The Old Republic resurrects 300 year old protagonist as villain in Shadow of Revan

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If The Old Republic really was Knights 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 as it was first pitched, then this week’s expansion is sequel number eight. After deviations into dogfighting in Galactic Starfighter and cosmetic player housing, Shadow of Revan is a nod to the series' original playerbase, and a final act for its first protagonist and sometime plot point.

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League of Legends patch 4.21 brings gifts for "many orphaned champions" (but not Warwick)

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In past years, preseason follow-up patches like 4.21 have been conservative affairs - but this time’s different. Riot have taken the opportunity to fiddle with balance in the new League of Legends jungle, tweak early-to-mid-game gold flow, and solve a hairy problem named Warwick.

“We know everyone’s still getting adjusted to the new preseason, so we’ll be watching closely over the next while to see what new Warwicks come bubbling to the surface,” wrote Chris ‘Pwyff’ Tom. “Please don't let it be Warwick.”

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You-boat: Wargaming make waves in first World of Warships footage

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At GamesCom, our Tim found World of Warships to be quietly brilliant. The noise of the trade show must have skewed his perception of volume, however, for there’s nothing quiet about this first-ever footage of Wargaming’s tactical sea-tank sim. Hoo, no.

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Hearthstone: Goblins vs Gnomes activated in Europe. Three free packs for all

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Hearthstone’s first expansion, Goblins vs Gnomes has finally gone live. Although the official release was yesterday, problems with the North American release saw the European activation delayed.

Blizzard are rewarding all players who log in before the 19 December with three free Goblins vs Gnomes card packs.

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DICE on Battlefield 4’s future: “Final Stand is not the end”

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Battlefield 4: Final Stand looked like it would be the final DLC for DICE's shooter but the team aren't done yet. “There is one thing we want to assure you,” DICE say. “There is more content coming for Battlefield 4.”

Details will be announced in the “near future” but it looks like it may be some remade classic maps.

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InXile trademark Van Buren and Meantime. The most famous RPGs never made

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Last week we learned that InXile, makers of Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, were starting work on another project. The team aren’t yet saying what it is but they said that it was “another RPG that has been passionately demanded of us for a while now.”

Speculators suggested it would be A Bard’s Tale or Baldur’s Gate but two recent trademark acquisitions suggest otherwise.

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Dovetail Games Fishing patch makes Call of Duty’s fish AI look Crappie

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Activision made a big deal about the next generation fish AI under the hood of Call of Duty: Ghosts but, frankly, next to Dovetail Games Fishing looks Crappie. Cod’s fish didn’t migrate based on local food sources, the lakes temperature, or oxygen level.

Yup, Dovetail Games Fishing’s AI is pretty Brill.

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EVE Online's Rhea update gives ships a makeover and introduces keyboard flight controls

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The sixth EVE Online mini-expansion, Rhea, left spacedock yesterday, introducing the manual flight controls beta, new wormhole systems and two unique ships among a lot of other things that suggest that these mini-expansions aren’t nearly as small as the name suggests.

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lol

Given that in PC hardware fans are one of the most divisive components one can find, I think some may find this comparison of 103(!) 12cm case fans useful.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5770/103-12cm-case-fans-review

Killer Instict May Hit The PC, Microsoft Gathering Community Feedback

Heroes of Might & Magic III is getting an HD makeover and launches next month

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I was grounded several times thanks to Heroes of Might & Magic III as a wayward youth. I could hardly be blamed for ignoring trigonometry or yet another bloody Shakespeare play when such a monumentally addictive strategy game was just sitting their, in my PC. But now, almost 30, I’m gleefully anticipating spending however much time I want with the recently announced HD remake.

Fifteen years after it first came out, HoMM 3 is getting a new coat of paint and Steamworks support. Along with the PC release, you’ll be able to grab it on tablet if fighting fantastical turn-based battles is the sort of thing you long for when stuck on the bus or sprawled on the sofa. 

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Dying Light intro cinematic explains what's up with zombie-infested Harran

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Techland’s Dying Light isn’t due out until next month, but don’t let that stop you from watching the intro cinematic in an effort to trick your brain into thinking you’re just about to play it. Though I would suggest being nicer to your brain, it’s the only one you’ve got, and nobody likes to be tricked. 

Dying Light’s intro paints the scene with an exciting… news report. It’s unusual that so many zombie games still use news reports for exposition, when clearly Twitter will be the first place people look when the dead rise from their graves. Anyway, direct your eyes below for the trailer. 

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Mordheim: City of the Damned sprouts a loopy cult and warband customisation

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I’m a bit keen on Mordheim: City of the Damned. It’s a turn-based tactics game where warbands of Warhammer beasties, mercs and demons duke it out over a cursed town that nobody in their right mind would want to live in. I led my own wee rat warband to victory in the last episode of Playing With Myself, and ended up becoming quite enamoured with the admittedly very unfinished Early Access game. 

Phase 2 of Rogue Factor’s Early Access plans for the game is close to kicking off, with an update that should hopefully put some more meat on Mordheim’s bones going live tomorrow. Point your squishy eyeballs at the trailer below for a rundown of the new features. 

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Doom turns 21, Romero reveals a stack of never-before-seen artwork

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Happy birthday to Doom! Happy birthday to Doom! Happy birthday dear old Doomy, happy birthday to Doom! 

Hooray! Classic FPS Doom has made it to the grand old age of 21, and that’s cause for some serious celebration. He’s all legal to drink now in his home state of Texas, but instead of his family cracking out the beers, they’re revealing some unseen art work from the creation of the seminal shooter. 

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Elite: Dangerous’ “secret” has been discovered

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In the latest changelog for Elte: Dangerous, Frontier added a cryptic bullet point described only as a “secret”. Of course, with the game's millions of players hurtling through the universe, it hasn’t taken long for someone to stumble across it and bust the surprise wide open. 

If you want to discover if for yourself unsullied, don’t read any further. 

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Counter Logic Gaming fined $10,000 for poaching in League of Legends LCS

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Counter Logic Gaming, on of eSports’ largest organisations, has been fined a hefty $10,000 for breaking LCS rules. The eSports giant has been found guilty of attempting to ‘poach’ player William “Scarra” Li, a player for rival organisation Dignitas. 

The fine is the largest ever handed out by LCS, which highlights the severity of the case, and has been intensified by untruths told by Counter Logic Gaming’s bosses. 

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Valve have "rebuilt" classic Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map Train

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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive started the year with record numbers and expanding community prize pools, and has trundled on ever since to become a firm fixture of Steam’s upper-most-played list.

Some classic CS maps have aged in the meantime - but luckily, the track’s turned out to be one of those oval playset ones and we’ve come back around to Train. Valve have rebuild the memorable map to ensure it remains pretty and competitive in one of the best first-person shooters on PC.

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Zenimax explain Undaunted Pledges: The Elder Scrolls Online's latest round of dungeons

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Perhaps you’ve never been to an American university, and don’t put much stock in greek letters beyond alpha and beta. Then you, too, will have have been left wondering what a ‘pledge’ is. It turns out they’re dungeon quests handed out to warriors once they reach level 45, with the promise of soul gems and shoulder pieces fashioned from the remains of slain monsters.

They don’t show you that in the teen moves. But they’ve been introduced to The Elder Scrolls Online in Update 5, and elucidated at length by Zenimax.

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Habitat Steam Early Access update piles on the space junk

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The release of Habitat v0.5 on Steam Early Access means one thing: piles and piles of space junk. It’s just floating there, so it might as well be put to good use. It’s an unusual game, is Habitat; a PC version of Gravity, directed by Charlie Chaplin. 

There’s more than just junk in the new version, though. 

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Recycle Steam Community items like Trading Cards, backgrounds, and emoticons from your Inventory into Gems and use it to bid on games up for auction. The first auction round ends on 16 Dec @ 4:00am with a new round ending every 45 minutes until the last auction round ends on 19 Dec @ 7:00am. At the end of each auction round, the top bidder for each title wins.

Deathtrap – Tower Defense With RPG Elements – First Guide Video Focuses On Traps

Neocore Games has released the first part of a video series explaining the various features of Deathtrap. Deathtrap, a tower-defense game with strong action-RPG elements, launched as an Early Access Game with many exciting features you’ve been longing to see in this genre. Choose from three game modes (PvP, Single Player and Cooperative Campaign), create your own maps and monsters, share them with your friends and get ready for a game of vicious tricks, killing machines, rotating blades and splattering blood. Enjoy! Continue reading →

 

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Final Fantasy XIII-2 Now Available, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Coming In Spring 2015

December 11, 2014 John Papadopoulos 0 Comments

Square Enix today announced that Final Fantasy XIII-2, the second instalment in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, is now available for Windows PC across Europe and PAL territories, priced at £12.99 / €15.99. Continue reading →

Video-News

Saints Row: Gat out of Hell Gets “Behind The Scenes” Video

December 11, 2014 John Papadopoulos 0 Comments

Deep Silver has released a new ‘behind the scenes’ video for Saints Row: Gat out of Hell in which the game’s voiceover actors give a rare behind the scenes look at what it takes to make the characters of Saints Row come to life in the recording studio. Saints Row: Gat out of Hell releases on January 20th. Enjoy! Continue reading →

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The Talos Principle Is Now Available On Steam

December 11, 2014 John Papadopoulos 3 Comments

Devolver Digital and Croteam announced today the release of The Talos Principle. The game is available today on Steam for 35,99€ and in order to celebrate this launch, Devolver released the game’s launch trailer that can be viewed below. Continue reading →

Screen-News

Just Cause 3 – New Beautiful Screenshots Released

December 11, 2014 John Papadopoulos 10 Comments

Avalanche Studios has released a new set of screenshots for Just Cause 3, showing the beautiful visuals of its upcoming current-gen only open-world title. Just Cause 3 looks amazing and is full of explosions (like basically its predecessor). The game is currently planned for a 2015 release. Enjoy! Continue reading →

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Satellite Reign – Spiritual Successor To Syndicate Wars – Now Available On Steam Early Access

December 12, 2014 John Papadopoulos 2 Comments

5 Lives Studios has just announced that its spiritual successor to Syndicate Wars, Satellite Reign, is now available on Steam Early Access. Moreover, the game comes with a 10% discount until December 18th, meaning that it will cost you around 25,19€. Continue reading →

When is the sale going to end?

Usually the big sales last two weeks

Steam Winter Sale incoming, suggests a PayPal email

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It’s been less than two weeks since the last Steam sale, but it’s time to prepare your battered wallets again. The Steam Winter Sale is on its way. 

And once again we know about it thanks to Paypal. 

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Mojang's Scrolls releases alongside a free demo version

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It’s easy to forget that Mojang has more than Minecraft on its plate, but today marks the release of Scrolls, the developer’s hexy card game. This comes after a lengthy open beta, which started in June last year. 

There’s a free demo version, and you only need a Mojang account to play. Take a look at the launch trailer, below.

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Oculus VR swallows up a three course meal of one mo-cap expert and two developers

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The news that there were still people not employed by Oculus VR did not go down well in the companies underground lair, which is also on the moon. That’s why the VR developer isn’t just hiring individuals, now, it’s swallowing up whole teams. You probably know someone working there now, or perhaps you are reading this from your office in the aforementioned underground layer. 

Today, Oculus VR announced three new acquisitions amounting to many brains that will be consumed by the virtual hive mind: Nimble VR, 13th Lab and mo-cap expert, Chris Bregler. 

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Steam Holiday Auction: bid on 200k free games with recycled badges and inventory items

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Valve appear to have opened a new game-recycling service ahead of the rumoured Steam Winter Sale. Not only can users purchase games, earn Steam trading cards through play and turn them into badges, backgrounds and emoticons - they can now break down those Steam Community items into gems and use the twinkly currency to bid on different games at auction.

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Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition 1.3 sorts multiplayer; "We nailed all the little problems"

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When we talked to Beamdog’s Trent Oster about Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, we were prepossessed with the future of D&D RPGs - but he was just as concerned about mistakes made in the past with one of the best RPGs on PC.

“We rushed Baldur’s Gate II out. It’s that simple. We rushed it and we screwed things up,” he told us. “1.3 fixes a ton of things. That thing is massive. The number of fixes in there is just insane.”

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Source code for Doom’s 3DO port has been released online

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Yesterday we all had a bit of a song and dance about Doom celebrating its 21st anniversary. That came with photos of its creative process, but today brings something a whole lot more technical: source code. In specific, the source code for Doom’s 3DO port. 

It also comes coupled with a short story by Rebecca Ann Heineman, the coder who was tasked with bringing Doom to the console. The transition from PC to console was certainly not a smooth one…

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STALKER Apocalypse is the new project from the devs who tried to make Areal

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Remember Areal? It was the domed Kickstarter project from West Games; a team supposedly made up of members who worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The project went through a turbulent fundraising period and was eventually pulled.

But that hasn’t stopped West Games from dreaming the dream. They’re back, this time with a game pitch that’s even closer to nabbing them a copyright infringement ticket than ever before. Take a look at STALKER Apocalypse. 

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Microsoft’s Phil Spencer: “It's time for us to talk about gaming on Windows”

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It’s easy to feel that Microsoft, custodian of one of PC gaming’s biggest platforms, has being ignoring computer games for many years. Afterall, when their biggest contribution to the scene has been the troublesome Games for Windows Live, it’s not difficult to see Microsoft in a less-than-positive light.

Hopefully change is on the horizon, though. Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Studios and the company’s Xbox division, has said that gaming on Windows will be a talking point in 2015. 

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Satellite Reign now available on Steam Early Access

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5 Lives Studios have infiltrated Steam Early Access with Satellite Reign, their Kickstarter success that bathes itself in the nostalgia of the original Syndicate games. You can buy the game right now and start parading your team of agents through the first zone. 

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Payday 2: The Diamond Heist trailer has Hitler and your new crew member

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Payday 2’s six-man crew’s soon to be joined by a another like-minded criminal. We don’t know much about Clover besides her Irish accent and that she bloody loves diamonds.

In the latest trailer for the upcoming The Diamond Heist update she tells us about one diamond in particular, one she calls the diamond.

It’s got quite the potted history.

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How to rebuild a publisher: Atari on Haunted House and their future on PC

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As I dial into a conference call with Atari COO Todd Shallbetter, my questions about the new Haunted House reboot fade away like a Graves residence ghoul. They’re replaced by a single, unignorable one: who the hell are you people, anyway?

Like the bright bead in Video Pinball, the Atari name has bounced about so often over the past three decades that it’s been impossible to follow. This is no longer the Atari who seared the image of an upside-down cheese string into the retinas of arcade-goers in the late ‘70s; nor the one that staved off a D&D drought in the noughties with Neverwinter Nights and The Witcher. 

So who are this iteration of Atari, and what do they want with the PC?

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Assassin’s Creed Unity patch 4 coming on Monday. Aims to make it more stable

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Assassin’s Creed Unity’s 4th patch is due out on Monday, 15 December. The priorities of the patch to make the game more stable and fix performance issues, though it should also improve the online matchmaking.

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NA LCS Expansion tournament concludes this weekend

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For the last four teams hoping to join the North American division of the League of Legends Championship Series, this weekend represents the moment of truth. A mix of eSports hopefuls and veteran League of Legends players are fighting for two spots in the 2015 spring split.

For some of them, it would be a dream come true. For others, it would be a last chance to get it right.

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BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend – Available Now On PC