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The metaverse is exciting, it's mystifying, but above all else, it's kind of a mess. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg got brutally dragged in August because of his horrific, dead-eyed meta-selfie; the beatdown resumed earlier this month when Zuck announced that Meta avatars would be getting legs. And it's not just the online hoi polloi who don't care for the current state of things. Speaking at today's WSJ Tech Live 2022 conference, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said the metaverse is "a poorly built videogame." "If I think about videogames, for years we've been putting people together in 3D spaces to go and save the world from invading aliens, or conquer the castle," Spencer said. "Building a metaverse that looks like a meeting room, I just find that's not where I want to spend most of my time." Palmer Luckey, who co-founded Oculus VR in 2012—the company that would provide the nucleus for Meta's Reality Labs business—was more bluntly skeptical in his assessment of Meta's Horizon Worlds, comparing it to a "project car" that Zuckerberg is pouring unreasonable amounts of money into in pursuit of a vision. "I don't think it's a good product," Luckey said. "It's not. It's not fun, it's not good. I think actually most of the people probably on the team would agree that it's not currently a good product." Interestingly, Improbable CEO Herman Narula seemed to agree with Spencer's assertion that games are already mini-metaverses, but argued that the metaverse more broadly isn't gaming-focused. "Videogames already work well," Narula said. "Videogames are great closed systems of value. If you enjoy Call of Duty or World of Warcraft, they're going to keep on being fun for years to come. The metaverse is the idea, at least in my view, that you can start connecting these experiences together, and that's a lot less interesting to game companies than it is to, say, sports leagues or fashion brands." That's not an unreasonable take: Games do work pretty well as standalone worlds already, and most of the early efforts at crafting some form of metaversal experience seem more broadly focused: Walmart Land, for instance, or the Adam Savage thing that made Imogen cry (and, more importantly, convinced her that the metaverse could maybe work, someday.) Even so, Spencer said (via the Wall Street Journal) he thinks that online worlds will ultimately go in a more game-like direction: "I think [virtual engagement] will end up looking more like videogames than some of the models that I see from the metaverse today," he said. Regardless of what anyone thinks about it, right now Meta's metaverse is bleeding badly. The company reported in today Q3 financial results (via MSNBC) that revenues generated by its Reality Labs business fell by almost half from the previous year, to just $285 million; it lost $3.67 billion in this quarter, compared to $2.63 billion in the same quarter last year. Total losses on the year have reached $9.4 billion, and Meta said it expects that "operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year." View the full article

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launch time is nearly here—again. Of course the first game bearing the name launched 13 years ago but, also, pre-order players have been hopping into the nu-MW2 campaign since last week. The real launch is about to arrive though. On Friday (or the tail end of Thursday in the west coast of the US) everyone on all platforms will get to hit the multiplayer lobbies together. Or the campaign first, if that's your style. I can respect that. My fellow PC Gamer writer and CoD man Morgan Park has already been testing the ground this week, rounding up the seven best and cringiest moments from the campaign for those who don't mind the spoilers or have also already sunk their time into hitting the credits before multiplayer launch. Here's the intel you really want under your belt though: the Modern Warfare 2 release date and all the official launch times. Modern Warfare 2 launch times (Image credit: Activision) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will launch globally at 12:00 am Eastern on Friday, October 28. Here's how that breaks down for other timezones across the world, which Activision has highlighted: PDT: 9 pm, October 27EDT: 12 am, October 28GMT: 5 am, October 28CEST: 6 am, October 28JST: 1 pm, October 28AEDT: 3 pm, October 28 For PC players on Steam and Battle.net, the game launches simultaneously in all regions at the above times. Things are a bit different for console players though, who will have a regional roll-out starting at 4 am PDT on Thursday and ending at 9 pm alongside the global PC launch. That's because on consoles each region will get access at midnight local time on Friday, October 28. Yup, folks are asking about the "New Zealand trick" for console launch which presumably will work if you want to put in the effort for an extra 17 hours of modern warring. If you're from New Zealand, congratulations—you're the cool kids again. For everyone else, you can change your console's region in your settings and restart. View the full article

It says a lot that in a Call of Duty campaign that includes the highly anticipated reunion of iconic series regulars like Captain Price, Soap McTavish, Gaz, and Ghost, the Modern Warfare 2 character seeing the most buzz is actually its most murderous villain. Valeria Garza has captured the undivided attention of the CoD community, with some already calling for her to become a playable operator in multiplayer. And, yes, it's because people are thirsting over her. Note: Modern Warfare 2 campaign spoilers below. Garza is a new face in the Modern Warfare-verse—she's the anonymous head of the El Sin Nombre cartel and ruthless ruler over the fictional town of Las Almas, Mexico (where much of the campaign takes place). She's also ex-Mexican army and an old friend of new Team Price member Alejandro, who is understandably upset to see that she's used her military experience to become a powerful crimelord. Garza is undeniably among the evilest characters in a roster that includes corrupt generals, PMC war criminals, and aspiring terrorists. She is also hot. You could chalk up Garza's popularity to her appearance (and judging by fancams already cropping up on TikTok it's certainly a factor), but it's a bit deeper than that. Despite only appearing in a single mission and a few cutscenes, Garza leaves a lasting impression on a story dominated by dudes with gruff voices. She's an imposing presence in her titular mission, "El Sin Nombre", in which Alejandro, Soap McTavish, and Soap's 2009 mohawk infiltrate the El Sin Nombre headquarters to identify and capture the organization's faceless leader. Soap is questioned by Garza (believing that she's only a cartel general, not the head honcho herself) and the player is forced to answer trivia about the whos and whats of the story so far to not get shot in the chest. Actor Maria Elisa Camargo, who also did Garza's performance capture, really owns the scene and plays the good cop/bad cop interrogator well. Camargo herself is having a blast interacting with Garza's unexpected fanbase, even embracing her thirst trap status. "Such an honor to feel accepted by the Call of Duty community, I respect you," she wrote in an Instagram post yesterday. "Amazed and overwhelmed with all the comments in my social media (I read them ALL), memes, 'mommy's and smart/detailed reviews about my performance." In an earlier post, Camargo described her foray into videogame acting as "a completely new and challenging experience on set, and SURREAL times with the most loving, kind and badass team of super talented people from all over the world!" We live in a society #ModernWarfareII #ModernWarfare2 #Valeria pic.twitter.com/Nypc3cewmUOctober 24, 2022 See more Personally, I'm still holding a candle for Farah Karim: the calm, precise, and vengeful freedom-fighting protagonist of the previous Modern Warfare campaign. Karim returns briefly in Modern Warfare 2 to help Captain Price take down a convoy of terrorists, but unfortunately it's the worst mission in the game. I fully expect Infinity Ward to take notice of Garza's growing fanbase and react accordingly. If there wasn't already a Valeria skin in the works, it's probably coming. The enthusiasm speaks for itself. if bad, why hot? valeria bae frfr pic.twitter.com/PdBWU8hE7QOctober 25, 2022 See more Valeria kinda bad though#MWII | #MW2 pic.twitter.com/Obh6i5TvnUOctober 22, 2022 See more Thanks, Kotaku View the full article

There is no bait guaranteed to hook a PC gamer like someone on social media asking for advice on a PC build—especially if that someone is a celebrity with 2.8 million followers, like actor Chloë Grace Moretz. The star of Kick-'donkey' and new sci-fi series The Peripheral has recently been tweeting about her gaming habits, saying she was "obsessed" with the Modern Warfare 2 beta back in September and that she seriously wanted to get into sim racing. Now it looks like she's at the tipping point of going full-blown PC gamer. Early Wednesday, Moretz tweeted the bait, asking "to all my gaming friends out there—for a PC set up, where should I begin, how deep do I need to get into the intricacies of it?" Three hours and some 750 responses later, she'd already gotten the usual spread of responses: influencers and other fans recommending boutique PC builders, others recommending building it herself, and brands thirstily offering up their own rigs. (I've got to give special thanks to reader Chris Thornett, who recommended PC Gamer's own Alan Dexter as a veteran hardware expert). If I were Moretz I would've quickly given up on responding to a thread with 750+ replies, but I'm heartened that she wrote back to a few folks who recommended building over a prebuilt rig and called out PCPartPicker as an invaluable resource. As our EIC Evan Lahti wrote years ago, building your own PC is a special experience. "It's pretty much adult legos," one fan tweeted, which got a response from Moretz. "Adult legos is literally a dream haha yes," she wrote. After a rough couple years of overpriced or unavailable stock, it's finally a good time to build a PC again: Intel's i5-13600K is a killer gaming CPU at a good price and power efficiencyHigh-end NVMe SSDs are getting closer and closer to $1 per gigEven RGB lighting is a lot less tacky than it used to be Moretz is a race fan and already has a wheel setup and a care package from Logitech to kickstart her gaming setup, but if I could make a couple suggestions to any new PC gamer: Don't skimp on the monitor: a quality, high refresh screen is so nice. For a race fan, I think the best choice right now is the slightly curved 34-inch Alienware AW3423DW. 175 Hz refresh and HDR on an OLED! Get a great chair—and maybe not a "gaming" chair. We can tell you about the best gaming chairs, but I'd recommend the Herman Miller Embody or even better, the Steelcase Gesture, over a gaming-style bucket chair. Once she gets her rig up and running, I hope Chloë Grace Moretz falls fully into the PC gaming tinkerer's life and discovers the Sunday morning joy of installing 30 mods for a game and then never playing it, or undervolting a CPU to get just as much performance for less power. If she and Henry Cavill ever cross paths, I like to imagine they'll have a deep discussion about Noctua fans. They really are the best. View the full article

McPixel 3 was the best demo I played in the Steam Next Fest that took place in February (although, full disclosure, I actually played it a bit before the Next Fest began). It's an absolutely bonkers collection of puzzles in which McPixel saves the day in astonishingly bizarre ways, like disarming a cruise missile by peeing on it, saving people from a car bomb by kicking a man in the nuts, or crashing a barbecue and stuffing bratwurst into his paints. If that doesn't sound like it makes sense, well, believe me, it doesn't. If anything, trying to figure out what 'makes sense' in this game is the surest way to go wrong. The McPixel 3 demo was a blast, and now we've got a release date on the full game, which will arrive on Steam and GOG on November 14. The full release will have 100 levels with more than 20 minigames scattered amidst its surreal puzzles, over 1,500 interactive items, and "almost 1,000 hilarious gags," although your mileage may vary on that front: I thought it was a riot, but I also laugh at fart jokes and bad language, so take it for what it's worth. For those unsure about where exactly they fall on the "this is (not) funny" spectrum, the launch trailer above offers a pretty good sense of what to expect. Even better, the McPixel 3 demo is still available, so you can get some actual hands-on time with it if you like. The original McPixel, released way back in 2012, is also available for $5 on Steam and Itch.io. There is no McPixel 2: Publisher Devolver Digital said it might reveal the truth of what happened to it when the new game goes live, but I'm betting it doesn't. View the full article

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, the next game in BioWare's hit RPG series, has completed its alpha milestone, general manager Gary McKay announced today—and what that means in practical terms is that the game is now fully playable from start to finish. For the developers, at least—there's still no word on when any of us will be playing it. "Up to this point, we’ve been working hard on the various parts of the game, but it’s not until the alpha milestone that a game all comes together," McKay wrote. "Now, for the first time, we can experience the entire game, from the opening scenes of the first mission to the very end. We can see, hear, feel, and play everything as a cohesive experience." There's still a long way to go before Dreadwolf crosses the finish line, but McKay said getting to an alpha state is a big deal because it means developers can turn their focus to improving graphics, iterating on gameplay, and ensuring that progression, pacing, and "narrative cohesion" all come together properly. "Now that we’re finally able to experience the entire game, for me, my favorite part is the characters," McKay wrote. "Whether followers, allies, or villains, they’re woven into the game in ways that take a concept that’s always been a part of the Dragon Age DNA—stories about people—and push it further than ever before. The characters help contextualize the world and the stakes, and I can’t wait until we’re able to start really discussing them in depth. "It’s also exciting to finally be able to bring our fans to parts of the world that we’ve previously hinted at, but never been able to fully explore—like the city of Minrathous, the capital of the Tevinter Empire. We’ve talked about Minrathous in previous games, and now you’ll finally be able to visit! It’s a city built on and fuelled by magic, and the ways in which that has come through in its visual identity, and what that looks like in comparison to previous cities we’ve visited in Dragon Age, are pretty spectacular." McKay committed to remaining "transparent" with the community as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf continues, and also took a moment to remind everyone that BioWare has other things on the go, including a new Mass Effect and continued updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic. He also gently suggested that Mass Effect fans not hold their breath waiting for news on that front, saying BioWare has a team "hard at work envisioning what the future holds for a new single-player Mass Effect game." View the full article

The venerable InXile Entertainment is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and has posted a new studio video with some of its key figures talking about the journey thus far. InXile was founded in 2002 by Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo, and its first game set a high bar: The Bard's Tale, a fourth wall-breaking APRG that managed the rare feat of being a genuinely funny videogame. Quality doesn't always win through, though, and InXile had a rough ride of things at times, including spells when it developed mobile and Nintendo DS games to keep the lights on. Cancelled projects didn't help either: I visited a Codemasters preview event many years ago and saw a demo of Heist, an in-depth bank robbing strategy game that would never see the light of day. It actually looked like it could've been great, but clearly looks can be deceiving. The studio's anniversary video goes through a number of its highs and lows, but what really blew my mind is an incident I'd completely missed at the time. One of the avenues InXile pursued when it was trying to keep things ticking over was the enormous Nintendo DS market, and its seemingly inexhaustible appetite for 'lite' style sim games. "The world was shifting underneath our feet," said Fargo. "Okay, we just got to be plucky entrepreneurs, we've got the rights to Line Rider. Then Nintendogs came out, I'm like 'let's do cats', so we sold like three quarter-of-a-million copies. I mean, what else… dogs are done, what else should be done. Well, people love babies…" This would ultimately become a game called Baby Pals, but what happened shortly after its release must have stunned InXile. The anniversary video shows an American cable news clip (timestamp), where the reporter says this mother was distressed after buying her 8 year-old girl the game as a reward, before 'discovering' that it contained a hidden message. The baby appears to say "Islam is the light". "We licensed the sound library," said Fargo. "Which was the same one that Mattel used for one of their dolls so, y'know, seemed safe. And next thing you know we're in the news, that if you listen carefully the baby is saying 'Islam is the light'. "I'm like, okay, you've got to be kidding me. Right… okay, kind of a stretch." "It wasn't even words," adds another voice, and they're clearly right. The random baby sounds do however add up to an odd approximation, one of those things where if you're looking for it (and no doubt some do) you can hear what you like. "It was just a baby babbling," recalls InXile's Elene Campbell. "There were no hidden references and it caused so much trouble, it was so stupid. But Baby Pals was great!" At the time the game's publisher, noting that Mattel's dolls included the same sounds, said: "The sound in question of this babble may sound like the words night, right or light, but it is only coincidence as the baby recorded was too young to pronounce these words let alone a whole grammatically correct phrase." The controversy eventually blew over, and the perpetually offended cable news shows moved onto other targets like French mustard. Things seem to be going much better for InXile these days, and its most recent title Wasteland 3 has seen positive responses from players and critics. It's not yet known what the studio's next project will be though, following its 2018 acquisition by Microsoft, the various talking heads here strongly indicate it will be the kind of game it's known for. And no, that doesn't mean Baby Pals. View the full article

Rocksteady Studios co-founders Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker will be leaving the studio at the end of 2022, just months before the expected release of its next game, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. The announcement of their departure came from Warner Bros. Interactive president David Haddad, who called them "great leaders of the team." "Visiting Rocksteady Studios has always been a highlight for me personally—the attention to detail, the energy of the people, and a sense of what it is like to be in a high performance studio," Haddad wrote. "They have committed to the highest quality and excellence across all facets of game development while ensuring an outstanding culture of caring for their employees." Hill and Walker said the decision to leave Rocksteady "was emotional to say the least," and that the studio "has been our life and soul" from the day it was founded in 2004. "It has given us the opportunity to do what we love most: Make great games with exceptionally talented people. We are so proud of the team here for the games we have all made together, from our first game Urban Chaos, to the much-loved Arkham series, and now the epic Suicide Squad." "Now with Suicide Squad in safe hands, and the team here stronger than ever, it's time to hand over the reins, and for us to start a new adventure together in games." Rocksteady's director of production Nathan Burlow will take over as studio director, while Darius Sadeghian will step into the role of studio product director. Haddad said Burlow and Sadeghian are "extremely talented executives [and] passionate about continuing the high-quality game development at Rocksteady for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and all future games." A message from Jamie & Sefton “We wanted you, the Rocksteady fans, to hear it first; we have decided to leave Rocksteady... From the day we founded the company all the way to today, Rocksteady has been our life & soul.”https://t.co/3ZRs1NMom2 pic.twitter.com/98I6YOgZrYOctober 26, 2022 See more Despite the upbeat tone of the announcement, the timing of their departure has caused concern among some Rocksteady fans. There's been some chaos at WBIE thanks to a 2022 merger with Discovery that saw the sale of at least one Warner-owned game studio and the cancellation of numerous television shows and movies, most notably Batgirl, which was well into post-production when the plug was pulled. Suicide Squad was originally supposed to be out this year and so it's possible the decision to go was made before the delay, but that happened back in March and there was no word about a major shakeup at the top until now. At this point in development there's presumably nothing left but to do but polish the game, which means there's no more creative work left for Hill and Walker anyway. But for the optics alone, I would think that Warner would be eager for them to stick around at least until the game is out the door. Unsurprisingly, some fans saw the impending departure as bad news for Suicide Squad, and Rocksteady as a whole: (Image credit: Twitter ) (Image credit: Twitter ) (Image credit: Twitter ) (Image credit: Twitter ) Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League still doesn't have a fixed release date, but we expect it to arrive sometime in spring 2023. View the full article

Overwatch 2's first seasonal event, Halloween Terror, is here. In some ways its formula barely deviates from the original game's shenanigans: it's a small PvE mode with fixed heroes and varying difficulties. Tyler Colp particularly enjoyed this year's offering, Wrath of the Bride. But gone are the days of earning skins in-game through loot boxes and challenges. Nope, this year things are a little different, a little pricier, and fans are not happy. New heroes Kiriko and Junker Queen have received spooky skins as part of the event, available to purchase through the shop. While Junker Queen's skin is available individually (still at an eye-watering $19, mind you), Kiriko's skin is the one causing more of a ruckus. As multiple Reddit users have pointed out, it's only available via a 2600 coin bundle, which requires either purchasing $5 and $20 Overwatch coin packs or forking out for the next coin tier at $50. The high price is the fuse leading to a fan blow-up, but the match lighting that fuse is Blizzard's decision to force a package deal. The bundle includes a name card, weapon charm, highlight intro, and player icon alongside the skin but offers no way to purchase the items separately. The bundle is sold for an alleged discount: the store says its actual value is $37. According to the bundle description, that metric is based on the "price for similar items offered individually in the same tier and category." Overwatch's subreddit and Twitter replies are flooded with fans calling on Blizzard to reduce the price of the items and offer them separately. Streamer Redshell called out the game's "fake discount" in a YouTube community post, bluntly adding: "'frell' Blizzard and 'frell' Overwatch 2." A Reddit post with over 1,400 upvotes called Blizzard "a garbage greedy 'donkey' company," while another compared Junker Queen's skin price to a skin in Fortnite. Some fans have also taken issue with the prices of old event skins. A bundle that is, according to Blizzard, worth $76 at full price (but is being sold for $44) contains four previous Halloween event skins that could previously be earned for free through natural progression in Overwatch 1. Some of these skins have been in the game for five years, which makes their new supposed $20 value a bit of a stinger. The juxtaposition of Overwatch 2's monetisation in comparison to Overwatch 1 certainly isn't helping the backlash that's been happening since the game launched. Loot boxes are awful and predatory, but at least the original game let you never spend a dime (outside the game's initial purchase) and still consistently earn a nice stream of rewards. It's an unfortunate consequence of its transition to free-to-play, and the high prices are easy to point to as further evidence of Activision-Blizzard's push to wring more and more money out of its games. Hopefully, Blizzard will reconsider its skin pricing soon and we won't end up in a world where we're forking out $45 for a mythic skin. View the full article

In July 2021, Blaseball was sucked into a black hole. This was the end of Blaseball's second era—Expansion—a tale of excess; of gods and finance and increasingly complex mechanics stacking on top of each other to build something absurd. Now, finally, Blaseball's third era is on the way. First, though, the universe needs to rebuild itself. In a lot of ways, what we're doing is very much a reboot of Blaseball. Joel Clark Today, Blaseball launches Fall Ball, a prologue to the new era. "We're dropping players from a black hole, onto teams," says creative director Sam Rosenthal. "So this is a way to witness the reforming and birth of a new Blaseball universe." The countdown that's currently live on the site is ticking down to the first player drop. When it ends, someone from Blaseball's roster will emerge and land randomly onto their new team. It's a cosmic draft, essentially, that will redistribute the players across the league's 24 teams. Already, as a fan, I'm nervous about the possibility of seeing my team's players scattered throughout the league—although the end of Expansion left plenty of rosters almost unrecognisable. For The Game Band, though, it's an important chance to hit the reset button. "When our last era ended by being swallowed by a black hole, we specifically ended on that note so that we could start fresh and shake loose some of the… maybe baggage isn't the right word for it—but to let us get started anew," says game design lead Joel Clark. "This is our first opportunity to do so. I think it's gonna feel really fresh and new to even our existing fans. And I think you'll all appreciate it. Like we wanted to bring in new fans while still honouring the old and letting the old spirit of Blaseball still be there. But in a lot of ways, what we're doing is very much a reboot of Blaseball. We're trying to find that balance between the two, and I think we found it." What state those players land in should tell us a lot about Blaseball's third era. Expansion's glut of mechanics pushed up the number of modifiers attached to players and teams higher than ever before. And the inflation of star ratings and their underlying stats meant players were better at the game than ever before. This new era, then, is a chance to rebalance the books. You don't have to go join a bunch of different external servers and social networks to get a feel for that community experience. Sam Rosenthal "Star creep got out of control," says Clark. "And there were so many mods, so we're going to have to remove quite a bit of those on both counts just to have a fresh starting point. If we even just kept the mods, we would be starting with a glut of systems. So it's going to be pretty fresh. How fresh? Well I won't say exactly. Things will look different, for sure. I will say… we've had to rebuild a lot. So even the core sim has undergone huge changes. And it's going to feel very different in this era, and it's going to have whole new systemic depths to dive into." uhJuly 27, 2021 See more "It'll look very new too," Rosenthal adds. "It's getting a huge fresh coat of paint as we redid the UI completely. Part of that was just really reconsidering what playing Blaseball is actually like, and how we can bring a lot of the choices and actions that the players are doing more together, so it feels less like everything is on a separate page. We thought a lot about how fans organise and play together outside of Blaseball, on Discord and on Twitter and such, and wanted to bring some of that spirit into the game so that when you join you realise that this is a game that a lot of people play together. And you don't have to go join a bunch of different external servers and social networks to get a feel for that community experience. And then also, we're launching on mobile for the first time too, so we wanted a UI that at the very least would not be the same on both, but have a consistent visual styling, no matter where you're playing." Good sport It sounds like part of the aim for this new era is to have Blaseball be easier to follow for new fans, and less time intensive for existing ones. Towards the end of Expansion, I attempted to summarise some of the story up to that point, but eventually gave up when it became clear that, each week, the rules would dramatically change, sometimes invalidating that everything came before. Instead, after the era ended, I wrote a tribute to the Philly Pies, and their trials and tribulations during the season when they were the best teams in the league, but wins turned into losses. Each week will be like a 'monster of the week'—its own little arc that you can dive into. Joel Clark "Oh yeah, because the Pies were finally really good that season," says Clark as I explain all this to the people responsible for my heartbreak. "But actually they were really bad that season. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry about Nerd Pacheco. That was another devastating one. We were really like, 'how far can we push this?' It was a learning experience." whatJuly 26, 2021 See more A consequence of the way Expansion worked is that it was hard to catch up mid-era. If you weren't there when it started, you needed to do a lot of research just to figure out why sharks were biting players, or why a home run could give your team a negative score. To solve this problem, The Game Band are planning a new structure for the third era. "Definitely some elements will be kept," says Clark. "We get to reevaluate everything we had from Discipline era, all the way through Expansion, and see what works the best. What can we cull away and what can we keep? What can we redesign? This new era, you're going to see our first attempt at that. Expansion was very much about that accumulation of systems. It was the natural conclusion of the structure we had set up, of every week you get to add a new rule or add a new something to Blaseball. We've reevaluated that, so our new structure is going to be more week-by-week. Each week will be like a 'monster of the week'—its own little arc that you can dive into. Even if you don't have context of previous seasons, you can dive into the current season and just see what horrifying or mysterious things might be happening that season. It gives us a little mini reset each season, which I think is going to go a long way." I am the Blaseball CommissionerJuly 27, 2021 See more "The new structure lets us really curate the mechanics a lot more as well," says Rosenthal. "Like Joel was saying, that Expansion was just this constant accumulation meant that when you jump in, it's kind of difficult to know what to focus on. Systems were never removed, features were never removed—everything was always there, all the time. So we've actually, internally, talked a lot about Super Mario Galaxy when designing this era, where every galaxy was its own self-contained thing that had one or two mechanics they explored quite a bit and then discarded as you went into the next one. We've been trying to move more into that style of design where we can really highlight a system or mechanic for a week—tie it all in with the theme and the character—and move on to something else." Attendance record I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry about Nerd Pacheco. Joel Clark Overall, then, the new Blaseball aims to be more accessible, and more respectful of fans' time. This coincides with it being available on more platforms, where it can reach more prospective fans. This is why part of the Fall Ball period will also act as a recruitment drive for the third era. By registering, the community will collectively work towards attendance goals that will unlock rewards that hold secrets to Blaseball's universe, past and future. The Game Band aren't yet saying what, exactly, those rewards will be, but they'll be tied into the new on-site community features. "So we're going to actually have to make a little bit of money this time around with Blaseball," says Rosenthal, "so we are going to have what we think are cool things to buy, that are very much in the spirit of the game. We've spent a lot of time thinking about monetization, how to make it ethical. We certainly aren't going to let you pay to make the Philly Pies win. But the rewards are going to be really cool free versions of what we're going to be ultimately selling, and the experience. They're cosmetics and they will interact with some of the new community features that are there. That's all I'm really able to say about it right now." ohJuly 26, 2021 See more There's no date yet for the start of the third era, and much of The Game Band's plans are still under wraps. "When we left off, we melted the Coin, which was the big boss of Blaseball," teases Clark, "and that left behind a power vacuum. And so a lot of this era is going to be about the ramifications of that, and the ramifications of the black hole—so two sort of vacuums—how do we resolve that? How do we fill that void?" "We talk a lot about what creates interesting, funny outcomes in sports," says Rosenthal. "And once the ball is in play in baseball, all sorts of things can happen. Previously in our simulation, a small amount of things could happen. So we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out, 'how do we widen that space and bring some of the interesting, funny outcomes from the real sport into our world, and spice them up a little bit in the way that we usually do?'" Fall Ball is live now. View the full article

With Fallout celebrating its 25th birthday, Bethesda has been rolling out a series of short videos containing interviews with Todd Howard, Tim Cain, and other developers responsible for bringing the games to life for the past quarter-century. Topics have ranged from how Howard learned he'd be working on Fallout 3 (via a Post-It note) and how the beloved Fallout: New Vegas was almost just a big expansion pack instead of a standalone game. But Fallout isn't just a game series anymore, it's also a TV series. Yesterday Amazon gave us a single image from the show, and in a new video today (embedded above) we got to see a little bit more of the production, like one of the sets, some power armor, and even a bottle of cold, refreshing Nuka-Cola. In the video Todd Howard discusses bringing Fallout from the medium of videogames to television, saying he'd always wanted to work on a Fallout adaptation with Jonathan Nolan, writer of Interstellar, screenwriter of The Dark Knight, and one of the writers and directors of HBO series Westworld. Nolan is now writer, director, and executive producer of the Fallout TV series, and Howard talks about how they approached him to collaborate on Fallout. "It turned out he was a big fan of it," says Howard. Cut to Jonathan Nolan on the set of the Fallout TV series. "Fallout? I love videogames. I'm not familiar with Fallout," Nolan says, completely deadpan. "Tell me a little bit about 'em." An arm reaches in from the left of screen—it should be noted the arm is inside a suit of hulking power armor—to hand Nolan a bottle of Nuka-Cola. After taking a swig and (and gaining a few rads), Nolan's memory is jogged. "Yes, Fallout! The post-apocalyptic, humorous, dark, bleak, brilliantly written, annoyingly playable videogame franchise." As for how Nolan got involved in the Fallout TV series: "Several years ago I decided I was going to write the next great American novel. And then a friend gave me a copy of Fallout 3. And now I'm working in television." (Image credit: Bethesda) We can't see all that much of the set in the background—it's a bit blurry but we can see some rundown, ramshackle buildings and the sandy terrain surrounding it. Yesterday's tease from Amazon showed actors wearing Vault 33 jumpsuits, and that number indicates it's most likely a Vault located on the west coast of the United States, potentially California or Nevada. Maybe this is the exterior of that Vault. As for the power armor, I wish we could see the full suit, but even just the arm looks pretty accurate. And the Nuka-Cola bottle, with fins at the bottom to make it look like a rocket, is straight out of Fallout 4. We haven't seen much of the Fallout series yet, but what we have seen looks pretty good so far. View the full article

Frtizchens Fritz is at it again. The close-up chip photographer has just released infrared images of Intel's Core i9 13900K CPU, and these die shots give us a rather intimate look at Intel's flagship CPU. Fritz shared a couple of his shots on Twitter, but you can find the rest on his Flickr account. That's best to appreciate them at the highest possible quality since our gallery viewer won't do them justice. The CPU photographed in this series is the Raptor Lake B0 die measuring 252mm2. His gallery looks at Raptor Cove cores, Gracemont clusters, and the accompanying L2 and L3 caches in a view you don't see too often in great detail. Fritz even breaks down the sizes of the tiny cores below: P-Core with 2MB L2$ - 8,080mm²P-Core w/o the new L2$ - 7,429mm²P-Core with L3$ - 10,068mm²E-Core w/o L2$ - 1,588mm²E-Core with L2$ - 2,570mm² The powerful Raptor Lake CPU launched last week, and its gaming performance did not disappoint despite being a bit of a power-hungry chip. Our review of the chip called it the "most impressive CPU money can buy right now." Image 1 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchen Fritz)Image 2 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchen Fritz)Image 3 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchen Fritz)Image 4 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchen Fritz)Image 5 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchen Fritz)Image 6 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchens Fritz)Image 7 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchens Fritz)Image 8 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchens Fritz)Image 9 of 9 (Image credit: Fritzchens Fritz) More recently, Fritz took some remarkable die shots of the PlayStation 5's SoCs to highlight the difference between the console and desktop CPU. And if you go back in his collection of chip pics, you'll find plenty of other gorgeous ones to gawk at, some going way back to the early days of gaming processors. Intel is planning on recently releasing a version of the Core i9 that will 6GHz "out of the box" early next year, which Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger calls a "huge milestone for client computing." Until then, we can just sit and stare at this 5.8GHz beast. View the full article

Hello virtualsaturn, Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. virtualsaturn joined on the 10/26/2022. View Member

Hideo Kojima has taken a break from posting snaps of his lunch to do an interview with the Guardian, during which he touched briefly on one of his upcoming game projects, as well as touching on a recent and unfortunate incident. The celebrated designer was earlier this year erroneously linked with the assassination of Shinzo Abe, a malicious fake that began online before spreading into real-world news, and a bitter irony for a creator who predicted the age of junk information. "This story is digital, so it could remain online for millions of years,” said Kojima. "People post without considering that. It’s almost a new kind of sin for mankind. No, I’m not happy about having predicted these things." Kojima is in a rather digressive mood in this interview and, amusingly enough, insists on his normality even as he's making the Guardian's journalist take a Covid test before meeting him. “I’ll show pieces of my daily life," Kojima muses at one point on his social media habits, "but I don’t do glamorous photos like other celebrities on Instagram.” Anyone who gets food envy, particularly of delicious looking katsu sandwiches, may disagree with that. The director briefly mentions the Metal Gear series, which is progress of a sort after the almost total silence since he left Konami: "now I see these young kids playing Metal Gear Solid, a game made 30 years ago, and they are having fun … My feelings have started to change." Then the interview ends with a typically Kojima-'donkey' teaser for one of his upcoming games, and given the way he talks this is almost certainly the one for which Kojima Productions has gone into partnership with Microsoft. The big known element of this is that it's making some sort of core use of Microsoft's cloud technology, which admittedly could mean anything but is why Kojima reckons the studio can achieve something special. "It’s almost like a new medium," said Kojima. "If this succeeds, it will turn things around—not just in the game industry, but in the movie industry as well. You can have successful experiments, but there’s a long distance between an experiment and a place where it’s something that becomes a part of everyday usage. For the first person, everything is hard. But I want to be the first. I want to keep being the first." View the full article

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, the mythological and locust-ridden next project from Team Ninja, has gotten a release date. Players will be able to cut a swathe through Wo Long's Han dynasty China on March 3, 2023 "via Windows and Steam," per an announcement on the game's Twitter page. #WoLongFallenDynasty will be available March 3rd, 2023, worldwide on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, on PC via Windows and Steam®, and will be available day one with Xbox Game Pass on console & PC!Get all the game details here - https://t.co/tJXCYth9RH pic.twitter.com/5MkUeyt1vAOctober 26, 2022 See more Developed alongside Dynasty Warriors creator Koei Tecmo, Wo Long bills itself as a "dark fantasy Three Kingdoms masocore game," and we got our first glimpse of it during Microsoft's summer showcase in June this year. It looks, well, like a pretty unpleasant time to be alive: locusts skitter across corpses, smoke rises from burning villages, and everywhere you look burly men are swinging polearms at each other. In other words, it looks quite a bit like Nioh with a dash of Dynasty Warriors-style bombast, which makes sense. We've been intrigued by what we've seen of Wo Long so far, with August's gameplay trailer in particular whetting our wuxia whistle with its beautiful environments and abundant inventory of historical Chinese weapons. The game got a limited-time demo (now sadly concluded) in September, and responses to it were generally positive. The demo didn't do much to show off the game's story—it dumped you into its game world with little more than a big sword and a dream—but did give everyone a taste of its combat. It was fairly Souls-y: you'll need to play smartly and watch your enemies for openings, but it also asks you to balance caution and aggression to manage your spirit bar, which functions a little like Sekiro's posture metre. Even if you didn't get a chance to try the demo, it's not like you have long to wait. March is a mere 4(ish) months away, at which point you too will get a chance to "overcome the odds by awakening the true power from within," which I honestly feel like I try to do most days anyway. To keep track of updates, you can keep an eye on the game's Steam page and Twitter account. View the full article

One of the classic PC meta-games has always been, "Will it run?" I've got some decent kit nowadays but in the mid-2000s all of my PC gaming was done on a crappy laptop with integrated graphics, and I either played '90s classics or, every so often, would try something contemporary and watch the poor thing sputter through some 5FPS slideshow. Hell this thing could barely run Quake, but optimism sprang eternal. Which is why I retain a kind of childish amazement at seeing the technical behemoths of yesteryear effortlessly recreated on contemporary tech: a recent favourite was Doom on a fridge. But there's Doom on everything now, heck it's even in your kids' Hallowe'en candy, and so now we're getting meta with a website that has a name straight out of the '90s: WAD Commander. According to legend, WAD is an acrostic for "Where's all the data?" It's the file format used by Doom and all games that use the Doom engine, and since time immemorial has been the mechanism by which Doom modders distribute their work and players get hold of it. Even Doom co-creator John Romero still pops up every so often with a new WAD file. You did this by heading to one of the many Doom WAD depositories on the internet, downloading what you wanted, and depending on the client you were using either loading up the WAD directly or inserting it in the appropriate directory. Using WADs was never difficult, but WAD Commander simply removes the download and all the busywork. Seriously: you just go to the site, drop your WAD on it (sorry), and after a few seconds' loading you're off. This is a dream (if you just want to check the site out, it will auto-run certain popular shareware versions of Doom), and should definitely not be passed around the office with a big list of great Doom WADs like Brutal Minecraft, and certainly don't share the one that lets you have sex with the demons (NSFL!). WAD Commander is one of those things it would be easy to be blase about. But looking at how simple it makes a process that once seemed like dark magic, I'm left in a kind of minor awe. Doom's ongoing afterlife is something to behold, and creations like this are one of the things that keep it feeling vital. View the full article

Patch NotesEvents The "Little Witch's Manastorm Lucky Draw Machine" event has started. The Little Witch's Manastorm Lucky Draw Machine will appear at Austera and Marianople (become peace zones).A worldgate that allows you to move to the event region will appear at the Growlgate Isle faction base.Spend 2 Manastorm Crystals per draw and you will receive a "Pumpkinhead Ball."Opening the Pumpkinhead Ball consumes 100 Labor and you will obtain one random item.There is a low chance you can obtain a "Golden Pumpkinhead Ball," which allows you to get a special item, from opening the Pumpkinhead Ball.An Invisible Ghost now wanders Erenor. If you manage to not see it, post a screenshot in our Discord. Bug Fixes Fixed the intermittent issue where the Blue Ribbon ranking information would not reset.Fixed the issue where notice information was missing from the Task Board.Fixed the issue where information about exchanging the "Brilliant Hiram Awakening Scroll" was missing from the Gift Exchanger.Fixed the issue where loading could not be completed when changing servers from the Select Server window.Added a disclaimer to Traveler's Campfire interaction skills.View the full article

EventLittle Witch's Manastorm Lucky Draw Event Event PeriodOct. 27, 2022 (Thurs) after maintenance–Nov. 10, 2022 (Thurs) before maintenance Event DetailsOutlineThe "Little Witch's Manastorm Lucky Draw Machine" will appear at Austera, Marianople, and Growlgate Isle during the event.Use 2 Manastorm Crystals on the Little Witch's Manastorm Lucky Draw Machine for 1 try (unlimited account participation, must be at least Lv50).There is 1 type of ball and you can open it by spending Labor.About Event Quests and RewardsPumpkinhead BallSpend 100 Labor to open the ball and obtain 1 of the below items:Golden Pumpkinhead Ball x1Bound Anchoring Tempering Charm Box x1Pouch of Prosperity x1Unidentified Eternal Hiram Infusion x4Ewan's Rune Rank 1 x1Hallowtide Decor Mystery Box x1 Bound Serendipity Stone x1 Bound Worn Costume Crate x1 Bound Mining Drill x1Bound Majestic Tree x1Bound Serendipity Stone Shard x2Demigod Essence x1Bound Resplendent Solar Temper x1 Bound Resplendent Lunar Temper x2 Wrapped Fusion Alembic x1Vitalizing Treat x1 Angel Wing Elixir x1Bound Savory Bread x10 Bound Aromatic Soup x10 Radiant Infusion Supply Kit x8 Golden Pumpkinhead BallOpen to obtain 1 of the below items:Image Item: Rabbit Queen Suit x1Image Item: Moon Bear Chroma x1Image Item: Plague Doctor Costume x1Bound Resplendent Weapon Anchoring Tempering Charm x1Bound Resplendent Armor Anchoring Tempering Charm x2Wrapped Calamitous Manticore x1Sealed Gilt Deathchill Coffin x1Bound Lucent Serendipity Stone x1DisclaimerThe Little Witch's Lucky Draw Machine will disappear after the maintenance on November 10, 2022.You need to participate with a character that is at least Lv50.All event items cannot be restored.View the full article

Greetings Inheritors! We will be conducting scheduled maintenance at the following times: Maintenance Start Time: UTC: Oct 27 at 08:00 am CEST: Oct 27 at 10:00 am EDT: Oct 27 at 04:00 am PDT: Oct 27 at 01:00 am Maintenance End Time: UTC: Oct 27 at 01:30 pm CEST: Oct 27 at 03:30 pm EDT: Oct 27 at 09:30 am PDT: Oct 27 at 06:30 am * Please note that the game will shut down before maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your understanding! The ArcheAge Team View the full article

Zombies don't want to murder you, they're just driven by a mindless hunger that happens to be directed at your brain, and it's hard to be too mad at them for desiring comfort food. That's how you know The Callisto Protocol is not a zombie game. Its undead mutant bastards are easy to be mad at, because they don't want to eat you—they want to put you on the wrong side of a Doom glory kill. The Callisto Protocol is a gruesome upcoming horror game from Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield, a lineage will be enormously obvious to Dead Space fans. It takes place in a space prison, which game development loreheads will recognize as the original idea for Dead Space's setting, and you play as a rugged dude named Jacob Lee who has a glowing health bar on his neck, telekinetic powers, and a problem with reanimated corpses. He and Isaac Clarke should share tips. I played part of an early level of The Callisto Protocol at a press event a couple weeks ago, most of which had me wandering through industrial passageways and sewers, taking a straightforward path through Black Iron Prison's metalworks. The level wasn't choked with mutant encounters or item-finding puzzles; at times I had nothing to do but creep forward and appreciate the corrosion and goop on the exceptionally detailed pipes and railings. The Callisto Protocol moves a little slower than Dead Space and its upcoming remake, which I also previewed recently. Objects on the ground don't teleport into your inventory. Jacob bends down and picks them up. There are items that heal immediately on pickup, but health packs that are usable at will are administered with an injection animation that takes a couple seconds to play—easily long enough to be killed. The Callisto Protocol is even tougher and grislier than Dead Space, which is already pretty tough and grisly. The camera is close, and pulls in extra tight when Jacob is shimmying through narrow gaps or crawling under pipes, lagging behind him a little whenever he makes a 90-degree turn, just to hold us in suspense for an extra moment while we wait to see what's around the corner (it's just more crawlway, always). I liked the feeling that I was creeping through an elaborate haunted house. I didn't need a lot to do to enjoy sloshing around in such a convincing 3D soundscape, with muck squidging under my boots, pipes pinging hollowly as I crawled over them, and fans whooshing above my head. I wish Jacob didn't mutter stuff like "gettin' there" to himself—kind of ruins the mood—but otherwise it's a top-tier scary space prison simulator. And I was glad that combat wasn't a constant activity, because it takes a lot out of you. Showing guts The Callisto Protocol is even tougher and grislier than Dead Space, which is already pretty tough and grisly. Your best friend is not a ranged weapon like Dead Space's plasma cutter, but an electrified baton. Whack a mutant with it a few times and you can snap to them with your pistol to take a sure shot. Then it's back to whacking. The mutants should be easy to hit at a distance with mouse control (my demo was on a PlayStation 5, so I had to use a controller), but that possibly console-centric design also serves as a clue to conserve ammo. It's not endless, and reloading is slow. I got a hint of the spectacle to come when I emerged into a glass-domed greenhouse and saw Jupiter looming over the horizon. Fighting on the inside, you can avoid damage by dodging left or right or blocking, but I never got the hang of it (the videos in the article are not me playing, I'm sad to say). I survived with the help of the telekineses ability, which I used to huck enemies out of range when I was losing control. Taking out one enemy is no problem: Just swing your baton until you're prompted to shoot, and if they aren't dead after that, swing some more. Managing two or more can be rough, though. I died over and over in one room where I struggled to dodge one enemy's acid-spit while fighting off the others. Movement isn't quite as awkward as it is in the early Resident Evil games, but it's well on the survival horror side of the shooter movement spectrum: clomping, stomping, and light jogging. Later in the level, I encountered a non-biological enemy: a patrolling robot guard whose vision cone I had to avoid for some light stealth action. At that point I'd made it out of the sewage via a waterslide sequence, the standard videogame kind where you navigate left or right to avoid obstacles and spinning blades—it's not really fun, but I enjoyed how whimsical it is in contrast to the rest of the game. Along with occasional 'press button quickly to not die' bits, the slide reminded me that this isn't some indie arthouse thing: Schofield has also directed huge action games like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. There's a definite console action adventure game flavor to The Callisto Protocol, but where 2008 me might've complained about quicktime events (it now seems quaint what a big topic those were), 2022 me is happy to have some easy spectacle to break up the combat. I got a hint of the spectacle to come when I emerged into a glass-domed greenhouse and saw Jupiter looming over the horizon. Even on a PlayStation, The Callisto Protocol is a graphics tech showcase. Play it on a big screen, if you can. (Or with your nose pressed against a small one.) The Callisto Protocol will release on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and consoles on December 2. (Image credit: Striking Distance Studios) View the full article

Age of Empires just celebrated its 25th birthday, and with it a cheeky little livestream that announced that both Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition and Age of Empires 4 are coming to Xbox in 2023. Turns out that's pretty good news for us too, as the PC versions will be getting the extra goodies coming to console. Both games will be getting cloud gaming support and, more excitingly, controller support and crossplay with our console friends. I can imagine contorting complex RTS controls onto a controller was no easy feat. In an Xbox News Wire post, director of customer voice at World's Edge Emma Bridle acknowledged that it was a "massive task," one which the developer "had to approach carefully and thoughtfully." Bridle added that there'll be a new controller-specific tutorial added to the game, "paired with a new user experience for consoles" that should help those who favour a pad over the ol' keyboard and mouse. On top of that, both games will have "a new game AI which helps make resource management in a strategy game efficient and intuitive." I'm always a fan of seeing more intricate control systems boiled down to simpler, streamlined forms, and I'm sure World's Edge has done a great job of making an RTS playable and enjoyable on a controller. Combine that with being able to play alongside fellow strategy nerds on Xbox and the whole thing's a pretty sweet deal. I'm sure most people will still opt for keyboard inputs—Xbox players will also be able to plug in a keyboard and mouse to play—but more options for varying comfort levels are never a bad thing. The additions will come to PC when each game gets its respective console release. That's January 31, 2023 for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition and sometime later that year for Age of Empires 4. That wasn't all the fun AoE news in the livestream either—we're also getting a definitive edition of a very beloved spinoff in the near future. Neat! View the full article

The Witcher, the 2007 RPG that put CD Projekt on the map, is being remade. The studio announced the remake today, saying that it is "being rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5." "The Witcher is where it all started for us, for CD Projekt Red," studio head Adam Badowski said. "It was the first game we made, ever, and it was a big moment for us then. Going back to this place and remaking the game for the next generation of gamers to experience it feels just as big, if not bigger. The remake is being developed by Polish studio Fool's Theory, the developer of Seven: The Days Long Gone, with CD Projekt providing "full creative supervision." "Collaborating with Fool’s Theory on the project is just as exciting, as some of the people there have been previously involved in The Witcher games," Badowski said. "They know the source material well, they know how much gamers have been looking forward to seeing the remake happen, and they know how to make incredible and ambitious games. And although it will take some time before we’re ready to share more about and from the game, I know it’ll be worth the wait." The original Witcher was an outstanding RPG, but it was also pretty quirky in some notable ways. The most obvious was its combat, which relied on rhythmic mouse clicks to simulate smooth, flowing swordplay. I liked the system after I got used to it, but it was so completely different from other skill-based or click-to-spam combat systems that some players struggled with it. I imagine that will be changed in the remake for something more conventional—and I expect the in-game cards that Geralt could collect for scoring with the many available and attractive ladies in the game (a relic of a very different era and culture) will be gone too. CD Projekt confirmed that The Witcher remake is "Canis Majoris," one of the two spin-off games announced earlier this month. No further details have been revealed: CD Projekt said on Twitter that "we want to do this right, so please be patient." We're thrilled to reveal that, together with @Fools_Theory, we're working on remaking The Witcher using Unreal Engine 5 (codename: Canis Majoris)! We want to do this right, so please be patient — it's gonna be a while until we can share more details. https://t.co/6VCAokPgXs pic.twitter.com/ERFOXQrUEPOctober 26, 2022 See more View the full article

Welcome back, then, Master of Magic, a 4X strategy game first published in 1994 for MS-DOS. Developed by Simtex and published by Microprose, Master of Magic entered a burgeoning strategy genre, which had already seen the likes of Civilisation, with a slightly wild 'anything goes' attitude towards turn-based combat and conquest. It's regarded as a stone-cold classic, but was also something of a buggy mess and subsequent years would see patched-up re-releases of the original, though never the sequel that some clamoured for. Now it's the subject of a remake, and a game that sits in an odd limbo zone. This is not an all-singing, all-dancing reimagining of the game, nor is it a slavish, like-for-like redo of the original. It's an updated and polished version of the game that feels relatively comfortable to modern hands, but would never pass as a contemporary title. Master of Magic is prettier than I was expecting. It's not a graphical powerhouse by any means, but everything's clean and clear and the portraits in particular are great: full of character and little kinks. I'm a particular fan of the familiar for the baddie dragon wizard, a plump little red imp with a salacious grin. Each of the wizards has these familiars, which provide basic tips and also act as your deputies. If a town's ticking over, leave it in the hands of your familiar to keep it that way. As with any 4X game you're thrown into your first map and will be slightly bamboozled by a raft of different menus, options, UI overlays, and your wizard's particular familiar. The depth you can go into is intimidating but the top-level stuff is relatively easy to get your head around, and you can also automate elements of it. The game generates the world map and you start managing a small settlement with one army detachment, which you can quickly set exploring, and after a few turns you'll be gifted a ghost explorer unit. What you won't get past, initially at least, is the difficulty. I played my first few maps on Easy before moving up to Normal and, in my very first combat encounter, ran about 24 halflings into a bunch of skeletons. Easy win for the lads, I thought, only to watch them all unceremoniously cut down. There's something quite charming about how retro Master of Magic is in this respect, or perhaps it's just my age, as the opposing units play their attack animation (usually a fairly simple stab), the damage number comes up, then if it was enough to destroy your unit you'll see six halfings upend themselves and fall dead in sync. And yeah, you'll be seeing a fair amount of that. The beta version I was playing had three wizards, each with their own buffs and army type: Merlin, who goes with halflings and has research-based buffs; dark magic specialist Sharee; then my ultimate favourite, the dragon chaos wizard Sssra. He's got dragon-type warriors, very useful because they can simply float over water, making map navigation so much easier, and a whole bunch of fire spells to boot. Regardless of which wizard you pick, though, or where you're intending your tech tree to go, those early stages are spent exploring, sticking your head into caves and finding enemy towns, and mostly avoiding fights while you build up an army. Even the basic enemy types like gnolls are capable of taking a few lumps out of you, though sheer force of numbers usually wins out. The maps are also populated with fantastical creatures (that's their in-game designation too) that come with delightful effects like poison, magic negation, and thwacking great damage counts that will flatten whole detachments at a time. There are two ways you start to negate the enemy advantage: first, by upgrading the types of troops you can produce and trying to make sure they get a few 'easy' fights in and some XP before you send them off to face a hydra. You can also, as things progress, start to hire your own 'hero' units. Then comes the game-changer: you're not just the commander here, but a master of magic. Once a turn during combat, provided you have the various magical resources required, you can cast a spell. These can be buffs to your army units, which come in all stripes, landscape-altering spells, direct attacks on enemy units, 'control' spells like an immobilising web, and many more. In a game where the battles are usually a bit tighter than you might like, these interventions are often critical. Now you might be thinking so far, so standard. But Master of Magic has a trick: in fact, it's got hundreds. The mistake I'd been making initially was to load up a game and just accept what the algorithm gave me. I'd land in an unforgiving little stretch of surrounded by hell-beasts with nary a treasure chest in sight and think "This is fine." But you don't have to take that. First of all, you can just choose your own map parameters: I didn't really play around with this, but you can tweak a wide range of options to create a world along the lines you'd like: as lush or barren as you like. Secondly, which is what I did end up doing, you can just reload until you get something you like the look of, and then start delving into the fun stuff. Image 1 of 8 (Image credit: Slitherine)Image 2 of 8 (Image credit: Slitherine)Image 3 of 8 (Image credit: Slitherine)Image 4 of 8 (Image credit: Slitherine)Image 5 of 8 (Image credit: Slitherine)Image 6 of 8 (Image credit: Slitherine)Image 7 of 8 (Image credit: Slitherine)Image 8 of 8 (Image credit: Slitherine) Master of Magic's secret sauce is in how completely you can begin to manipulate and combine the different mechanics underpinning your wizard and their chosen race. So first you try and get a decent spawn, somewhere that isn't too challenging, has lots of potential loot, and will allow some easy early expansion. You get a production line going, paying bribes to get the more important structures up quicker, and begin to turn your home base into an economic powerhouse that'll fund the rest. So you could raise taxes in a city, which would normally increase unrest, but then cast Just Cause to rally the population and Wall of Fire to render it (relatively) safe from outside attack. That'll cost mana upkeep, but if you've got some magic sources it's a pittance. You can directly attack enemy units or use stuff like warp magic which will decay and degenerate them, turning some raging monster into an enfeebled little piggy waiting to be roasted. Your buffs align on a similar spectrum, some just improving weapons while others transform units into elites, grant them completely inappropriate abilities like flying, or make weapons ludicrously effective against given sub-classes. On one run I went all-in on necromancy. At the start of battle I'd fight normally then, when enemy units were weakened, cast a bunch of ghouls behind them that would turn dead enemies into ghouls themselves. This could combo with a Terror spell for true panic, and eventually you're able to get werewolves, more powerful soul-sucking ghouls, and then the one I wanted but wasn't able to get: wraiths. This army was a bit weak really, until the death magic started happening, at which point battles would completely flip. And looking at the stuff further up the spell tree I couldn't reach, it gets even wilder. The point being that all of this stuff can and should be stacked at once. Why have halfling swordsmen, after all, when instead they could be flying swordsmen with holy-infused weapons led by a newly-minted mega unit? Soon those skeletons begin to seem laughable: because they are, really, especially when you start moving onto the fire elementals, magic-packing demons and inexplicably powerful rift guardians. The beta build of Master of Magic has plenty to do, but it also limits you to three wizards and three factions, and it feels like the spells are quite limited too. The game lives or dies on just how wild it is able to get with unexpected combinations, and this build isn't the best indication of that: even though I managed to get some odd combinations going, it felt like the training wheels were on. Another aspect of Master of Magic that never really factored into my playtime, even though it's at the heart of the game, is the dual world mechanic. The world here is really two worlds, with certain points allowing you to travel between the two (eventually you are able to do this at will), and the goal is to dominate both by the time the dust is settled. This is a days-long commitment of play, and the Master of Magic beta build I was playing ends automatically after 100 turns. Given that the spells can take anywhere from 10 to 50 turns to research, and the rather glacial nature of progress in upgrading settlements over time, this made each of my runs a bit of a sprint to see as much as I could before things re-set, whereas you'd definitely play the finished game as more of a marathon. Slitherine strategy games are definitely of a type, and Master of Magic is perhaps some historical exemplar of it. This game won't be giving Firaxis any sleepless nights, but you can see how in its seemingly endless cocktail of armies, world-altering spells and items there is the potential for one of those petri dish experiences: a game that may not look like much, but has the potential to create epic stories. Even if sometimes that story may be that your army walked into a cave, never came out, and then a bunch of demons razed your hometown to the ground. View the full article

One of the big victims of Fortnite's runaway success was, surprisingly enough, Epic's own videogame: Paragon. First released in 2016 after many years of development, this bombastic thirdperson Moba never quite gained enough of an audience and, when Fortnite took off, Epic decided to pull the plug. It did so in an interesting way though, closing the game but releasing all of its $17 million worth of assets, for free, on the Epic Game Store. Several games have already been released that make use of Paragon's assets. Fault: Elder Orb has been on Steam since 2020, while Omeda Studios is working on a Moba called Predecessor. So we come full circle to a game that not only uses all of Paragon's assets, but has been granted permission by Epic to use the game's branding—welcome to Paragon: The Overprime. In development from South Korean studio Netmarble, PtO is an action-focused Moba, needless to say it's free-to-play, and it's intended to operate as a live service game with new heroes dropping in and out. It also features the frankly baller tagline: "We invite you to Prime where the space opera of a symphony of heroes echoes across the universe!" The question with this will be just how different it is from Paragon because, hazy as my memory of Epic's original is, this seems pretty much along the same lines: pick a hero, level them differently in each match depending on skills and item choices, and ultimately help your team destroy the enemy base. We've all seen games make comebacks over the years, mostly unsuccessfully, but it's singularly odd to see a game semi-resurrected in such a fashion by a different studio. We'll find out soon enough whether the Lazarus act was worth it. PtO is currently running a "final test" before entering early access in November, which you can enter by tweeting something about how good the game will be on social media (eurgh). The game is also, appropriately enough, coming to the Epic Game Store. The test includes new characters and a new map, while in-game the big news is an improved item index, new lobby design, and a reworked tutorial/ training system for new players. One wonders if there will be any old ones too: it's striking to see that this game is using Paragon heroes as-they-were in Paragon, while layering more on top. If nothing else, PtO will be one hell of a curio to round-out the year. View the full article

Age of Mythology, the much-loved Age of Empires spin-off which first released in 2002, is getting a remaster. Announced during yesterday's Age of Empires 25th anniversary event, Age of Mythology Retold will gussy up the original game's graphics, tweak its gameplay, and in general do for Age of Mythology what the Definitive Edition did for Age of Empires. Microsoft has been making noises about doing something with the Age of Mythology series for the past few years, but until now it's been the only Age of Empires game that didn't have some kind of definitive edition announced. The original game got a Steam release back in 2014, and even got a (not well-liked) new expansion in 2016, but it's taken this long for Microsoft's much-discussed "possibility" of an Age of Mythology return to turn into a reality. It's a good thing, too, because Age of Mythology is a unique entry in the Age of Empires catalogue. Rather than taking (loose) inspiration from the real-life conflicts and civilisations that inspire Age of Empires, the game situates its battles in the spheres of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology. Players select a cabal of major and minor gods to worship, granting them unique technologies, units, and abilities, and even special powers that can either help your faction or smite your enemies. It's a breath of fresh air if you're used to the more grounded nature of Age of Empires. That's pretty much all the info we have about Age of Mythology Retold, and you might have noticed that most of it is actually info about regular old Age of Mythology. Besides an announcement that the project is happening and a cinematic trailer promising that "heroes will rise" and "legends will battle," information about the new definitive edition is remarkably scant. That's probably because development is still in very early stages, so we shouldn't expect to hear much more about the game for a while yet. Still, even if we have to stay patient before we can hear more, it's nice to know that Age of Mythology hasn't receded into legend itself. View the full article