During the holidays I started a new playthrough of Dragon’s Dogma, and while I barely made a dent in it (it’s a long game), it did remind me that there’s still nothing else like it. The sense of going on adventurous expeditions rather than simply ticking off quest icons is what I love most about it, but I love pretty much everything else too (except for the absence of the original and best intro theme). Anyway, it’s super cheap on Steam at the moment – $9.99, down from the usual $29.99. And if y

Golem Gates is a card-powered RTS game from former Epic Games folks. It launched on Steam Early Access last December, and developer Laser Guided Games says it will officially release on March 28. One main goal of the card system is fast-forwarding through the building stage seen in most RTS games. As it stands, Golem Gates supports multiple singleplayer and multiplayer modes, including bot fights, standard PvP, and survival mode. The studio says it’s set in a dark fantasy world, but its plentifu

Most interestingly, by using these methods, a game’s music can direct you, the player, by telling you what you should feel in a given scene. …there are two games that use their lack of music to incredible effect, and they teach us a lesson about why we choose to use music in the first place. A game’s music is a guiding presence, even when it’s trying to creep you out. Game music enthusiasts may scoff at this, but there are two games that use their lack of music to incredible effect, and they t

Digital security company Irdeto announced today that it has acquired Denuvo, the anti-tampering software company that gamers love to hate. Denuvo is best known as an anti-piracy tool, although some recent versions of the software haven’t held up very well against the efforts of crackers. And despite the value of anti-cheat protections, one of the most common complaints about Denuvo is that the technology also dramatically degrades performance. Denuvo 4.8, which is used to protect Assassin’s Cree

You may recall that a couple of years ago, Steam followed up its big Winter Sale with a Lunar New Year Sale in early February. The next @steam_games sale is Lunar New Year Sale and will run from February 15th to 19th.Thanks to Steam Direct, it now takes less than 5 hours for that information to leak.January 23, 2018That’s a shorter run than most Steam sales, although it’s not too far off of the most recent Halloween and Autumn Sales, which lasted a week each. And while the report obviously isn’t

EVE Online pilots will engage in a battle this afternoon that could dwarf every other major conflict in its history. This is the latest chapter of a conflict that has been brewing for years between EVE’s biggest player-led factions. It will take some hours before we know if this fight will become the biggest in EVE history, however. Before today, both of EVE’s biggest battles were started because of single mistakes. With so many pilots itching to participate in the biggest battle of EVE’s histor

The Destiny 2 weekly reset has taken place, and that means the latest Faction Rally is now over. Once again, New Monarchy rules the Faction Rallies. The Faction Rally got off to a rough start when players discovered that Bungie was throttling token drops in an effort to combat excess Lost Sector farming. Bungie later acknowledged that it had mishandled the issue, and that its solution to the farming problem was “too disruptive.” This is the second Faction Rally win for New Monarchy; Dead Orbit,

Yesterday, James and I discussed our time with SOS, a 16-player survival game which encourages loose alliances and betrayals, and where half the goal is to entertain viewers. This morning, it released on Steam Early Access—and now Snoop Dogg is streaming it on behalf of developers Outpost Games. You can watch Snoop’s stream on Twitch above, or on Hero, where you can react with emojis. Most impressive is how Snoop is able to play with one hand:SOS is $30 on Steam for the base game, and there are

Nintendo has hired the creator of reverse-shmup Downwell . Even so, it’s nice to see a talented indie developer who started on PC take his talents to a big studio. It’s also an interesting talking point in the Nintendo Switch gold rush, which has been a huge boon for many indie devs. As our own Tom Senior wrote in 2016 , Downwell is a simple game hiding layer upon satisfying layer of hidden depth. If you want to try it yourself, you’ll find Downwell for $3 on Steam and GOG.

If you’re looking to supplement your mouse and keyboard with a game controller—some games are just better suited for a controller—you can snag a wireless Xbox One controller for $40 at Amazon. We lean towards the PlayStation DualShock 4 when shunning our keyboard and mouse, but it’s largely a matter of preference. That’s the case right now for the Xbox One wireless controller, which is currently marked to $50 at most places. The Xbox One controller is compatible with Windows 10 via Bluetooth. It

His ire is not with Amazon, however, but with Intel and how it is approaching Meltdown and Spectre. As it stands, Torvalds says Intel’s patches are “COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE,” and declares them as such in all caps because he’s really, really angry. “The patches do things like add the garbage MSR writes to the kernel entry/exit points. Is Intel really planning on making this shit architectural?,” Torvalds asked. Intel is aware of Torvalds’ criticism and apparently has a dialogue going with him,

Normally we would recommend Harman Kardon’s SoundSticks Wireless speakers for a mid-range solution (see all of our picks here), but Klipsch’s ProMedia 2.1 Bluetooth speakers are currently on sale for $100, which is a stellar price. These speakers normally go for $179, and sound good at that price. And compared to the SoundSticks, the ProMedia 2.1 Bluetooth speakers are half as much right now. This is a 3-piece speaker solution consisting of two satellite speakers and a 6.5-inch subwoofer. You ca

Crafting RPG My Time at Portia is now available on Steam Early Access. It goes for $20, and according to developer Pathea Games, already contains 25 hours of content with more to come. Pathea Games expects My Time at Portia to remain in Early Access for around nine months, putting its full release around this fall. The studio says they’re “planning on increasing the price when we leave Early Access,” though they didn’t specify amounts. Our own Lauren Morton gave My Time at Portia a try last year

Samsung today unveiled not one, but two new SATA SSD families, the 860 Pro and 860 Evo. Unfortunately Samsung didn’t include an 860 Pro drives for us to evaluate, so that will have to wait. You would expect the 860 Pro to be faster than the 860 Evo, and that’s the case, at least on paper. Random writes are the same, with the both the 860 Pro and 860 Evo rated at 90,000 IOPS. Both drive lines carry a 5-year warranty, or up to 2,400 TBW (terabytes written) for the 860 Evo and 4,800 TBW for the 860

The new Humble Bundle is a handsome collection of games from Paradox Interactive, beginning with a $1 entry-level bundle that will net you the city building sim Cities in Motion 2, the co-op arcane adventure Magicka 2, and the fantasy RTS Majesty 2. Up your payment a few bucks more—to around $6 currently—and you’ll wave goodbye to a great deal more of your gameplay hours with Crusader Kings 2 and the Old Gods DLC, the old-school RPG Pillars of Eternity, the Hearts of Iron 3 Collection, and Europ

Having previously slashed its way through The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street, the multiplayer horror-survival game Dead By Daylight is now headed to a new playground: The sticky slaughterhouse mess of Saw. The Saw Chapter will add a new survivor to the game, David Tapp, and a new killer, The Pig, each with three unique perks. The update also includes a new map, Gideon Meat Plant, which sounds like a lovely spot to visit: “A place of death. Dead By Daylight: Saw is slated t

PUBG has done for the battle royale genre what Madonna did for costume couture. That is to say, battle royale games have been around for quite some time, despite being pushed into the spotlight by the enduring success of Bluehole/PUBG Corp’s runaway hit. Darwin Project is among the flurry of newcomers set to make their mark on 2018, and, when it does, its developers hope to create “more or less, The Hunger Games: The Game.” “We’re trying to do, more or less, The Hunger Games: The Game. Remember

I still remember my first venture into Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin’s Forest of the Fallen Giants. Benzoingum’s work-in-progress Enemy Randomizer mod aims to takes this element of surprise one step further, by allowing players to shift and change the layout of SotFS’s baddies by their own volition. My skin now crawls at the thought of a Blue Smelter Demon parading the ramshackle catwalks of No Man’s Wharf. At present, benzoingum’s mod only supports a few of the game’s levels—full detai

As fond as I am of Total War, I’m still finding my feet with its Warhammer offshoot. Who this time is the Skaven’s Tretch Craventail—a new legendary lord who’s heading to Totes Warhammer 2 today, riding on the coattails of its Rise of the Tomb Kings campaign expansion. I’ve seen Creative Assembly describe the Skaven in the past as a race of Bond villains, and I think that’s what I love about them. They’re the bad guys, right, but there’s something quirky and charming about them that always makes

Despite it being 2018, Duke Nukem might soon get a film adaptation. TIt seems like odd timing for a Duke Nukem adaptation. Not only did Duke Nukem Forever tank miserably (because it sucked!) One could reasonably suspect that this film adaptation may be planned to coincide with a new game. Whatever the case, John Cena would probably make a good Duke – he looks the part.