Say Hallow to Hearthstone's new Ranked Play Season card back
Even if you take the open beta as your starting point, Hearthstone is still a few months off its first birthday. But its top players are already hardened veterans of its meta, and the game’s just now entering its seventh ranked play season.
It’s October, which Blizzard have deemed close enough to competive gaming’s favourite holiday. Hit Rank 20 during this month’s season and you’ll land the new Hallow’s End card back.
“It’s not a trick,” scream the devs as they’re pulled offstage. “It’s a treat!”
Pathologic reaches Kickstarter target; new stretch goal could fund a "small prequel"
To call the original Pathologic a flawed gem would be misleading, because that might imply it could be polished up - perhaps with a fresh lick of lighting, at a new resolution.
But Pathologic is a game about broken things. It’s a simulation, but not of anything you’d ever want to experience. A living, breathing world, but one “short of breath”. On a thematic level, it can never be fixed. Nevertheless, more than 5,600 backers have paid to see its plague-ridden town rebuilt, and its intentional flaws amplified.
Smite picks up another Roman god: green-fingered tree-chap Sylvanus
Traditionally, welcoming a new god has been a messy business - necessitating a whole load of smashed icons and charred priests. But a glance at our Smite beginner’s guide will reveal that the game subscribes to the room-for-one-more approach to religion - squeezing the latest deity into their existing god-roster with all the rest.
This week’s patch introduces Sylvanus, Keeper of the Wild. Turns out you can do a bit of damage with a thick, thorny branch or two.
EverQuest Next will let NPC groups roam the map and dynamically determine quests
Oh, goodness. It’s time to start getting guardedly giddy for an MMO again. Throughout this 30 minute demo, EverQuest designers throw around words like “procedural” and “simulation” as if the ‘90s never ended and RPG design never grew up to lean on scripting like a zimmer frame.
In EverQuest Next, we’re told, players won’t be pointed in the direction of “NPCs with question marks over their heads”. Question marks are banned. Instead, they’ll participate in dynamic geopolitical events. Events defined by AI groups who roam about the game’s map, guiding by nothing but their own motivations.
If you’ve ever sighed at the conservatism of MMO design, consider this essential watching.
War Thunder update 1.43 okays air-to-ground assaults in new arcade mode
The great promise of War Thunder has always been that its fire-spitting aircraft and bomb-gobbing tanks would eventually join together in glorious phlegm-filled shooting matches. It’s been months since Ground Forces introduced tracked armour to the game - but it’s taken until this week’s update for tanks and planes to trade fire.
Kickstart a first-person space strategy game inspired by Star Trek: Flagship
We’re a sucker for familiar game ideas viewed from unfamiliar perspectives. Especially the first-person perspective. Speaking freely, we’ll play anything that sounds a bit odd and controls like an FPS.
Enter Flagship - a Kickstarter pitch as much inspired by the Bridge sequences in sci-fi television as space strategy games like Homeworld and Sins of a Solar Empire.
Australian Steam store quietly removes "Australia Tax" from Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
If you live in Australia, you surely winced when Steam arbitrarily increased the price of Monolith’s latest romp around Tolkien's fantasy: Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. It had over $20 slapped onto the price, bringing it from an acceptable $49.99 to $71.99 AUD. Yuck.
Well I have some good news. Today, the Australian Steam store quietly reverted this unwarranted price hike. The evil has been vanquished. Well, it’s good news for you if you’re yet to buy it that is, as the people who put up with the more hefty price are probably stuck with that decision.
Borderlands 2 explodes onto Linux and SteamOS; is also 75% off on Steam
Borderlands 2 joins its upcoming addition to the family, Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, to both Linux and SteamOS. To celebrate, Steam is also knocking a massive 75% off Borderlands 2 and all of its endless DLC packs.
The game of the year edition of the game is selling for a cool £8.74 and $9.99 respectively.
You might find a ghost on your toilet in Sims 4 this month, and in your pools in November
If you’re suddenly seeing your deceased Sims return to life in a more ethereal form, don’t panic: it’s just a new free update to The Sims 4 to celebrate that spooky time at the end of the month. Your beloved Sims that have passed away now may roam your household causing all sorts of mischief. Their behaviour is influenced by how they bit the dust; I hope no one died in a house fire.
Next month we’ll also see the return of pools, which is nice. You can expect to see the population of ghosts who died by drowning to sharply increase when that happens.
EVE Online is altering the laws of physics to allow capital ships to fit through stargates
Big changes are coming to EVE Online in terms of long-distance travel. Moving between two distant points, particularly with jump drives and jump gates will take significantly longer. Why? Well CCP think the practical dimensions of New Eden have “shrunk considerably”, all to the “detriment of the game”.
Pilots will now accumulate “jump fatigue” every time they make a jump of any kind. This value persists over time and between play sessions. This will limit your ability to make rapid successive jumps in a short amount of time, especially over long distances. Also with this update, capital ships will gain the ability to use stargates, but they’ll still be unable to visit high-sec.
Discover how to colonize, build and achieve victory in this Civilization: Beyond Earth trailer
In just over three weeks, the next chapter in Sid Meier’s franchise, Civilization: Beyond Earth, will launch. With the dawn of mankinds bid for survival just around the corner, Firaxis have released a lengthy trailer, detailing how a typical game plays out from start to victory. Your choice of sponsors for your civilization, your chosen affinity to help promote your chosen values and most importantly, all the different ways you can win the game.
If you’re remotely interested in the game, it’s worth a watch.
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