Orcs Must Die! Unchained preview: vulnerable bears
There are two key differences between the Orcs Must Die you know (and we love) and this new upstart. It’s still a game where you fill corridors with traps that slice, dice, crush, incinerate, and impale wave after wave of orcs that are trying to reach your rift gate. But Unchained is now a multiplayer versus game, where two teams of five defend their rifts against the marauding green menace. Think of it as two games of Orcs Must Die lain end to end.
The second key difference: there are now giant, armoured bears.
Wasteland 2 Early Access sales have helped double its Kickstarter budget
Once upon a time, Wasteland 2 was to be a $900,000 game - held together by rad-tape and iguana-glue. Now it’s practically finished, it’s both “larger and more nuanced” than InXile envisioned even after its nearly $3 million Kickstarter budget was finalised.
That's because Wasteland 2’s eventual budget has been two times the amount it was Kickstarted with.
What's it like to cheat at Titanfall?
I'm a Titanfall cheater. I use Titanfall cheats. And this is how I'm killing you.
Contraption Maker is second-generation The Incredible Machine, out now on Steam
Are you ready to hear the sweetest story in videogaming? A man named Jeff Tunnell made The Incredible Machine in the early ‘90s, and seduced the world with its simple puzzles, solved exclusively with needlessly complex mechanisms.
Fast forward two decades, and Contraption Maker has just been released. Rather than the contemporary rip-off it appears to be, it’s actually designed by Tunnell’s son, Jon. Contraption Maker is a true second-generation game.
Firefall finally fires up the jetpack, launching on July 29th
After a long and tumultuous development, Firefall is finally gearing up for launch on July 29th, three years after the initial release window. The jetpacks and mining MMO had quite the bumpy ride, with developer Red 5 making massive sweeping changes well into development, shutting down PvP, letting go of staff and even sacking the CEO.
The launch date has come out of the blue, after Red 5 went quiet for most of the year. CEO James Macauley said, in an interview with Polygon, that the developer made a “conscious decision” to go silent so it could knuckle down to deliver the game it wanted to.
Building the fort of my dreams in Epic Games' Fortnite
When I was a kid, I dug a slit trench in my backyard, right next to the woodpile. It went swimmingly until I hit the dense clay that lies in patches beneath two or three feet of Indiana topsoil. Then, unable to go deeper, I decided to start digging out farther, using the loose dirt to created a kind of a breastwork.
Either way, my father eventually came outside and discovered his son jamming pointy sticks into an earthen berm, with a replica bolt-action rifle slung over his shoulder. He wasn’t even angry, I don’t think. Just amazed at the curious industry I’d shown.
I loved the idea of digging-in, of fortifying myself against... something. I imagined hordes of the Hun wasting themselves against my defenses as my imaginary platoon and I cut them down like the cordwood that held my left flank on that warm spring day.
For me, Epic Games’ Fortnite is all about that day. It’s about sneaking into the garage to steal some tools, and then getting to work building something that’s equal parts absurd and murderous. Except you can build something better, and it’s easier to get friends to help.
What Cliff Bleszinski did next: F2P arena shooter, BlueStreak
Cliff Bleszinski has been teasing his return to game development recently, and today finally revealed what he and his new studio will be working on. It won’t come as a surprise that the studio is Boss Key Productions - which was linked to Bleszinski before he revealed his involvement - and they’ll be developing a free-to-play arena shooter for PC codenamed BlueStreak.
Bleszinski spilled the beans on Twitter today, but he won’t be giving any specifics until tomorrow.
Get out the shears: Guild Wars 2's new Living World episode, Entanglement, blooms on July 15th
Last week saw Guild Wars 2’s Living World enter its second season with Gates of Magumma. Adventurers were called to assist Seraph forces in rooting out villainy in the Brisban Wildlands. But a living world is a world that keeps on ticking, and the second episode, Entanglement, is set to begin on July 15th.
Last year we said that Guild Wars 2 was one of the best MMORPGs on PC, and this stream of new content is only making it better.
Hearthstone's Curse of Naxxramas won't cost you your soul
Hearthstone’s dungeon expansion, Curse of Naxxramas, will take adventurous card sharks (and orcs, humans etc) to the floating necropolis of Naxxramas for good times and boss battles this month. Today, Blizzard’s broken down the pricing and bundles and introduces the very World of Warcraft Heroic mode.
If the upcoming expansion is piquing your interest, but you’re fresh-faced and deckless, take a look at Nick’s best Hearthstone decks for beginners.
MOBAlands: Battleborn is Gearbox's new IP, and it's a MOBA
Gearbox has joined the increasingly large number of developers trying their hand at a MOBA. The studio’s first new IP since Borderlands is Battleborn, it’s been revealed in a Game Informer cover story, a first-person arena shooter with MOBA sensibilities.
Warriors from across the universe, including an immortal samurai and a gun-toting robotic gentleman, all come together to battle over the last star in the sky.
Humble 2K Bundle: Buy eight games for $20 and help out two charities
2K is getting in on the Humble Bundle action for the next two weeks, offering up over $200 of games while supporting the American Red Cross and Action Against Hunger.
You can pay what you want for the original BioShock, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified and The Darkness II. You’ll walk away with two great games and two charities will be a wee bit better off.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 2.3 calls on Eorzea's defenders today
Final Fantasy XIV’s chunky 2.3 update, complete with gargantuan beards and new dungeons, has just launched today. New questlines, challenging boss battles, chocobo raising and a mountain of other additions have being thrown into the MMO.
It’s come a long way since it was shut down and rebranded as A Realm Reborn, which our Nick became very fond when he worked away on his Final Fantasy XIV review, and called it one of the best MMORPGs on PC. Have you had a chance to dip into any of the new content?
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