With Minecraft and Rocket League allowing PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One players to join forces–or the opposite–without having to buy rival platforms, console gaming is seemingly friendlier than ever. PlayerUnknown’s Battleground’s executive producer Chang Han Kim wants a piece of the cake, too.

“Cross network play between the PC and the console is definitely something we want to do down the road, and we don’t anticipate we’ll have any technical issues with that,” Kim said in an interview with VG247.

“But… when you consider the competitive side of the game, I do feel that there’s a balance issue between controllers and keyboard and mouse. That’s what’s making it difficult for us to do right away. If we’re going to allow players to use controllers we need to have the aim assist added in and things like that. We’re not going to be supporting it right away, but it’s something we’d like to look into later.”

Kim’s worry when it comes to balancing between PC and console users is very warranted, especially when you take some of gaming’s previous efforts into account. The 2007 FPS Shadowrun allowed cross-platform play between both Games for Windows Live users and Xbox 360 players back in the day; it was an absolute bloodbath with 360 players getting slaughtered against their keyboard and mouse wielding foes. Modern games, such as Minecraft, Gears of War 4 and Rocket League are games that take numerous actions to make sure that gamers are having a fair experience across platforms.

Gears of War 4 has full cross play support for co-optional modes with ranked matches having a toggle, allowing users to opt in or out of matches against PC players. Minecraft is mostly a co-operative experience too, and its clunky combat isn’t the game’s focus. Rocket League? Well, control setup doesn’t really seem to matter much. Nevertheless, bringing a competitive multiplayer game like PUBG to a cross-play experience may not seem like the smartest thing to do, but hopefully the developers can figure out a way to balance the feature properly.

Id Software co-founder John Romero is well-known for selling his belongings for hundreds of dollars, but just how much would fans pay for his personal copy of Doom 2?

Well, after a day of fierce bidding on eBay, Romero’s five-disk set of original Doom 2 3.5″ floppies have fetched $3,150. $3,150! The disks don’t even come in a box! And they’re only signed if you specifically ask! For comparison, you could buy over 1,600 copies of Doom 2 on Steam for that price in the current Steam sale.

Romero is one of the few game developers who are held to stardom, and it really shows. The Doom creator has sold many items with nothing more than his signuture adding to the value for over a hundred dollars, at the minimum.

For example, recently Romero sold a signed copy of David Kushner’s Masters of Doom book, a great book that details the founding of id Software, for $255. Before that, he sold a boxed copy of Heretic–a game made using the original Doom engine–for $1325.

It seems that fans of John Romero will purchase literally anything that the developer puts up for sale. If they’re willing to pay over three grand for an unboxed copy of Doom 2, just imagine how much they’d pay for his original Doom discs. Don’t get any ideas, Romero!

Source: eBay

The Last Night has been announced for Xbox One and PC, offering artistic cyberpunk platformer.

“The Last Night is what we call post-cyberpunk – it’s not the kind of dystopia the genre is famous for, rather it depicts an alternate direction for society. One where the fight for survival doesn’t mean food and water, but a purpose for living. Human labour and creativity has been rendered obsolete by AI, so people are now defining themselves by what they consume, not what they create,” says the developer.

Further details about the game give the trailer some substance.  The main character is Charlie, a lower class citizen who isn’t able to function in a world that has grown technologically due to a childhood accident.

The Last Night started as a prototype game for a cyberpunk gamejam and won the competition.  The small development team then continued to work on the concept to flesh it out into a full game, apparently.

The release date for The Last Night has been set for 2018.

The initial reveal trailer certainly fit that bill, you can check out The Last Night’s gameplay reveal below:

The Last Night Reveal Trailer

The week 11 update for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds will go live to main servers on Thursday June 8th.  While already live on the Test Servers, this latest updates aims to fix a number of issues in PUBG.  Expect about an hour of downtime around 1AM PDT this Thursday as the fixes are deployed.

The patch notes for the Week 11 Update for Battlegrounds can be found below:

Server Performance

• Improved physics engine performance on game servers.
• Mitigated an issue with the character stopping moving when a large amount of data is sent.

Client Performance

• Improved client performance in the lobby.
• Improved care package airplane rendering performance.

Gameplay

• Modified the “match ends in” timer from 5 minutes to 1 minute.

Bug Fix

• Fixed a bug that caused weapon icons at the bottom of the screen to not be shown when switching weapons after opening the inventory.
• Fixed a bug that caused a client crash when changing the character’s looks.
• Fixed a bug that caused Freelook (Alt) not to work while the character is jumping.

If you haven’t checked in with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in a little while, the game has saw some big changes with its big month 2 update.  A leaderboard wipe, the inclusion of a VSS Sniper Rifle, and new skins for Twitch Prime members have all been added to the game.

While we’re all still waiting to find out when PlayerUknown’s Battlegrounds will release on Xbox One or PlayStation 4, another Battle Royale game recently hit the Xbox Game Preview Program.  A similar game, The Culling, just arrived on Xbox One.

PUBG is getting a very powerful new weapon.  The VSS Silenced Sniper Rifle will be introduced to the game shortly.  In its current state, Sniper Rifles in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds are somewhat hard to come by.  And even when you do, you often times need to find a scope to use it best.  Furthermore, they’re incredibly loud.   Meaning that anytime you fire one you’re sure to give away your position.

Apparently the VSS will come equipped with both a scope and silencer.  I think we can safely say this will quickly become the most sought after guns in the game if only for the range it provides and the ability to stay undetected when firing.  A lot of games have silent sniper rifles in them.  They’re usually low-powered and inacccurate to offset the benefits.  We’ll have to wait and see just how powerful it is once it starts heading into matches.

The gun was revealed by Tweet, and it’s unclear whether this will be a random drop on the map or found in one of the cargo crates dropped by plane.  Either way, there’s going to be a brand new gun in play for Battlegrounds.

The PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds monthly patch is due out later this week.  The second monthly update is said to be addressing performance issues in the game, which include server and game client improvements.  A leaderboard wipe is also on the way, come May 31st.

Destiny 2 is coming to PC.  This is a known quantity, but many assumed that the game would launch on Steam or multiple platforms for PC.  Apparently this is not the case.  To close out the gampleay reveal Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime revealed that Destiny will be a Battle Net exclusive.

This is where Destiny 2 PC players will buy and download the game, as well as access features that are already included in Battle.net like connecting through friends lists and cross game chat.

The Battle.net announcement is probably the biggest surprise and will most likely outrage Steam supporters.

Though it’s been a trend in recent years to see the biggest publishers put their games on unique platforms like Origin, Uplay, and now Battle.net.  However, Battle.net has been reserved for Blizzard games in the past.  This would be a first for the system.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 initially released a number of years ago as an extension of the regular Marvel vs. Capcom 3 release. Just this past December though, not only did we get the reveal of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, but surprisingly got a re-release of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for PS4 in December and later for Xbox One and PC. There has been a call for a balancing patch for years and sadly that still isn’t happening, but a patch for the PC version is coming out regardless.

As revealed by the Steam listing for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, a patch update is coming soon to the game on PC. While you may be hoping for some big changes, this isn’t really doing all that much.

-Adds mouse support for menu navigation. (wheel scroll functionality also included.
-Improved compatibility with DirectInput controllers

The two changes coming in this update are simply making the experience smoother controller wise, as you can now use the mouse to select in the menus instead of a controller, as well as the DirectInput compatibility being improved.

The post does end with “please stay tuned,” so now the question is whether that just means on information for when this update goes live or if they are potentially working on additional patches moving forward. Odds are, we won’t see anything too substantial on any changes with the game considering we have Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite said to be coming sometime this year.

However, there’s likely different teams working on the two, so they could always be working on additional issues that could help. Netcode has also been a complaint, so it would be nice if we could get a fix that could help to improve that. Either way, the announced patch will be coming sometime in the near future, so keep an eye out for it.

The NPD Group has released their figures for video game hardware and software sales for March 2017 and saw big percentage increases year over year in almost all categories, with the biggest leap being in hardware as Nintendo released the Switch.

That said the Nintendo Switch was the number one console sold in March.  The chart topper was not only a best for the month of March among its peers, but it was also a best for Nintendo itself, topping it’s previous best seller the Gameboy Advanced which launched over 15 years ago.  NPD says that the Switch was one of the biggest successes of any hardware launch since 1995.  We gave the console high marks in our review of the Nintendo Switch.

Surprisingly enough, however, Ubisoft hit the top of the software list with Ghost Recon: Wildlands beating out The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the top spot.  For all the flak it caught, Ghost Recon: Wildlands has had the second best debut ever for a Tom Clancy title and is the best seller of all of the great games we’ve seen in 2017 thus far.  The Division still holds the top spot for a Tom Clancy debut though.  Mass Effect: Andromeda came in third, and that saw sales tail off behind that of which we saw for Mass Effect 3.  The top five was rounded out by a couple of PlayStation 4 exclusives with Horizon: Zero Dawn and MLB 17: The Show.

You can check out the full top ten below:

NPD Software Top 10 March 2017

• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Record: Wildlands (Ubisoft)
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild  (Nintendo)
• Mass Effect: Andromeda (Electronic Arts)
• Horizon: Zero Dawn  (Sony)
• MLB 17: The Show  (Sony)
• Grand Theft Auto V  (Take-Two)
• For Honor  (Ubisoft)
• NBA 2K17 (Take-Two)
• Nier: Automata (Square Enix)
• Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (Activision Blizzard)

It’ll be interesting to see if Nintendo can keep up the pace with their Nintendo Switch sales.  There was obviously a lot of pent-up demand for the new Legend of Zelda game, but the summer appears to be looking strong for the console with Splatoon on the horizon.  To tide Switch owners over, and to possibly entice new interest when consoles finally come back in stock, the excellent Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will be arriving later this month.

Blizzard make the announcement last month that the original Starcraft and its DLC expansion Brood War were getting remastered for PC with a release scheduled for this summer. For those that can’t wait for that and want to play some classic Starcraft, you can now do so completely free.

As of the release of patch update 1.18 for Starcraft, both the base game and the expansion Starcraft: Brood of War are now free to download and play on PC.

This news comes courtesy of the patch notes for Starcraft, which also mention a number of additions and bug fixes to the game.

To make it easier to multitask with Starcraft, the game has added windowed fullscreen and windowed mode, which you can easier switch between by pressing Alt+Enter.

The game also added better compatibility with Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10, which is very important as a result of it now being free to play. A large number of computers now have at least Windows 7, and with so many bound to download this now free copy of the game, this should help with any issues.

Anticheating measures have been improved in the game as well, so there shouldn’t be as many issues with potential cheaters while playing online. The online play should be much smoother as well, as they have “improved gameplay responsiveness during multiplayer by increasing turn rate to match LAN speeds over Battle.net.”

For those trying to download the free versions of the main game and the expansion, there are reports of Battle.net going down as a result of the traffic from this today. However, it appears to be up as of the time of this writing, so make sure to keep trying if you have any issues.

Make sure to download this free version to get that Starcraft fix for now and then look for Starcraft Remastered to arrive sometime this summer.

Apparently Bayonetta has debuted well on PC, according to data from Steam Spy.  The re-release of the seven year old hack and slash title has sold around 100K copies according to the site, and they did so deviating away from the usual road to release that most games have.

Ditching the pre-release, pre-order hype, Bayonetta simply was announced and launched.  With very little air between the two events.  It seems like the pent-up demand for Bayonetta to arrive on PC was in fact real making the release profitable for SEGA.

It didn’t hurt that Bayonetta was a great port, according to our review.  Which gave PC gamers many of the options they’d expect from a modern PC release while releasing at an attractive price point of $19.99.

The success of releasing Bayonetta on PC for SEGA could open the door for other titles to arrive in the future, with many hoping for other Platinum Games titles to arrive on the platform.  While many are hoping for a release of Bayonetta 2, that seems unlikely as Nintendo published the title for Wii U.  But other Platinum Games releases, like Vanquish could see the same treatment.

Heroes of the Storm made its debut back in 2015 as a MOBA based on the many characters from the expansive Blizzard universe, which has since added a few Overwatch characters to no one’s surprise. The roster keeps growing though and now they have added yet another Overwatch fan favorite.

Following up on the addition of Tracer, Lucio, and Zarya over the last year, Heroes of the Storm is now adding the cybernetic ninja Genji into the mix. Genji is fittingly part of the assassin class in Heroes of the Storm with his highest stat being damage, while also getting a bit of a boost in abilities from his Overwatch self.

Primary Abilities
Shuriken: Throw 3 Shuriken in a spread pattern, each dealing 65 damage to the first enemy hit. Stores up to 3 charges. Shuriken’s cooldown replenishes all charges at the same time.
Deflect: Become Protected for 1.25 seconds. Any damage blocked during this period causes Genji to throw a Kunai toward the nearest enemy, prioritizing Heroes and dealing 55 damage. Damage Deflected: 0
Swift Strike: Dash forward, dealing 215 damage to all enemies in a line. Enemy Heroes that die within 2 seconds of being hit with Swift Strike cause the cooldown and mana cost to be refunded.
Heroic Abilities
Dragonblade: Unleash the Dragonblade for 8 seconds. While active, Dragonblade can be reactivated to lunge forward and slash in a huge arc, dealing 240 damage. If enemy Heroes are killed within 2 seconds of being hit by Dragonblade, Swift Strike’s cooldown is reset.
X-Strike: Perform two slashes dealing 135 damage. The slashes detonate after 1.25 seconds causing an additional 270 damage to enemies in their area.

Genji is not the only Overwatch related item to be added to Heroes of the Storm here though, as the game is getting its first Overwatch inspired map with Hanamura. It has the look of the map of the same name from Overwatch and introduces payload to the game for the first time. It won’t be a carbon copy of Overwatch’s style at all, but it is going to be interesting to see how they implement it regardless.

Genji and the Hanamura map are currently in beta and should be going live officially in the game with the upcoming 2.0 update for Heroes of the Storm. If you want to check out the Hanamura map in action, you can do so in the gameplay video below.

Halo Wars: The Definitive Edition is slated to arrive on PC later this week on April 20th.  The game which launched on Xbox One a few months back as an “early access” perk for those who pre-ordered Halo Wars 2 will see its debut on PC with this release.

The remastered version of Ensemble’s 2009 release has brought forward some marginal visual improvements over the original.  While at the same time has seen some things pulled from the game like multiplayer matchmaking.

Launching on Steam should give this game a larger audience, though it’s unclear how many PC gamers are pining for this eight year old title.  The campaign in the original Halo Wars is certainly worth the price of admission for fans of Halo, and the remastered visuals definitely bring it up to speed with current RTS titles.

The bulk of the value should come out of multiplayer, but it’s going to take people actually buying the game to build a pool of community players to play with.  The Xbox One version of Halo Wars: Remastered, which has been out for a few months now, has a very small community.  With no matchmaking it’s pretty hard to find a game most of the time.

It’s likely that most of that player base has moved on to Halo Wars 2.

Regardless, if you’ve been waiting for Halo Wars on PC, that day finally arrives on April 20th.

Update:  While not explicitly stated, it sounds like the game will be available for purchase on the Xbox One as well as a standalone product.  It was previously only available if you had already purchased the Halo Wars 2 Ultimate Edition.

Nier: Automata is getting new downloadable content for the game titled “3C3C1D119440927,” which sounds more like a typo in the press release Square Enix sent out than the actual name of the content.

Nevertheless, fans of the game will get new colosseums to challenge, and additional sub-quests to play. Upon completing these quests a number players can earn a number of unlockables for the game.

Nier: Automata DLC Includes

• Costumes from the Japanese release (NieR Replicant, for androids 2B, 9S, and A2.
• Records that add special music tracks to the players’ jukebox.
• New equipment and cosmetic accessories such as hairspray that allows you to change the color of 2B and A2’s hair.
• Masks with unique “on equip” effects.
• Special bullets that change the appearance of enemy bullets.

The downloadable content will arrive on both PlayStation 4 and Steam, though no release date was given for it in the announcement.  You can check out gameplay of the 3C3C1D119440927 DLC for Nier: Automata, below:

Nier: Automata DLC Gameplay

NieR: Automata, released earlier this year, released to a ton of critical praise. You can check out our review of NieR: Automata, and if you’re in need of guides for Nier: Automata you can check those out here.

G2A a place where people can purchase PC game keys, has recently had a run-in with Gearbox Software.  The controversy started when Gearbox Software cancelled a partnership to sell keys through the marketplace after being prodded by the gaming community about the practices of the online retailer.

According to a statement sent to Game Revolution, G2A says that all the sales of keys on their website are legitimately acquired.

“The reality is that the keys on G2A.com come from legitimate sources,” reads an excerpt of the statement.  It also calls allegations otherwise “false and defamatory.”

The allegations they refer to are the ones that sparked the problems between Gearbox and G2A.  YouTuber Total Biscuit called for a boycott of developers that work with G2A, calling into question their practices.  With millions of subscribers on YouTube, this likely prompted Gearbox to take action and sever the relationship with the key seller.

G2A has been in the headlines for months regarding allegations of dealing in black market or stolen keys, that which developers see no money from.  Though a recent Reddit AMA got the story going again when Reddit users brought to light the practice of selling ill-gotten keys on the website.  While G2A says that they play no part in it, they certainly profit from it if it is indeed happening.

These fradulent keys are said to come from pirates or other networks where they use stolen credit card information to acquire keys in bulk and then re-sell them on the marketplace.

Despite these claims by G2A of all keys being legitimate, developers and users of the service have spoken out about fraud on the marketplace.  One developer, Tiny Build, says that G2A sold over $450,000 worth of game keys on its market that they did not see a dime for.

It didn’t take long for Mass Effect Andromeda to hacked and pirated on PC, despite being protected by Denuvo DRM.  However, it appears that EA has another trick up their sleeves to deter piracy of the game by adding a new version of Denuvo in the game’s latest PC patch.

That patch, which many awaited, fixed some of the visual oddities that the game had at launch, alongside a myriad of other improvements to the game.  (You can find those patch notes here)

What this new version of Denuvo means for those who pirated Mass Effect Andromeda is that they’ll be stuck with the vanilla version of Mass Effect Andromeda for the forseeable future as there is no crack available for this version of the anti-piracy DRM.

More games should be moving to this version of Denuvo if they want to deter piracy of their games.  Nier: Automata, Dead Rising 4, and 2Dark, all which use the technology have yet to show up on popular torrent sites where people download the cracked versions of the games.

Though the cat and mouse game is never over.  The original Denuvo was cracked and this one likely will be too.  Until then, it’s dead faces in Mass Effect Andromeda for those who chose to download the game illegally.

Battlefield 1’s first night map is slated to arrive on June 1st, according to the official Battlefield site where DICE revealed the first beautiful image of the Nivelle Nights map.  Early June will be the first available time to play the night map, which will be available for Premium Pass owners.

The image above is our first look at the map, but here’s what DICE has to say in describing the map which is lit by moonlight, fires, and laterns.

“As darness falls over the muddy battlefields around Malmaison and Soupir, French and German batteries perpare to yet again support their troops on the contested ground.

The moon, the searchlights, and artillery lights up the night skies, exposing the vast network of trenches.  Bite and hold as your foe will fight for every inch of ground.  Strategy and teamwork will overcome those who have neither.”

While DICE says that the map will currently only be available to premium members, they haven’t made it clear whether the map will roll out to all Battlefield 1 players eventually.  There’s also no word on whether this DLC Map will be covered under the “Premium Friends” feature that DICE rolled out recently that allows players who team up with a friend who is a Premium member to access premium maps.

Mark the date, Battlefield 1 takes to the night on June 1st.

The Batman: Arkham series debuted last generation from Rocksteady Studios with Batman: Arkham Asylum and grew from there. While it was originally announced that Batman: Arkham Knight was going to be the end for the series, we got a nice treat last year alongside the launch of PlayStation VR with Batman: Arkham VR, which is finally coming to PC.

Prior to the launch of Batman: Arkham VR, it was revealed that PlayStation had a timed exclusivity with the game for it to launch first on the PlayStation VR. We didn’t know of an exact window, but now we do as it has a release date on PC.

Batman: Arkham VR will be releasing on PC for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift on April 25. There is no mention of price for the game on PC yet, but we assume it will likely be around the $20 price that it is on PS4 for PSVR right now. You can’t pre-order the game yet, but the official website says that pre-orders through that site will be coming soon.

The game already controlled quite well with PSVR, but it will definitely be interesting to see how it will perform with better controllers than the PlayStation Move, especially with the ones available for the HTC Vive. Luckily, this game doesn’t require a ton of precision, but having the experience be even better is definitely something we’d like to see.

Batman: Arkham VR was definitely a good game to come out alongside the PSVR, as it was one of the best tech demos for the peripheral, even if it is a very short experience. Being able to immerse yourself into Gotham as Batman was a real treat on PSVR and is definitely one that those who don’t have a PSVR need to pick up when it releases on PC for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift later this month. In the meantime, you can check out our review of the release on PSVR, as well as the announcement trailer for PC below.

Starcraft made its debut back in 1998 and quickly became a huge hit for Blizzard as one of the most well regarded RTS games of all time. It took awhile to get a sequel in 2010, but now they are going back to their roots as it has been revealed that the original game is being redone in Starcraft Remastered.

Blizzard made the announcement during a presentation tonight in Korea that Starcraft Remastered was coming and has since uploaded a trailer and put up a website with plenty of details about the game.

Starcraft Remastered will feature remastered graphics, revised dialogue and audio, and Blizzard friends and matchmaking support. The remastered graphics will include updated buildings, units, environments, and now will support expanded resolutions, making Starcraft look better than ever. It’s definitely not going to look like a current-gen game, but it is still an upgrade from the original.

For those concerned about the gameplay, Blizzard has already confirmed that the gameplay will stay in tact with just how it was back in the day. This is definitely good for purists that love the original, as it’s better not to mess around with something that isn’t broken.

Not only will this remaster include an updated version of the base Starcraft game, but also its follow-up expansion Starcraft: Brood War, so you will have plenty of content.

It appears this is likely just exclusive to PC though, even though the original also came to Nintendo 64. RTS games are definitely built for PC and the fact no platforms were mentioned likely would lend you to think it’s likely going to be exclusive to PC. However, that’s something we’ll have to wait to find out for sure considering they did bring Overwatch to consoles.

No specific release date was given other than Summer 2017, but you can check out the announcement trailer for Starcraft Remastered below in the meantime.

Mass Effect Andromeda is due out next month, and with the game having gone gold, EA & Bioware have finally posted the official PC specifications recommended and required to run the game.  Posted over on the Origin storefront, PC players are a going to need at least at GTX 660 & i5 processor (or equivalent) and are recommended to have a GTX 1060 & i7 (or equivalent).

Mass Effect Andromeda looks like it’ll be coming in at 55GB as that’s the required hard drive space needed to install the game.  This sounds about par for the course with this generation of games, though Bioware did recently note that a single planet in Andromeda is the size of Dragon Age: Inquisition.  From what we’ve seen so far, the spec requirements seem warranted.  All of the video we’ve seen thus far make Andromeda look like a graphically intensive game.

Obviously for the ultimate experience, high-end PC owners will be able to push the boundaries much higher, but Bioware hasn’t said just how high the visual fidelity bar will be.

You can find the Minimum & Recommended System Requirements for Mass Effect Andromeda below:

Mass Effect Andromeda Minimum System Requirements

OS: 64-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10
PROCESSOR: Intel Core i5 3570 or AMD FX-6350
MEMORY: 8 GB RAM
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB, AMD Radeon 7850 2GB
HARD DRIVE: At least 55 GB of free space
DIRECTX: DirectX 11

Mass Effect Andromeda Recommended System Requirements

OS: 64-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10
PROCESSOR: Intel Core i7-4790 or AMD FX-8350
MEMORY: 16 GB RAM
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB, AMD RX 480 4GB
HARD DRIVE: At least 55 GB of free space
DIRECTX: DirectX 11

The release date for Mass Effect Andromeda is set for March 21st, 2017 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.  The game will be available slightly earlier for Origin Access subscribers when it rolls out on March 16th, 2017.

Steam users can currently download Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare multiplayer for free on the console for a limited time trial.  With access from today until February 26th at 1pm PST, players can play as much of the game as they desire, with no level caps, prestige caps, or blocking of any content in the game.  The disk space required for the download is a hefty 50 GB.

Multiplayer download does not include Zombies access

The promotion is going on to give would be buyers to purchase the game as it’s on sale right now for 50% ($29.99) on the standard edition and 33% ($53.59) off of the Digital Legacy Edition which includes Modern Warfare: Remastered.   The version which contains both Modern Warfare: Remastered and the Infinite Warfare season pass, the Digital Deluxe Edition, is currently 25% ($74.99) off.

While Infinite Warfare saw a polarizing release this fall, Infinite Warfare still ended up being one of the most popular/most sold games of the year.  Multiplayer takes elements of the Black Ops 3 game and brings them forward with new special characters, weapons, and customization options.

Unfortunately, this free multiplayer trial does not include the popular Zombies mode of the game.

When it comes to the release of new heroes in Blizzard’s Overwatch, they’re usually leaked early and everyone already knows who it’s going to be prior to the official announcement. However, there have been some hints in the game that have lead people to believe that the next hero will be someone in particular, though the game’s director has come out to make people reconsider.

Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan recently posted on the game’s forum regarding the next hero in the game, which many assumed would be Doomfist. Kaplan responded by saying “24 is not who you think it is,” presumably meaning that Doomfist will not be the next hero. Of course, this doesn’t rule out the character ever coming to the game, but it looks like there is a currently-unknown character that has the priority at the moment.

Season 3 of Overwatch’s Competitive Play is just about to come to an end, with the season’s official ending being tomorrow at 4 PM PT. The developer said that “If you completed your placement matches during Season 3, you will eligible to receive a special spray and player icon. These will be unlocked automatically when you log into your account the first time after the season ends. If at any point during the season you managed to break into the Top 500 players on your platform (and in your region), you’ll receive an extra player icon and animated spray on top of the other seasonal rewards.”

The game most recently received a new update through its Public Test Realm (PTR), which brings several new things to the game. These include the likes of a new server browser for custom games, capture the flag becoming a permanent game mode, as well as some notable hero changes. You can get the full details on the latest update by clicking right here.

The Alone in the Dark series has sadly gone further and further down the drain in terms of quality over the past several years, with it seeming like the series may never get back on the right track again. However, the person responsible for creating that series, Frédérick Raynal, has taken it upon himself to create a brand new series that looks to take survival horror back to a more simple and retro approach.

The game is called 2Dark, which is a 2D survival horror game that has players taking control of a man named Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is a former detective who is looking for his kidnapped children following the murder of his wife. The following is a brief synopsis:

“Plagued by a string of child abductions, darkness hangs over the once-picturesque city of Gloomywood like a curse, smothering hope and paralyzing its citizens with fear. Having seen his own wife slain and his children taken, former detective Mr. Smith vows to find justice and bring an end to the misery. But, if only it were so simple. From dubious streets and suspicious dwellers, to the pack of smokes in your pocket and the betrayal of your own footsteps, danger infests every corner and crevice. Doubt everything in this trap of a city where death is the only certainty.”

2Dark is set to launch for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on March 10th. Those who elect to play the game on PC through Steam will be able to get an exclusive deluxe edition of the game that comes with an uncensored art book that is called The Art of 2Dark, along with the game’s original soundtrack that includes 21 orchestral tracks. The following is a list of the minimum and recommended PC system requirements for the game: