Call of Duty: Ghosts tires of half-baked DLC, gets fully baked with cannabis-themed pack
Some would argue that paid-for personalisation packs are endemic in the games industry—chronic, even.
Some would argue that paid-for personalisation packs are endemic in the games industry—chronic, even. But is there anything wrong with showing off some style while high at the top of a leaderboard. Infinity Ward are no dopes, they know how to hit their target markets. Presented with a money making opportunity, they're not going to make a hash of it. And so, some Call of Duty developers embarked on a skunkworks mission to create the Blunt Force Character Pack—a marijuana-themed DLC release.
The DLC, priced $1.99, is one of three new character packs now available for the Xbox version of the game. The other two character packs are themed as "Inferno" and "Bling". Infinity Ward definitely know their audience.
Each character pack contains a uniform and two helmets. In addition, the recent DLC drop also makes available six new 'Personalisation' packs and two new weapons. You can see the full round-up here. Expect all items to arrive on PC after the standard Xbox-exclusivity period expires—likely next month.
Of course, maybe you're thinking, "but why can't I re-skin my gun in a garish cannabis pattern?" Don't worry, you already can!
Thanks, PCGamesN.
Top 10 most gimmicky peripherals
Top 10 most gimmicky peripherals Guitar Hero made the peripheral valid, but it’s in bad company: this area in gaming is a pile of secrets, with publishers pushing products in profiteering efforts. Here are our favourite examples of terrible peripherals… Sega Activator The Sega Activator – aside from being ridiculously badly named – was a device that plugged into the MegaDrive and formed a ring you
Call of Duty: Ghosts – Invasion DLC trailer shows new maps, contains actual ghosts
You know, I've been genuinely inspired by the new Call of Duty: Ghosts DLC announcement.
You know, I've been genuinely inspired by the new Call of Duty: Ghosts DLC announcement. Invasion contains—among other things—a "refreshed" version of the Modern Warfare 2 map Favela. In that spirit, I'm going to similarly "refresh" an old Call of Duty news post...
Why do Call of Duty characters hate each other so much? Yes, they're at war—that I can understand—but the lengths they'll go to annihilate their enemy is almost sadistic. In [Mutiny], one of the four maps included in the [Invasion] DLC, somebody has gone through the time, danger and expense of [harnessing the power of actual ghosts]. It's as if Infinity Ward have created an fiction in which every person is a [Pirates of the Caribbean extra].
Other deathtraps include the standard military issue [Mariachi], and some weird device called ["bombs"]. Whatever will they think of next?
In addition to the four maps, players will also get the [third] episode of "the Extinction saga" co-op campaign, and [no new gun].
All this will be available sometime after [June] 3rd, which is the date the Xbox lot start their exclusive access period. It's annoying, sure, but if they don't get first dibs, they'll spend the rest of the year saying mean things about your mum.
Resident Evil Revelations 2 Episodes 1-4 review
Resident Evil Revelations 2 Episodes 1-4 review Capcom has genuinely been listening to fans of the Resident Evil series for years now, but it hasn’t been until Resident Evil Revelations 2 that this has become startlingly apparent. The obvious additions like an ability to actually move – strafing, crouching and so on – have been around a few years now, the inclusion of cult favourite Barry Burton as
RadarPlays - Bushido Blade
As RadarPlays Retro continues its new schedule (which is every other Wednesday), we dip our toe into the PlayStation era for this week's game. Released by Squaresoft in the afterglow of Final Fantasy VII's blockbuster release, Bushido Blade. The deadly fencing game didn't have a deep roster, but it made up for it with the surprisingly deep gameplay we enjoy in this video. GamesRadar editors Henry Gilbert
Call of Duty: Ghosts DLC trailer tours the maps of Devastation
Why do Call of Duty characters hate each other so much?
Why do Call of Duty characters hate each other so much? Yes, they're at war - that I can understand - but the lengths they'll go to annihilate their enemy is almost sadistic. In Ruins, one of the four maps included in the Devastation DLC, somebody has gone through the time, danger and expense of rigging a volcano to explode on command. It's as if Infinity Ward have created an fiction in which every person is a Bond villain.
Other deathtraps include the standard military issue aliens, and some weird device called "helicopters". Whatever will they think of next?
In addition to the four maps, players will also get the second episode of "the Extinction saga" co-op campaign, and a new gun. It's called the Ripper, and can switch between SMG and an Assault Rifle modes.
All this will be available sometime after April 3rd, which is the date the Xbox lot start their exclusive access period. It's annoying, sure, but if they don't get first dibs, they'll spend the rest of the year saying mean things about your mum.
Who is the Arkham Knight? games lifts the cowl in issue 151
Who is the Arkham Knight? games lifts the cowl in issue 151 After the dust settled from E3 and our celebratory 150th issue (!), we’ve been hard at work breaking down all the big announcements and interviewing all the key players that’ll shape the games industry in the coming year and beyond. We talked to Rocksteady about Batman’s greatest foe yet (himself!?) in Batman: Arkham Knight and quizzed the
Why is Pikachu talking and wearing a Sherlock hat? WHAT IS HAPPENING?
I really don't know what to make of this trailer for an upcoming mystery game starring Pikachu in a Sherlock Holmes hat. "Oh, Pokemon mystery game," I thought. "I'm sure that'll be cute!" And then Pikachu opens his mouth and starts talking , with a voice that sounds like an adult man, and then he starts poking at unconscious bodies lying in the street and stealing kisses in a dark alleyway. Stop looking
Call of Duty switches to 3-year development cycle, next game from Sledgehammer
Activision's quarterly earnings call was yesterday and—to no one's surprise—the company made a lot of money.
Activision's quarterly earnings call was yesterday and—to no one's surprise—the company made a lot of money. $1.5 billion in net revenues to be exact. A lot of that money was made with the Call of Duty games, which, according the Activision's calculations and the NPD, was the number one franchise in retail in North America in 2013. As you may have noticed, there's a new Call of Duty game every year, which may be part of the reason why we've grown weary of it. Activision announced that while it will keep to that relentless schedule, it will give the games' developers three years to work on each title as opposed to two.
Previously, development on Call of Duty alternated between the Infinity Ward and Treyarch studios, giving each a two-year development cycle. If you paid attention to the credits on Call of Duty: Ghosts, you would have noticed that it was led by Infinity Ward, but with help from Raven Software, Neversoft, Certain Affinity, and even Treyarch for the Wii U version. Going forward, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games will each get three years to work on Call of Duty installments. It's unclear whether that will free up developers like Neversoft and Raven to work on other projects, or if they will continue to support Call of Duty development.
Sledgehammer, which previously contributed to the development of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, is developing the next Call of Duty, which will come out this year, and that CEO Bobby Kotick has already described as "the best Call of Duty game ever created."
Road Not Taken review
Road Not Taken review 7 You can’t fault Road Not Taken for its inventiveness. Though the game is primarily a match-three puzzle game – the likes of which developer Spry Fox itself had already mastered with Triple Town – it provides enough of a twist to the core mechanics that there’s a genuine sense of revelation about it. Much like Triple Town, in fact, matching certain items together creates a new
Lobodestroyo’ Is Dripping With N64 Generation Nostalgia
‘Lobodestroyo’ Is Dripping With N64 Generation Nostalgia
Inspired heavily by some of the greatest platforming games from the Nintendo 64 generation, Left Handed Game Studio are hoping to really create something nostalgic with Lobodestroyo by bringing back some of that mid-90s charm.
Lobodestroyo is an action platformer with a strong emphasis on item collection and exploration, much like the good old days of Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 . Players take control of Mutt a poor hapless hero who players must guide across nine unique interconnected worlds.
Mutt is forced to realize his full potential after he wakes up to find Mt. Justice in ruins, his wolf pack brothers missing, and the prized Lobodestroyo’s belt strewn across his destroyed temple. On top of this, ten members from maximum security lockup have escaped.
Although Mutt has never aspired to much he takes it upon himself to don the belt and go out in a hunt for the escape convicts, and his wolf pack.
Left Handed Game Studio seem to have great ambitions with this title and have realized without public backing, Lobodestroyo may never be finished, which is why they have turned to Kickstarter.
Asking for $35,000 to fund a complete version of the game, Left Handed Game Studio plans releases on the PC, Mac, Linux, and OUYA. If they make the goal they also have hopes to bring the game to the Wii U, PlayStation 4, and even Xbox One.
With a little over half a month remaining in the campaign, it seems Lobodestroyo needs some love from the community in order to hit its target.
Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor review
Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor review The year is 2082, and a silicon-eating microbe has chewed its way through all microprocessors an event referred to as the ‘datacide’, leaving only clunky, chugging, unpredictable technology in its wake. As such, in this Steel Battalion the mechs aren’t iPods but more like VHS machines. They’re plodding M4 Shermans on legs; cramped, sweaty and claustrophobic, pocked
That terrible Charmander tattoo is actually pretty good
You might have seen the above tattoo already today. Reported on reddit by user yllowsnow2 , this was allegedly meant to be Charmander. Not only that but the artist drew it on himself while drunk and taking Xanax. When he apparently asked the next morning why no one had stopped him, it turns out that friends had tried multiple times. While such behaviour definitely shouldn't be encouraged, it's reassuring
Average Giants Episode 25 Pt 2 – Disco Dodgeball Returns… Again!
IGM Presents… The Average Giants!
IGM Presents… The Average Giants! A weekly webseries where we play indie games while chatting with their developers. Come watch (and “follow”) the show live on our hitbox channelevery Monday night at 9:00pm EDT.
Or you can just sit back and watch all our live streams right here on our new IGM Livepage.
Original Air Date: September 2, 2014
Tim Sweeney thinks Microsoft will make Steam "progressively worse" with Windows 10 patches
It's well established that Tim Sweeney, co-founder of Epic Games and co-creator of the Unreal Engine, is not a fan of where Microsoft is headed with Windows 10.
of where Microsoft is headed with Windows 10. He's criticised the Universal Windows Platform twice this year, claiming that it's an attempt by Microsoft to monopolise what has traditionally been a happily open platform.
Now, in an interview with Edge Magazine, Sweeney has become even more direct in his criticisms, claiming that future updates to Windows 10 could serve to erode the usefulness of third-party applications and storefronts like Steam.
"There are two programming interfaces for Windows and every app has to choose one of them," he said. "Every Steam app – every PC game for the past few decades – has used Win32. It’s been both responsible for the vibrant software market we have now, but also for malware. Any program can be a virus. Universal Windows Platform is seen as an antidote to that. It’s sandboxed – much more locked down."
"The risk here is that, if Microsoft convinces everybody to use UWP, then they phase out Win32 apps. If they can succeed in doing that then it’s a small leap to forcing all apps and games to be distributed through the Windows Store. Once we reach that point, the PC has become a closed platform. It won’t be that one day they flip a switch that will break your Steam library – what they’re trying to do is a series of sneaky manoeuvres. They make it more and more inconvenient to use the old apps, and, simultaneously, they try to become the only source for the new ones."
While that could technically be true, how could Microsoft ever hope to bring down something as gargantuan as Steam, either intentionally or inadvertently? Sweeney believes they have a plan for that.
"Slowly, over the next five years, they will force-patch Windows 10 to make Steam progressively worse and more broken. They’ll never completely break it, but will continue to break it until, in five years, people are so fed up that Steam is buggy that the Windows Store seems like an ideal alternative. That’s exactly what they did to their previous competitors in other areas. Now they’re doing it to Steam. It’s only just starting to become visible. Microsoft might not be competent enough to succeed with their plan, but they’re certainly trying."
Sweeney has previously said that the PC has remained at the vanguard of graphics innovation because it's an open platform. Microsoft's supposed attempts to turn Windows into a closed platform risks neutering new breakthroughs such as VR before they've had a chance to flourish.
Revealed: The REAL 3DS price Nintendo doesn't want you to know
I got talking to a representative from one of the major supermarket brands in the UK, who told me that Nintendo is selling 3DS units to him at a base price of £173. Don't think this means shops are being mean to you by charging up to £230 for it - everyone in business needs to make money somehow. But the fact is, anyone charging £230 at launch is taking a nice big 33 per cent mark-up, so you should indeed be able to pick one up for less. Somewhere. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Justin Towell The longest-serving GR+ staffer, I was here when all this was just fields. I'm currently Reviews Editor but still find time to speedrun Sonic levels and make daft Photoshop articles. Topics Nintendo We recommend By Zergnet Load Comments
IGM Forum Finds: Fight of the Castle AR
Just released on the Android market, Fight of the Castle is a tower-defense strategy game for Android phones and tablets, but it has one big twist.
is a tower-defense strategy game for Android phones and tablets, but it has one big twist. It uses augmented reality (AR) to play the game. For those that are unaware, AR is adding 3-D objects into a game by making use of the device’s camera to pull the enemies off of the paper and into the game. For Fight of the Castle , you use the AR to defend your castle from the storming enemies that appear off the paper.
To play, the player simply prints out the AR image (it doesn’t matter whether it’s in black-and-white or color) and lays it flat on the table. The image is required in order to play the game. By viewing the image with any supported Android device, the image becomes interactive on the device and you must defeat the enemies to protect the castle.
Fight of the Castle is entirely free, excluding the small cost of printing out the AR image. The game saves automatically after each wave of enemies so players can easily close out of the game to utilize their phone or device without fear of entirely losing game progress. After forty balanced waves of enemies, an endless mode will begin. Throughout the game, players can upgrade their turrets and guns to defeat the spawning enemies in new ways. The game has four save slots so players can easily share their tablet and not lose their own game progress. By rotating the paper, the player can get a different angle to see where the enemies are attacking the castle.
Fight of the Castle is available for the Android market from Google Play. The augmented reality pageis available on DropBox and is required for the game to work. Levi Buck, the developer of the game, has a page on IndieDBto update players about the game and links are also available there to get the AR page.
BlizzCon 2016 virtual tickets are now on sale
BlizzCon 2016 is set to take place November 4-5 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.
is set to take place November 4-5 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. Tickets to attend in person are completely sold out, but “virtual tickets,” offering streaming access to the entire event, are now on sale.
This year's big Blizzard blowout will feature developer panels on World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch, plus exclusive interviews with members of the development teams, contests, BlizzCon-exclusive swag, and giveaways of in-game items. A pile of pro esports will also be on tap, including the StarCraft II World Championship Series Global Finals, the World of Warcraft Arena World Championship, the Hearthstone World Championship, and the Heroes of the Storm Fall Championship.
"It's incredible to think that we're getting ready for our tenth BlizzCon," Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime said. "We can't wait to celebrate this epic milestone—and Blizzard's 25-year anniversary—together with everyone joining us in person and watching from home with the Virtual Ticket. We'll have more live games than ever at this year's show, and we look forward to sharing our newest content, celebrating our players' creativity, and witnessing some incredible esports competition this November."
Some of the BlizzCon happenings, including the opening ceremonies and all the esports showdowns, will be broadcast free for everyone. But the virtual ticket grants access to everything, streamed in HD over two separate channels, including on-demand replays of events for three weeks after the show is over. BlizzCon 2016 virtual tickets are available for $40 each at blizzcon.com, and DirecTV customers in the US can also opt to take it in as a PPV event for the same price, which includes access to a virtual ticket.
Telltale announces The Walking Dead and Fables games
Comic games that got it right We call out the five most authentic hero games out there Cape-free comic book games TalkRadar listeners explore comic games without the super powers The most accurate/inaccurate comic book games Undead Batmen, demonic divorces, the sad truth of Aquaman and more within Topics We recommend By Zergnet Load Comments
Pollen – First Person Virtual Reality Exploration Game
Mindfield Games, a virtual reality games studio, recently announced its new game Pollen would be unveiled to the public at PAX East in Boston.
would be unveiled to the public at PAX East in Boston. The game is a first person virtual reality space exploration game with a developed science fiction mystery tale developed by two authors, and inspired by works from directors Andrei Tarkovski and Stanley Kubrick.
Pollen is set on the sixth largest moon of Saturn, Titan, known as the only moon in our solar system with an atmosphere and vast liquid seas along the surface of the world. Players begin the fully explorable world within a desolate space station only known as Research Station M. The fate of the crew is a complete mystery that the player can discover bit by bit as the explore more of the station and the alien surface of Titan. Players progress through the game in a fully immersive first person perspective, being developed to be fully optimized for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Players will also learn more about Titan, including secrets that the crew on the station might have found out before they disappeared.
Pollen is slated for release in late 2015 for PC, with eventual support Linux and Mac versions afterwards. Gamers will have the opportunity to learn more information at PAX East in Boston, or by following Mindfield Games on Twitteror Facebook.
Watch Dogs 2 video profiles new protagonist Marcus Holloway
As we learnt at E3 last month, Watch Dogs 2 has a new protagonist in Marcus Holloway.
has a new protagonist in Marcus Holloway. Originally from Oakland, Marcus moves to San Francisco to rub shoulders with other hackers, and finally falls in with DedSec. A self-taught programmer, Marcus is described as "passionate" and "a fighter" by the Ubisoft spokespeople in the video, and these are important qualities when you have to shoot lots of people and steal cars and hack into corporate networks.
Watch Dogs 2 releases on November 15. Sam Roberts had some hands-on time with the sequel last month, writingthat "if [Ubisoft] get the tone right in Watch Dogs 2 and it really feels like a true sandbox game, this could be a sequel that gets closer to realising the first entry’s potential."
Call of Duty: Ghosts trailer shows Onslaught's maps, weapons and unlikely cameo
After yesterday's Instagram teaser, today Infinity Ward have released a more fleshed out promo for Call of Duty: Ghosts' first DLC campaign.
After yesterday's Instagram teaser, today Infinity Ward have released a more fleshed out promo for Call of Duty: Ghosts' first DLC campaign. Onslaught follows the traditional COD DLC pattern: containing four maps and a few extra bits. This time, the extra bits include a gun that's actually two guns, and a new episode of Extinction.
The most notable of the new maps is Fog. To go along with its horror-themed setting, players who complete a Field Order are transformed into Michael Myers, tearing up the map with his trademark axe and mask. It's a pretty weird bonus, but not as strange as if you'd been transformed into Mike Myers and forced to act out scenes from The Love Guru. On second thoughts, that would probably be more horrifying.
CoD Ghosts: Onslaught is out on Xboxes at the end of the month. The PC release date will likely be announced soon after.
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Get Lost In Space With ‘Dark Expanse’ As It Continues To Expand
Anyone looking for a new massively multiplayer online real time strategy game set in a distinctly Sci-Fi universe and have managed to miss Dark Expanse so far, should consider reading on to find out what you are missing.
Dark Expanse is a free to play galaxy conquest game that allows you to really become king of the stars, your way. In Dark Expanse you will see local commanders develop their resources, improve their planets, colonize new worlds, and all manner of other features you would expect to see in a game like Dark Expanse .
Dark Expanse is set in a huge online world with over 200,000 planets along side 5 playable races making the game highly expansive. If you thought Dark Expanse was good before, be prepared for the latest update from Deorc Enterprise.
Dark Expanse has been running for the past four years and has recently seen a substantial update. Adding in a whole heap of quality content just in time for the new year their latest expansion called Dark Expanse . In this latest instalment you are able to enjoy the new Andromeda 3 galaxy instance, which has been created for a much more relaxed style of play.
The new galaxy will open up new gameplay avenues not formally seen before in Dark Expanse and should really begin to broaden the gameplay. Alongside the new galaxy there is also a new game enhancement called “Rescue The Natives”.
Rescue The Natives allows even more in depth and engaging gameplay as it forces you into numerous moral dilemmas. This feature adds a dynamic event that will allow players the option to either rescue, ignore, or conquer the natives of previously empty planets.
Dark Expanse is free to play and if you are interested in strategy games on a grand scale this may very well be for you. There really has been no better time to get into Dark Expanse and with Deorc Enterprise currently holding the Refer A Friend contest you should also consider bringing a friend.
The contest runs until the end of the month and gives the opportunity to win a copy of Steven L. Kent’s latest book “The Clone Sedition”.
Be sure to check out the official websitefor all the latest information on Dark Expanse and get conquering.
Call of Duty: Ghosts' Onslaught DLC teased
Infinity Ward have announced their first DLC pack for Call of Duty: Ghosts.
Infinity Ward have announced their first DLC pack for Call of Duty: Ghosts. In an ideal world, this would update the campaign with even more animal followers. Personally, I'd love to see the addition of a stealth-friendly attack owl, a Worms-inspired exploding Sheep, and a bagful of hedgehogs to be thrown spines-first into the exposed faces of enemy soldiers. Alas, with the Onslaught DLC the Activision studio are instead sticking to the formula that guarantees them a truckload of money: four new multiplayer maps and some extra bits.
The teaser comes soon after the more traditional CoD DLC announcement route: a retail outlet poster. Spotted by Twitterer Ser6_Vick,reveals that the added multiplayer battlespaces will be called Fog, Bayview, Containment and Ignition. As for the extras, it promises a new Maverick AR/Sniper Rifle, and another episode of the Extinction game mode, titled Nightfall.
It's that latter addition that the official Infinity Ward teaser focused on. And naturally, because you've gotta fill that Social Media Engagement quota, the announcement was made via Instagram.
A photo posted by on
Hidden in the teaser's accompanying onslaught of hashtagswas the reveal, "something menacing is coming Jan. 28". Of course, as this is Call of Duty, it's not quite that simple. In an agreement that feels like it pre-dates the Treaty of Versailles, the DLC will appear as a timed exclusive on the Xbox Arbitrary Number. A PC release will follow later: sometime between a few weeks and the heat-death of the Universe.
Given that, as with all Call of Duty posts, the comments will likely gravitate towards an argument over whether the series is responsible for the death of all that is good and right about gaming, let's do something fun instead. What animal companion would you like to see added to the campaign? As well as the above examples, I'd also quite like a gruff but lovable honey badger, possibly voiced by Danny Dyer.
Thanks, CVG.
The ups and downs of Kickstarter success
The ups and downs of Kickstarter success Getting a crowdfunded payday isn’t as easy as you might imagine. We chat with the developers and the head of games for Kickstarter to discover the rewards and pitfalls beyond the money “Nearly anyone with a computer can walk in out of the cold and start a project and fund it,” Kickstarter’s head of games, Luke Crane, reveals to us. That’s both the great appeal
Indie Intermission – ‘The Villain’s Rules!’
Anyone who has ever watched a horror film by now must be well aware of the rules that are required for being a villain, or more specifically a serial killer.
Anyone who has ever watched a horror film by now must be well aware of the rules that are required for being a villain, or more specifically a serial killer. Scream was one of the first films to outline the rules in plain English and last year’s Cabin In The Woods further perpetuated the rules of slasher films.
The Villain’s Rules! is essentially a game version of the aforementioned films. Created for Ludum Dare 25 by the highly talented duo of Alexandre Lautie and Zimra The Villain’s Rules! has you play as a maniacal overlord who must adhere to the rules of a villain whilst eliminating the archetypes who were unfortunate enough to wander into your evil lair.
The game does prove to be rather difficult to get to grips with, however after playing around with the traps and items on a few different tries you begin to understand how to play the game. The gameplay is rather fantastic and offers a lot of fun as you try to separate these kids and pick them off one by one.
Although with only one level in the current build I do see a lot of scope for The Villain’s Rules! with the addition of many other levels and variants.
Average play time – 20 minutes
The Villain’s Rules! is a great take on the horror genre and follows the now quite common self-aware nature of itself. The concept is quite simple but the gameplay can be quite challenging and is a great deal of fun from start to finish. My only hope is they developers decide to great a more complete version of the game later down the line.
The Villain’s Rules! can be played via the official Ludum Dare site here. If you like the game be sure to vote for it.
If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!
How Evolve makes healing fun again
TRIGGERNOMETRY
Evolve is ostensibly hide-and-seek taken to its unnatural extreme .
We write about FPSes each week in Triggernometry, a mixture of tips, design criticism, and a celebration of virtual marksmanship.
. Within that framework, though, Turtle Rock found room for some of the most creative and easy-to-learn, hard-to-master healing mechanics since Team Fortress 2. That’s no coincidence, considering the tiny overlaps in how Evolve’s three medics and The Medicoperate.
Evolve’s healing role can be played as an aggressive scout, sneaky necromancer, or first-aid grenadier. Let’s briefly break down how the three (currently released) healing Hunters operate:
Val
Uses the Med Gun, a healing tether tool with a long (but limited) range that’s the cousin of TF2’s Medi Gun. The starter, “vanilla” medic.
Lazarus
A ninja defibrillator. Lazarus can’t actively heal (other than Healing Burst, the long-cooldown AOE heal that all medics have), but revives dead allies at close range.
Caira
Hurls healing grenades that heal allies or NPCs in their radius for smaller amounts of HP. She can actively heal herself with her primary weapon, unlike Val and Lazarus.
Each of these characters has interesting, weapon-specific skills to master. On paper, Val is the shallowest, simplest medic to play—you point at a beam at whoever’s hurt and hold down Mouse 1. But the Med Gun doubles as a way to block and bait the monster. In most situations, the Med Gun’s green beam acts as a neon sign that says “You probably shouldn’t attack this guy.” So one of Val’s specific skills becomes keeping every teammate in your line of sight so that you can juggle between targets—a tall task in Evolve’s ragged, varied-elevation maps. Swapping between teammates with the Med Gun, even if they’re at full health, forces the monster to recalculate who the best target is, especially if Hank’s (support) shield generator is in play.
Lazarus takes a bizarre combination of patience, speed, and stealth to play well. It doesn’t suit me at all, but it’s certainly novel and ironic: he’s a medic that has to let players die. In practice, this means that he has to keep an eye on everyone and be ready to act, but not so much that he’s idling on the bench while the rest of the team fights. It’s like trying to keep your eye on the road while peeking at the rear-view mirror.
Lazarus is also the only medic who can cloak, which makes him resemble TF2’s Spy—the rhythm of waiting, watching, and maneuvering into position is similar, except that your backstabbing target is a dead teammate. It’s a clever twist on healing that adds a lot of uncertainty and fragility to the equation, but the payoff is great when you revive someone right under the monster’s nose.
What’s common to the three current healers is that they all carry weapons that deal damage passively. Val and Lazarus’ sniper rifles deal a tiny amount of active damage on hit, but their primary function is to paint damage-multiplying bullseyes on the monster for other Hunters to tag. Likewise, Caira’s healing grenade launcher also spits napalm, a damage-over-time effect. Evolve’s background reloading (all guns reload automatically when unequipped) means that medics can spend even less time with rifles in their hands and still feel like they’re contributing to the fight.
Bottom line: Turtle Rock probably could’ve gotten away with making the Med Gun the lone healing mechanic in Evolve, but the game benefits a lot from these asymmetrical healing mechanics.
Dave Grossman talks Day Of The Tentacle
Dave Grossman talks Day Of The Tentacle To celebrate the remastered release of arguably LucasArts’ most iconic adventure game, games™ speaks to co-lead designer Dave Grossman about its creation This was yours and Tim Schafer’s first lead role. Do you feel it gave you a drive to create something unique and special? Yes, but maybe not for the reasons you would think. I mean certainly it was exciting
Squad is a team FPS from the makers of Battlefield 2 mod Project Reality
Here's Squad, a standalone commercial game from the makers of Battlefield 2 mod Project Reality.
Here's Squad, a standalone commercial game from the makers of Battlefield 2 mod Project Reality. In a stark departure from that project, this game is "an online, team-based military themed first-person-shooter where high levels of teamwork and communication are crucial to success". Wait, did I say 'stark departure'? What I meant was 'basically the same deal, only in Unreal Engine 4'.
In Squad, players will form squads of up to nine people—those squads coming together to form teams of up to 50. As the developers put it, "systems honed over years of experience with the Project Reality series draw the focus away from the lone-wolf player and much more on the cooperation with other members".
As with the Battlefield game, Squad will feature large-scale environments, but with a heavier focus on realistic simulation of things like ballistics and damage. There's also a base-building component that puts a heavier focus on coordinated teamwork and leadership. For more information, head over to Squad's Greenlight page.
Dungeons & Dragons Online leaps into The Forgotten Realms with its first expansion
The Forgotten Realms is as classic a D&D setting as they get: a lost realm related to our own where magic runs rampant, deities are active, and--well, just imagine most any classic RPG game you've played and you'll see hints of The Forgotten Realms' influence.
The Forgotten Realms is as classic a D&D setting as they get: a lost realm related to our own where magic runs rampant, deities are active, and--well, just imagine most any classic RPG game you've played and you'll see hints of The Forgotten Realms' influence. And Update 13 is finally bringing it to Dungeons & Dragons Online, which is still offering it's brand of flexible free-to-play options to the masses. I recently sat down with the game's Executive Producer Fernando Paiz to talk about what the upcoming content will look like in DDO's first-ever expansion: Menace of the Underdark.
First up: how will this be connected to existing DDO content, since they exist in different realms entirely? Through the preceding update, and events held at the launch of the expansion, the worlds of Eborron and Forgotten Realms will be connected to one another, allowing players to travel between the two. Level 20 players will be able to travel to Forgotten Realms on their way to the new level cap of 25. There, they'll find the mysterious Drow (dark elves) as well as their Spider Queen Lolth. Another update to the leveling process that Paiz teased is that Turbine's revamping the enhancement system, which currently allows you to tweak your character's stats in small ways, with the goal of updating the advancement system for players as they reach the Epic levels.
While quite coy about what Forgotten Realms will specifically look like for players, Paiz was able to talking about the new class being added: the Druid. Well, it's not completely new to players familiar with D&D, as the Druid is the final "core" class available in the tabletop universe to join DDO. And it sounds terrific: a versatile caster, with a spell for any occassion, the Druid will also have animal companions - first introduced to DDO awhile back with the Artificer class- and will be able to shapeshift into different animal forms to take out the enemy up close and personal.
Once I wiped the drool of my chin, I got back on track and continued to pester Paiz about how this connection between the two realms would be made. It paid off and Paiz spilled (at least part of) the beans. Update 13, to be released at "the end of Februaryish", will set up the story for this bonding of universes, and will also give veteran players a chance to earn a cosmetic (non-combat) pet. While there will only be a few of these pets at first, Paiz added that the number available would grow over time. Sounds like we could be in for a very cool high-level quest chain that has us help connect these two worlds.
As my interview time winded down, I asked Paiz what question he wished he was allowed to answer most, but can't. He thought for a second and told me, "I wish I could tell you about Big Scary Monsters."
So there you have it. We're headed into the Forgotten Realms--which I've been anxious for DDO to move into for years--and there are going to be some "Big Scary Monsters (tm )" waiting for us there. Bring 'em on!
Why now is the best time to start watching pro-level League Of Legends
Why now is the best time to start watching pro-level League Of Legends Don’t know your LCS from your LMS? Don’t worry, games™ has got you covered as the arenas heat up for the world’s biggest pro-level competition Competitive League Of Legends is one of the most electrifying spectator sports available to anybody in the world with an active broadband connection. Honestly, it really doesn’t matter whether
End of days: GameSpy's forgotten games and the gamers keeping them alive
GameSpy began in 1996 as a fan-hosted server for the original Quake.
GameSpy began in 1996 as a fan-hosted server for the original Quake. By the early 2000s, GameSpy was the online multiplayer platform, adding dozens of games every year. More than 800 games have used GameSpy to connect players and manage servers. GameSpy's ubiquity spawned dozens of offshoots such as Planet Half-Life and FilePlanet. Even in the age of Steam, the GameSpy catalog remains an extensive library of the great multiplayer games of the past 15 years. That all ends tomorrow when GameSpy shuts down.
More recent games, much-loved favorites, and games with even a modicum of popularity are being ported over to Steam-based servers to continue their lives. This is not a story about those kinds of games. This story is about the games that have become living museums to the Way Gaming Was—from before Call of Duty became an annual franchise, before the rise and fall of Rock Band, and before anyone paid a single microtransaction for horse armor. Games from this era relied on GameSpy for their multiplayer servers, and many of them will die when those servers go offline on May 31.
I wanted to talk to the people who still play games that, for the rest of us, are nothing but fond memories. With my anti-virus on high alert, I dove into the seedier corners of the Internet to dredge up old install files, seek out the last guardians of a dying age of PC gaming, and ask them: Why this game? Why now? Why still ?
Do they even know that the end is coming?
Nostalgia
Scott Kevill has been working to set up multiplayer servers since 1997, which actually makes him a contemporary of GameSpy. While GameSpy peaked and crashed, it's only recently that Kevill's company, Australia-based GameRanger, has kicked into high gear. GameRanger now has over five million members and serves connections to over 120,000 players a day. The big hits pay his bills, but it's the older gems that drive Kevill.
In the past few months, GameRanger has been working overtime to add support for GameSpy games that would otherwise be forgotten to the annals of pixelated YouTube Let's Plays or a forlorn Wikipedia stub. Halo: Combat Evolvedand Star Wars Battlefront 2have been two recent high-profile additions. The service now hosts almost 700 games, 325 of which are set to have their GameSpy-based multiplayer modes go offline tomorrow. I ask him why people still care about old games.
“Nostalgia is a big one,” he says. “The games had an impact on them at a certain point in their lives.” Adding support for these games is “a lot of work for little reward,” and players don't always make it easy. “Nostalgia has a double-edged sword in that people are upset that the online experience is not as big as it was at the game's peak. As if bringing back those original servers would magically bring back all the old players and the old experience, and it just doesn't work that way.”
I recently took a tour through the GameRanger servers for Halo: Combat Evolved. On an average weeknight, I saw three full servers and a half-dozen others with progressively smaller populations. All told, about 100 people were still playing the great-grandaddy of the Halo franchise, which came out on PC in September 2003. When half a million people log into Dota 2 every night, it puts two games of Capture the Flag and four pairs of friends into stark perspective.
People still play, though, because of nostalgia. Every player I talked to referenced nostalgia as their first reason for logging in. Two players in Rune, a hack-and-slash multiplayer melee game from 2001, stopped chopping heads off long enough to tell me explicitly: they still play because they still have fun with friends they met in-game. “Friends and a sweet community,” a player with the tag of Gamora told me over the in-game chat. “If they left, I wouldn't be staying in this game for one more minute.”
Gamora's friend Pan told me that the group does play other games, but they still like playing Rune because of the fond memories. They also play Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, but they have more fun with Rune's antiquated combat systems. While I spoke with Pan and Gamora, a total of six people were logged into Rune's servers.
Star Wars: Battlefront 2 had a more active community over the Memorial Day weekend—the last full weekend the game would be live on GameSpy. I found Lucas Verdugo and his friend fighting a battle on Hoth with around 20 other players. I joined a Skype call, which Lucas uses to chat with friends while they play, to ask him about it.
“It was a nostalgia purchase,” Verdugo told me. He'd originally played it on his long-lost PlayStation 2, and had only recently bought a copy for PC. “I love Battlefront so much because I'm able to create my own storyline if I want to [in the galactic civil war].” Battlefront 2 was the first FPS game he ever purchased. “Star Wars is my favorite franchise of all time. When I first started playing this game, I was ecstatic.”
Verdugo had actually not heard that GameSpy was shutting down until I asked him how he felt about it, something I felt immediately terrible about. There was a silence as he did a web search for articles about the shutdown. His recent purchase and rekindled enthusiasm for a game from his youth were about to get cut short, and I'd accidentally dropped the news. While Battlefront will live on thanks to GameRanger, the still-active community will most likely be fragmented and much smaller.
New games don't measure up
Players still think of these aging games like they did when they were new, with the fondness they felt for them when they were young and in love. I'll be blunt: a lot of these games have not aged well. To someone who hasn't played a Battlefront game since Episode 3: Return of the Sith was in theatres, the graphics are messy and the gameplay is floaty. To the fans, they're the hallmarks of a golden age.
“It's the first multiplayer game I ever played, so nostalgia is part of it,” Dylan Mason says about Battlefront 2. I met him and his friend while I shot at Ewoks—rendered in 2005 graphics as waddling gray turds with spears—on Endor's forest moon. Mason told me on a Skype call that he is disappointed that the servers are shutting down before the new game—rumored to be shown at this year's E3—has a chance to come online. He jokes that when the servers go offline, he'll probably cry a bit and then play against bots for the next week. But he's also somewhat antagonistic about more modern games. “None of them have the same feeling as Battlefront,” he says. Battlefront is his main game for multiplayer.
His friend, Bill Bish, chimes in: “I played it as a little kid growing up, and it's one of the best Star Wars games ever.” He hopes that EA and DICE will make the next Battlefront game incredible, but he's skeptical. “I really hope they can top it,” he says, “but you know...”
I do know. I know exactly what he means because a fan of DICE's other multiplayer shooter franchise, perennial Call of Duty competitor Battlefield, told me almost the exact same thing a week earlier. The player, whose online tag is RIICKY, is part of a group of modders working to save Battlefield 2 from obsolescence. He still plays the second entry in the Battlefield series all the time with a large community of friends. He expressed the same nostalgia I saw in all of my interviews: “For me, I was kinda raised with the game.” RIICKY also longs for a time before Battlefield became “dumbed down for the masses” to appeal to a wider audience. “Business is business and I understand, but it's sad to see the core values get pushed aside... I still can't find even recent Battlefield games to be a replacement to Battlefield 2.”
I ask Kevill about this angle, and he agrees that he's heard it a lot from GameRanger members. “Sometimes it's the gameplay hasn't been matched by newer offerings—even if the graphics are not that new and shiny,” he says.
Art history
The modern mega games industry is the biggest it's ever been. The games of the GameSpy heyday generation were created by smaller teams than the modern Call of Duty blockbusters, but they still represent the work of hundreds of artists, programmers, writers, and animators. If even the oldest, least-loved B-movies can find a home on Netflix, doesn't the artistic output of these developers deserve to be saved?
I asked RIICKY if he thinks he's saving a piece of gaming history. “I definitely do. Even if it wasn't really that much of a popular game compared to other titles that were active at the time. It definitely shaped the way the new Battlefield games were made and I'm sure how the Call of Duty series and many others responded to them.”
Half a world away in Australia, Kevill thinks so too. “For me, that's actually a big part of it, he says. “It's one thing to preserve the games themselves years later, but multiplayer was part of these games as well. As the trend shifted to have the online experience intertwined with the rest of the game, more and more the games have become unusable without those online services. They're a part of history that need to be preserved.”
Kevill may have a soft spot for unloved technology. He collects old computer hardware, including a collection of TRS-80 computers that I would love to visit. He doesn't think of himself as a collector by trade, though: it's just that the more popular stuff already has someone looking out for it.
“[With these old games] it kind of felt like, if I didn't, no one else was going to. And that would be a great pity to have history vanish.”
World Of Tanks celebrates Tankfest 2016 in style
World Of Tanks celebrates Tankfest 2016 in style Tankfest has been going for a number of years now, held by the world-renowned and Tank Museum and in recent years given incredible support from Wargaming and its World Of Tanks brand. The additional exposure and publicity has seen attendances rise from 6,000 a few years ago to 20,000 this past weekend as Tank fans flocked to Bovington to see real-world tanks from various eras take on the show’s arena course, and to try out Wargaming’s latest offerings. You can check out what it all looked like thanks to Wargaming’s latest video of the event, and tickets for next year’s show are already available now from The Tank Museum website .
Creative Assembly gives away new Total War: Rome II DLC for a week
The new pack includes three playable factions with a nomadic feel: the Roxolani, the Massagetae, and the Royal Scythians.
Even before Total War: Rome IIlaunched, its developer promised downloadable content in both paid and free forms. With the Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack, Creative Assembly will hit both those promises.
The new pack includes three playable factions with a nomadic feel: the Roxolani, the Massagetae, and the Royal Scythians. The DLC also includes new buildings, building chains, and technology trees, as well as new units, both unique and available for mercenary use. Even better: if you download the DLC pack by Oct. 29, you can skip the normal £5.99/$7.99 fee and get the pack for free.
Total War: Rome II didn't exactly launch smoothly. Login issues and game-crashing bugs hampered what we thought was an otherwise superb strategy game. One can surmise that Creative Assembly is offering this DLC for free for a week as a way to thank fans for sticking through those launch issues.
Check out the trailer for the Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack below.
And above this one.
Total War: Rome 2 gets a blood and gore pack, to make up for the lack of blood and gore
We recommend By Zergnet
Star Trek Online to go free to play this year
Massively have spotted a statement on Seeking Alpha by the CEO of Perfect World, owner of Cryptic studios, that Star Trek Online will go free to play before the end of the year.
Champions Online, Cryptic's other MMO, went free to play in January, so it comes as no surprise that its sister game has followed suit. CEO Kelvin Lau said that he felt the free to play model had 'bigger potential' in both the US and Chinese markets.
Sadly the statement contained no information Star Trek will follow Champions in using Steam's new free to play systemor continue with its own payment model.
Would you be more likely to try Star Trek Online when it's free?
An SSD is now an essential component of a modern gaming PC. With your operating system and applications
stored on an SSD, Windows will boot faster than you can grab a drink from the fridge. Applications will load in seconds. Once you’ve tried an SSD, you’ll never want to go back to a hard disk. So what makes an SSD the best? Striking the right balance between speed, reliability, and price. These are the best SSDs for your dollar. The 850 Evo is the recommended SSD for most users, given the balance of price, performance, and capacity.
The 850 Evo is the recommended SSD for most users, given the balance of price, performance, and capacity. The 850 Pro is the fastest SATA SSD, but if you're interested in paying more for a faster drive, you should consider an NVMe drive . Meanwhile, TLC is increasingly common in the budget sector, but outside of the 850 Evo, performance can be a real concern, so we recommend sticking with the 850 Evo or finding an MLC drive. Our budget recommendation has been updated, after we did some testing of the Silicon Power S55; it's not the fastest SATA drive, but it is the least expensive, and that counts for something.
The best SSD
Hits 500 MB/s read speeds Outperforms more expensive SSDs Great price per gigabyte Speed can drop under heavy prolonged write loads Lower capacity models are slower
What does the term 'best' mean, when talking about a storage device? Best value for money, great real-world performance, or a brilliant feature set? The ideal SSD for a gaming PC strikes that perfect price/performance/reliability balance, andmanages this, and then some.
The technology behind the 850 Evo is similar in many ways to Samsung’s high-end 850 Pro. Samsung is the only SSD manufacturer that operates an entirely vertical business, owning the means of production for every aspect of its products. It designs the controller, programs the firmware, manufactures the NAND flash memory, and sells the finished product. Every other company is forced to rely on a third party for at least one of these aspects of its SSDs.
The advantage is closer collaboration between teams. When designing the controller, the engineers know exactly the type of NAND it will be used with. When writing the firmware, every last detail of the 850 Evo is known to the programmers.
The 850 Evo uses the same vertically arranged 3D NAND flash memory as in the 850 Pro. This arrangement allows for larger chip densities without having to go down the path of shrinking cell sizes, which begins to introduce problems that affect performance and reliability.
Samsung calls its proprietary 3D flash memory technology V-NAND, and has managed to stack 32 layers of flash cells on top of each other (and newer V-NAND is now capable of 48 layers). Each layer is connected to the next via unbelievably tiny wires, with a far greater number of connections between cells than you might expect from a 2D (planar) arrangement.
The 850 Evo is sold in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, with prices on Amazon ranging from about $70 (£50) for the 120GB model, to around $290 (£228) for the 1TB, or $603 (£498) for the massive 2TB drive.
It’s not quite the most affordable SSD, but it’s around 20 percent less than the top-end Samsung SSD 850 Pro for example, and cheaper than SanDisk’s high-end model, the Extreme Pro. It’s probably best classed as a midrange drive, although if you look at the results table, you’ll see it outpaces more expensive drives in many tests.
The 850 Evo offers excellent value for the money, and it's still a good performer. How has Samsung managed it, given that V-NAND is an ambitious undertaking that is more complex and expensive than standard flash memory? The answer is cheaper triple-level cell (TLC) flash memory. The 850 Evo is the first drive to combine TLC memory with a 3D flash arrangement, which is an interesting combination, vastly different from the planar MLC drives from other manufacturers.
But TLC flash memory typically has considerably worse performance and endurance than 2-bit MLC flash. Samsung gets around this major issue with what it calls TurboWrite, with a dedicated portion of the drive configured as SLC flash, acting as a cache. By only allowing each cell in the cache to hold a single binary value, this area has far greater endurance and reliability than the TLC portion, or even a standard 2-bit MLC drive. Samsung isn’t the only firm to do this. SanDisk has its own similar nCache 2.0 technology used on the Ultra II SSD and Extreme Pro.
All writes go to the SLC section first, and are quickly flushed to the TLC portion when the drive is idle. The size of the SLC cache is larger in the bigger 850 Evo capacities, with 3GB in the 250GB model, up to 12GB in the 1TB model.
In normal everyday use, you’ll never notice the SLC cache exists or see it impact performance. It only becomes apparent under extreme testing conditions where the 850 Evo doesn’t get a chance to flush the data, such as those conducted by AnandTechand other hardware review sites. According to AnandTech, when this happens you’ll see a more severe performance loss with smaller capacities. When writing to the TLC area, the 120GB 850 Evo drops to 150 MB/sec, the 250GB model to 300 MB/sec and the 500GB and 1TB models to 500 MB/sec and 520 MB/sec respectively. It’s worth stressing that filling up the SLC cache with a full-speed continuous write is not something you’ll do on a daily basis.
Endurance is barely affected by the use of TLC flash. With some firmware optimizations as well, the SLC cache reduces the number of writes to each TLC cell, boosting longevity. Samsung quotes 75TB of writes over five years for the 120GB and 250GB models, with 150TB for the 500GB and 1TB models. That’s a lot of writing, averaging to either 41GB per day, or 82GB per day, every day, for five years. Unless you're putting the 850 Evo through a ton of use, you won't go over this limit.
Another perk of Samsung's SSDs is its bundled Magician management software. It's very well designed, with easy access to SMART information, a benchmark tool, and a function to secure erase your SSD (which creates a USB boot disk). It also enables something called Rapid Mode, where a portion of your system memory acts as a cache for the SSD, so when you write a file, it can be written at speeds well in excess of 4GB/sec to system memory, then flushed to the SSD during idle periods. A chunk of your system memory is used up when it is enabled, so this is best used only if you have 16GB or more RAM in your PC. Rapid Mode looks great on benchmarks, but in real-world use its impact is smaller.
It should also be noted that when talking about the SSDs, the performance differences between them are tiny. In PCMark 8 for example, rival brands are within 0.1 seconds. Some come out slightly ahead, some slightly behind, but these differences are so small, they're not worth losing sleep over.
Finally, we circle back to price. When we reviewed the 850 Evo SSD, we noted that it was a fantastic SSD that was just a bit too expensive to be our new favorite. Remember, when it comes to SATA SSDs, the performance differences are often barely noticeable. When it launched, the 250GB Samsung 850 Evo cost $140 on Amazon. Now it costs only well under $100, making it a much better value. For most people, this is the SSD to get.
Read More
The best budget SSD
Great SSD for the money 480GB for $100 Decent speed and performance Struggles under heavier sustained workloads
The days of using a spinning HDD for primary storage in a desktop are over, as SSDs are quickly taking over the role of system drives. Flash memory is getting cheaper all the time, though it's still more expensive than than spinning platters. Even if you go with a cheaper SSD, you'll still see a huge jump in performance over a spinning drive, and the Silicon Power S55 receives good marks for performance without demanding a premium like the Samsung 850 series.
While the Samsung 850 Evo offers the best and most consistent performance for consumer SATA SSDs, the Silicon Power S55 isn't that far behind. Perhaps most impressive is that for just $10 more, making a nice round $100, you can pick up the 480GB model and nearly double the capacity of the 250GB 850 Evo. Performance will be a bit lower, but for gaming and general use, you'll likely never notice.
In fact the price was so impressive that we had to see for ourselves if the drives were any good. It's worth noting that the S55 is offered in both MLC and TLC trim, with the MLC drives carrying a performance advantage but at a higher price; we nabbed the TLC model and it still managed to best several other TLC drives we've tested, at the current lowest price point we can find: just $0.208 per GB. By comparison, the Samsung 850 Evo is $0.36 per GB--that's still a far cry from the $0.032 per GB you'll pay for a 2TB hard drive, but then hard drives can be a couple orders of magnitude slower for random IO.
If the 850 Evo is out of your range, or maybe you're just looking for a single drive capable of holding a moderately sized gaming library, you can do worse than the Silicon Power S55. Just don't forget to backup important files--good advice regardless of what sort of storage you're using.
If you're looking for other budget options, the SanDisk Ultra II 480GBsits about half way between the S55 and the 850 Evo. It tends to be a bit faster than the S55 but still slower than the 850 Evo.
Read More
The best high-end SATA SSD
Fastest consumer SSD 10 year warranty Pricier than Samsung 850 EVO for small speed gains SATA bottlenecks
Update: If you have a motherboard with an M.2 PCIe slot, consider NVMe drives at the high-end of the spectrum. The 850 Pro remains the pinnacle of SATA performance, but SATA is a bottleneck on most of our current SSDs.
Samsung has reached the top spot in a second category in this SSD group test for a good reason. The Samsung 850 Prois simply the fastest consumer SATA SSD money can buy.
It came out before the 850 Evo, and was the first consumer SSD to use V-NAND. Like the 850 Evo, the NAND flash memory is 40nm, with 32 vertical layers. However it doesn’t use TLC NAND: everything here is 2-bit MLC. There’s no need for an SLC cache then, which gives it a slightly higher formatted capacity. But the extra cost of V-NAND means a generally higher retail price than other SSDs.
The 850 Pro uses a triple core MEX controller running at 400MHz, which is a step up from the 850 Evo’s dual-core MGX controller. We've tested multiple capacities, and the 512GB and larger models are slightly faster and slightly better value for the money, but things can get pricey rather fast. If you want the fastest SATA SSD, no one has managed to top Samsung's 850 Pro, and at this stage it appears no one will; the future of high performance SSDs is PCIe and NVMe. But do you really need to spend the extra money on a high-end SSD? Our recommendation is no .
In nearly all real-world situations, there’s not a huge benefit to using a Samsung 850 Pro over a cheaper SSD. It costs quite a bit more and that money is better spent on a faster GPU, a better CPU, or more system memory. Or, say, a 1TB SSD instead of a 500GB one. The 256GB 850 Pro costs more than the 480GB SP S55, and the 512GB model is slightly more expensive than the 960GB S55.
If you’re building the ultimate rig and want the very best possible performance in any situation, never mind the cost, you're better off investing in an NVMe SSD. About the only real advantage of the 850 Pro is the massive ten-year warranty supplied with the 850 Pro. The 256GB drive is rated for 150TB of writes, or around 40GB per day for ten years, which is certainly enough for workstation use.
But if you're looking for a professional solution, you probably won't want to be using the Samsung 850 Proin five years, let alone ten, as storage technology (and speeds) will have moved far beyond the limitations of current SATA controllers. And the long warranty won't recover any lost files, just the hardware replacement, so you still need to keep a backup of your important files!
Read MoreHow we tested SSDs and others we tested
SSDs make your whole system faster and more pleasant to use. But they matter for gaming, too. A fast-loading SSD can cut dozens of seconds off the loading times of big games like Battlefield 4 or MMOs like World of Warcraft. An SSD won't affect framerates like your GPU or CPU, but it will make installing, booting, dying, and reloading in games a faster, smoother process. When shopping for a good SSD for gaming, one of the most important factors is price per gigabyte. How much will you have to spend to keep a healthy library of Steam games installed, ready to be played at a moment's notice?
To find the best gaming SSDs, we researched the SSD market, picked out the strongest contenders, and put them through their paces with a variety of benchmarking tools. We also put in the research to know what makes a great SSD great, beyond the numbers—technical stuff like types of flash memory and memory controllers.
To be clear, this article only covers 2.5-inch SATA SSDs , the standard internal drives most PC gamers are accustomed to. There are newer, faster SSD form-factors (M.2 and PCie) that can deliver far greater performance than SATA drives. If that's what you're after, head on over to our best NVMe SSDs guide.
Testing SSDs
To test the SSDs, we used a PC with an Intel Core i7-6700K, 16GB of DDR4 memory, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, and an Asus Z170-A motherboard. Windows 10 was installed on the main system drive, AHCI was enabled, and all the drives were connected to the motherboard’s SATA III ports. We used a combination of synthetic and trace benchmarks. This included AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark, and PCMark 8, which runs a set number of timed traces of popular applications.
SSD Technology
The single specific advantage that makes an SSD so much faster than a hard disk is access times that are orders of magnitude faster. A hard disk depends on a mechanical arm moving into position to read data from a platter, while in an SSD, data is stored and accessed electronically. Although modern hard disks are astonishingly fast at accessing data, they’re no match for an SSD; the fastest HDD access times are still around 10ms, while any decent SSD will usually have access times closer to 0.1ms.
An SSD is a physically simple device. It’s made from an array of flash memory chips and a controller, which comprises a processor, memory cache, and firmware. But like most things in computing, it starts to get complicated when you look at it in more detail. NAND flash chips store binary values as voltage differences in non-volatile memory, meaning they retain their state when power is cut off. In order to change the state of a single cell (i.e. writing to it), a strong voltage is required. But because of the way the cells are laid out, it can’t be done on a cell-by-cell basis: an entire row has to be erased at once.
Each cell is insulated from its neighbors to preserve the value it holds, but every time a cell is programmed, the insulator becomes slightly less reliable. Eventually, after a certain number of writes, the cell becomes unable to hold any values, which is why SSDs have a limited lifespan. In the early days of flash memory, this limited number of writes was a concern, but clever tricks, improved technology, and software improvements mean it’s no longer a real issue.
If you want further proof, then have a gander at the SSD endurance experiment over on TechReport. In one of the only tests of its kind, they set about continuously writing data to select SSDs until the drives became completely unusable, in a test that went on for months. Although the odd bad sector crops up relatively early, at 100TB of writes, most of the drives survived until nearly a petabyte of data or more was written to them, far beyond the manufacturers’ rating, and it took months of non-stop writing to reach that point.
The best drives managed 2.5PB of writes. It’s fair to say endurance for all but the most extreme workload is no longer an issue.
SLC, MLC, and TLC memory
A given quantity of physical flash memory cells can be programmed to hold either one, two, or three bits of data. A drive where each cell holds a single bit is known as SLC. Each cell can only be in one of two states, on or off, and only needs to be sensitive to two voltages. Its endurance and performance will be incredible, but a large amount of flash memory is needed to provide a given capacity, so SLC drives have never really taken off beyond expensive server and workstation setups.
2-bit MLC memory is currently the most popular kind used in consumer SSDs. Each cell holds two values, with four binary states (00, 01, 10 and 11), so the cell needs to be sensitive to four voltages. The same amount of flash memory provides double the amount of space as SLC, so less is needed and the SSD is more affordable.
3-bit TLC memory goes even further, with three values per cell. Now each cell has to hold eight binary states (corresponding to 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111), and performance and endurance begins to really suffer as there are eight distinct voltages that represent data. Since each cell needs to differentiate between eight voltage values, reading them reliably requires more precision, and wear and tear reduces the number of write cycles. The plus side is you get even more capacity from the same amount of flash memory, resulting in even cheaper SSDs, which is something everyone wants.
As we’ve found from testing some SSDs, manufacturers are using tricks to mitigate these negative effects with TLC flash memory, so prices can continue falling without impacting performance. These days, we're seeing increasing numbers of TLC SSDs, particularly in the budget sector, and performance has reached the point where they're generally an acceptable compromise.
Sequential Transfer Speeds
Whenever you read about an SSD or look at a review, the first figure you’ll usually see is a headline-grabbing transfer rate. Imagine read and write speeds up to 550MB/sec, or even faster in the case of PCIe SSDs. These numbers always look really impressive, and it typically represents the best-case performance you'll see from a drive. It usually means doing large sequential file transfers, which means all the blocks are laid out one after the other and caching and other advantages are at their peak.
In the real world, most software applications deal with both large and small files, and at times a program might be waiting for input before it carries on, so you’ll rarely get the maximum sequential speed of your SSD. You might see these speeds when reading or writing a large 10GB movie file, but things will be a lot slower when copying a folder full of 10,000 jpeg images, HTML documents, or even a game directory. These smaller files could be spread all over the disk, and will be slower to transfer.
In the case of a hard disk, that entails moving the disk head over the correct position on the platter, which adds a really long delay. SSDs are far quicker to do this, which is where the real improvement in overall responsiveness comes from.
To further complicate things, some SSDs handle uncompressed data much better than compressed data. Specifically, there has been a big difference in performance with these two types of data with SSDs that use older SandForce controllers. If there’s a difference, the faster speeds when dealing with uncompressed data are the ones that are quoted. Therefore, although faster sequential speeds are always nice to see, it’s best not to judge an SSD on these figures alone, as you won't see these speeds all the time.
IOPS
IOPS is another term that is often used in relation to performance of storage products, usually quoted with SSD specifications, but its direct application to real-world use isn’t simple. Put simply, IOPS means input-output operations per second. The more a device can manage, the faster it is. Except, not all IO operations are the same. Reading a tiny 512-byte text file isn’t the same thing as writing a 256KB block from a 10GB movie.
There’s no standard for how figures should be advertised, but the general agreed format is that companies quote the QD32, 4KB block size figure, or IOPS when 32 4KB read or write commands are queued. In the real world, applications won’t be constantly queuing up 32 4KB blocks. It will likely be a random mixture of block sizes, reads, writes, and times when the storage device is idle. For random IO (like booting the OS when lots of files from many applications and drivers are requested), the IOPS figures are important, but they're not the only figure that matters.
Much effort goes into measuring IOPS for patterns that simulate databases, web servers, file servers and so on. For gaming, it really depends on the application, since no two games will be identical. Some might involve huge textures being loaded from disk, while others might be structured differently. Although the 4K QD32 IOPS figure is relevant, it’s best thought of as an indicator of SSD performance with a heavier workload rather than a definitive, comparable benchmark for overall performance.
Competitors
We started with a collection of nine SSDs by researching the most popular and competitive drives around. At the time, 240-256GB drives offered the best blend of capacity and performance, but as time has passed we're now looking toward 480-512GB drive--256GB can go fast with a few games and Windows 10! There are plenty of other SSDs out there and new ones arrive regularly, so we've added additional drives to our database over time.
Focusing on just one or two tests doesn't usually tell the whole story, so we've run a variety of benchmarks along with simply using each drive. Outside of specific benchmarks or copying large amounts of data, what's surprising is how little difference there is between the 'best' and 'worst' SSD we've tested. Applications (and games) may take a bit longer to install, but otherwise they all feel remarkably similar for light use. That's why for gaming specific use, we recommend going for the lowest price per GB as the primary consideration.
At the high end, the SATA bus is now the limiting factor in SSD performance. Fortunately, SSD manufacturers can take advantage of the PCIe interface, including add-in boards like the Intel SSD 750 and newer M.2 'gumstick' drives. But even the affordable SSDs are starting to hit the SATA performance ceiling, and prices continue to fall.
Over the past year and more, we've tested many drives. The Samsung 850 Evo, Samsung 850 Pro, and Silicon Power S55are currently our primary recommendations, but depending on pricing and availability, many other drives are worth considering. Here's what we've looked at, in alphabetical order:
Corsair has had an SSD line under the Neutron name for several years now, and performance has generally been good, but pricing is higher than we like. Unfortunately, the Neutron XTcan't match the 850 Evo, despite a similar price.
Crucial's BX100was a great budget option that was replaced by the slower Crucial BX200. Crucial also has their MX200and now MX300that boast better performance along with higher prices, and the MX300 (with TLC 3D NAND) is now available at a variety of capacities, all priced around 25 cents per GB.
Intel’s 730 series SSDhas been on the market a while and has been surpassed by the firm’s PCIe 750 series, which is a lot more up to date. Frankly, we’d ignore the 730 as its pricing is just not good value for money, and its write speeds suffer compared with Samsung, Crucial, or Plextor’s drives.
Kingston’s V300is rather old now, and it has generally poor write performance and isn't worth buying, despite its affordability. The newer UV400 driveslook much more promising, using a combination of TLC NAND and an SLC cache to deliver better performance than many other TLC drives.
A few years back, OCZ ran into some financial difficulties, but they were saved by Toshiba, who now owns their assets and continues to sell drives under the OCZ brand. The OCZ Trion 100and newer Trion 150are the first drives to come post-acquisition, with the 150 replacing the 100 and offering some minor updates. The Trion 150 is a budget offering, using TLC NAND with the relatively common Phison S10 controller. Phison had a deservedly bad reputation in the past, but their S10 is doing quite well. With MLC it can come relatively close to the top drives, though the TLC models are less impressive.
More impressive is OCZ's Vector 180, a drive that can actually come relatively close to matching the 850 Evo's performance. But you get 20GB more capacity with the 500GB Evo compared to the 480GB Vector 180, plus a bit better performance, so barring further price cuts it's not the best choice.
Plextor seemed to be making headroads into the world of consumer SSDs at one point, and then they pulled out and focused on the more lucrative enterprise market. Their M6 Pro linehas decent performance, but at the current prices it's no longer competitive--you can get twice the capacity for a lower price.
Samsung is the current 800 pound gorilla of SSDs. They have the advantage of owning the NAND and controller fabrication facilities, plus they do all their own firmware. That allows them to compete on price while also offering better performance than many other companies. V-NAND allows the 850 Evoand 850 Proto claim two of our three SSD recommendations. Simply put, you can't go wrong with a Samsung SSD.
SanDisk's Extreme Prois one of the few SATA SSDs that can go head-to-head with the 850 Pro. It doesn't win every battle, but with a lower price it doesn't need to. Like Samsung, they make their own NAND, which is a big advantage in the cutthroat world of consumer SSDs, and they also have a lot of experience building controllers. It's interesting that the Extreme Pro is still their best SSD, considering it came out in 2014; maybe we'll see an NVMe drive from the company in the future?
Meanwhile, the SanDisk Ultra IIis a serious contender for the best budget SSD, losing out mostly due to the added $25 compared to the SP S55. The Ultra II is a bit faster than the S55, thanks to its continued use of MLC NAND, and if you're willing to spend up it's worth a closer look.
Silicon Power's S55is one of our latest additions. The TLC models are currently the least expensive SSD you're likely to find, at $100 for 480GB or just under 21 cents per GB. We might be tempted to say you get what you pay for, but in practice we've been pleasantly surprised by the drive and it's now our budget recommendation. The MLC S55 drivesmay perform better, but at their higher price we'd stick with a Samsung 850 Evo.
Our final entrant--again, alphabetically--is Transcend, with their relatively new SSD370S series. Unlike many other companies, Transcend is sticking with MLC NAND on the SSD370S, combined with a Silicon Motion 2246EN controller. The results is relatively impressive performance--a bit behind the 850 Pro and 850 Evo, but worth a look, particularly if pricing comes down. Note that like the 850 Pro, this drive also gives you 512GB at our recommended capacity, a bit more than most other options.
Closing thoughts and a look to the future
Now that an SSDs are such good value, there's simply no reason not to have one in your PC. If you were an early adopter with a 64GB or 128GB drive and find that capacity to be rather limiting, it might be time to consider an upgrade. A 512GB SSD now costs a lot less than a 128GB model did a few years ago, and we strongly recommend at least 240GB for your OS and primary applications, with 480GB and larger providing plenty of room for some games and other goodies.
While ubiquitous, standard 2.5-inch SSDs are now fundamentally limited by the speed of the SATA bus, which has a maximum theoretical throughput of 6 Gbit/sec. In real world terms, the performance ceiling is around 550 MB/sec for an SSD, and it’s clear this is imposing a limit on flash memory technology.
The solution is to switch to the PCI Express bus, where Gen3 offers 985 MB/sec per lane, with a x4 card allowing for up to 3.94 GB/sec. Unfortunately, the PCIe SSDs to date are expensive, and they're limited to either PCIe add-in boards or the M.2 form factor, which means only newer (basically Z97, X99, and Z170 motherboards) have the requisite NVMe support. Quite a few laptops are switching to M.2 drives due to the space savings, however, and long-term the standard has a lot of room to grow.
In another 10 years, solid state technology may make today's SATA SSDs look like floppy disks. But for now, SATA SSDs still offer the best performance you're going to get for your dollar, and the Samsung 850 Evois currently the best choice for a great gaming SSD.
A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to stores like Amazon. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which helps support our work evaluating PC components.
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Total War: Rome 2 patch adds new faction, Steam Workshop support
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latest patch has a couple of welcome surprises, in addition to the usual bug fixes and the like. Surprise the first is support for Valve's handy Steam Workshop, making it easier to find and install the game's burgeoning assortment of mods. Surprise the second? Well it's a brand new faction, the Seleucid Empire, who were apparently quite good at city building and engineering. Also, one would presume, killing.
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Lord of the Rings Online doubles revenue in one month - by going free
At the GDC Online conference - which is not online, it's in Texas - LoTRO developers Turbine revealed that making the game free has doubled the amount of money they make from it.
At the GDC Online conference - which is not online, it's in Texas - LoTRO developers Turbine revealed that making the game free has doubled the amount of money they make from it. The game now generates its cash from microtransactions, and optional subscriptions that provide a monthly income of Turbine Points to spend on in-game stuff. It means less money from the average player, but their number of players has exploded by over 400%.
Turbine's previous MMO, Dungeons & Dragons Online, went free-to-play a year ago. The results were similarly spectacular: so many players bought in-game items that they only made slightly less revenue from each of them. And with the biggest barrier to entry removed, sign-ups rocketed. There's a tendency to see going free as a sign of desperation from MMOs that are struggling to compete with World of Warcraft on subscriptions. But in LoTRO's case, it was just logical: DDO had already taught them how much more effective the system is, both in popularity and profitability.
Some aspects of microtransactions are rather off-putting: until recently, DDO required you to buy 'leveling sigils' to continue to level up your character, which seems more like a subscription in disguise. But in general, free to play just makes more sense for MMOs. Until last year, we had a ridiculous situation where everyone and their grandmother was asking us for £10 a month to play their game. World of Warcraft's meteoric success had everyone trying to emulate it exactly. But few gamers can afford to subscribe to more than one or two games, so you're asking people to leave the game they're deeply invested in to try yours.
What we're really seeing now is the MMO finally figuring out an effective way to have a demo. You're not likely to lead a long and fulfilling virtual life in LoTRO without ever spending a penny, it's just a much easier way to find out whether you like it before committing. And it scales better to your playing habits: if you end up forgetting about it and playing WoW all the time, you won't be slowly bleeding money into the game you're neglecting.
[Thanks Joystiq(LoTRO) and TenTonHammer(DDO)]
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Squareface
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Total War: Rome 2 patch adds new faction, Steam Workshop support
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Battlefield 4 post-launch content may be coming to an end
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In response to queries about DICE's plans for Battlefield 4 in 2016, Sirland had the following to say: "Today I can let you guys know that at this point we don't have any plans to release new content for BF4 to the CTE."
The CTE is the 'Community Test Environment', where DICE releases new content for testing before deploying it publicly. The end of new content for the CTE seems to suggest that no new content will be rolled out at all, even though there are no firm plans to shut the CTE down, Sirland later added.
The timing makes sense: DICE is currently developing Battlefield 5, which is rumoured to take place during World War One. The next instalment is expected to release in 2016. As for Battlefield: Hardline, well, there are new maps rolling out this month, but whether more will follow is uncertain.
The resurrection of 4X gaming – Master Of Orion
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Total War: Rome 2's huge second patch promises performance and AI improvements
You could read a book in the time it takes for Rome 2 to calculate AI movements between turns.
to calculate AI movements between turns. Our Chris Thursten has made good progress with Game of Thrones. I, meanwhile, tend to make a cup of tea every end-turn event, and then run my empire with the urgency and recklessness of a hyper-stimulated general with a permanently full bladder. To the delight of my internal organs, CA are trying to trim those long AI thinking times down. They've posted a list of fixesmade by a beta version of the second patch, which went into testing on Friday, of which "campaign performance optimisations" and "AI round time improvements" are the most welcome. There are also GPU optimisation tweaks listed alongside significant in-game changes to unit speed and morale-battering flank charges. The fix-list is here for your perusal.
Technical and Performance Issues
Campaign performance optimisations. Campaign AI round time improvements (greatest effect during early game). A new "Limited" option has been added to the "Show AI Player Moves" settings in Single Player an Multiplayer Campaign modes, this enables the player to see all movement of enemy factions, all movement within the players regions, and all movement within sea that the player has ports in during the AI turns. Improved AI recruitment decisions in Campaign modes. Further improvements planned for subsequent patches. Pathfinding optimisation on the Campaign Map. Fix for "Level of Detail" distances scaling incorrectly when the "Field of View" is changed which reduces the chance of the "Intelligent Zoom" [N] key, causing "zombie like” low quality textures on unit faces in battles. A new warning message has been added to loading screen to inform the player when graphics memory is running low, and the game is downgrading the players graphics settings. This can be overriden, allowing the game to use system memory for graphics (VRAM) by ticking the "Unlimited video memory" option in the graphics menu. Increased the frame rate and reduced frame stuttering in battles on certain GPUs. Improved compatibility for graphics cards with multiple GPUs. Added earlier Multiplayer Campaign resyncronisation detection, upon loading save games which allows resyncronisation in more cases. More conservative out-of-the-box graphics settings and resolution for DirectX 10 and 11 on Mobile GPUs Improved the processing speed of the default deployment placement, reducing battle loading times on some battle maps. Fixed battle crash bug caused by the default deployment placement. Crash fix for when the player placed the mouse over a garrison force of a region in Campaign mode. Fix for crash loading save games that were created on the "settlement captured" screen in Campaign modes. Fix for a crash when holding the [SHIFT] and [CTRL] keys down, and selecting a unit card, when no unit cards where previously selected in Campaign and Battle modes. Fix for crash caused by forming a Confederation in Campaign modes. Some desyncronisations have been fixed in multiplayer city / port assault battles. Crash fix for when multiple AI reinforcements arrive in a single player siege battle in Campaign mode. Fix for crash when selecting Custom Battle mode after fighting several different Multiplayer battles. Fix for a crash in 4v4 custom or multiplayer battles caused by the battle AI. Fix for crash when cancelling a game request for a password protected game whilst in a Multiplayer battle lobby. Fix some crashes in multiplayer campaign mode, when one player quit the game, it would cause the other player to crash. Fixed a Multiplayer crash which happened when a client joined a lobby and was being allocated to the wrong slot. Fix for a very rare crash when launching a new campaign. Fixed rare battlefield loading lockup. Fix for a rare crash caused by animal handlers in battles. Fix for crash that happens when AI unit triggers raise banner special ability when no human units are selected in battles.Gameplay Improvements
Reduced infantry run speed, charge speed and acceleration in battles. The low level casualty moral penalties have been significantly reduced in battles. Improved balancing for Food and Squalor in Campaign Mode. Campaign AI is more likely to make a stand when defending its final settlement, but may still seek out another home, if they fear losing the final battle. Encampments battles are no longer incorrectly merged with Coastal battles, which lead to forts floating in the air when a friendly navy reinforced an army in the Fortification stance. Improved ship movement speeds in battles. Shock cavalry run speed and charge speed have been increased in battles. Increased flanking morale penalties. Added icons to indicate activity in the Technology and Faction screens during a campaign. Fix for the boarding/ramming button which showed the incorrect state in certain circumstances in battles. Fix for a bug that sometimes made it impossible to exchange units between a transported land force and another land force on the Campaign map. Fix for armies on the sea getting stuck in patrol stance in Campaign modes. Fixed splitting an embedded army from a navy which sometimes caused the player to get stuck in the Prologue Campaign. Some missions in single player and multiplayer Campaign have been fixed and now execute correctly. When a settlement is captured via a siege battle, with a friendly naval fleet blockading its port, the ownership of the port is now changed correctly to the friendly navy fleet on capture. Fix for AI taking inappropriate sized siege equipment into battle when the user changed the settlement wall height, via the map selection settings, in Custom Battle mode. Fix for defending armies under AI control grouping together at the edge of their deployment zone, during Ambush battles when the player choses to wait before attacking them. Improved AI and scripting in the Raphia Historical Battle. Fixed a bug preventing the player from progressing in The Invasion of Samnium prologue chapter, if they had spent all of their funds before being instructed to recruit a General (and therefore having no funds to do so). The Attribute increases for an agent accompanying an army now activate its associated effects on the general of that army in Campaign modes. Improved AI collision detection with Deployables in battle. In Multiplayer Campaign mode, one player can no longer cancel recruitment during the other players turn. The order of events leading up to the Battle of Bovianum in the prologue have been re-scripted. The player now gets multiple turns to construct siege equipment. Fixed issues with not enough time being given for certain advisor lines to play in different languages in the prologue. Fix for units floating in the air while climbing siege towers in battle, when the tower is placed on a slope. Attacking siege ladders will no longer clip through the gate house in the siege on Bovianum battle during The Invasion of Samnium chapter in Prologue Campaign. The victory screen in Multiplayer Campaign mode now shows the correct title for both players. The Basilica of Vulcan religious building now applies the correct bonus to recruitment cost reduction in Campaign Mode. Added level indicators to the Sanctuary of Austro & Sanctuary of Fraujaz shrines in Campaign mode and the Encyclopaedia. Fix for settlement expansion trapping / blocking units movement on the campaign map in very rare cases. Improved the terrain in a small Barbarian city battle map. Minor bug fixes for Roman and Barbarian siege battle maps. During battles, players are no longer able to un-pause the game while in the options menus.Usability improvements
In Campaign mode, exempting a province from tax will no longer incorrectly adjust the food number in the province info panel left side of the screen. Improved multiplayer lobby discovery, reducing the chance of finding *multiplayer lobbies with the wrong battle type. Removed the red tint from the sky in battles. Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations. The "Quaestor" achievement should now unlock correctly, when completing the Prologue campaign Fixed the inability to select the previous faction, when an army is automatically loaded due to a battle type change during battle setup. Improved the clarity of stats displayed for Slaves Economic Effect when placing the mouse over "Slaves" in the Province Details panel on the Campaign map. Fix for rare cases of broken save games in Campaign mode. Fix for Campaign mode bug, where a hostile agent and the players' ship became stuck in the same position, with neither one able to move. Fix for very rare agent pathfinding issue, which caused the game progression to become impossible in Campaign modes. Removed the ability to loading the wrong type of units into a battle from a saved army pre-set in Custom Battle mode. In Multiplayer battle setup, unit restrictions related to "Battle type" are no longer desynchronised between the host and client, so only the correct units can be chosen. Defending armies in an Ambush Battle can no longer load an army containing *Fixed Artillery and other Siege Equipment. Fixed the tooltip displayed when placing the mouse over the garrison in enemy settlements, while the settlement is under siege. The Public Order "Change per turn" stat is now displayed as the sum of all of its "Contributing Factors" on the Province Info panel in Campaign mode. Right-clicking on the Aggressive, Balanced and Protective stance buttons when Autoresolving a battle in campaign mode will now take the player to the Encyclopedia, where these stances are explained in more detail. More detailed descriptions added to the tooltips for the "Occupy, Loot and Raze" buttons after successfully capturing a settlement on the Campaign map. Improved icons for Province Effects in Campaign mode. Fixed an error with uploading stats when a multiplayer battle was ended prematurely. The "Force March" movement effect on the campaign map (looks like a whirlwind) are now correctly removed from the screen when the AI move their army. Correction to the Assault Hexeres unit card in the Parthia faction during battles, which had no colour mask and appeared black. The buttons to change pages in the Leaderboards menu have been fixed, so more players can be seen on the Leaderboards. The Provinces list in Campaign mode can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel. Units in a recruitment queue, in a province with its capital under siege, now have an "infinity sign" icon to indicate that the "turns to recruit" is infinite while the siege is maintained in Campaign mode. In the "Controls" menu under the "Settings" option in the main menu, when the player modifies the keyboard controls, and saves them, the new name for these controls is now replaces the "Classic Total War" name. Added a tooltip to say "Left-click to remove unit from recruitment queue" for units that are queued for hire in Campaign mode. Added a tooltip to make ruined buildings more obvious in Campaign mode. Added tooltips to "Weather" and "Time of Day" settings in the Custom Battle menu. Fixes and corrections for text in the encyclopaedia have been made. Minor text and grammar corrections in Campaign Modes. Fix for some German text not fitting into the available text space in the campaign mode user interface. Improved text formatting in the Objectives panel in Campaign mode. Added some localisation text fixes for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish. Fixed some missing text on the Diplomacy screen in Campaign modes. Added white outline to Armoured Legionaries unit cards in battle.