New game releases.
Today’s Deal: Save 40% on The Caligula Effect: Overdose and its DLCs!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Tuesday 9/3 at 10AM Pacific Time
Every month Epic Games release several free assets on the Unreal Engine marketplace and this September is no exception. Keep in mind you need to “purchase” the assets during the month of September for free then you can keep them forever. Additionally Epic make a couple free assets available forever each month.
September Free Assets
Free Forever Assets
You can learn more about the asset giveaway on the Unreal Engine blog or by watching the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nor2NMhGgo&w=480&h=270]
So I’ve been trying to dabble in some more mobile games this past week – I downloaded Gears Pop! Just to see what it was like (gacha, but not terrible) and Fallout Shelter again because I remember having fun with it when it first launched. Now I’m testing out Pokemon Masters because we’ll be doing some guide work for it over the next week or two. Interest around Harry Potter: Wizards Unite seems to have died off quite quickly so i’ll be interested to see how long this new pan flashes for.
It’s not been a great week as far as premium games go – all our favourites continue to get plenty of updates, and we decided to look back on games with some excellent expansion content. Hope you enjoyed that.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away…
We’ve been mentioning this one for a while – now the collect’em-all 3v3 battler is out in the wild. It’s not quite as noble as Pokemon GO – you’re not being incentivised to go out-and-about or anything like that, this is more of your bog-standard ‘gatcha’ game dressed in a Pokemon skin. If you’ve not yet read up on it, this is essentially a game about collecting and levelling up ‘Sync Pairs’ – a pairing of a trainer (pulled from the Pokeverse) and a Pokemon.
The F2P aspects mainly revolve around ‘Scouting’ where you spend gems to try and pull rare combinations to help fight in the game’s story mode. Unlike a lot of gacha games this is wholly a PvE affair, with Co-Op available once you’ve cleared Chapter 10. I’ve been dabbling around with it and it’s not bad as games go – the battles still retain some of the tactical dimensions you get from the main games. Your mileage will vary depending on how much you care about Pokemon and, more specifically, specific iconic characters from the TV Shows.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiXFpUf1fBg?controls=0]
Anyone interested in giving it a go should check out our Beginner’s Guide, plus our guide looking at how to make the most of those early-game scouts.
Not so much this week but we missed a couple of popular indie releases that aren’t exactly in our usual wheelhouse:
A couple of announcements we didn’t get a chance to write-up yet you might be interested in knowing about:
Nintendo has finally given us a solid release date for Mario Kart Tour, the rumoured Mario Kart mobile game that was announced at the start of 2018. Like most Nintendo experimentations on mobile, it looks like it’s going to be a F2P experience, but you’ll be able to make up your own mind about it come September 25th.
Also, it’s that time of the year again when we have the latest version of Football Manager to look forward to. Football Manager 2020 Mobile and Football Manager 2020 Touch are due to release at the same time as the main PC version of the game in November. No real information as to what the improvements will be over the 2019 version, but I’m sure it won’t be long before we find out.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeZ13UiTdWA?controls=0]
Also don’t forget that Tropico’s Android version will be released next week on September 5th.
Not much to report in terms of major game updates. The big Star Traders: Frontiers content drop we talked about at the start of the week is now live on mobile, if you were waiting for that.
Plus the Auto Chess games continue to further improve themselves. Dota Underlords, for example did some tweaking last Friday which you can read up on here. We’re going to be running some more Underlords content at the start of next week, so watch out for that.
Seems Google Play and the Apple App Store hate mobile games this week, as there’s not really anything worth doing a full write-up on. The only two things worth highlighting are:
Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan is Now Available on Steam!
The Dark Pictures Anthology is a series of stand-alone, branching cinematic horror games that can also be played online with a friend.
In Man of Medan, five friends set sail on a holiday diving trip that soon changes into something much more sinister.
In celebration of the new Close Encounters DLC, play Two Point Hospital for FREE starting now through Monday at 10AM Pacific Time. You can also pickup Two Point Hospital at 50% off the regular price!*
If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play Two Point Hospital. If you don’t have Steam, you can download it here.
*Play for free Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time.
© 2019 Valve Corporation. All rights reserved. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries.
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Today’s Deal: Save 65% on Battlestar Galactica Deadlock!*
Plus 10% off the newly released DLC Battlestar Galactica Deadlock: Resurrection!
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Saturday at 10AM Pacific Time
Crytek have just released CryEngine 5.6 featuring over 1000 changes and improvements including several developers for the game Hunt Showdown. There are a number of new features in this release including new project management features directly in the Sandbox editor, a new AI Behavior Tree tool, area lights, ragdoll physics and ADX2 support. Details of the release from the CryEngine blog:
This major release packs in over 1,000 changes and includes production-proven features which have been used to deliver Hunt: Showdown. The entire team here at Crytek would like to thank the entire CRYENGINE community for all the feedback and suggestions that have helped shaped the direction of development. This engine is for you, and we couldn’t have done this without you.
CRYENGINE 5.6 is designed to put more power in your hands and make game creation quicker and easier. We’re sure you’ll agree that it marks a big step forward for the engine. As you know, work doesn’t stop, and we’re already looking at the roadmap for CRYENGINE 5.7. Make sure you keep your thoughts and feedback coming as it really does make a difference.
The full release notes are available here, additionally Crytek have released a short video trailer showcasing the new features available here. You can learn more about this release in the video embedded below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svUmMWYylRY&w=853&h=480]
29 Aug 2019
Now that’s it’s officially out in the open, it’s time to talk about rerolling in Pokemon Masters. For those new to “gatcha” mobile games, ‘re-rolling’ means restarting your game account to get the most out of the starting resources these games use to hook you in, including gems and the Pokemon themselves.
You want to pull either multiple 5-star units, or at least one of the top-tier units before settling into your account to give you the easiest time going forward after the easy gems start to dry up.
Don’t forget to check out our tips guide for general advice on getting started in Pokemon Masters.
We’ll get to the ‘why’ you want to reroll in a moment, but actually deleting your account to start the reroll process is fairly easy. To do so, just tap the menu in the bottom right of the main game screen, and tap the Account button in the bottom right corner of that. You’ll want to hit Delete Account and go through the motions.
After a bit of waiting around, you’ll be tossed back to the start-up screen where you can tap in to start fresh.
Rerolling in Pokemon Masters is a tougher sell than most other games of its kind, as there’s very little incentive to save copious amounts of gems, and virtual no safety net against bad luck. It’s a practice that can quickly suck the fun out of a game, but if you’re planning to play Pokemon Masters for a long while, rerolling is something to consider.
The main ‘pro’ is the potential early game advantages and value for your time investment. With how little free gems the game tosses at you early on, it’s tempting to aim for the best sync pair scout draws you can get and simply restart and repeat the process if it doesn’t go well. Since you’ve just started, you don’t have to worry about lost progress.
It’s suggested to aim for around 4-5 single scouts before rerolling. If you don’t get a 5-star unit during this initial burst, delete your account and start fresh. It costs 300 Gems to perform a single pull and 3000 for a 10 pull, meaning there’s absolutely no reason to do a 10 scout for anything more than the sake of convenience.
That’s why it’s instead recommended to stick to re-rolling after 4-5 pulls – which costs around 1200-1500 gems. You can earn this much by:
If you don’t manage to pull a top-tier 5-star character in this opening window, you may want to consider re-rolling to try your luck again.
Between August 29th, 2019 and 28th November, 2019, players will get be allowed to use a special Sync Pair Scout pull where, if you do the 10-pull, you are guaranteed a 5-Star Sync Pair on the 10th pull (regardless of what happens in draws 1 through 9). As far as we can tell this is a one-time only deal, and the big catch is that you have to use gems you spent real-money on to do the Scouting. We’re not sure how the game can tell the difference at the moment, since there’s only one Gem pool displayed on the UI.
But now let’s talk about why pulling a 5-star isn’t actually that big a deal…
In the current build of the game, 5-star rates are 7% per pull. But it isn’t quite so simple. There are only five 5-star units in the box (the game has 11 in total right now), cutting those odds to 1.4% for any specific 5-star unit. According to Reddit user Applepie38 the chances of coming out of 10 pull with all 5-star units is an astronomically low 0.000000003% or 0.000000004% during a guaranteed 5-star summon banner.
While most units 5-star are very strong in their own right, the prevalence of type advantages helps make a case for just about any unit in the game. They all have their uses with the right team composition backing them up, and pulling one over another is bound to just end up helping you through a slightly different area of the game.
Here’s some general tier list advice:
All in all, while re-rolling is certainly possible in Pokemon Masters, it won’t carry much weight in the absence of guaranteed 4-star or above pulls – which is what we’re hoping to see after the initial 5-star launch banner. Rerolling is something for hardcore players to consider, but we highly suggest just playing at the game at your leisure.
The perception of this may very well change over time as power creep sets in, but right now, rerolling in Pokemon Masters is not recommended in general. Just have fun and don’t worry about losing hours of your life to RNG min/maxing.
Pokemon Masters is free-to-play and can be downloaded on iOS & Android.
Unity have just released Unity 2019.3 beta. A few minor changes have had a major impact on the user experience, including a new UI font and icons making HiDPI support easier while cleaning up the UI. Additionally the LWRP or Lightweight Render Pipeline has been renamed to the Universal Pipeline (HDRP remains the same), the package manager is improved with the ability to show assets as well as download directly from Git.
Details from the Unity blog:
The last beta release of the 2019 cycle, Unity 2019.3b, is here and it comes packed with new features, improvements, and a completely refreshed interface. Download it to get an early look at these highlights as well as to explore the new Input System, post-processing in the Universal Render Pipeline (formerly LWRP), physics updates, faster in-Editor iteration times, and the debut of ray tracing in Unity.
They are also running a giveaway for NVIDIA GeForce 2080 RTX GPU, check the above link for details. The full release notes are available here or watch the following video for more details and to experience the updated UI in action.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9h5Bc7i0po&w=853&h=480]
