It didn't take long at all for Blizzard to reveal Orisa, the latest Overwatch hero, but remaining patient for her to trot into the live game hasn't been quite so easy. While curious PC players have had time to experiment with the barrier-slinging quadruped tank on the PTR, console players have been stuck with the existing 23 characters and a frighteningly capable Bastion. It'll be a while longer yet.

Addressing an impatient forum-goer, game director Jeff Kaplan posted that "We're getting great feedback and fixing a lot of issues. I know this feels a little longer than other PTR periods, but we think it will be for the better. We know how anxious you all are to have Orisa join your ranks... and she will soon... but most likely she will go live later in the month rather than this early."

On the Overwatch Twitter feed, Blizzard expressed a similar sentiment: "Orisa will have a slightly longer incubation time on the PTR compared to previous heroes." Set you expectations accordingly!

While we wait, I'll continue stockpiling gold for Orisa's beetle-inspired skins.

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Andrew Morrish's Kingsway looks like a good time.

It's a fantasy role-playing game set within a familiar but probably-legally-distinct-enough faux operating system, and this trailer nails that vibe. Things like your health and mana status, inventory, and even the world map are laid out across popup windows that you can poke and prod to your heart's content. Cool, right? It's coming to PC this summer with a helping hand from Adult Swim Games.

I especially love that pose the skeleton is doing. Looks like he's raising an invisible top hat.

Kingsway [Steam]

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Exploring your home planet in No Man's Sky is about to get easier. Hello Games has announced it's adding a new vehicle to the space sim in its upcoming "Path Finder" update.

Via: GamesRadar

Source: Hello Games

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ARK Park. It has a staccatoed cadence to it that's so damn entertaining to say. I saw it on the Wednesday of GDC and spent the entirety of the week barking it out like DMX pretending he's a dog. Steven, who just would not stop singing the first few lines of "Bad and Boujee," would sometimes transpose the lyrics to "Raindrop, ARK Park." We have a lot of fun with video games, a very serious topic.

Just as we crib from rap for ARK Park, ARK Park cribs from Jurassic Park for its whole concept. We begin the demo in a visitor's center, one that looks awfully familiar. It's filled with holographic displays, each one committed to giving a little information about a different dinosaur. I pick up a holographic leaf and a holographic brontosaurus leans down to gobble it up, taking my hand with it in a weird translucent way. I offer it some meat and it isn't at all interested.

It's then that I teleport on top of a giant map (this is VR-only after all; blinking across short distances is about the only way to get anywhere) and choose a less manufactured destination. I'm going out into ARK Park to get an up-close look at the wildlife that runs this place. It's clear that this venture isn't a dangerous one because I'm not given a means to protect myself. ARK: Survival Evolved is where you go to defend yourself from nature; ARK Park is where you go to get a voyeuristic first-person glimpse at it, free from the constant threat of maybe getting trampled.

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This is the second and seemingly final time I'll cover Ion, the space simulation multiplayer game DayZ creator Dean Hall announced as part of Microsoft's E3 2015 press conference. It's a game we never knew many concrete details about and one I had all but forgotten about since its vague reveal.

Ion is now back in the news as Eurogamer has discovered that, actually, it's no longer being made. That's according to statements received from co-creators Improbable and RocketWerkz. "We are focussed on making SpatialOS available to developers, and supporting developers such as Bossa Studios and our SpatialOS Games Innovation Program partners as they make games on our platform. We currently have no plans to develop or release a game ourself," said the former.

The publication got similar word back from Hall, who stated that "We're not actively working on Ion, no. I am not involved in that, no. Nor is RocketWerkz studio in New Zealand." As for the reasoning behind ending production, that's much less clear at this point in time.

Speaking more generally, though, Hall noted that "Part of what we were doing with RocketWerkz in the early days was experimenting around and saying well how do we want to make games? Do we want to focus on partnering, do we want to look for other people to do technology? And the decision we've made is to very much focus on the projects we control in their entirety ourselves."

So there it is. If you were looking forward to Ion due to its Space Station 13 inspiration, that's rough.

Ion, the space survival game by Dean Hall and Improbable, is dead [Eurogamer]

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Modern 3D video games require a ton of processing power to look good and respond to player input quickly. That's why most of the web-based games you see today are at best stripped down versions of their PC or console counterparts. The team behind the Firefox web browser would like to see that change, however. Mozilla released a version of the browser that includes WebAssembly - a new technology that enables high-resource apps like games, computer-aided design, video and image editing and scientific visualization to run in a browser almost as fast as they do on your local computer. It will also speed up existing web apps that use JavaScript.

Source: Mozilla, Medium

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Last week, the Bolivian government has lodged a formal complaint with the French embassy over the portrayal of the country in the recently released Ghost Recon: Wildlands. In Wildlands, a then-minor Mexican drug cartel has taken full control of Bolivia and in just two years (the game is set in 2019) turned it into a full narco-state, supporting its $2 billion per week cocaine export business. As a result, the United States' seediest organizations -- CIA, DEA and JSOC -- deploy special ops to the country to destroy the cartel.

According to Reuters, "Interior Minister Carlos Romero said Bolivia had delivered a letter to the French ambassador and asked that the French government intervene," though it's unknown how Romero wants the French government to intervene with the just-launched game. Romero also said, "We have the standing to [take legal action], but at first we prefer to go the route of diplomatic negotiation."

Countries straining relations over video games. Life imitates the internet on a frighteningly macro scale.

For its part, Ubisoft came back with an anodyne statement exculpating itself, noting "the game takes place in a modern universe inspired by reality, but the characters, locations and stories are all fantasies created solely for entertainment purposes," before pivoting to patronizing compliments and, "hope that the in-game world comes close to representing the country's beautiful topography." Even if that topography is littered with fictional savages we have every right to murder with spooks.

Bolivia, to its mind, has done a lot to work against the kind of future Wildlands predicts in two years. While it has decriminalized the coca leaf, which has ancestral and medicinal uses in the country as well as status as a cash crop, it has also capped production. Bolivian President Evo Morales, speaking out against a recent U.S. State Department report which accuses Venezuela, Bolivia and Burma of having "failed demonstrably" to combat drug trafficking, tweeted over the weekend, "Colonial Bolivia under imperial domination: 37,000 hectares of coca. The Plurinational State: 20,000 hectares. Where is the demonstrable failure?" Morales, who has been president since 2006, is referring to a 2009 constitutional change that renamed the country to the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

Bolivia complains to France about its portrayal in video game [Reuters]

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Nintendo is no stranger to cracking down on companies that sell tools enabling pirated games on its consoles. However, its latest victory might be more important than most. The company has won a copyright case in Canada that accused Go Cyber Shopping (GCS) and its founder, Jeramie King, of illegally selling 3DS flashcarts, modchips and other piracy-oriented tools. While Nintendo would likely be happy enough with that triumph, it notes that this is the first case "of its kind" to test the Canadian Copyright Act's anti-circumvention measures -- think of it as a rough parallel to aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US.

Source: BusinessWire

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Did you forget to build your space empire in last year's Stellaris? Perhaps you didn't bother visiting Capcom's excellent PC port of Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen? If you didn't play some of the well-received games of 2016, GMG has you covered in a new Most Played Games of 2016 sale.

While we can't exactly figure out GMG's criteria on "most played," we did notice many were Paradox Interactive strategy titles. We suppose you can make the argument that these have endless replayability since no two games would play out exactly alike. Regardless, there are some really decent discounts to be found.

There is a new historic low price on the Stellaris Galaxy Edition (Nova and Standard Editions are near historic lows) along with the aforementioned Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. All other titles in the sale are within a buck or two of their best prices ever. Don't see the price drop? Login or register for an account and you'll see the final price during checkout.

Misc Publishers

• Street Fighter V (Steam) — $16.99  (list price $40)
• Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (Steam) — $10.29  (list price $30)
• Mount & Blade: Warband (Steam) — $5.79  (list price $20)
• Insurgency (Steam) — $2.29  (list price $10)

Paradox Strategy Games

• Stellaris: Galaxy Edition (Steam) — $29.79  (list price $70)
• Stellaris: Nova Edition (Steam) — $28.57  (list price $50)
• Stellaris (Steam) — $22.79  (list price $40)
• Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet Edition (Steam) — $22.79  (list price $40)
• Europa Universalis 4 (Steam) — $8.57  (list price $40)
• Crusader Kings II (Steam) — $8.57  (list price $40)
• Cities: Skylines (Steam) — $8.29  (list price $30)

Killing Floor 2

• Killing Floor 2: Six Pack (Steam) — $85.57  (list price $150)
• Killing Floor 2 - Digital Deluxe (Steam) — $22.79  (list price $40)
• Killing Floor 2 (Steam) — $17.29  (list price $30)
• Killing Floor 2 - Digital Deluxe Edition Upgrade (Steam) — $5.79  (list price $10)

The GMG sale is fairly short-lived as these discounts are only good now through Friday morning ending at 9AM Pacific. That said, at least you have a few days to pickup the price breaks.

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Two weeks ago, the Trump administration rolled back federal protection for transgender students who wish to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity. The act has drawn criticism for not just discriminating against transgendered people, but also putting them in harm's way. Several Silicon Valley companies have also come forward to decry the rollback, proclaiming their commitment to LGBT rights. At the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco last week, it was clear that the gaming industry shares the sentiment too.

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When Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare first got the Variety Map Pack in 2008, the DLC was $10.

When Modern Warfare Remastered gets those same maps, first on PS4 on March 21, they'll cost $15.

What gives? Well, Activision can get away with it. People who were willing to shell out for Infinite Warfare to play the remaster will also pony up for the chance to play Broadcast, Chinatown, Creek, and Killhouse again. There's also "10 Rare Supply Drops" to attempt to justify the heightened cost.

Is any of this surprising? No, but it is disappointing. Those initial six free maps added to Modern Warfare Remastered were the beginning and end of that line of thinking for the publisher, it seems.

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Hello Games has mostly kept to itself as of late, but it hasn't stopped working on No Man's Sky. Another update is planned for release this week following last year's base-building Foundation Update.

"We're calling it the Path Finder Update; it introduces a new vehicle that will aid home planet exploration, building on the Foundation Update to hint at a path ahead for the future," teased the team. There aren't any patch notes yet, but those will be available once the new content is up.

In its announcement, the studio says it was "surprised and excited by the response to Foundation," adding that it is "listening carefully to community feedback" whether positive or negative.

The prior content update wasn't enough to convince me to boot up No Man's Sky again -- I still have one Trophy left to earn for extreme-weather survival -- but maybe this will give me that extra push.

Path Finder Update Coming Soon... [Steam]

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Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and perhaps even Emperor Justinian (if we are to believe the Secret History) all possessed by the devil himself. Is that the case with your medieval monarch in Crusader Kings II? Well, the strategy game that won't die is getting yet another DLC, Monks and Mystics, with an emphasis on holy and anti-holy orders alike.

Best part is it's even on sale along with the Crusader Kings II base game and a few of the other more recently released DLC packs. GMG is holding the first discount on the new Monks and Mystics DLC and the best discount online from Crusader Kings II at $8.57. No coupons or other hassles, just login or create an account to see the deal.

New Crusader Kings II Deals

• Released today: Crusader Kings II: Monks and Mystics (Steam) — $12.79  (list price $15)
• 
  
• Crusader Kings II (Steam) — $8.57  (list price $40)
• Crusader Kings II: Conclave (Steam) — $7.49  (list price $15)
• Crusader Kings II: Charlemagne (Steam) — $7.49  (list price $15)
• Crusader Kings II: Horse Lords (Steam) — $7.49  (list price $15)
• Crusader Kings II: The Reaper's Due (Steam) — $4.99  (list price $10)
• Crusader Kings II: Way of Life (Steam) — $3.99  (list price $8)

Other DLC packs are also on sale at Bundle Stars. There you'll find Charlemagne, Horse Lords, The Reaper's Due, and more 50% off. These discounts and GMG's will go through Friday, March 10.

2012's Crusader Kings II is still getting DLC released in 2017? Paradox Interactive must be doing something right. The 15% discount is at least some savings for the CKII fan who faithfully buys the new DLC as it comes out. 

Monks and Mystics adds several new features to the game players might enjoy. Monastic Orders are given new options, devil worship is an option for your ruler, and new events are added to the game with secret societies playing a huge role.

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Hall-of-fame Brazilian racer Emerson Fittipaldi has finally seen his dream supercar not only realized, but featured in the upcoming Gran Turismo Sport. Italian car design firm, Pininfarina, is set to reveal the Fittipaldi EF7 Vision Gran Turismo at the Geneva Motor Show this Thursday. It joins 20 other cars in the Vision Gran Turismo program, in which Polyphony digital called out to car manufactures to make an "ideal GT." 

A release date more specific than "2017" for the game is still unknown, leaving it just as unobtainable as the car itself for now. Perhaps it is to be expected given the brand, but Gran Turismo Sport is graphically stunning. It makes me want to get a PS4 and high resolution TV so I can turn around, drive the wrong way, and cause a huge pileup in 4K.

Read more...

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If you're like me, you've been keeping tabs of Dissidia Final Fantasy arcade in the hopes that'll it'll come to the PlayStation 4 soon. The two PSP titles were some of my favorite games on that system, so I really want to play this soon. 

What makes it sting even more is when new characters are added and they look pretty cool. Final Fantasy II's Emperor Mateus definitely looks good in the new engine even if his move set is the same as before. Then again, it's not like Square Enix was going to throw off the emperor's groove. 

I wonder who's going to be added next? The first two games had huge rosters, so hopefully they reach a stopping point soon and port/localize the beast.

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Last year, Riot Games entered the legal arena to shut down League of Legends scripting/cheating site, LeagueSharp, a service that Riot claimed was ruining their game and their cash flow. Months later they've emerged triumphant, with a settlement that has crippled LeagueSharp, awarding Riot a $10 million payout, and providing Riot control of their sites and services.

LeagueSharp offered a service many other cheating sites do -- providing bots that level up and earn currency for your account, circumventing the idea of accruing currency through normal play, which typically drives players to spend real money on "Riot Points" as a shortcut. It's a massive blow to botting in general now that free-to-play developers have seen it cut into their bottom line, we could see a lot more preemptive shutdowns or legal initiatives.

Having grown up seeing this type of scripting as a normal practice, it's interesting to see a developer win a case like this. Perhaps Blizzard is next, as they've been fighting to shut down Overwatch cheat sites since its inception.

Riot awarded $10 million in League of Legends scripting lawsuit [Dot eSports]

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Back when Persona 4 Golden released, I considered its advent as the sign that we as a society had it the point of “Peak Persona”. That game took the already-polished structure of Persona 4 - itself a refinement of Persona 3's pioneering disruption - and buffed out the few remaining rough spots in the design.

In the wake of that release, I thought that the series couldn’t possibly top itself without veering radically from the tried-and-true formula Atlus and P-Studio had devised over the years. A real sea change would be needed to make things fresh again. To me, Persona 5 would need to be as much a departure from Persona 3 and 4 as those games were from Persona and Persona 2. And I was even disappointed when early word came out that P-Studio would stick to its guns and not depart from the anime high school and daily-life themes that had done so well for them before.

Thank goodness I'm not the guy in charge! I was, thankfully, dead wrong. Based on the 30-odd hours I've played so far, Persona 5 could well be the marker for "peak Persona". Read on for a bit more (spoiler-free) detail about my time with the game.

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The game selection on Nintendo Switch right now is decidedly sparse, but I don't mind. Two titles are keeping me plenty busy, and if you've glanced at the eShop yet, I bet you know 'em.

The first, of course, is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That game card isn't leaving my system anytime soon. But the other? It's a last-minute addition to the launch lineup called Snipperclips.

Read more...

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If you're eager to get some hands-on time with Quake Champions, it looks like you'll finally have a chance. Bethesda has opened up registration for the closed beta that will be happening in a few weeks. They also let loose a new trailer that shows a few snippets of gameplay, which looks pretty fast paced.

Read more...

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Ana has dominated the Overwatch scene for a while, but that may change when the next round of PTR changes hit (as a reminder, the PTR, or Public Test Region, is where the dev team tests their changes before they go live mostly for bugs, and for occasional balance reasons as well). Blizzard has provided some updated patch notes following what's become known as the "Bastion patch," and it heavily deals with Ana, among other heroes.

Pretty much all of her stats have been cut across the board, with her Biotic Rifle damage going from 80 to 60, and her Biotic Grenade going from 60 to 30 and 100 to 50, when it comes to damage and healing impacts respectively. Junkrat also won't hurt himself from his own explosions anymore (poor Pharah), and Orisa got some small nerfs in the form of a lower magazine size (150 from 200) and a Supercharger cost increase (15%).

Finally, Sombra's stealth audio has been reduced by 15 meters (so she can be a bit more secretive) and her Translocator is now on a four second cooldown (from six), Winston's Barrier Projector cooldown now starts when it's placed (!), and Zenyatta's Orb of Destruction has a slightly better recovery time for his alt fire (.06s from 1s), and he can target enemies through barriers with Orb of Discord.

It's an interesting set of changes for sure, especially for Ana, who is straight-up worse. Let's see how the community deals with the next patch hits -- but as always, PTR is not final, and a lot could change by the time the live version arrives.

Geoff Goodman [Battle.net]

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The latest screenshots of the highly-anticipated and long-awaited Final Fantasy VII remake caused some concern among fans. A still of the protagonist, Cloud, leaning up against a crate to shield himself from enemy fire worried fans that the game would rely on cover.

Director Tetsuya Nomura addressed those concerns today, explaining that cover is optional and was shown to demonstrate the "seamless" actions possible in various contexts. He again confirms that battle is action, not command based, which allows for "flashy battles" such as adding "map destruction" to the Guard Scorpion fight. 

Read more...

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The last thing the gaming industry needs is another digital currency system that supplants dollars for an exclusive "points" system -- and yet that's exactly what Razer invited me to see at its San Francisco offices last week. The company's pitch was almost contradictory. Razer zVault is a digital wallet system designed to unify payments across platforms encumbered by a myriad of other fragmented digital wallets.

It sounds ridiculous, but it's already moderately successful: over six weeks, the zVault pilot program has already tracked over 370,000 transactions using zVault's zGold currency. That's probably due in part to the fact that zVault boasts a burgeoning rewards program that offers users discounts, free games and a second bonus currency that can be used to buy Razer accessories and laptops.

Source: Razer

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Heroes of the Storm is known for weird characters. It has Abathur, a hero that touts a playstyle not typically found in the MOBA genre, among other oddballs that bend the rules in interesting ways.

While the builder concept isn't really new (turrets have been a thing since DOTA 1.0), Probius takes it and shifts the meta with his unique Protoss conceit.

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"Fucking stupid" is my aesthetic -- just ask anyone on Twitter that disagrees with my opinions -- and 1-2-Switch is definitely stupid, though not in the good sense. It's stupidly priced with a stupidly low amount of content.

If only 1-2-Switch felt like more than a collection of funny videos and tech demos.

Read more...

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In case you forgot, Sony is remastering PaRappa the Rapper for the PS4, and it's out soon-ish! They just confirmed an April 20 release date for the project, which will be priced at 1,800 yen (roughly $20), and will come with six PSN avatars for "early purchases."

New features include trophy support, 4K/1080p visuals, and a remastered uncompressed CD quality OST. The only gameplay changes are a metronome-like mechanic for DualShock 4 controllers, and enlarged icons.

Although I think a fully remastered collection of all the PaRappa and UmJammer games would have been preferable, the first entry is still an easy, obvious choice as they don't have to change much -- it's still a classic that I replay every year.

PaRappa [Sony via Gematsu]

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Mass Effect 3 may have been a disappointing end to the alien dating trilogy, but BioWare handled the multiplayer component with a bit of grace. Instead of shoving in a bunch of maps with the season pass for the game, all the extra maps were released for free. That trend is going to continue in the upcoming Andromeda as confirmed by BioWare's general manager, Aaryn Flynn.

Along with that information, the producer for Andromeda (Fernando Melo) stated that the multiplayer component would tie back in with the single-player in the form of some unlocks for your character. Melo mentioned on Twitter, "On the fifth day of MP-mas, the MP dev team gave to you: a new feature in MEA – Missions. Your link between MP/SP. Play & get rewards in both."

That sounds similar to how Mass Effect 3 handled your "War Readiness" for completing missions in co-op mode. That may be a bit tacky (since you can farm out components to make the game easier), but at least your time spent away from the campaign won't be for naught. Getting extra maps for free is also a pretty nice gesture, even if that used to be an industry standard (I miss you Unreal Tournament).

Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Multiplayer Maps Will Be Free [WWG]

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Last year's Game Developers Conference was ruled by virtual reality. From Sony detailing its PSVR launch plans to Oculus showcasing the first batch of games for the consumer Rift headset, you couldn't swing a Meowth at the event without hitting a VR booth. But, perhaps fueled by the success of Pokémon Go in 2016, augmented reality has become the new industry darling. That's not to say VR has been kicked to the curb completely, but at GDC 2017 we saw the emergence of AR as a compelling technology for gaming and beyond.

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So, the Switch hype (and Superbowl commercial) paid off. The Nintendo Switch sold well. How well? We don't have raw data yet, but it's looking pretty good.

Nick Wingfield of the New York Times spoke to NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime, and got the lowdown. According to Nintendo the sales of the Switch in all of the Americas and Canada outsold the Wii over a two day period. Zelda: Breath of the Wild also took the crown for "most sold launch game" for Nintendo.

Breaking it down, that means the Switch surpassed 600,000 in sales in the same region. We can only assume Nintendo will give us hard sales data soon, likely in the form of a worldwide figure that sounds more impressive. In Japan, it's estimated that they hit roughly 313,700 units sold.

So they followed through with the launch, now they just have to play the long game, not fumble the Virtual Console/online play, and continue to deliver a steady stream of first-party games and forge/foster third-party relationships along the way.

Good luck!

Nick Wingfield [Twitter]

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