Kotaku Sunday, December 17, 2023 10:30 AM  On the heels of The Game Awards, this week saw the launch of two expansions for fan-fave games: God of War Ragnarok and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. We also took a meaty deep dive into Analogue's latest and greatest new retro console and did a year-three rundown on the state of the PS5. |
Kotaku Sunday, December 17, 2023 9:00 AM  Does anyone else feel like the PS5 just came out, not that long ago? Well, there's already an abundance of chatter about a potential mid-gen Pro version of Sony's strangely designed console. And we've also got a Game Awards rundown for you too. |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 11:39 AM  Old World, the historical 4X strategy game from developer Mohawk Games and publisher Hooded Horse, announces its new DLC pack Wonders and Dynasties. The new add-on for the empire-building game that comes from Civilization 4's lead designer Soren Johnson introduces a hefty helping of additional content, with a focus on dynasty-related events and new character traits. It also includes eight wonders of the ancient world and more than 100 new faces from the annals of history. Continue reading Historical 4X game Old World adds over 100 famous faces in new DLC MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Upcoming PC Games, Best strategy games, Best 4X games |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 10:48 AM  Stardew Valley style innkeeping and tavern management sim Travellers Rest just got a big upgrade in its latest patch. The Travellers Rest Recipes and Farming update, released as part of patch 0.6.3 for the farming game currently in Steam Early Access, introduces two new areas, dozens of crops, and over 100 recipes to explore. The hefty update also overhauls the game's crop system and introduces weather phenomena such as thunderstorms and snow. Continue reading Stardew Valley style innkeeper sim Travellers Rest gets big update MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best farming games, Best management games, Best indie games |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 9:54 AM  With the announcement of Monster Hunter Wilds at The Game Awards and Capcom running an event encouraging players to return to Monster Hunter World, what many would call the best game in the series is seeing the highest Steam player count in over three years. Tens of thousands are coming back to the game, with that number likely to exceed six figures at once anytime now. Continue reading The best Monster Hunter game sees massive resurgence amid Steam sale MORE FROM PCGAMESN: MHW: Iceborne release date, MHW: Iceborne Banbaro guide, Monster Hunter World review |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 7:56 AM  Kerbal Space Program 2 always had a big act to follow, as its predecessor remains one of the most incredible games on PC, offering a comprehensive simulation of space flight and exploration with an almost unparalleled level of depth. Launched in February 2023 in early access on Steam and the Epic Games Store, KSP2 has so far struggled to win over its audience, currently holding a 'mixed' Steam user review score, with one of the primary complaints being a sparseness of things to do. That's all about to change, however, with the launch of the new Kerbal Space Program 2 update For Science. MORE FROM PCGAMESN: The best space games on PC, The best simulation games on PC, Kerbal Space Program 2 system requirements |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 7:29 AM  FF14 player and content creator 'SuperLouis64' has done it again, this time taking the Gunbreaker class from Square Enix's MMORPG, turning it into a real-life prop, and playing through dungeons with it. So if you thought managing any of your Tank rotations across all of what Eorzea already has to offer was hard enough, you've seen nothing yet. Yes, the Gunbreaker has just been 'nerfed' (I'm so sorry). Continue reading FF14's most stylish tank just got 'nerfed' in the best way possible MORE FROM PCGAMESN: The best MMOs, FFXIV Island Sanctuary guide, FFXIV Island Sanctuary animals list |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 6:41 AM  December 17, 2023: We've added two new Monopoly Go dice links to our list. How can I get free Monopoly Go dice links? The classic board game has made its way to a free-to-play format, and you'll be doing laps of the board collecting houses and hotels and completing a variety of multiplayer minigames along the way. You can't get far in Monopoly Go without dice rolls, which you'll have a limited amount of to begin with. To earn more dice rolls, you'll need to log in daily to collect bonuses, invite your friends to the game, or progress further. If you don't want to spend your hard-earned money on more dice, you can use dice links for the board game instead. Continue reading Free Monopoly Go dice links December 2023 MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best board games, Free PC games, Monopoly Go dice |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 6:30 AM  Sea of Stars developer Sabotage Studio is in the process of replacing an in-game character based on YouTuber Jirard Khalil, best known as 'The Completionist.' Following ongoing investigations into The Open Hand Foundation charity, which Khalil was until recently a board member of, Sabotage Studio is removing Khalil's in-game cameo. The indie developer, which was awarded the best independent game award for Sea of Stars at The Game Awards, says it has "arrived at this decision after carefully monitoring events over the past few weeks." Continue reading Sea of Stars dev is replacing its NPC based on The Completionist MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Sea of Stars review, Best RPG games, Best PC games |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 5:44 AM  Baldur's Gate 3 deserves all the awards it's been getting this year. The entire team at Larian made something truly special, and the musical score is a big part of that whether you realize it or not. Videogame music has always been well appreciated by players and developers alike, but the BG3 composer thinks we're still in the middle of a new era for the medium. MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Baldur's Gate 3 builds, BG3 mods, Baldur's Gate 3 classes |
PCGamesN Sunday, December 17, 2023 11:11 AM  December 15, 2023 Three great new codes have been added to the list! What are the latest Disney Dreamlight Valley codes? We've done some digging to make sure we've got the latest codes available from Gameloft. To celebrate the release od Dreamlight Valley multiplayer, there are two new codes below. The Dreamlight Valley golden potato code was the first to come to the Disney game, and gives you just that, a golden potato. It doesn't even do anything yet, but the exciting news is that it appears to be part of a future Dreamlight Valley quest. The code might no longer available, but if you still don't have a golden potato, you can pick one up in Scrooge's shop. Notes hidden around the valley right now suggest that the potato might be put to any day now. Other codes have since been released with various celebrations, including the Dreamlight Park community challenge and the Festival of Foolishness, for which all the Dreamlight Valley codes can be found below. Continue reading All Disney Dreamlight Valley codes December 2023 MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best Disney games, What's the next Dreamlight Valley update?, Disney Dreamlight Valley guide |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Sunday, December 17, 2023 8:00 AM  Time for day seventeen on the 2023 Advent Calendar! What's Christmas without a bit of nostalgia, eh? |
Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed Sunday, December 17, 2023 6:00 AM  Sundays are for almost pulling the trigger on a silent mechanical keyboard you definitely don't need. Let's read some of the week's best writing about games and game-related things. |
Siliconera Sunday, December 17, 2023 12:00 PM
If you told me in 2004 that World of Warcraft would have become my favorite MMORPG of 2023, I would have told you that you were lying. I've talked about my newfound love of the genre more than enough over the course of the past few months, but I still can't believe how enamored I am with a nearly 20 year old game. And when I say 20 year old game, I'm talking about World of Warcraft Classic.
For those unfamiliar with World of Warcraft Classic and what that entails, it means that Blizzard effectively made the "vanilla" version of the game with its very own set of servers. It isn't entirely 1:1 with the World of Warcraft 1.0 experience, as it does have some basic quality of life features that make jumping into it a bit easier. That said, I love playing old MMORPGs; Lineage II was my main haunt for eight years and AION followed shortly after that, and both of those games were extremely grindy. So of course I'd love World of Warcraft Classic, where the game is focused on the grind and the experience. I don't mean experience in the technical sense, but more or less just being in the game itself.
World of Warcraft has a level of immersion I've been missing in MMORPGs, along with environmental design that piques my curiosity. Classic allowed me to experience areas post World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, which is perhaps one of the most divisive expansions in the game to date. It's given me access to areas that ended up changing to staggering degrees. Now I've already sung my praises about Season of Discovery, which encourages players to use the Rune system to try out unconventional builds, like Mages that heal or Warlocks that tank. But Classic has impressed me so much that World of Warcraft has been my go-to MMORPG, effectively usurping Final Fantasy XIV as my primary MMORPG.
Starting off as an Undead in Season of Discovery allowed me to explore The Undercity, the remains of Lordaeron from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and the hub for other risen (also known as the Forsaken). The area is full of incredible ambient noise and has fantastic sound design. Lingering in the throne room allows you to literally hear a pivotal cutscene from the RTS play out in chunks, echoing along the empty halls of the ravaged palace. But there is something unsettling about this area, as the mundane farmlands and provincial villages outside of The Undercity are awash with the mindless undead and the sky is forever a sickly green that taints the horizon. It edges on horror, which I find so interesting in an MMO. But the longer I played World of Warcraft and the more characters I created, the more I realized that each of these individual starting zones has so much packed into them that I just wanted to explore and experience them all.
Outside of these starting zones, which probably aren't very novel to long-time World of Warcraft players, environments are vast and feel alive. Even The Plaguelands has enemies that roam in packs, with one particularly fearsome beast wandering around in random paths. After clearing out my quest log in The Plaguelands, I headed to The Barrens, taking a zeppelin to the other continent to meet up with friends that numbered some returning players and others entirely new to the MMORPG. This lush, golden savannah had herds of gazelle running through swathes of grass in a way that made the zone feel immersive. What also helped is the sudden influx of returning players as well, as all of the areas I traveled to, even the starting zones, had more than a dozen people wandering around and assisting others.
The game feels like the way MMORPGs did when I was a kid, and maybe that's why I'm loving World of Warcraft Classic. It's populated, areas are distinct with their own themes and enemy types, and the game feels vast in ways that other MMORPGs don't. It amazes me that Classic has little to no loading screens, and that the game launched that way as well. I'll probably keep playing World of Warcraft for as long as Blizzard continues to support it's Season of Discovery servers, and Hardcore game mode. And I'll probably keep playing retail as well on my Death Knight just because the game is so much fun.
I've just really come to love World of Warcraft, and I think so long as I enjoy the game casually it'll stay that way. Which is what I'm planning to do, as exploring Azeroth and tackling dungeons with friends as they recount their time in the game has made this one of my favorite experiences of 2023.
World of Warcraft is available on PC.
The post World of Warcraft (Classic) Became My MMORPG of Choice appeared first on Siliconera. |
Siliconera Sunday, December 17, 2023 9:00 AM
I didn't expect to close out 2023 by playing one of the best roguelikes I'd seen in a while, but here we are with Astral Ascent! It's a lovely game with a striking amount of control over each run, allowing you to make significant progress and experiment with fun builds and spell movesets each time.
Astral Ascent is set in a world where a being called the Master captured various worlds. This being pulled them into astral prisons and tasked warriors known as Zodiacs to keep people in line. However, the people in the Garden are fighting back. Ayla, an assassin, and Kiran, a Silver Scout, start out as the first of the player's forces to fight back so they can beat the Zodiacs, reach the Master, and break free.
I think I knew Astral Ascent was something special when I discovered how far I got on my first run with skill alone. It wasn't too "easy." But I managed to nearly reach the first member of the Zodiac because it was so fair, well-balanced, and fun. You select your next room after clearing the combat, exploration, or rest space you're in, eventually going through one after another until you reach a boss fight against a member of the Zodiac keeping people imprisoned. You get accustomed to the enemies you face. You get a sense of choice as to what sort of challenge you take, rewards you'll next acquire, and even difficulty of the next step. It's all so clearly telegraphed that there's this great level of control and approachability.
Once you actually get into these areas is when Astral Ascent can get really fun and maybe even trip you up. The distribution of foes, stage elements like hazards that hurt you or items you can exploit to deal additional damage, are so much fun to find and either avoid or implement into your attacks. You learn what to expect from opponents, which are all quite stylish despite their size, and offer a window of effect with attacks so you know where the hitboxes are and can anticipate assaults.
And after I would fall and get kicked back to the hub, it still felt like I had even more elements at my disposal to go in stronger than ever. I'd get currency rewards for achievements, which I pumped into upgrades for my character or spells. I could choose which character would go into a run, with Ayla and Kiran available right away and Calie and Octave unlocking as I played. I could buy new spells that I could see show up. Then, when I'd head back in, I could choose which first spell and abilities I'd take in with me, eventually getting Aura boosts and Gambit modifiers I could add to certain spells.
Astral Ascent is also great at telling its story between runs. We already know everyone's trapped in the Master's astral prisons and held there by the Zodiacs. But by continuing to explore, we get to interact with NPCs in the hub, see flavor text from our playable characters as we struggle to reach the master, and find memories that Papa Yalee lets us read through to learn more about characters who aren't as vocal or Zodiacs we'd normally only see during boss encounters. There's such personality here, and it really helps set everyone apart.
I'm just really pleased by everything Hibernian Workshop offers us as players in Astral Ascent. It's such a satisfying roguelike, with a big part of that owing to how much freedom a player has when approaching each attempt to make it through a world. I never once felt like a playthrough was doomed from the outset, and the possibilities afforded by the different characters and spells made me eager to experiment and keep trying to escape.
Astral Ascent is available on the Switch, PS4, PS5, and PC.
The post Review: Astral Ascent Keeps Players Captured in a Satisfying Gameplay Loop appeared first on Siliconera. |
PC Invasion - FeedDDD Sunday, December 17, 2023 11:42 AM  If you're playing Ready or Not, you may have run into trouble while staging busts on your suspects. This can often result in nerve-wracking shootouts, but as you advance in the game, you run into traps too. Here's how to avoid booby traps in Ready or Not! How to spot and avoid Booby Traps in Ready or Not Have either yourself or a teammate bring a Mirrorgun to check under doors for Booby Traps in Ready or Not. Also, look along walls and floors of interiors for other traps. The first instance for most players will be in the 'A Lethal Obsession' mission where you must apprehend a paranoid and skilful target. The most common traps you'll encounter here are tripwires hooked up to grenades triggered by opening doors. Related: What is Ironman Mode in Ready or Not Explained If you wish to avoid a Booby Trap in Ready or Not, I recommend looking at the corner of the door directly down from where it opens to use a Door Wedge. If... |
PC Invasion - FeedDDD Sunday, December 17, 2023 10:58 AM  The Gingerbread Galore milestone event has begun yet again in Monopoly GO. For all the sweet rewards, keep reading! Gingerbread Galore has already hit Monopoly GO – although this time both the rewards and the way to get points has changed. It started 10:00 ET on December the 17th, 2023. Milestone events are rather straightforward, although the accumulative rewards that can be earned are huge. All Rewards for Gingerbread Galore in Monopoly GO Below is a full list of rewards for the Gingerbread Galore event in Monopoly GO. Note that cash prizes can't be given a value as it'll be different from player to player. A huge thanks to @itsjakesm on X for the info! Excitingly, we have a chance to earn Puzzle Pieces here, which will contribute to the Gift Partners event currently going on! Milestone LevelPoints RequiredReward1580 Puzzle Piece tokens25Cash310Green Sticker Pack475125 Free Rolls515100 Puzzle Piece tokens615Green Sticker Pack... |
Gamer Empire Sunday, December 17, 2023 9:41 AM Stone is an essential material in Raft, as it can used for a lot of purposes, such as combating, crafting, recycling, and even quests. Although stone is considered an early-game resource, finding them can be challenging unless you know where to look. Recommended Read: What to Do With Blueprints in Raft In this article, we'll […] |
Tabletop Gaming News – TGN Sunday, December 17, 2023 10:27 AM  ViaModiphius, a branch of the renowned game publisher Modiphius, has made an exciting announcement for tabletop game enthusiasts. The company has revealed its first 'Winter Collection', a lineup of solo and co-operative adventure wargames that promise to revolutionize the tabletop gaming experience. This collection, available for pre-order starting today, features four outstanding games, each offering … |