Ratloop Games Canada’s complex sounding turn-based competitive FPS Lemnis Gate is getting an open beta, running through Thursday July 22 6pm BST to Monday 26 July 6pm BST.
Beta access is free, but will require a code, which should be turning up in various places, including the game’s official Twitter, Discord, and through Twitch Drops when the Beta is live.
A blog post confirming the beta also lists the various modes that Lemnis Gate players will be able to sharpen their time manipulating skills over ahead of release. Players will be able to play Retrieve XM, which tasks you with retrieving a substance called XM and bringing it back to your spawn point on maps Quarry and Tectonic Wells.
Domination will be available on The Arbor and Chimera, and players will need to activate and claim as many particle accelerators across the map as they can.
Games can either be played 1v1 or 2v2, with the added wrinkle that one sees every player take turns, and another where both players on a team act during their turn.
Due to Lemnis Gate’s unique turn-based FPS premise, there’s even an option for Local 1v1 and 2v2 play. Players of the beta will also have a chance to unlock exclusive operative and weapon skins which represent an in-game faction called Chameleon Company.
As tested by Eurogamer, an FPS Boost upgrade for Dark Souls 3 will let players enjoy a 60fps rendition of the game on Xbox Series X or S consoles, similar to the performance improvement enjoyed by PlayStation 5 owners.
Eurogamer’s Digital foundry tested the upgrade, finding that it performed at a consistent 60fps, with a few hiccups taking the game lower in intensive areas.
The testing also explained that FromSoftware patched the PlayStation 4 version of the game for the Pro version of that console, allowing Dark Souls 3 to run at 1080p 60fps.
The Xbox One X version did not receive the same upgrade, meaning that the game can only run 900p 60fps on the Xbox Series consoles, which leaves it a little less graphically impressive than the Sony counterpart.
Digital Foundry also discovered that load times in Dark Souls 3 are significantly improved too: “Fast-travelling from the initial Firelink Shrine to the High Wall of Lothric gets chopped almost in half, down to 6.7 seconds on Xbox Series X, versus the 12.3 seconds on the older Xbox One X.”
Fans of Dark Souls are currently looking forward to FromSoftware’s next release, Elden Ring, which is set o release on January 21 in 2021.
Valve‘s popular competitive game Dota 2 has got the go ahead on a new location for its yearly tournament, The International, with a £29million ($40million USD) prize pool.
The tenth International (TI10) for Dota 2 is going to be held at the Arena Nationala in Bucharest, Romania, and will begin on October 7.
The group stage will run until October 10, with the main stage beginning on October 12, and the finals planned for October 17. Teams will be battling it out in Dota 2 games for a portion of a £29million ($40million USD) prize pool.
In an announcement post, Valve say “We are grateful for the partnership we have formed with Romania and the city of Bucharest, and very much look forward to gathering with the global Dota 2 community, both in-person and virtually, to celebrate the elite players and amazing fandom at The International.”
Dota 2 has also received a new summer event called The Nemestice in the run up to TI10, which ties into the game’s Battle Pass.
Players are encouraged to grab Nemestice Embers in order to power up their characters, whilst creeps and towers gain power every time an allied tower is destroyed.
Fan favourite Rainbow Six Siege operator Tachanka is getting a host of changes in the next update for Year 6 Season 2, alongside a handful of other operators.
The Year 6 Season 2.2 update to Rainbow Six Siege is making balance changes to a few operators, and Ubisoft has detailed the changes in a designer’s notes post, with Tachanka, Alibi, Frost, and Zofia all getting updates and nerfs.
Accompanying the update are a range of graphs and matrices that show the difference between win rate and how often the heroes are picked, which figures into the changes as Tachanka “has a very low presence in the Balancing Matrix” according to the post.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege. Credit: Ubisoft
The changes being made to Tachanka see him get a deployable shield added to his kit, as well as increasing the ammo that he gets for his Shumikha Grenade Launcher. This is to “encourage more active usage” of his kit, letting him blow holes in walls whilst protected with a shield.
Alibi is also getting changes to her scope loadout in order to bump her up the rankings, with the scopes making her “more viable in roaming scenarios and appeal to players who are more frag-focused.”
Zofia and Frost are also getting changes to their weapons, as they currently have high presence and win rates respectively on the balance matrix. Zofia is getting increased vertical recoil, and stronger horizontal spread to make her a less appealing all round pick: “This means that while it will initially be harder to control, it should be possible to master the recoil pattern over time.”
Rainbow Six Siege. Credit: Ubisoft
Frost is losing a scope from one of her guns, making her less able to hold long angles with her powerful C1 gun. Ubisoft has said it is aware of the power of her welcome mat trap, and promise to keep a “close eye on her updated performance over time.”
More changes to guns, and information about experiments being undertaken on operator Nøkk, whose balance changes are put on hold, are available in the update post too.
PUBG Corporation revealed earlier today (June 6) that the Tottenham Hotspur footballer Son Heung-Min will be coming to PUBG after its upcoming Tageo update.
Nice one Sonny! Nice one Son! Nice one Sonny! Let's drop into the Battlegrounds! pic.twitter.com/NSUvHjMzfK
Dataminers have discovered exactly what the skins will look like when they are released, with prominent PUBG leaker PlayerIGN sharing images of the two Son Heung-Min skins. The first one shows Son in football gear, while the second is a more stylish long coat.
The next update to PUBG that will see the game receive a brand new map called Taego will release on PC tomorrow – Wednesday, July 7. Maintenance is planned in order to ensure a smooth update, and as such PUBG will go offline on July 6 for eight hours at 5:30pm PDT (1:30am July 7 BST).
Taego will be live worldwide on July 7 at 1:30am PDT (9:30am BST). The console version of the game’s 12.2 update will not available until July 15.
PUBG will be getting a whole host of new features alongside the patch, including a brand new self-revive mechanic. Also promised is a second-chance mechanic which gives players who go out in round one to survive until round three. Tageo will also feature ambient wildlife that will be alarmed by player activity, acting as natural alarm systems.
During today’s (July 6) Nacon Connect stream, the french publisher made a wide range of announcements and capped it off with a surprise unveiling of a game titled RoboCop: Rogue City.
The short teaser, which gives a brief glimpse of Alex Murphy’s robotic suit and iconic gun concealed in his thigh armour, is available below:
According to a press release from Nacon, developer Teyon is working with MGM entertainment to develop: “develop an authentic RoboCop game experience that is faithful to the franchise’s DNA, while immersing gamers in an original story that enables them to play as none other than RoboCop himself”.
Robert Marick, executive vice president of global consumer products and experiences at MGM said: “We’re very much looking forward to collaborating with Nacon and Teyon to bring one of MGM’s most timeless IP’s back to gaming platforms with a brand-new story.”
RoboCop: Rogue City. Credit: Nacon
Marick continued, saying “The film is known for gripping action and complex storytelling, and we are excited for RoboCop fans to experience this first hand through the game.”
Far Cry 6 narrative director Navid Khavari has revealed that actor Giancarlo Esposito brought his own props to the first meeting he had about playing character Antón Castillo.
Khavari confirmed this via an interview with The Loadout that Esposito was incredibly well prepared for his role as Far Cry 6‘s main antagonist.
“It was a bit surreal to sit down in front of him in our first meeting in New York,” Khavari explained. That meeting lasted for something like four hours. It was the most prep I’d honestly experienced with an actor in a first meeting.”
“He’d done extensive notes and even had some props.” Kavarhi continued.
According to the director, Esposito doesn’t want Castillo to be considered as just another ‘villain’ and pushed for empathy – especially in the way the relationship between Castillo and his son is presented.
Khavari finished up by talking about Esposito’s intensity: “There was charm, charisma, and also a moment where he stared at me dead in the eyes as Antón, and he might as well have burned a hole into my skull. It was Far Cry.”
The developer also confirmed that the upcoming DLC for Far Cry 6 will let players take control of previous villains from the series: Vaas, Pagan Min, and Joseph Seed.
Nacon has announced a whole host of updates to its upcoming games at its Nacon Connect digital event, including two brand new games: Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos and Ad Infinitum.
Today’s (July 6) Nacon Connect event saw the publisher unveil two new games, along with a whole host of updates to upcoming titles such as Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong and The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum.
The first of the two new announcements arrived in the form of Ad Infinitum, a story-driven horror game. The first trailer showed off a nightmare sequence set during World War I:
Nacon also revealed Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos, a newly developed title from ACE Team, the creators of Zeno Clash. This game will see players explore the bizarre world of Zenozoik.
Developer Big Bad Wolf also showed off a trailer and a new character for Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. Galeb is a 300-year-old vampire who is described as “just and unsentimental”. Check him out in the below trailer:
Daedalic Entertainment then revealed a new developer’s interview for The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum, where producer Herald Reigler introduced new characters and environments that players can expect to encounter in the finished product.
Spider’s founder and creative director followed this up by presenting a first look at the combat for its upcoming action-adventure game, Steelrising. The game is set in an alternate version of 18th-century Paris and sees the protagonist battle against armies of automata.
Next, Nacon premiered a trailer for Blood Bowl 3, as well as a confirmed release date for the upcoming roguelike Rogue Lords: The Devil.
Session was another game to receive an announcement during the showcase, fronted by professional Skateboarder Daewon Song. The game is available in early access from today on Steam and Xbox.
Finally, the long awaited Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown received a cinematic trailer, which revealed its Hong Kong setting, along with a host of features previously unannounced.
Additionally, there were a whole host of other announcements, including new brand accessories for Xbox and PlayStation 5 consoles.
Tunic is a game about a little fox, and big ideas. Many of these ideas it wears on its sleeve readily. The first that immediately jumps out to a casual observer is that despite its isometric graphics, it looks a little bit like The Legend Of Zelda; when you finally get a sword (after beating back slimes with a stick) you can even chop grass and bushes, just like Link.
Shortly after, you’ll fight tougher sword-wielding, pig knights with shields. Rolling to dodge attacks and stamina management suddenly reveal themselves as integral parts of the games. Suspicion rises, and shortly after you’ll be delving into knotty dungeons that knit themselves together with smart shortcuts. Ah, it’s Dark Souls!
Then, you’ll inevitably notice a few odd things here and there – shortcuts and places you can get to that maybe you shouldn’t be able to get to; geometrical tricks meticulously designed and folded into the world seamlessly. There’s also a mysterious language that crops up, runic and obtuse and… well, that’s Fez, right?
Lead designer Andrew Shouldice confirms my suggestions with a grin: “there’s definitely a document somewhere that has those three games listed right next to each other. Good work!” But, that’s the easy stuff. Tunic does wear these influences heavily. Shouldice also says he was influenced by Ustwo Games’ mobile puzzler Monument Valley, “what would it be like if you had a game like that, but it wasn’t these little dioramas, you’re exploring a larger space. That’s definitely something I’ve thought about a lot over the years.”
Tunic. Credit: Andrew Shouldice
The diorama aesthetic of Monument Valley definitely shines through in Tunic. The short demo that was available after E3 was beautiful, a soft-shaded, gradient-filled dream world, with a wonderful breezy soundtrack that invited many players in. Tunic has been in development since 2016 though, and there’s a lot going on beneath the surface. When players pause, they’ll note that the game pops them out of a screen, leaving them to view a dim CRT in the background. It’s here where the game’s manual is eventually pieced together.
In-game, they will find pages – these pages can be accessed via pausing, and reveal a classic, 16-bit era, Legend Of Zelda or, Super Mario, Or Sonic The Hedgehog style instruction manual complete with maps, hints, and instructions. This is where I learned, 25 minutes into the demo, that holding the roll button let me sprint. On restarting the demo it was clear I could always do this, but it wasn’t until the manual spelled it out to me that I picked it up. It’s a key trick of the game, and something Shouldice feels is a key element of Tunic.
“There’s this feeling of leafing through a manual, and not understanding everything that’s in it, trying to comprehend it, finding secrets that are buried inside it,” says Shouldice, explaining how the manual is going beyond just aesthetic dressing. He shows me a pristine copy of the manual for The Adventure Of Link that he keeps on hand during development, a “fun little artifact” but something that’s full of controller diagrams, illustrations, and photographs of CRT screens that point to secrets and areas of interest.
“There’s something really special about the object of these things, leafing through them and almost having them be a part of the game themselves.” Shouldice explains further: “you might find some secrets marked on the map, they’re a little bit unobvious perhaps, and we are trying to do that sort of all over the place, you know, bury secrets in the manual and use it to tell the story.”
Tunic. Credit: Andrew Shouldice
There’s an interesting compromise in Tunic’s manual though. We talk about how older manuals were both incredibly enticing, but also completely at odds with the way that modern audiences consume media, treating each new area and new area as a secret to discover and cherish, whereas Link’s Awakening named every one of the game’s eight dungeons in its manual. Shouldice talks of a “middle ground” where the manual can be drawn out and separated in the game world through its pages, meted out when the story or pace of exploration deems them necessary. One thing that Shouldice is adamant on however is that “nothing in the game unlocks mechanically based on having a page. It’s just a piece of paper. That’s pretty strong as a game philosophy… nothing magic happens.”
This part of Tunic’s design is part of what attracted producer Felix Kramer to the project. Kramer, who has worked on games such as Fez and Blaseball is no stranger to unique ideas and innovations, and they talked about how they felt about the game’s use of a manual and the era of games that it evoked: “I used to spend time with friends playing obtuse games that we rented because the box art was cool, trying to figure out manuals before we could fully decipher what the game was about – all with missing pages and cryptic notes from previous renters, it almost felt like we weren’t supposed to be doing it. ”
Tunic does feel, in a way like a game of forbidden charms, evoking an era of gaming not just in a flat, reverent way, where the graphics or the gameplay or the music toy with our perceptions of the mid-90s by creating facsimiles. Instead, Tunic sets out to capture a specific feeling of exploration and challenge that was present in older games, the feeling of struggling uphill with a playful manual at hand, and it does so in a more holistic way. As a result of this, Tunic is surprisingly hard.
Tunic. Credit: Andrew Shouldice
Given the ever-present debate about accessibility and difficulty in games, I raise a concern I have with Shouldice, that the game’s aesthetic and presentation may invite players into the game that are unprepared for its demanding, stamina-based combat which borrows heavily from the Souls games. “The reason for the difficulty, generally speaking,” says Shouldice “is to help people feel like they are a tiny fox in an inhospitable world, and to make you feel brave and courageous as you take on the challenges around you.”
Level artist Eric Billingsley also has an interesting take on the way the game’s difficulty and presentation intertwine “the flip side is that someone might come in [to Tunic] seeing that it looks like maybe a game that could be a bit more casual to pay and then realise, oh, maybe I do like this kind of thing,” referring to our discussions of games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, “and maybe it’s not the type of person who would have played a grimy looking Soulslike or something, and maybe we introduce them to that kind of thing.”
“Not everything needs to be in the ‘if it’s hard it needs to be largely beige quadrant!’ chips in Shouldice, “it can be easy to say something like Fez is straightforward and easy because it has no fail state, but I was recently revisiting it and yeah, some of it is demanding.” Billingelsy adds that the game is designed in such a way that roadblocks shouldn’t happen as there are nearly always multiple places you can explore (the demo is less freeform, with lots of construction work signs blocking areas off). Billingsley also believes that repetition and success are important, “if you feel like you’re improving each time, and that you’re eventually going to get it, that’s an important aspect in everything. It makes it all the more satisfying when you finally do it.”
Parallel in some ways to the axis of difficulty is accessibility, which is also amongst Shouldice’s concerns, especially when working with a publisher like Finji, whose accessibility options in the recent Chicory went as far as turning off the wet sounds that might cause people with misophonia to feel uncomfortable. “The M.O. of Finji, in general, is to make sure there are decently robust accessibility in their games. I think there are lots of ways to make sure people are going to be able to have a good time with something that isn’t just necessarily renaming hard mode and easy mode, you know?”
Tunic. Credit: Andrew Shouldice
Kramer also adds that they believe it’s on them to communicate a game that requires “patience, practice, and perseverance” but wants players to feel that they will find themselves “rewarded for going places they might think they shouldn’t go, or finding ways around situations that look daunting or scary.” This is a philosophy that ties directly into Tunic’s core influences of Dark Souls and the original Legend Of Zelda, especially in the way that the game’s intricate world and levels are designed.
Tunic’s world looks vast to begin with, but as you zoom into ground level to play as the tiny fox, it becomes clear that it’s less a sprawling expanse, and more a densely plotted series of interconnecting areas and zones. Billingsley, who handled level art, worked hand in hand with Shouldice to turn simple boxy designs into intricate levels, and often needed to flatten them back into 2D maps that could be represented in the game’s digital manual. Secrets and exploration is a key element though: “the way the spaces are connected, you might not realize this shortcut is there unless you go on to the other side of it, and then you come back”. The vertical slice the demo presents is less open than this, but its small size betrays the wealth of secrets and shortcuts within.
People were incredibly thorough with Tunic’s demo, with some going as far to debug the game to break its tight boundaries, but beyond more obvious looping shortcuts, Shouldice said he enjoyed filling the demo with secrets, including one secret that is completely unmarked: “I like that sort of stuff is entirely arbitrary and there if you find it, but if you don’t, that’s okay.” The secrets are often so well hidden, that even Billingsley didn’t catch all of them until playing through the game.
For all of Tunic’s references, and nods to the past this little adventure about a fox is still its own thing. Shouldice is especially satisfied with the way they have stuck to their guns with the game’s isometric design. Whilst the viewpoint is frequently used to provide clear and concise information to people, in strategy games, visual blueprints and design documents, Shouldice and Billingsley have used it to draw the players eye “in such a way that they move through the world and can explore properly but allowing them every now and again, to slip behind a corner that looks like they shouldn’t be able to slip behind it.”
This is vital to Tunic’s identity too – its crisp visual language renders things simultaneously baffling and evocative. Early in my playthrough I didn’t realise that bushes were bushes, until I chopped some up with a sword. Billinsgfley related the challenge he found in how to take the clean isometric look and apply it to natural environments. In a game world that needs to convey the sort of overgrown ruinous decay of a Soulslike, he found himself wondering “how often do we want to put those details in? that’s a constant balance we have to maintain”.
I think that this is scratching at what’s key to the innate interest at Tunic’s heart. It maintains a constant balance with old and new, known and unknown, the clear and the obscure. The games it references will prime many players for its secrets, but in other ways it sidesteps those direct influences by aiming beyond them, and into something slightly more tenuous, a feeling conjured by certain design ideas, by the game’s homage to paper manuals and beyond.
The main mystery that’s left to solve (beyond the game’s release date – Finji let me know that whilst the game is circling a final development period, – Tunic won’t be released for some time) is the game’s mysterious language. These hieroglyphics and runes turn up everywhere, from within the game’s manual, to its in-game signs, with only pictograms of items and control buttons helping make any sense of it. When I ask Shouldice, he’s baffled: “I don’t think anybody needs to worry about the secret language. I don’t think that it’s worth anybody’s time really. It’s probably nothing.”Billingsley also adds that he isn’t “actually sure what’s being referenced. I’ve not seen anything like that”
Maybe they haven’t seen that page in the manual yet, or perhaps it really is absolutely nothing players should be concerned with. Either way, Tunic is shaping up to be an unforgettable experience: tough, evocative, standing on the shoulders of giants, but confidently forging its own way. I can’t wait to see where this little fox ends up, after all, it’s a wide, terrifying world out there.
Tunic is planned to launch in 2021 for the Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and macOS.
During Summer Games Done Quick on July 5, runner “Toehlot” beat the record for Styx: Shards Of Darkness by exploiting the level design in an interesting way. A video of the whole run is available below:
As explained in the clip starting around 16:35, Tohelot breaks out of bounds of the level, using a trick to get his character into a part of the level they usually cannot, letting them skip a section.
Unlike other speedruns, Tohelot is aiming for a developer tool built into the game. Instead of existing as just abstract code, the flowcharts that represent the levels objectives and its triggers are physically present.
Tohelot is able to walk over this flowchart, activating triggers, which makes the game think he has completed certain objectives, which allows him to finish the level in record speed.
The commentators and Tohelot explain that these flowcharts exist in every level in Styx: Shadows Of Darkness, but reaching them in some levels is slower than using regular speedrunning techniques.
As such, Tohelot uses a mix of both techniques to get through his speed run, displaying an impressive level of knowledge of the game.
Summer Games Done Quick is a yearly sister event to Awesome Games Done Quick. The event runs every year, raising money for charity.
This year, Summer Games Done Quick 2021 is raising money for Doctors Without Borders, and due to the ongoing COVID pandemic, is taking place entirely online.
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