If WordPress had a wingdings font option, you can bet I’d use it here. But for now, I’ll have to set aside my desire for “show don’t tell” and just speak plainly about what’s going on. It’s very simple, really: DOTA 2 released its patch notes in .

No, really. They just went and did that. And there’s lore, too! Enjoy this plaintext, ’cause this is all it’s giving you.

The post You Cannot Read DOTA 2’s Latest Patch Notes appeared first on COGconnected.

It looks like the perfect setup. Baldur’s Gate 3 ends its campaign with characters at level 12, in a system known for taking things up to level 20. But despite fan interest, if you’ve ever played in a D&D campaign and grown beyond level 12, you might have a clue as to why that may pose… difficulties.

Beyond those levels, the powers available to player characters start to get a bit… nuts. Multi-dimensional movement, the ability to reshape reality to your wish, high-level D&D gets wild sometimes.

Now imagine you have to program that into a game.

“[Level 12-20] adventures require a different way of doing things, in terms of antagonists you’re going to have to deal with, which require a lot of development to do them properly,” Larian Studios‘ founder said in an interview. “Which would make this much more than an expansion in terms of development effort. A lot of D&D adventures are sub-level 12 for precisely that reason. So it sounds like neat, easy expansion material until you start thinking about it and it’s not as easy as one would imagine.”

“Honestly, we haven’t started on an expansion.”

That said, nothing has been ruled out quite yet. The team apparently has a solid idea of where they’d like to go (Whether it’s Baldur’s Gate or something else entirely). Bet they’re hesitant to make definitive announcements at this stage.

The only point of certainty is that Larian’s work is not done. More experiences are coming. And lessons learned from Baldur’s Gate will see the light of day.

SOURCE

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The Nintendo Switch has been on the market for several years now. People are starting to think about the future. Nintendo is no small fry studio; a successor to the Switch isn’t a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’. That ‘when’ is starting to look a lot like “next year, actually. everything just sorta lines up.”

“I would generally say that looking at Nintendo’s financials, it seems clear that it’s time for a new piece of hardware in 2024,” an industry insider told VGC during an interview. “Hardware is already projected to fall 16.5% year-on-year in the current fiscal, while the minus for software is expected to hit 15.9%.”

“The only way to stop these losses from totally ballooning next fiscal is a new device, and the second half of 2024 sounds like a realistic release window to me.”

Another source speculated that 2024 would fit well within the usual release cycle for Nintendo. The company tends not to line up with the usual model that, say, Xbox and Sony seem to use. Nintendo’s releases are often placed mid-cycle, in between xbox/playstation releases, and hey, that’s 2024.

“The original Switch released over three years after PS4 and Xbox One, which proved to be an effective move for Nintendo. A second half 2024 release for Switch 2 would be nearly four years after PS5 and Xbox Series X and S”

If you’ve got a Switch sitting next to your TV right now, how would you feel about getting an upgrade? Is the platform showing its age, or are you fine with what you have? Let us know in the comments below!

SOURCE

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Dreams is first on our list – a tool for converting your creative whims into playable gaming experiences you can share with the world. The game’s won awards for itself, and takes pride in its accessible design. And if games aren’t your cup of tea, then first of all, why are you here? And second of all, Dreams also lets you dive into other mediums as well. Painting and animation are all on the table here, so go nuts and fulfill your wildest – say it with me –

Desires, that’s right. There are no other possible answers, fool.

Second on the list is Death’s Door, an action-adventure game where you play as a crow. Here, you’ll be gathering up lost souls and sending them for processing at the Reaping Commission Headquarters. Seeing frequent comparisons to Dark Souls and The Legend of Zelda, the game’s been put into a pretty high weight class in terms of raw fun. And it aims to soar over any bar you set!

Lastly: do you like sports? Lots of people do, lots of people don’t. PGA Tour 2K23 hopes you’re in the former category – and if you are, this Playstation game’s got the quality to please. We’ve already reviewed this game here on COGconnected, so if you want a deep dive into the world of small-balls-slapped-with-heavy-sticks, you’re in the right place. Or at least you will be if you click that link. The review’s not here. Why are you still reading this? You’re silly.

SOURCE

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The Steam Stealth Fest is on, and sales are cropping up all over the platform. Well, not everywhere, that’d be too exposed. Gotta keep to the bushes. Stealth games have seen big ol’ price cuts, with those responsible sneaking off to who knows where. Theif, Spliner Cell, Outlast, Aragami – all down to 3$ or less.

Of course, there have been a few diversions here and there. Wolfenstein games, Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Seige, Deus Ex – they have stealth options to be sure, but generally sell themselves as something else. A devious scheme if I’ve ever seen one…\

Okay, the jokes have gotten old now. Stealth may not be the premier gaming genre, but a ton of popular games use elements of it in light doses. If you wanna see how those mechanics perform when the whole game is build around them, now’s probably the best time to do it. Single-digit prices are gonna do that. The sale runs out at the end of this month, if you’re going in, the mission starts today.

And hey, if you’re the sort to care about this, Steam Stickers are available here! One each day, for the entire sale, each one appropriately themed. It’s a great chance to buff up your collection, assuming this isn’t the first time you’ve ever heard of them (what in the world are steam stickers?)

Are there any sales that catch your eye? Any games you’d recommend to your fellow stealth fans, or newcomers to the genre? Keep the conversation going in the comments down below!

SOURCE

The post Shh, The Latest Steam Sale is Very Very Sneaky appeared first on COGconnected.

Sorcerers have had a rough time of it in Diablo 4. Falling at the bottom of the game’s pecking order was bad, but at least they had tools to pretend they could compete. Like a bug that offered a significant damage-per-second boost against staggered bosses. Wouldn’t it be funny if that bug was patched? What’s that, “no”, you say?

The developers disagreed. It’s gone now.

Devouring Blaze, a skill Sorcerers relied on, was also nerfed.

They also nerfed the defensive value of gear, almost across the board. Which doesn’t sound bad on its own, since everyone needs good gear. “We have seen that skillful players are frequently slaughtering monsters many levels above their own,” the Diablo 4 developers argued. “We want to support this, but the current situation is beyond what we believe is correct for the long-term health of the game.”

This would be fine, if sorcerers shared a trick that other classes had: “having defensive powers.” Sorcerers are far more reliant on their gear’s stats for survival, especially late in the game. As a result, this nerf hit them particularly hard.

Finally achieving the comedic rule of three, Activision Blizzard‘s apparent crusade against the funny magic users left them as the butt of the joke. And it’s got players laughing to exactly the degree you’re thinking of. “It’s a giant F U in my opinion to a class that already suffered.” one player asserts.

Another fan takes things a step further. “Imagine nerfing the damage of the worst late-game class by half then adding a defensive spell buff that will not affect their ability to survive a single hit from an elite in 90+ NM dungeons lol. These people are actual clowns, do they even play their own game past 50 NM dungeons?”

SOURCE, SOURCE

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Microsoft’s battle has been hard-fought, involving court rulings on a global scale. Though the FTC mainly cares for the United States, it still represents a powerful body that stood against Microsoft’s purchase of a massive player in the games industry: Activision Blizzard.

In a five-day, no-holds-barred legal injunction, a judge has denied the FTC’s desire to impede Microsoft’s purchase of Activision-Blizzard. From the looks of things, commentators attribute the FTC’s loss to one simple factor: incompetence.

It’s not like the FTC completely lacked ground to stand on. The size of this purchase would give Microsoft huge control over the games market, and other big names like Sony have been keeping a very close ear to the ground on this one, occasionally moving to obstruct things themselves where possible. Yet the juggernaut that is Microsoft moves ever forward.

The FTC’s tactic here was to refine their arguments on a single point: Call of Duty. The franchise is easily among the biggest in the industry, one that benefits every console it finds home on. The FTC, and Sony, argued that Microsoft would gain the ability to poach the entire Call of Duty playerbase, simply by making the franchise an Xbox-exclusive. A strong argument to be sure – with only one problem.

As any forum discussing this trial will tell you, anti-monopolization policies (like the one the FTC built itself on) falls under this little category called consumer protection. The judge focused hearing how Microsoft’s purchase would hurt consumers. Sony’s not one of those.

Oops.

Those discussing the trial are both frustrated and concerned in equal measure. Common folk who view the deal favorably are few and far between, with their opposition louder than ever. And all those involved are seriously dissapointed with the FTC’s performance.

Where do you fall here? Let us know below!

SOURCE, SOURCE, SOURCE

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Cheaters never prosper. Or so they say. But when they just run rampant over your game of choice, right in your match… sometimes it’s a hard sentiment to believe. But this development? It’s a definite win for players at large. This particular Rainbow Six basement-dweller bit off a bit more than he could chew, and faces three years of community service, courtesy of the French government.

So, what’s the story here? What could a cheater have possibly done to-

Swatting. It’s Swatting. They called in false police reports and sent SWAT teams to people they didn’t like. In this case, it was the Montreal developers of Rainbow Six Seige.

As part of the cheater’s punishment, he’ll be forced to “compensate victims, undergo treatment for a mental health problem and either work or undergo training“, according to the Montreal Gazette.

Ubisoft released a statement of their own, but kept things minimal. “In this trial we were committed to representing the interests of our employees who were affected by this false hostage taking alert at our Montreal studio,” they said. “It was important for us to denounce this violent and unacceptable incident. Out of respect for our employees who were affected by this event, we will not comment further.”

After being taken into custody, the cheater had little to say, beyond a desire to get his account unbanned. Do you think he’ll get his wish? One of life’s great mysteries, that one.

How are you feeling about the cheater’s punishment? Is this enough, given the crimes? What do you think the consequences of this will be, for swatters and cheaters at large? Leave your answers in the comments down below!

SOURCE

The post Rainbow Six Siege Cheater Faces Years of Legal Punishment appeared first on COGconnected.

The development of Halo Infinite keeps trucking along. Slow and steady more often than not, but with reasonably-long seasons and fresh new progression, the game is officially “getting there”! And tomorrow, there’ll be another addition to the game: a new map! Its name is Solitude, but to any Halo 5 players out there, you may know it by a different name.

Tomorrow, Halo 5’s Plaza returns as Solitude!

https://t.co/iUpJIechSI#HaloInfection pic.twitter.com/UF3dI9vELw

— Halo (@Halo) June 26, 2023

Halo 5’s infamous reputation is due almost entirely to its single-player campaign. The multiplayer is generally viewed in extremely high regard. Bringing that kind of quality into a multiplayer-centric experience like Halo Infinite is probably a good move.

Interestingly, this remake would mark Plaza’s first incarnation on a PC platform. Halo’s other premier PC experience, the Master Chief Collection, is simply missing any of Halo 5. No plans to introduce it, either. And while this certainly isn’t the first time Halo Infinite has remade content from a previous title, it is the first time Halo 5 has been a headliner. The game’s only seen loose remakes of its helmets appear in Halo Infinite’s customization, and given the massive art style shift they look rather distinct from their original versions.

An official post on Halo Waypoint showcases some deeper insights from 343 Industries.

“Solitude is very close to being a 1:1 remake in terms of spacing,” says one of the map’s designers, “but the height and overall verticality of the map has been adjusted. There are some pieces of gameplay that inevitably won’t translate between Halo 5 and Halo Infinite because they play quite differently, but this is a map that aims to be true to the original with lots of cool new gameplay opportunities afforded by Halo Infinite’s sandbox toys.”

SOURCE

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Hey, you know water, right? Funny little liquid, that one. Does some wacky and wild stuff when the temperature changes too much. Like, it gets too cold, and the whole thing just freezes up! But be careful while thawing it out, because it might get fed up with you and fly away as a gas. Yeah, water can fly! Isn’t nature wonderful? And you can use that flying water to power stuff! Anyway, some users at the Steam subreddit were out touching grass and made this discovery. They brought it back to their compatriots, and everything changed.

Or, more accurately, the Steam subreddit is joining in a large-scale protest against Reddit’s new API changes. Or, more accurately, they’re responding the the fallout from a protest that already happened, one that Reddit’s higher-ups are currently trying to overcome. Or, more accurately, this is just a whole big mess and we have to start from the top.

One day, Reddit decides to make some changes to their website. Big ones. Ones so big that a bunch of programs that use reddit’s data (typically to make moderation easier or to make the site more enjoyable) will cease to function. The site’s moderators hate it, users hate it, everyone hates it, so they decide to do something about it: destroy Reddit. Moderators, with community support, shut down their own forums in collective protest. They also, collectively, publicly declared that this protest would last only 48 hours. Oops.

Reddit said “ok” and didn’t really care that much. When reopening time came and nothing changed, some subreddits decide to stay closed indefinitely and prolong things. Reddit said “no”, and promised to take control away from forums that don’t reopen. Many reopened, but did not forget their prime directive, and instead transformed their forums into something unusable. r/art contains only images of John Oliver, r/Interestingasfuck is “not suitable for advertisers”, and r/Steam LOVES steam. The gas. Not the Steam gaming platform. That’s how you get posts like this:

SOURCE

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A newcomer to the FPS genre has just exploded onto the scene. BattleBit is the name, and low-poly carnage is the game. Acting like a mixture of EA’s Battlefield meshed with a graphical style not dissimilar to Roblox, the game’s core premise is pretty straightforward.

BattleBit‘s own description is relatively spartan: “BattleBit Remastered aims for a chaotic, massively multiplayer online first-person shooter experience.” That’s it, that’s the whole description. It goes on to list a handful of features and its hardware specs. All are predictably low for a game that looks like this.

The benefit of low graphics, though, is that the game can handle over 250 players in a single match. Each one armed with full military gear, perhaps even a vehicle, and placed within a destructible environment. Seems like a recipe for broken games, but the only thing that breaks are anything placed before the barrel of a gun.

The game’s low price-tag and rock-bottom hardware demands make it an extremely accessible game, and nearly 50,000 people are playing it as I write this, with that number only growing with time. In fact, despite the game only existing (in early access, no less!) for just three days, it’s done incredibly well on Steam. So well, that it has evicted Counter Strike: Global Offensive from its throne atop the steam store’s “top seller” list! See it for yourself, it’s quite the sight.

This list is sorted by revenue, for reference. Look at all the other games atop this chart, like Spiderman or Lost Ark, and imagine how many different ways that money is being split.

Anyway, there are four (4) people on BattleBit’s dev team. Just a fun little factoid to leave us off with.

SOURCE

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Remember Titanfall 2? You better – if you don’t, it can only be because you haven’t played it. The game has a legendary reputation, not just among franchise fans, but among FPS players at large. And given how often it goes on sale, there’s really no excuse for not trying it. People have been praying for a continuation, and turns out, we almost got it.

“Titanfall 2 came out, did what it did, and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna make Titanfall 3,’ and we worked on Titanfall 3 for about ten months, right?”

This comes to us from Mohammad Alavi, a narrative director at Respawn, in a discussion with The Burnettwork. He said the game was “just as good if not better than whatever we had before“, but there was a caveat. “I’ll make this clear: incrementally better, it wasn’t revolutionary.”

“And we were feeling pretty decent about it, but not the same feeling as Titanfall 2 where we were making something revolutionary.”

“And then PUBG came out.”

Apparently, the Battle Royale explosion got some gears turning at Respawn. New ideas. Exciting ones. Ones that felt just as revolutionary as Titanfall’s did back during the sequel’s development.

“We literally canceled Titanfall 3 ourselves ’cause we were like, ‘We can make this game, and it’s going to be Titanfall 2 plus a little bit better, or we can make [Apex Legends], which is clearly amazing.’”

“And don’t get me wrong, I will always miss having another Titanfall. I love that game. Titanfall 2 is my most crowning achievement, but it was the right call. That is a crazy cut. Such a crazy cut that EA didn’t even know about it for another six months until we had a prototype up and running that we could show them!”

SOURCE

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So, your horse in Diablo 4 is moving super slowly, right? You try and make it run, and it decides to cosplay a snail for a bit. If that sounds relatable, there’s actually an easy fix!

Move your mouse far away.

No, really.

This funky trick was first posted on the Diablo 4 subreddit, by user u/Floridaman156

Discourse includes such insightful comments as: “What”

Naturally, this trick only applies to mounted movement. You won’t get any boost to your walking speed, no matter how energetically you flail your mouse.

Now, where things get interesting is in speculation around why exactly such a strange “bug”(?) exists on the pc version of the game. The running theory is that it’s a holdover from the console version; specifically, a way to measure how far the player’s moved the control stick. A small input is analogous to the mouse being relatively close to “center”, aka your character. But a big input puts the stick far away, on the furthest possible edge.

At the very least, an explanation like this would thoroughly explain this complaint’s existence on PC alone. We’ll have to wait for a developer response to confirm anything, but more likely options have yet to show up.

But hey, now you know. And now that you know, you can have your horse sprint along with the best of them.

Aside from this oddity, how are you enjoying Diablo 4? How far have you gotten into the game? Are there any features you’d love to see in a new update? We’d love the hear from you in the comments down below!

SOURCE

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There’s been a spot of, let’s say, prolonged controversy around Microsoft over the last long while. Specifically, around their proposed acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. People don’t want Microsoft to have massive-scale control over so many sections of the video game industry, with Call of Duty’s presence in particular being of special importance.

Since international law doesn’t exactly preside over this, the matter instead falls to national governments that care about the games industry. Which, turns out, is a lot of them. Which means a lot of politicians need to look at this stuff, which means that the whole acquisition process moves at politician-level speeds, and so on.

But that also leaves Microsoft a lot of time. Time to plan contingencies and what-ifs, like “what if a country says no, but overall we get what we want anyway? Will we just pull our games from that country?” Obviously that depends on how important that specific country is to Microsoft, but for something the size of the UK, that answer is “maybe we’ll cut them off.”

This plan was noted as an “extreme option” by Microsoft higher-ups, but it’s clearly something that they’re thinking about. You know, given that they name-dropped it.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Microsoft says it remains “committed to finding creative and constructive ways to address remaining regulatory concerns”.

Of course, its main plan is still to advocate for itself and have the deal go through with thumbs-up all around. So if you’re in the UK, you’re probably still safe from having a chronic gaming-deficiency… probably.

SOURCE

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Nvidia just had a tech demo at Computex 2023 – a multi-hour affair you can watch in full here. It covers a wide variety of topics, most of which we can safely ignore because the AI stuff is too damn cool.

It’s not the first time tech like this has come into the gaming space. If you’re a Skyrim player this may seem familiar. The game’s modding community has seen some AI experimentation, the results of which have… well, Skyrim levels of jank. But at least they’re not caused by Skyrim this time!

Now, a large tech business is taking a look at the problem. The actual demo itself is fairly barebones, but carries and weighty implications – exactly what you’d expect of a tech demo. The framing of the presentation, fake-gameplay and all, is very E3-esque (may it rest in peace). In a cyberpunk bar, the player receives a mission from an NPC. They get some backstory details, learn where the objective is, all the usual stuff. Funny enough, the player seemed more robotic than the NPC. It’s outright stated that the dialogue here – including the voice acting, lip syncing, and body animations, were all done by AI.

While you might not be able to see tech like this in near-future upcoming titles, the far future could look very different. The idea of NPCs that can react to you dynamically, remember the player’s actions and responses for later use, and potentially even generate quests, is a pretty appealing one.

SOURCE

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Sunset has come for Prison Architect. Specifically, the “sunset” update, which serves as the game’s final addition.

“It’s been a real joy and honor here at Paradox Interactive and Double Eleven to work on this game for you,” writes Double Eleven. “It’s been just over a decade since Introversion first put out an Alpha build of Prison Architect and the game has come so far since then. While we’re closing this chapter, the book is certainly not yet finished. We’ll see you around.”

The update itself is mainly a quality-of-life affair, with a few new items and balance tweaks. A trailer was launched alongside the update, and it mainly focuses on celebrating the game’s legacy rather than showing off all the shiny new features one by one. But with that said, there is something shiny in there, at the end.

A fully 3D model of a prisoner can be found at the trailer’s end. Suspected to be a tease of what’s to come, a sequel to this beloved game may be in the works. We’ve not had solid confirmation of anything yet, of course. But making a 3d model would certainly be odd if its inclusion was just “haha silly random”.

Bringing things back to the game we know exist, have a look at the comments on that trailer. Prison Architect fans are sharing their stories and their love for the game, joining in its swan song with good vibes and friendly waves. Should a new Prison Architect game emerge, it’ll certainly have no trouble finding an audience.

SOURCE

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Following rampant abuse of Koroks, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom players have moved on to their next target: the physics engine.

The game offers a whole new dimension for players to explore: an extensive building system, using simple ingredients to create fantastic results. You have your basic blocks, sticks, and planks, but you can discover heaps of devices like rockets, wheels, and flamethrowers to make some truly fantastic gizmos. Naturally, with that kind of freedom, someone’s gonna break something. Which fancy gadget broke Tears of the Kingdom’s physics?

None, actually. You see, it starts with an apple stapled to a plank of wood.

Content Creators: “Check out my 30 piece battle setup that requires 300 Zonaite and obliterates everything!”

Speedrunners: “Check out my plank of wood and single apple that can cross Hyrule Field at the speed of sound.”

We are not the same#TOTK pic.twitter.com/Lg2E59f7Uj

— Cryptic In QA (@CrypticJacknife) May 22, 2023

With a bit of menu manipulation and autobuild cancellation, the game constantly tries to align the items to the player in a specific way… but in the process, also push the player in a direction. The process accelerates. The result is absurd.

Is this something that may get patched out of the game at some point? Hard to tell, but it’s clear that many players would be saddened by such a change. With reactions like those, with that sense of pride, comes a lot of enjoyment. Sometimes people just really like broken games.

SOURCE

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“Welcome to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria! Where fantasy and fun come to life!” The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie has unveiled its trailer for all to see, and fans are eager to see what’s in store. Taking clear stylistic cues from analogue horror and slasher movies, the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie does exactly what it says on the tin: bringing the spirit of the games to the silver screen.

As someone whose childhood involved following the game’s lore far too closely, I can tell with certainty that we really don’t know much about the movie quite yet. It looks like it’ll be taking most of its inspiration from the first game though, but that’s the obvious stuff. The presence of ghost children definitely gives it some of FNAF 2’s energy, and one scene is reminiscent of FNAF Sister Location, but that’s about it.

Will it follow the games one-to-one? …obviously not, how would they even make that interesting? But the question of how much creative liberty they’ll use is up in the air. There’s one scene with a SAW-esque murderchair, which is definitely not a thing in the games.

Some fans seem to be up-in-arms about the evil red eyes on the animatronics, but it doesn’t seem like a “Chris Pratt as Mario” level of outrage. There’s been a mixture of upset users and upbeat memes, among other typical kinds of discourse.

[SFM] The FNaF Movie trailer in a nutshell.
by u/davidthefnaffan in fivenightsatfreddys

How are you feeling about the trailer? Are you excited to see the movie when it comes out? Will you need an extra push? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below!

SOURCE

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Steam is the biggest marketplace for PC games, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfected the formula. For a long time there’s been a way to “try before you buy”, but it’s had issues. The old (well, I should say “current”, since it’s not been replaced yet) policy was that if you have below 2 hours of playtime with a game, and have owned it for less than 2 weeks, you can get a full refund. Technically free, but you still have to fork over the money. And if you speedrun the game to completion and claim a refund anyway, the devs may feel a bit ripped off.

But something new is coming. Something that, right now, is only available for the excellent Dead Space remake. 90 minutes of gameplay, exploring as much as you want, as deep into the game as you want, for free.

90 minutes seems like plenty of time for your average player to solve all their unresolved questions. Will the game run well on their system? Is the gameplay something they’ll enjoy? How about the story? The overall vibes? You’ll get a taster sample of each one, with plenty of time to soak it all in, but you’ll have to fork over the cash if you want a full meal.

Right now, it’s unknown how far Steam intends to go with this system. It could just be for select games, ones where a 90-minuite unrestricted tester is enough to get what the player and developers want. It could be a limited-time offer, as a way of using FOMO tactics to draw players in. or maybe they just make it standard policy. Only time will tell, but for now, one thing is certain: the opening 90 minutes of Dead Space are free to experience!

SOURCE

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has released to incredible fanfare and flawless review scores. With a game this beloved, surely there’s nothing for players to hate on, right? Nothing that everyone views as worthy of, say, a literal crucifixion?

Well, this game is a bit different. Not because it’s free of anything that hate-able – because it’s still there. The difference-maker is, though, that Tears of the Kingdom actually lets you do the crucifying yourself. Because this game lets you build funny little contraptions, and those designs can be, well…

The Human Centipede (2009) https://t.co/2JR6T16GBO

— Boom (@BoomIsSoda) May 14, 2023

Remember Koroks from Breath of the Wild? Remember how you felt when you found them? Those oh-so-worthwhile “discoveries” taking space from something that could have actually been worth your time?

Well, even if you didn’t, someone else did. Let ’em cook.

The Human Centipede (2009) https://t.co/2JR6T16GBO

— Boom (@BoomIsSoda) May 14, 2023

One popular design though, involves a rocket booster. Really, it’s just the rocket booster. It make silly little green guy go up haha.

This puzzle-solving tool has been a major boon for Tears of the Kingdom and its players, offering a whole new layer of depth and discovery for people to play around with. Clearly, freedom was the goal – players would see a new item or gizmo, wonder “hey, could this be used for (insert thing here)”, and discover… they totally can. Giving players this kind of freedom is often a double-edged sword, but hey, at least this time the players are mainly just using it for a but of catharsis. …Right?

SOURCE

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If you’re looking for some inexpensive and memorable games, you’re in luck. Until around May 16th, a bunch of landmark Xbox games are on sale right now. You’re probably thinking “hey, I know how this works. They discount a bunch of bad games super heavily just to get people in the door. And the good ones aren’t nearly this cheap.” Which… yes, some of these games are ones you’ve likely never heard of (Anyone for Deployment? Hard to argue with 50 cents…). But others are actually really good! Like the entire modern XCOM franchise, available for just 10 bucks, if you have Xbox Live Gold.

Do you wanna dig around the Xbox store to find the highlight sales? No? Thought so, that’s why we’ve collected them here. Enjoy!

Dying Light: Definitive Edition at 10$. The Ori Collection at 10$. The Bioshock Collection at 10$. Watch Dogs: Legion Gold Edition at 10$. Far Cry New Dawn: Deluxe Edition at 10$. NBA 2K23 at 9$. Borderlands 3 at 9$. Metro: Exodus at 6$. Worms Rumble: Deluxe Edition at just above 4$. Psychonauts at 2$.

If you need any specific recommendations from that list, then check out our reviews!

Ori and the Blind Forest got a 91 from us, and that collection also comes with Ori and the Will of the Wisps scored even higher – you get both in the collection. Not a single XCOM gave has scored below a 90 for us, and Borderlands 3 got an 86. While we’ve yet to review every game on this list, the lowest I could spot was Watch Dogs Legion’s 75 – which is still pretty strong, all things considered! And now that you have the highlights, you can shop for cheap Xbox games to your heart’s content.

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So someone on the Valorant pro team “Ghost Commandos” made an oopsie. What was supposed to have happened was that each player needed to install a specific game client. Everyone needed it by a certain time for the match to properly begin. And while almost everyone had no problem here, one player was a bit preoccupied at the time.

They were a bit… distracted at the time. Blaming it on “anime” isn’t quite accurate, but it’s not entirely false either. The real culprit is Honkai: Star Rail, and if you’ve seen the game, certain ideas come to mind.

The game has been making waves in online spaces for a variety of reasons, easily visible in players’ reactions to this news.

i don’t blame them

— risorah (@risorah) May 4, 2023

Fans of both games mainly just find the whole scene hilarious. Even through all my digging, I’ve yet to spot any soured expressions.

“I mean he was clearly making a better life decision so…” Says one Honkai fan. “I’m not saying they’re right, but I understand.” Says a Valorant player.

At the very least, everyone was able to get their act together for the next match. A funny bit of trouble to be sure, but hey, anything that doesn’t create a Gamer Rage Incident ™ is a win in my books. Figuring out which specific player made the oopsie of the day though, is tougher to pin down. Which… is probably the correct move on their part, all things considered. Still, more Valorant awaits them in the future, and here’s hoping Honkai: Star Rail doesn’t drown them again in future.

SOURCE, SOURCE

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You’ve heard of the Ukraine war by now. You’ve seen staggering support from western countries, supplying Ukraine in the hopes that Russia will back down. But if you’re in Russia, you may have heard a different story. You wouldn’t have seen it called a “war”, for starters. But there’s good odds you play Counter-Strike – and if you do, there’s another way you can find the news that Russia’s government would try to bury.

But first, let’s rewind a bit. “Helsingin Sanomat” is a Finnish newspaper, the largest in the region – and naturally, they wanted to do some reporting on the Ukraine conflicts. Russia may have locked down their own news outlets with national policy, but this Finnish publication isn’t exactly keen to follow them. When Russia catches wind of this, they just block their website wholesale.

Enter a funny little Counter-Strike map called de_voyna. The map is, for the most part, just like any other. The name is even fairly generic: voyna simply meaning “war” in Russian. It’s a word that Russian media is forbidden to use, but hey, nothing here would raise many flags.

There are little signs in the map. A trail of breadcrumbs for players to follow, into a secret bunker. News of Ukraine covers the walls. Photographs, headlines, the works – all stuff that the Russian government would rather suppress.

Antero Mukka, editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat, had an interview with the CBC to elaborate on their thought process.

“It’s part of our message that in the digital world, you can’t close up any society, because [information] leaks anyway.”

“Russians have also [the] right to know, and I wish them to be able to read reliable information [and] make their own choices,”

“The Russians are a big group in Counter-Strike players and they are part of the global community, so we hope that when players start playing this map and it becomes popular within the Counter-Strike community then also the Russians will know this and will start playing“.

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The hunt for a certain Apex Legends audio bug was a long and strange journey – as many bug hunts are. But what made this one different, though, is the insight offered by Respawn on this particular venture.

“We first noticed the problem soon after the release of Season16 – Revelry with various instances of dropped sound FX, usually alongside particles. For instance, grenades would sometimes not explode even though they damaged players. This had not occurred during our Season 16 playtesting, could not be reproduced internally after initial reports, and was very difficult to pin down using live gameplay videos as the root cause was not always shown in the player’s POV.”

This comes to us from the Apex Legends subreddit, where a massive post details the trials and tribulations our heroic exterminators went through. If you don’t want any spoilers, check this link! And go no further.

If you just wanna figure out what that weird glitch was, with grenades not visually exploding, and some audio clips just not playing, read on.

“A single line of code was identified to be the root cause of the issue. Season 16’s new weapon. The Nemesis has a particle effect that ramps up when heating up, but when it’s uncharged we don’t need to waste resources playing it as the effects are concealed inside of the weapon.”

“Every time the server simulates an input from the weapon’s owner, this particular line of code is executed. Players send in their inputs for every single frame that is run on their client, and it’s the server’s job to simulate all of these inputs. This means that every single player with an uncharged Nemesis would create a “stop particle” “effect” on the server every frame, and this line of code was being called even when the weapon was holstered.”

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Xbox’s Game Pass was once an excellent deal, offering 1$ trials to the curious. These people got a full-package deal for a bare-minimum price, but given my use of past-tense here, you can probably deduce that the 1$ deal is no longer available. But it did not leave us quietly – it seems like Microsoft has put something new in its place!

If you are a current paid subscriber of Xbox Game Pass, you can get up to five 14-day trial codes to just… hand out to people. You can only give it to those who haven’t subscribed to Game Pass before, though. This is a free trial program designed to get new people into the fold, did you really expect anything different?

It’s worth noting that the offered trial is just for PC Game Pass, not console stuff. Current speculation indicates that Microsoft thinks they’ve penetrated the console market to the best of their ability, no need to promo things even more. But PC is much newer for the Game Pass program, and they still have plenty of room to grow. And yeah, Microsoft absolutely wants to grow.

On the deal’s official page, a number of FAQ sections offer some key details about how the whole process works. For one, the offer is apparently an annual thing. Each year, you can generate up to 5 codes to give 5 different friends. The codes themselves can sit around unused for up to 30 days, but if they go unclaimed, you can just get a new code. Unused codes won’t contribute to your 5-per-year cap.

All the information can be found here.

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