The XCOM genre is something special and distinct, and diverging too far from its fundamental design pillars results in something less than satisfactory. Then something dramatic happened—the RTS genre became the dominant game genre on PC, thanks largely to Warcraft (1994) and Command & Conquer (1995). Reorganised under the 2K umbrella, the former Bioshock 2 studios, 2K Marin and 2K Australia, began development on a new XCOM game. However, when Firaxis announced that they were going to release the

A new Overwatch patch went live today that restores Lucio’s Wall Ride speed, gives a minor buff to Mercy’s Valkyrie ability, and adds new voicelines for Cultist Zenyatta. Lucio’s Wall Ride speed boost has been cranked up by 65 percent, although that only compensates for a reduction in his speed that resulted from a prior bug fix. Mercy players can now glide past targeted allies using the jump key while using Guardian Angel, and the cooldown won’t reset when Resurrect is activated. Valkyrie won’t

The Killing Floor 2 Halloween Horrors content pack, with a new map and achievements, a pair of new weapons, a new (actually returning) enemy and boss, limited-time Halloween themed unlockables, daily missions, and the Dosh Vault, is now live—and free—on Steam. New Daily Missions and Dosh Vault System – Players will receive a random set of missions each day that can be completed to earn Vault Dosh. While it won’t be usable to purchase items during matches, players will receive free Vault Crates c

From October 24 to November 6, Hearthstone’s Arena mode will be replaced by a new dual class variant . Players will pick a class, then a Hero Power from another class, and finally draft a deck with access to cards from both classes. Dual class Arena sounds like a welcome shot of life for a mode which has struggled somewhat since the launch of Knights of the Frozen Throne. Log in between October 24 and 30 and you’ll get a free Whispers of the Old Gods pack and an Arena ticket. The following week

Jim: Good evening, folks, and welcome to a cheap narrative framework for explaining what we think of Mutant Football League so far! Tonight marks the evening of James’s first experience with the game, a noted spiritual successor and name flip cousin to Mutant League Football. Honestly, I don’t know the first thing about Mutant League Football, but I do know that Mutant Football League feels like NFL Blitz rose from the grave, hellbent on inciting gruesome supernatural violence and cracking OK jo

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is out today . Here are the features we especially like in the Fall Creators Update, and the ones we’re not so hot on. The Fall update adds GPU monitoring to the performance tab, alongside CPU, memory, disk and Internet usage. What if desktop apps got full-size icons, too? –Want a full list of the new features and changes in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update?

The Left 4 Dead-like dark fantasy extermination sim Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide was one of the happier surprises of 2015: Expectations weren’t what you’d call universally high, but it turned out to be a really good game. If you liked the first game, you’ll love the second.” Fatshark CEO Martin Wahlund said. “We have listened to the community, analyzed hours and hours of online playthroughs, and combined this with our passion for co-op games to bring you the very best experience possible.”

Visceral Games, the studio behind Dead Space and Battlefield Hardline and which was most recently working on a still-unannounced Star Wars game, has been closed down. Electronic Arts vice president Patrick Soderlund confirmed the closure in a statement, in which he also said that the design direction of Visceral’s Star Wars project will undergo a “significant change.” “Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe,” Soderlund writes. “We will mai

2K Games announced yesterday that Jayavarman VII will lead the Khmer people into Civilization 6 in the game’s next update. Gitarja’s leader ability is the very poetic-sounding “Exalted Goddess of the Three Worlds,” which grants bonus Faith to coastal cities. It also enables Gitarja to purchase Naval units at a discount using Faith, and eliminates the movement cost of Religious units that are embarking or disembarking from vessels. There’s still no word on a release date for the Indonesian (and K

Each of the 33 Warframes is like its own RPG class, with unique abilities and playstyles that players will craft and upgrade. Calling this a big plot twist is an understatement. Below are complete spoilers for the biggest plot twist in Warframe. More human than humanAlmost every event in Warframe’s story, present and past, is linked to the fallen Orokin empire. Calling this a big plot twist is an understatement.

This is an upgrade over the 7th generation dual-core processor options (Core i7-7200U and Core i7-7500U) that previously resided inside the Stealth Blade. “The new Blade Stealth is the most well-rounded Windows laptop out there, and it can be further supercharged with the help of the new Razer Core V2.” Also as before, the Blade Stealth does not come with a discrete GPU, instead relying on integrated graphics—Intel HD 620, in this instance. Razer sells an external graphics enclosure that you can

To combat against this, Corsair is now offering a set of durable PBT double-shot keycaps. These are meant as replacements for your existing keys and are compatible with a “wide range” of Corsair mechanical keyboards (K95, K70, K65, K66, K63, and Strafe). They also should work with many keyboards from other vendors that use Cherry MX key switches, though it’s a bit of a gamble—these replacement keycaps cost $50. PBT keycaps are usually thicker and matte with a textured finish, allowing them to re

Going top of the line almost always entails spending top dollar, and while that is still true of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, Massdrop is offering one at a pretty nice discount. The Aorus (Gigabyte) GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is up for grabs. That is the cheapest around for a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. The Aorus card that is up for grabs has a 1,569MHz base clock and 1,683MHz boost clock in Gaming mode, and a 1,594MHz base clock and 1,708MHz boost clock on OC mode. To see the $680 price tag, l

War never changes, as the saying goes, and soon it will never end, either—at least, not in Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Monolith revealed in a recent livesteam that “infinite Shadow Wars,” which will provide endless fort defense at the end of the game, will be released alongside the Slaughter Tribe Nemesis expansion. Shadow Wars is basically an end-game sequence in which the forces of Mordor launch counter-attacks against fortresses held by the good guys. Monolith said during the stream that the

The online arena shooter LawBreakers will soon have the competitive ranked mode that developer Boss Key promised in early September. And because Season 0 is a “beta test for the Boss Leagues,” Boss Key is looking for feedback, and will “make adjustments” as it unfolds. Also on tap are improved tutorials, multi-region queuing, new Blitzball Sports-themed skins, profile icons and kick decals, and various sorts of balance changes. Good game or not, those numbers are simply not enough to keep the wh

Months after it was first announced, Microsoft’s Fall Creators Update for Windows 10 is now available to download. Let’s start with the Fall Creators Update. This is the second major update to Windows 10 this year, the first being the original Creators Update released in April. As with previous major updates, the Fall Creators Update is being rolled out gradually to users, rather than pushed out to every PC at once. Microsoft has been testing and refining the Fall Creators Update through its Win

For hologram pop star Hatsune Miku, naturally. In this case, the modder didn’t just slap a transparent LCD panel on his case and call it a day. He tweaked the inside of the chassis to create a dance stage, so that when Hatsune Miku appears on the side panel, it looks like she is actually inside the PC. It is the same case and general setup, except there is a liquid cooling reservoir sharing the stage with Hatsune Miku. Case makers haven’t fully embraced the technology yet, but now that Hatsune M

Not to manipulate the process because we want all the PC games to win in every category, or anything, but because there are so many amazing projects nominated that we want to celebrate. If you vote, too, you get a free digital copy of The Best PC Games Ever, which we published earlier this year. All you have to do is vote, enter your email, then you’ll receive instructions on claiming this lovely-looking digital book. There’s a bunch of great PC games up for awards at the Golden Joysticks this y

Bomber Crew is an upcoming “strategic survival sim” about building and piloting bomber planes. Picking the right pilot and crewmates is crucial to successfully delegating tasks like manning turrets and repairing damage mid-dogfight. Bomber Crew is also as much a sim as it is a roguelike. You can fully customize your crew, pilot and most notably your ship right down to the smallest details. Bomber Crew releases on Steam this Thursday, October 19.

Last week, we learned that more than 3,000 Nazis die in Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. That’s next week, which is why the alternate timeline post-WW2 shooter now has a launch trailer. Let me revise that: I mean about a thousand personal kills, but then there are a few thousand impersonal kills as well.” Very possibly, as he pops up at the end of the above short looking quite under the weather. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is due Friday, November 27.