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มีผู้เล่นหลายคนเลยครับที่ต่างรู้สึกเจ็บปวด Mighty No. 9 ที่เป็นผลงานของคุณ Keiji Inafune ที่ระดมทุนกันเพื่อเป็นผลงานเปิดตัวครั้งแรกหลังจากแยกทางจาก CAPCOM และยังมาพร้อมธีมแอ็กชันผจญภัยตะลุยด่านในโลกไซไฟสไตล์เดียวกับ Rockman ด้วย ทว่าก็น่าเสียดายเหลือเกินครับที่เมื่อเกมวางจำหน่ายจริง เสียงตอบรับกลับออกมาในแง่ลบกันเสียส่วนใหญ่ จนเวลาไม่นานเกมนี้ก็กลายเป็นตราบาปแห่งวงการเกมที่ถูกลืมไปโดยปริยายคำพูดจาก สุ�…

OKCITY ได้ออกมาประกาศว่า “วีรบุรุษไร้พลัง ไข่ต้ม ภาค 2” เกม RPG กราฟิกพิกเซลฝีมือคนไทย ได้เปิดตัวบน Steam อย่างเป็นทางการแล้ว โดยเกมนี้มีกำหนดวางจำหน่ายในวันนี้ 26 ม.ค. 2024 ซึ่งหากผู้อ่านคนใดสนใจก็สามารถเพิ่มเกมลงไปใน Wishlist ได้แล้ววันนี้

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ไข่ต้มและย่างเนยออกเดินทางไปยังดินแดนภูติเพื่อค้นหา ‘ผลึกแร่แห่งเวลา’ 100 ก้อน สำหรับใช้เป็นพลังงานในการส่งพวกเขากลับไปยัง ‘โลกเดิม’ แต่พวกเขาจะทำได้สำเร็จหรือไม่&#82…

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree earned an immediate reputation for its punishing difficulty, to the point that it suffered a brief barrage of negative reviews from players who thought its boss fights were excessively brutal. The DLC’s final boss, as you might expect, is particularly nasty—so nasty that it took legendary boss-deleter Let Me Solo Her three hours of attempts. Seems like all the fuss might be a little unnecessary, though, because over the weekend, Elden Ring streamer Ainrun killed Erdtree’s last boss with a single hit.

There will be spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree’s final boss ahead, considering—well, you saw the headline.

Before you get your hopes up about walking through that last fog gate and one-shotting the boss yourself, I should clarify that Ainrun’s setup is… pretty involved. Bending Elden Ring’s combat math enough to pull off the instant knockout entailed an elaborate inventory juggling routine, where Ainrun stacked buffs from 5 consumables, 3 weapons, 4 helmets, and 5 talismans—some of which were actively killing him.

I’ll do my best to explain Ainrun’s procedure here, informed …

We may soon be entering a world where NPCs don’t just run through lines of code, but form complex relationships with other NPCs even when we’re away, or seem to, at least.

So far we’ve been subject to some pretty rudimentary NPC AI systems. Enemies and followers will react to their environment in real-time, making decisions based on your play style and so on, but a recent paper (PDF) by researchers at Stanford University and Google Research describes an impressive “architecture for generative agents” in open world environments. 

The paper is titled “Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior” and it goes over the clever way they’ve made NPCs behave in believable, spontaneous ways.

To test the capability of a generative framework they’d designed, the researchers built a little open world similar to “The Sims”, as they say, though the graphics are more akin to a Stardew Valley. After adding a sprinkling of personality into the NPCs’ seed data, they dropped the little agents into the world and watched them interact in impressively complex ways.

One NPC’s given “intent” was to plan a Valentine’s party, and plan she did. She ran around inv…

Counter-Strike 2’s latest patch makes a bunch of changes to the competitive shooter, and one in particular has been on player wishlists for a long time. As Valve puts it: “Lefties rejoice!” Players can now set a default preference for which side their character holds their weapon, and switch between sides on-the-fly during rounds (by pressing H), all the better to peep corners with.

The buy menu’s also got a few new tricks. The top right of the menu now displays the minimum amount of money you’ll have in the next round, and at the bottom features a new “dropped weapons” panel. This is a brilliant addition, because part of the economy game in Counter-Strike is passing weapons around the team and sometimes buying for your teammates: this panel doesn’t just show weapons that’ve been dropped in the buy area, but allows you to pick them up directly.

On top of that there are HUD/UI changes: a customisable line-up reticle for grenades, and a “Radar Map Alternate Zoom” setting that comes with a key toggle to let you switch between zoom levels during the round.

Then the big news: Dust 2 is back, baby! I’m kidding of course, it never went away, but now it’s been r…

AMD’s FSR 3 upscaling technology is set to make its debut tomorrow, on September 29, or September 30 depending on where you live in the world. AMD’s Frank Azor, the chief architect of gaming solutions and marketing made the announcement today via Twitter (or X if you really must call it that). FSR 3, or FidelityFX Super Resolution, was announced by AMD back at the launch if the Radeon RX 7000-series in early November 2022. It’s been a long time coming, but the wait is almost over. 

Two games with FSR 3 support will be announced, though which two was not stated. The two likely contenders are Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum, which are the ones prominently mentioned on AMD’s website, though of course, more games with FSR 3 support are in development.

FSR 3 introduces what AMD calls Fluid Motion Frames, and it can be thought of as AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s DLSS 3. It uses a combination of super resolution temporal upscaling and frame generation to deliver major performance increases in games that support it.

For a very good explainer of FSR 3, do check out our man Jeremy’s comprehensive overview.

According to AMD, FSR 3 will be optimized for a broad rang…

It hasn’t been a good couple weeks for Bungie. At the end of July, the Destiny 2 studio laid off 220 employees, representing roughly 17% of its total workforce; shortly after that, a report surfaced alleging that Bungie CEO Pete Parsons had spent more than $2.4 million on vintage cars over the past two years; and shortly after that it came to light that hopes of avoiding layoffs by really nailing The Final Shape expansion were completely misplaced, because the cuts were reportedly planned regardless of the expansion’s outcome.

Bungie is under pressure from Sony to get its house in order, but it seems increasingly unable to. Parsons acknowledged when the most recent round of layoffs landed that the studio was overextended on various “incubation projects” and was bleeding money as a result, but it’s unclear how it’s going to pull out of that spiral. The Final Shape is intended to be the final Destiny 2 expansion, but the nigh-inevitable Destiny 3 is still a long way out, and Marathon, presumably the studio’s next big thing, is struggling: The game recently underwent a leadership change, and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier …

A small-scale strategy game about building and defending little castle towns has debut on Steam in Early Access. Thronefall is a minimalist strategic experience from the developers of Islanders and Superflight, part of the booming genre of indie microstrategy. 

Each round of Thronefall  has you pick your king’s weapons and equipment, like a bow or spear, and build up a little settlement to defend. That means placing walls and towers, sure, but also barracks to recruit  various melee and ranged units you can place before each night falls and waves of enemies come to burn your town. The second layer of strategy is when and how much of your gold to spend on improving your kingdom’s economy for further expansion.

“With Thronefall we tried to strip a classic strategy game from all unnecessary complexity, combining it with some healthy hack and slay. Build up your base during the day, defend it til your last breath at night,” said developers Grizzly Games.

The early access version of Thronefall has four levels, each of which can have mutators applied to it for some nice variety. It also has “37 unlockable perks and weapons” for about “3-5  hours o…

Last month Path of Exile 2 was selected as the #9 Most Wanted game in PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted. The sequel to the long-running ARPG Path of Exile is coming soon, and with work on Path of Exile 2 now well underway, we flew to New Zealand to talk to developers at Grinding Gear Games about how they’re approaching a game that needs to be firmly rooted in the original while offering both new players and veterans something fresh and different.

“One of the things I’ve really enjoyed when designing Path of Exile 2 is just being able to surprise team members by the kind of changes we’re willing to do,” game director Jonathan Rogers said. When I suggested, ‘Hey, maybe we should have WASD controls for our characters as well as click-to-move,’ being willing to make those kind of changes to actually make the game better I think is something that’s going to really impress existing players, as well as new players coming to the game who maybe thought they weren’t interested in playing before.”

Lead game designer Rory Rackham said the studio wants to keep the underlying mechanics from Path of Exile in the new game, but also aims to “rebuild or restructure them” in a way that makes…

There hasn’t been a better time to be obsessed with city builders, and it looks like our appetite for plotting out road networks and crafting bustling towns is as strong as ever, with Slavic Magic’s Manor Lords now topping the Steam wishlist charts. 

As clocked by GamesRadar, the medieval city builder has risen to the top of Steam’s most wishlisted games, overtaking Hades 2, Black Myth: Wukong and Hollow Knight: Silksong. This is particularly impressive when you consider Slavic Magic, aka Greg Styczeń, is a solo developer, who initially funded the game through Patreon. 

Still, I’m not surprised. Anticipation for Manor Lords has been high since it was announced back in 2020, buoyed by popular Steam Next Fest demos. It’s also shaping up very nicely. Ahead of its early access launch on April 26, I spent a few days developing medieval villages, fighting bandits, and feeding everyone eggs—an extremely good time was had. 

There’s a lot to like about Manor Lords’ approach to building settlements, but what I really dig is its housing system. In a lot of city builders, homes are just where your citizens sleep, but in Manor Lords they are crucia…

As a driver I can tell you that hell isn’t other people: It’s other drivers. Seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many people there are on the roads that in any sane world should be banned from ever getting behind the wheel. Only a few weeks ago I lost a wing mirror to a car swerving into my lane on a 50mph road, presumably because its occupant was looking at their phone. So what cars really need is a few more distractions.

Take a bow BMW, which at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show is bigging up its plans for in-car entertainment and “the digital customer experience.” The company’s new 5 Series is the first to incorporate what it calls the AirConsole, a platform that lets the car’s occupants play games on the “infotainment” screens using phones connected via bluetooth as controllers.

AirConsole boasts split-screen play and various third-party titles have been announced, though we’re not talking Baldur’s Gate 3 here: This is more like mobile gaming on a bigger screen. The title showcased at CES was Beach Buggy Racing 2, a two-player retro-styled racing game that would’ve looked at home on the SNES.

“BMW is synonymous with both the ultimate driving machine and…

We knew it was coming, but it’s still exciting to see Alienware announce its new 32-inch 4K OLED gaming panel, the Alienware 32 AW3225QF. Alienware has also pulled the wraps off a new 27-inch 1440p OLED monitor running at fully 360Hz.

But first, that new 32-inch beauty. As with previous Alienware OLED gaming monitors, it uses Samsung’s QD-OLED panel technology. So, the main novelty here is pixel density. At 140DPI, this new panel is much more dense than any existing OLED gaming monitor, which all currently max out at around 110DPI for various 34-inch ultrawide and 27-inch 1440p models, including Alienware’s own panels like the Alienware 34 AW3423DWF.

Alienware says the new AW3225QF will hit 1,000 nits of HDR brightness, but it’s not clear how this new high density OLED panel compares to existing QD-OLED monitors for full screen brightness. 

One other feature that’s not clear is the panel coating. The spec sheet says “anti-reflective” which might imply a matte rather than glossy coating. But then Alienware uses the very same language for both the glossy and non-glossy versions of its 34-inch OLEDs. So, we’ll have to wait and see.

Elsewhere, the specs …

Though treasure goblins started as a Diablo thing, they’ve had a couple of cameos in World of Warcraft, showing up during the Diablo 20th anniversary world event back in 2017 and then as “loot specialists” added in a Dragonflight patch earlier this year. The idea’s always the same: they drop treasure if defeated, but only if you catch them before they escape via magic portal. What made loot specialists different was that they had a lore-appropriate reason for their very videogame behavior, being members of the Venture Co. acquisitions department—a goblin trade cartel that’s been used to parody corporate malfeasance since World of Warcraft’s early days.

When Eric Covington on the World of Warcraft quest team wrote the loot specialists, he gave them lines like “Another record quarter for revenue!” and “No profit sharing!” without thinking much of it. Until he was fired out of the blue, despite having worked at Blizzard for almost nine years.

Covington claims on Twitter that he was fired “because someone looked at an innocuous joke and saw a reflection.” It’s tempting to look over the dialogue and try to figure out if one specific phrase could have got him in trou…

Announced in the June 11 PC Gaming Show, the cherished cyberpunk game Citizen Sleeper is getting a sequel. 

In the dystopian role-playing game, you play a Sleeper, a digitized human brain piloting a robotic body owned by a corporation. You’re an imitation of life, an artificial intelligence outlawed in this sci-fi future, built to bypass the pesky legal limitations that restrict a corporation’s ability to make money. 

Last year Citizen Sleeper was critically acclaimed for its writing and characterization of those eking out an existence on the space station Erlin’s Eye, where it explored the fluidity of identity, failings of capitalism, and whether hope is possible. I won’t spoil what happens in the original game and its potential endings, but the second installment is set beyond the space station and some time into the future of the unstable Helion System.  

In Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, you are caught up in a corporate war, and your already precarious position as an escaped asset is made worse by factions who will do anything for an advantage. However, this time you are free to carve out your path. You hav…

…

Dead Cells developer Motion Twin revealed its new game during a surprise announcement at The Game Awards tonight, a high-speed roguelike battler called Windblown that sets players off on a quest to protect their home of floating islands from the invading forces of the Vortex.

As Leapers, players will move through the open, ever-changing world known as The Ark, a place “teeming with secrets” and, unfortunately, overrun by deadly Sentinels, the minions of the Vortex. Leapers will have multiple weapons at hand and can shift their builds on the fly, and also have the ability to absorb the memories of their fallen predecessors, enabling the use of stronger and more complex weaponry and allowing players to push deeper into the game with each new run.

“Windblown’s combat is tough but always fair,” Motion Twin said. “Every run is a lesson, so learn from your countless deaths, memorize enemy movements and leap back into action stronger than ever.”

Very broadly, Windblown’s roguelike gameplay bears some similarities to the outstanding Dead Cells: The memory unlocking mechanic, for instance, sounds similar to the “cells” players collect from fallen enemies in Dead Cells t…

When it comes to any fancy new tech product releasing out of China, it’s always fair to approach with caution. This goes doubly for PC parts, with components often being smuggled into the country, with varying levels of success. There’s also sneaky rebranding to be aware of, when one product is touted as something new and shiny but is really just a reskinned import. These can be tricky to spot, especially when brands like PowerLeader try so hard to convince you otherwise.

The Chinese brand recently unveiled its new Powerstar P3-01105 CPU, touting a new storm architecture. However Tom’s Hardware spotted talk on Twitter which convincingly unmasks the chip as an Intel Core i3-10105(F) Comet Lake CPU which was initially released back in 2021. 

Physically, the CPU is a dead ringer for the i3 having what looks like exactly the same heat spreader and substrate design, plus they have the same print format on the IHS. It follows that spec wise they’re also incredibly similar, both claiming to have a 3.70GHz base clock, and of course there’s the lazy reshuffling of Intel’s 10105 code to 01105 for the Powerstar.

When announcing the new CPU, PowerLeader also showed of…

Okay, idle fans, I’ve got a new clicker for you: Click Click Dig dropped a new demo this week, and it’s looking pretty much like your kind of thing. In it, your little guy (“Diggy”) and his friends are tunneling toward the center of various planets in search of special and rare materials. Special and rare materials you’ll obviously use to dig deeper, faster, on even more planets.

First off, it’s very cute. The little guys’ little animations are adorable, from the flopping fish to the squashy slime—exactly the kind of characterful thing you want from an idle or incremental game.

It’s the basic setup you expect by now: Start simple, just you and a click or two, then hire assistants to autoclick, then start unlocking upgrades… then skins that are upgrades… then upgrade shops… a research system… crafting. Yeah, it’s all here, and I like it so far.

The free prologue is its own unique planet to dig to the center of, which takes a day or three depending on how you play idlers. Pleasantly, it’s not every single system in the game and since it’s a special planet looks like it’ll have different unlocks than the main game does. Specifically this demo lets yo…

I was very pleasantly surprised when 3D Realms announced in January 2020 that a remaster of the 1999 FPS Kingpin: Life of Crime was in the works. It’s not an especially well-known shooter, but I have fond memories of its extreme violence, grimy ambience, endless profanity, and overall sense of silliness—it’s a game that aspired to be as over-the-top as possible on all fronts. Alas, the release was delayed in November of that same year, after which it fell off the radar completely.

Now it’s back, with a new trailer and a release date close enough that I can believe in it. Kingpin Reloaded, as the updated version is called, is now set to arrive on Steam on December 5.

Visually, the updated Kingpin doesn’t appear to have changed much, although it supports 4K and ultrawide monitors. But that’s a good thing: The slightly pulsating, over-emotive enemies and NPCs were a big part of the original game’s unique charm, and it’d be a shame if they were overly smoothed out. 

The remaster does make a number of under-the-hood changes that promise to expand the original experience, though, ranging from the addition of controller support to new quest and conversation…

Prepare to be smote. Smited. Smitten. Look, they’re making another Smite—Titan Forge’s godly and enduringly popular MOBA that first released in 2014—and it’s gearing up for an alpha test, should you wish to rage against the heavens as soon as possible.

Revealed at the Smite world championships, Titan Forge is pitching Smite 2 as “everything players love about Smite 1” in a sleeker, more modern, and prettier package. The announcement boasts of a “refined user interface, updated audio, clearer spell effects, and fresh physics-based abilities” for its various gods. You’re also getting “new God pantheons, kit refinements, gameplay changes, and overhauled Relic and Item systems for deeper strategy. 

In other words, it sounds like the devs are keen to make the game feel deeper and more flexible, which you probably have to do when players have spent ten years mastering all your old systems already.

On the technical front, Titan Forge promises “state-of-the-art cross-play” along with a rework of the first game’s ranked system with all-new tiers. Smite the second is also trading out the first game’s creaky ol’ Unreal Engine 3 for Unreal Engine 5, and it…

Was it a good idea for The Phantom Menace to include a lengthy subplot about our heroes gambling on a child to win a space Grand Prix? It was not. Did the visual spectacle of podracing blow our tiny ’90s brains regardless? Of course it did. 

What a concept: basically just tethering a little cockpit to two jet engines and sending it off careening at 600mph around a ludicrously dangerous course. And as proved by 1999’s Star Wars Episode I: Racer, it’s perfect fodder for a videogame. 

Enter: Deathgrip, an upcoming sci-fi racer shown off at the PC Gaming Show, that embraces that spirit of ridiculous speed and even more ridiculous mortality rates. 

As soon as I hop into my first race and see the vehicle designs and windy canyon race course, the Star Was inspiration is clear. But I don’t have to get far round the track to realise there’s something much more clever here than just a riff on a movie action scene. 

Deathgrip is all about pushing the limits. There’s an inherent risk-reward in cranking your speed up to max and hoping you can weave around those dangerous corners regardless, sure, but the game goes further than that. The thrusters y…

Deep Rock Galactic is the finest space-dwarf mining simulator out there, which is in no small part down to how the game has been supported with free updates since its early access launch almost five years ago (the game was fully released in 2020). February 28 is the anniversary date, and to celebrate the game will see an event running from March 2-16 with decorations and rewards aplenty for all bearded heroes.

The developers are also adding something even more unusual: The original version of the game, as it launched in early 2018. “Maybe you feel nostalgic and want to go back and experience those early days of glory,” writes Ghost Ship Games. “Or maybe you just want to appreciate everything that has been added since launch by actually seeing how different the game is today by comparison.”

So few games ever offer this opportunity to take stock. There are some games where there may be a reason you seek out and play an older, unpatched version, but rarely do developers want to go back and serve-up something they’ve spent many years improving. It’ll be especially illuminating to go back and see what this was like before all the additions, because I started playin…

Deltarune, the sorta-sequel to the absurdly popular indie game Undertale, has nearly finished development on its third chapter, according to a new Halloween blog on the game’s official newsletter. It’s full of cute touches, like a visitation from a certain white fluffy dog. The bigger news, however, is that Chapter 3 is “pretty much content complete”. The creator of both games, Toby Fox, goes on to write: “Hooray!”

“Obviously, releasing a game takes many more steps than just finishing the gameplay and graphics. But, people are already transitioning back into working on Chapter 4. Everyone is very excited to work on the next part!”

While Chapter 3 won’t be releasing as a free standalone like Chapters 1 and 2, Fox also mentioned that players would be able to get their hands on it sooner than expected. “My original plan was to release Chapter 3, 4, and 5 together. However, the finish line of Chapter 5 is still pretty far off… and I don’t think anybody really wants to wait that long to release anything. Especially me.”

Instead, once Chapter 4’s complete, the game will be available for purchase. Chapter 5 is still coming, you’ll just be able to play Chapters 3 and…

Update: In a statement to PCG, Larian says that the problem players are running into with the shared stash system is “not the intended behavior and will be fixed in an upcoming update.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 is excellent. Historically excellent, in fact, but it’s not without its flaws. The first of these, of course, is that Astarion was not voiced with Neil Newbon’s original Brummie accent, but the game’s awkward inventory system is a close-run second. I don’t know about you, but I probably spent at least a couple of hours of playtime standing stock-still in camp, desperately trying to give my chaotic inventory and those of my allies some semblance of organisation. It never worked.

The third patch for the game tried to ameliorate that a bit, implementing a new “Shared Stash” system that took important quest items away from party members when you dismissed them and placed them in your inventory. It’s not much, but it does mean you don’t lose track of your severed clown torso because you happened to dismiss the party member carrying it without thinking. But there’s a problem.

As spotted by GamesRadar, the system seems to be affecti…

Red Hook Studios has unveiled the first paid DLC pack for Darkest Dungeon 2: The Binding Blade, not to be confused with the Fire Emblem game that had Roy from Smash Bros. in it. The DLC is coming some time in December, and will add two new playable characters: the all-new Duelist, and the long-awaited return of Darkest Dungeon 1’s Crusader.

I was shocked we never got the Crusader among Darkest Dungeon 2’s early access drip of characters. He was a particularly strong and versatile option for any party, occupying that D&D Paladin niche of tank and damage dealer and support/healer. 

On top of that, I always saw him as a bit of a mascot for the game alongside the Highwayman. The Crusader’s Darkest Dungeon 2 iteration seems to largely fall in line with his original skillset, at least according to The Binding Blade’s promo material:

“This battle hardened knight is fueled by a radiant Holy fire and will Smite his foes where they stand. The Crusader is a well rounded front rank hero who can withstand punishing blows, support his team with healing and stress recovery, and rend his opponents with his righteous blade.“

But the Crusader won…

If you miss the sandbox of floating islands, customizable airships, and grappling hooks found in Worlds Adrift—the MMO from Bossa Games that shut down in 2019—you’re about to get another chance to sail the winds and swing around. The developer of I Am Bread and Surgeon Simulator are taking another stab the sky with a new co-op survival game coming next year.

Lost Skies, announced today at the Humble Games Showcase, is an open world co-op adventure for 1-6 players. Like Worlds Adrift, you’ll be free to explore the world, construct customizable airships, and yes, use a grappling hook and paragliders to visit the floating islands you discover.

“With a vast world to explore, you’ll need to build your own skyship to navigate the open skies. Lost Skies’ unique ship crafting system allows you to intricately shape your ship’s hull, and freely place parts where you want, taking care to consider the quality and weight of the materials you use. Not only is your skyship your home in the clouds, it is also your warship to take into battle and survive treacherous weather,” says Bossa Games.

The world beneath you has been shattered, and you’ll need to …

Update:
Nvidia has been in touch to let us know that the original release notes for the RT Overdrive mode were misleading. In fact, the new path-tracing goodness will run on any GPU with hardware ray tracing, including Nvidia’s original RTX 20-series and AMD’s RX 6000 and 7000 graphics.

As we explain below, given that the RTX 4090 is dragged down to just 16 fps running the new eye candy natively and without DLSS goodies, don’t get too excited if you have older RT-capable hardware. The frame rates almost certainly aren’t going to be pretty.

Original story:
Rejoice, for Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode is now live in all its path tracing glory. Well, rejoice if you own a recent Nvidia graphics card. Don’t rejoice if you own an older Nvidia GPU or any graphics from AMD, because it won’t run on your PC.

Path tracing, of course, is essentially full-fat ray tracing with more rays, more reflections, more of everything that makes lighting realistic.

According to the creators of Cyberpunk, CD Projekt RED, the patch, “pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in technology. However, because it is so new and fundamentally dif…

Relic Entertainment’s 2004 and 2009 real-time strategy magnum opuses, Dawn of War and Dawn of War 2, have been re-released as anniversary editions for their 15th and 20th years of real-time-strategerizing. The new anniversary editions, available on Steam, include all the DLC and extras released for the two games over the years. That’s especially nice for Dawn of War 2, which had a metric ton of DLC and skins and codes and wargear and exclusive bonuses by the end of its life cycle.

Both games are also on sale, at 80% off—or $7 and $10 respectively.

So far the two games have released on Steam in this new edition—no word on whether or not people who own them via other platforms like GOG will get an upgrade. Also I really doubt that Sega is going to honor an upgrade on my 20-year-old copy of Dawn of War—that one came on three CDs. I still have them.

“The fan-favourite and legendary release of Dawn of War and Dawn of War 2, originally developed by Relic Entertainment in 2004 and 2009 respectively, have just turned 20 and 15 years years old! To celebrate, we’ve put together two Anniversary Editions, collecting the original game with all its …

Brave soul that I am, I’m about to embark on a perilous quest. Over the next however many paragraphs this potentially rambling feature ends up being, I will say some nice things about Dragon Age 2. I have done it before, and I may do it again. I am aware this is upsetting to some readers. Please know that I respect your decision to be completely wrong about this misunderstood RPG (while also acknowledging that, yes, in some regards it’s a bit of a stinker). OK, hopefully you are now properly prepared.

Although, a cursory glance at the internet suggests that my appreciation of DA2, at least when it comes to this specific element, might actually see me placed in the majority. I’m talking about the qunari, of course, and how the crew that caused a big ol’ ruckus in Kirkwall was so much more badass than the defanged version introduced in Inquisition. I am, I should emphasise, not including Iron Bull in this slight, who of course is wonderful and, yes, weirdly hot.

Every time we get a new Dragon Age, it’s a starkly different RPG. Dragon Age: Origins remains the GOAT, and it’s where we meet our first qunari: Sten. He’s a big brooding lad who largely just looks like a blo…

Cooperative shooter Deep Rock Galactic will soon let players take its old seasons of stuff out of the closet and take them for a spin. That means the first four rounds of themed extra stuff to do in Deep Rock will be available as their own game modes alongside a separate Vanilla module that can spit out events and game modes from every season—and all of that’s coming as part of DRG season 5 this June.

As part of that, every single season’s tree of unlockables, their Performance Pass and Cosmetic Tree, will be put back in circulation as part of their own seasonal play mode. If you played that season before, you’ll get set back to where you were on that tree.

It’s an approach we’re seeing more and more limited-time-experience live service games adopt as time goes on: There’s a lot of game to play, so why restrict it to a limited amount of time when people might not be able to play it? With the notable exception of genre-leader Destiny 2, of course, which routinely removes big chunks of stuff to keep the game install at a reasonable size.

A cooperative shooter about science-fiction Dwarven miners on a funky-shaped asteroid planet, Deep Rock Galactic has had …

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The ever-growing genre of games that mimic the old top-down Zelda titles has another entry with Ogu and the Secret Forest. Releasing on Steam at the end of last month, Ogu has gotten a fairly positive reception from early players. The hand-drawn 2D art and characters are certainly pretty charming, as is little hat-wearing net-swinging platypus protagonist Ogu.

Gameplay emphasizes exploring the world to find puzzles, secrets, and mysteries in order to recover some magical doodads or other. Trailers and gifs show a pretty cool variety of puzzle types. I can see push-object puzzles sokoban style, some mazes made of gates that rise and fall in  patterns, even a match-the-tones style pattern puzzle using musical instruments.

Unlike some other entries in the genre, Ogu does still have the combat elements that were key to older top-down action-adventure games.

That means little enemies for sure, but it also seems like Ogu has an emphasis on some pretty tough bosses to beat. Battles against those bosses are unforgiving, requiring you to really learn how they attack to avoid the pattern and get in your hits while you can. 

There are also cute th…

Sorcerers are Diablo 4’s ultimate chameleons with the number of builds they have capable of crushing the RPG’s upcoming leaderboards. Last time, it was a lightning build that was so fast it made the game a slideshow, and now it’s a build that fills your screen with bouncy fireballs.

Diablo 4 streamer Rob2628 is back with a build that uses the same structure as the Arc Lash build, but ramps up the damage by using Fireball in combination with a Unique pair of gloves.

The Gloves of the Illuminator, which you can find pretty easily, turn your Fireballs into basketballs and cause them to bounce and explode for slightly less damage than usual. With loads of attack speed, you can dump buckets of them out as you jump from room to room with Teleport. Enemies instantly turn into ash with this setup, so you don’t even need to worry about having defensive gear on.

There are a few key parts of the setup that make it work:

• Gloves of the Illuminator make Fireballs bounce
• Flickerstep boots lets you spam Teleport and reset your Ultimate skill cooldown
• Tibault’s Will leggings give you a huge damage increase and refill your mana when you Teleport

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A Reddit thread by user zerger45 is swearing that Diablo 4’s rats will lead you to legendary loot, which wouldn’t on its own be news, except for the fact that over 8,000 people seem to agree with them. That, or they’re just throwing their voices into the new rat cult for kicks, hoping some rodent genuflection might result in one of Diablo 4’s mega-rare loot drops. Either way, I’m concerned we have another cow-level pipedream on our hands.

“Okay this is going to sound really bizarre, but you need to follow the rats for good loot. Don’t follow the predetermined path in any dungeon, instead, just follow the rats. The rats smell the cheese! I’m telling you it’s real,” types zerger45 in a somewhat religious trance. “I found multiple legendaries doing this within a span of maybe 10 minutes.”

Fellow co-conspirator LuxSolisPax comments: “I know most of us are joking, but following the animals has led me to [plant resources]. Following the rats doesn’t sound that ridiculous in that context,” they add: “There’s other things too. Every time I’ve seen an NPC at the beginning of a dungeon crawling and screaming about how the place is doomed that I can’t interact…

The dream of any sci-fi fan is a functioning holodeck. Just step into a humble room and be transported into another world, time period (probably in 1930’s Chicago, if you’re one particularly popular sci-fi TV show), get up to hijinks, and come crashing back into reality when it all goes dreadfully wrong. Well, sci-fi fans, you’re in luck because Disney just showed off a floor that looks incredible for limitless traversal in a small space.

In a video homage to Disney Research Fellow and Imagineer Lanny Smoot, who is set to join the prestigious ranks of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the inventor showed off the incredible floor. It’s called HoloTile, and it’s one of the sleekest VR flooring solutions I’ve seen.

“It will automatically do whatever it needs to have me stay on the floor,” Smoot says.

“Multiple people can be on it and all walking independently. They can walk in virtual reality and so many other things.”

Disney actually shows a clip of multiple users walking on the device at the same time. It’s pretty impressive, if a little dangerous if you’re not careful. Though it’s not often you see a VR walking solution that works for two or more peopl…

It’s still common for big-budget games to launch with Denuvo’s Anti-Tamper anti-piracy software, and it’s also common for those games’ performance problems to be blamed on said DRM. Irdeto, the digital security company that bought Denuvo in 2018 (and previously tried to force Overwatch porn offline), has denied its software is responsible for those issues, most recently in an interview with Ars Technica. 

Steve Huin, chief operating officer of videogames at Irdeto, claimed that comparisons using cracked versions of games that load faster and run more smoothly are inaccurate, because they’re rarely based on the exact same version of a game. “There might be over the lifetime of the game a protected and unprotected version,” Huin said, “but these are not comparable because these are different builds over six months, many bug fixes, etc., which could make it better or worse.”

Huin is aware that simply saying this won’t prove anything to the legion of players who blame Denuvo for every framerate drop they experience. “Our voice is unfortunately not sufficient to convince people because we’re not trusted in their mind as a starting point in that debate,” he said.&nbsp…