The search for immortality is just one reason that brings you to Yingzhou Island, located deep in the Dragon?s Triangle. Playing as ex-special forces soldier Tyre, you?re also here to discover the truth behind your mother?s mysterious death. Finding out how that event and her enigmatic past are tied to the secrets that lie at the heart of the island will see you battle through not only a mercenary army sent in to excavate it, but the horrors they?ve unwittingly set free.
[*Reviews go up at Thursday, April 25 at 5:01 am Pacific*] Set in the beautiful, volcanic scarred high-desert of the Pacific Northwest, Days Gone is an open-world action-adventure game in which you assume the role of Deacon St. John, a Drifter and bounty hunter who would rather risk the dangers of the broken road than live in one of the ?safe? wilderness encampments. The game takes place two years following a global pandemic which has wiped out just about everyone, but transformed millions of others into what survivors call Freakers ? mindless, feral creatures, more animal than human but very much alive and rapidly evolving. Made up of hundreds of individual Freakers, Hordes eat, move and attack together, seemingly as one. Some Hordes roam the highways at night, while others, like the one in the demo, have found a food source that keeps it in a single location. Skills learned in his prior life as an outlaw biker have given Deacon a slight edge in the seemingly never-ending fight to stay alive. But will it be enough? [Bend Studios]
Grimshade is a party-based role-playing game inspired by JRPG of the 90s, featuring a tactical turn-based combat system and a grim story of war and personal choices.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 04-25-2019, 08:58 AM - Forum: Lounge
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James Bond 25 To Be Revealed Today
The next James Bond film, known at present only as Bond 25, is to be revealed very soon. The official 007 Twitter account confirmed the movie will be revealed in a livestream starting on April 25 at 5:10 AM PDT / 10:10 AM EDT / 1:10 PM BST / 10:10 PM AET.
Little else is known about Bond 25 at present, and the aforementioned tweet didn't give much else away. The reveal is taking place "from an iconic 007 location," it said, and fans will have the opportunity to ask the cast questions.
The Bond actor himself, Daniel Craig, appeared reluctant to return for Bond 25. After wrapping Spectre, the previous film in the series, he said he'd rather slash his wrists than play the character again. He also said if he were to play Bond again, it would "only be for the money." A year later, a report claimed that Craig was offered $150 million to star in the next two 007 movies, before the actor confirmed his return in August 2017.
Ark: Survival Evolved Spin-Off PixARK Roars Onto Switch Next Month
Snail Games has announced that its upcoming open-world sandbox-survival game PixARK will launch on Nintendo Switch and all other major platforms on 31st May.
A new trailer for the announcement has been shared above, and you can learn more about the game, which is based on Ark: Survival Evolved, below:
To survive in this mysterious land, you must tame creatures both ferocious and cuddly, craft high tech and magical tools, and build your own base out of cubes. With a robust character creator, an infinite number of voxel based maps and procedurally generated quests, your PixARK adventure will be completely unique. Team up with friends to form a tribe, or play on your own. Spend your time building a towering fortress or go on a quest in a sprawling cavern. Fly on the back of a dragon and smite your enemies with a magic wand, or ride a mighty T-Rex and blast your foes with a rocket launcher. In the world of PixARK, how you play is up to you – as long as you survive!
If you’re feeling ready to explore a world of mystery, danger, ancient dinosaurs, mythical beasts, and cubes, you might want to check out this second trailer which was released earlier this year, too.
The game will be launching both physically and digitally, so make sure to keep an eye out for that lovely physical edition if you’re a collector.
Will you be picking this one up? Let us know in the comments.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 04-25-2019, 02:15 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Anthem Delays A Lot Of Anticipated Content
Anthem developer BioWare has announced some changes to the game's extra-content release schedule. Writing on Reddit, the developer announced seven planned releases have been delayed, including the major Cataclysm event.
"It's been 10 weeks since the early access release of Anthem. While we have been quiet publicly, we have been hard at work in the background and we wanted to provide an update on the state of the game," BioWare said. "We have learned a lot since the game went live. We have heard a lot of feedback from all of you, and we have been working diligently to improve as many things as we can in the short term."
BioWare has supported Anthem with bug fixes and additional changes (including the new 1.1.0 update that's out now) that help "point us in the right direction for the future." However, BioWare acknowledged that it still has "a long way to go before Anthem becomes the game we all want it to be."
Looking ahead, BioWare said it plans to prioritise fixing bugs and improving the overall stability of Anthem. "The reality is there are more things to fix and improve than we planned for. While this is the best thing to do for the game, it means some items from the calendar will be delayed," BioWare said.
The following Anthem features have been delayed:
Mastery System
Guilds
Legendary Missions – Phase II
Weekly Stronghold Challenge
Leaderboards
Some Freeplay Events
Cataclysm
For now, BioWare is keeping quiet on these delayed features, but new information should come in due time. "We want to make sure everything we add to the game has a purpose and fits with our long term goals. When we have information to share on the items above, we will do so," BioWare said.
The studio did, however, address some part of it. For example, the Cataclysm event is a "big focus," and BioWare said it sees it as an "important addition to the game."
"The Cataclysm will bring new challenges and rewards and pushes the story of Anthem forward. As our work continues, we will share more with you in May," it said.
BioWare also said it's aware of the concerns some have about end-game loot. "We agree that our loot and progression systems need to be improved and we are working towards this. When we have more information to share, we will," BioWare said.
Also in the post, BioWare admitted that it hasn't done the best job at communicating with fans. Going forward, BioWare said it plans to stay quiet for longer.
"A lesson we have learned is we have been talking about things too early. There are so many factors that can cause us to pivot on our plans--whether it’s bugs & stability issues, player feedback, or complications with a feature that require us to take more time to deliver it," it said. "Our goal is to tell you about new content and features once the work is closer to being done."
While that is true, BioWare is also hoping to communicate better with players earlier, too, through a test server on PC. BioWare will launch a Player Feedback Environment (PFE) where players can check out new content before it's released publicly to share feedback with BioWare.
In closing, BioWare said Anthem faces an long, uphill battle to get where it needs to be.
"We believe in Anthem. We believe the game will be great, but we recognize getting there will take a lot of hard work," the developer said. "We want to do that work and we want you all to join us on the journey to get there."
Anthem launched in February behind mixed reviews. Despite that, it had a strong first month of sales, in the United States at least.
Mortal Kombat 11 To Receive Reward System Tweaks After Player Backlash
Mortal Kombat 11 only came out yesterday, but fans have already been left rather angry at some of the game’s features. Developer NeatherRealm Studios has announced that it will be working towards satisfying fan demands as a result.
As you may know if you already own a copy, both the Towers of Time and The Krypt game modes give out in-game currency which can be spent on various items – skins, profile icons, and such. A quick skim of sites like Reddit or Twitter tells you that fans believe the playing time needed to earn these rewards (some of which are necessary for harder levels) is far too high. Some players have gone as far as to say that the game has been “designed to get you to spend money” to obtain these items instead.
Likely in hopes of calming the storm, NeatherRealm Studios has addressed these feelings in a Kombat Kast stream, promising changes in the near future. Essentially, it appears that tweaks to the reward system and the items received can be performed directly at the studio, without the need for a full patch to be implemented.
This means that you won’t see an updated version number or necessarily be notified of the changes, but tweaks should hopefully appear as and when the team enables them.
Have you been playing the game? Have you noticed any harsh systems in play? Let us know in the comments below.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 04-25-2019, 02:15 AM - Forum: Windows
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Microsoft earnings press release available on Investor Relations website
REDMOND, Wash. — April 24, 2019 — Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday announced that fiscal year 2019 third-quarter financial results are available on its Investor Relations website.
As previously announced, the company will host a conference call at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time. A live webcast of the call can be accessed on Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/.
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, financial analysts and investors only:
Investor Relations, Microsoft, (425) 706-4400
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. Shareholder and financial information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor.
With this newest Blazor release we’re pleased to announce that Blazor is now in official preview! Blazor is no longer experimental and we are committing to ship it as a supported web UI framework including support for running client-side in the browser on WebAssembly.
A little over a year ago we started the Blazor experimental project with the goal of building a client web UI framework based on .NET and WebAssembly. At the time Blazor was little more than a prototype and there were lots of open questions about the viability of running .NET in the browser. Since then we’ve shipped nine experimental Blazor releases addressing a variety of concerns including component model, data binding, event handling, routing, layouts, app size, hosting models, debugging, and tooling. We’re now at the point where we think Blazor is ready to take its next step.
Simplifying the naming and versioning
For a while, we’ve used the terminology Razor Components in some cases, and Blazor in other cases. This has proven to be confusing, so following a lot of community feedback, we’ve decided to drop the name ASP.NET Core Razor Components, and return to the name Server-side Blazor instead.
This emphasizes that Blazor is a single client app model with multiple hosting models:
Server-side Blazor runs on the server via SignalR
Client-side Blazor runs client-side on WebAssembly
… but either way, it’s the same programming model. The same Blazor components can be hosted in both environments.
Also, since Blazor is now part of .NET Core, the client-side Blazor package versions now align with the .NET Core 3.0 versions. For example, the version number of all the preview packages we are shipping today is 3.0.0-preview4-19216-03. We no longer use separate 0.x version numbers for client-side Blazor packages.
What will ship when
Server-side Blazor will ship as part of .NET Core 3.0. This was already announced last October.
Client-side Blazor won’t ship as part of the initial .NET Core 3.0 release, but we are now announcing it is committed to ship as part of a future .NET Core release (and hence is no longer an “experiment”).
With each preview release of .NET Core 3.0, we will continue to ship preview releases of both server and client-side Blazor.
Today’s preview release
New features in this preview release:
Templates updated to use the .razor file extension
You can find getting started instructions, docs, and tutorials for Blazor at our new Blazor home page at https://blazor.net.
Upgrade to the Blazor preview:
To upgrade your existing Blazor apps to the new Blazor preview first make sure you’ve installed the prerequisites listed above then follow these steps:
Update all Microsoft.AspNetCore.Blazor.* package references to 3.0.0-preview4-19216-03.
Remove any package reference to Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.Server.
Remove any DotNetCliToolReference to Microsoft.AspNetCore.Blazor.Cli and replace with a package reference to Microsoft.AspNetCore.Blazor.DevServer.
In client Blazor projects remove the <RunCommand>dotnet</RunCommand> and <RunArguments>blazor serve</RunArguments> properties.
In client Blazor projects add the <RazorLangVersion>3.0</RazorLangVersion> property.
Rename all _ViewImports.cshtml files to _Imports.razor.
Rename all remaining .cshtml files to .razor.
Rename components.webassembly.js to blazor.webassembly.js
Remove any use of the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.Services namespace and replace with Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components as required.
Run dotnet clean on the solution to clear out old Razor declarations.
Blazor community page is now Awesome Blazor
As part of updating the Blazor site, we’ve decided to retire the Blazor community page and instead direct folks to the community driven Awesome Blazor site. Thank you Adrien Torris for maintaining this truly “awesome” list of Blazor resources!
Try out preview Blazor UI offerings from Telerik, DevExpress, and Syncfusion
Blazor benefits from an active and supportive community that has contributed all sorts of sample apps, components, and libraries to the Blazor ecosystem. Recently popular component vendors like Telerik, DevExpress, and Syncfusion have joined in the fun and shipped previews of Blazor UI components. We encourage you to give these Blazor UI offerings a try and let them know what you think.
Give feedback
We hope you enjoy this latest preview release of Blazor. As with previous releases, your feedback is important to us. If you run into issues or have questions while trying out Blazor, file issues on GitHub. You can also chat with us and the Blazor community on Gitter if you get stuck or to share how Blazor is working for you. After you’ve tried out Blazor for a while please let us know what you think by taking our in-product survey. Click the survey link shown on the app home page when running one of the Blazor project templates:
Slay the Spire is a masterpiece of game design whose only sin is that it is not currently available on a platform I can play on the bus. Instead, I have to wait until my lunch break to load it up on the company desktop and drag cards around with a mouse, of all things! How barbaric!
However, all hope is not lost. For if you are like me, desperately craving one more run up the spire, one more shot at building the perfect poison-multiplying deck, or one more chance to try to understand how to use the Defect’s crazy orbs, you need something to take the edge off when you can’t simply spend all day in front of a PC. Thus, here are the best games to play until Slay the Spire comes out on mobile. It’s methadone, but for cards and weird-looking monsters.
First, let’s go back in time. Even before Slay the Spire was the innovative Dream Quest, a game known equally well for it’s incredibly ugly graphics as its incredibly deep gameplay. Compared to Slay the Spire, Dream Quest is more focused on deck building. You get fewer cards in your hand, and can often simply play all of them rather than having to make tactical choices. Unlike Slay the Spire, enemies play with their own deck of cards and don’t broadcast their intentions each round.
Dream Quest is less about playing each battle cleverly and more about making sure your chosen abilities work together against the given opponents. As you advance in the game, you’ll learn what each enemy is capable of and which cards you can add to your deck to counter them. If you master it, you’ll feel like you broke the game when you finally down the Lord of Dream.
Its creator described Meteorfall as “Dream Quest meets Reigns,” and that’s about as accurate as anything I can say. Meteorfall makes a smart decision in adapting card-battle gameplay to mobile: rather than having a hand of cards, you draw one at a time and decide to play it or pass, with each choice having a different effect on your resources.
It’s like if Grindr was a way to decide which way you want to spank some Adventure Time characters. It’s perfect to play one-handed, and complex and addictive. If you can’t handle Dream Quest‘s janky interface and retina-throttling art, this is your best bet for a roguish deckbuilder on mobile. Small wonder it won our 2018 GOTY Award.
Night of the Full Moon takes another path to streamlining Dream Quest. Like Dream Quest, you have a small hand of cards and gradually build up your deck from basic attacks to much more complex card engines. Rather than having a map, you choose from three different encounters, including enemies as well as stores and other places to pick up new cards.
You’ve got several classes that offer completely different approaches. It’s almost as challenging as Dream Quest and also quite a lot nicer to look at, with a fun cartoon style. The translation can be a bit of a struggle, however.
Where Slay the Spire has entirely different sets of cards for each character, even as you acquire new ones in your journey up the spire, Card Crusade gives each character a different starting deck and lets you add cards from a generic pool. It makes the characters less distinct, but improves the flexibility of your approaches.
This is probably the best choice after you’ve already exhausted Dream Quest and are looking for more of almost-the-same, like buying a bag of Hydrox when the store is out of Oreos.
If what you’re looking for is really a clone of Slay the Spire and not just something in the same vein, your options are somewhat more limited. Pirates Outlaws is the clearest doppelganger. However, this copy also seems to sport a goatee, signalling it comes from the evil Mirror Universe of obnoxious in-app purchases and paywalls. It might be worth a try if Dream Quest and Meteorfall aren’t doing it for you.
This one is basically a reduced version of Slay the Spire, with an almost identical gameplay loop and the twist of playing two heroes at a time. It’s quite a bit easier, however, and the cards aren’t quite as interesting. Worth a try after you’ve exhausted the rest.
Card Quest
If you love the card-battling dungeon-crawling of Slay the Spire but could take or leave the deckbuilding, Card Quest is the game you are looking for. It requires extremely careful, tactical use of your character’s deck, but doesn’t let you modify that deck card-by-card on the fly. Instead, sets of cards are tied to equipment you can acquire, and your deck shuffles these pre-set groups together.
If developing card synergies and managing your deck is your least favorite part of Slay the Spire, give this one a try. It keeps the roguelike challenge and even makes the battles deadlier to keep the focus on moment-to-moment tactical use of your cards.
Close, but no cigar
There are other card-based dungeon-crawlers or card battlers that are great fun, but not really substitutes for Slay the Spire.
Solitairica and Card Crawl are really solitaire games where you are playing against a deck, not trying to build one.
One Deck Dungeon deals out the dungeon from, you got it, one deck, and involves a lot more luck than Slay the Spire fans would like.
