With Avowed’s imminent launch, it’s almost time to return to Obsidian’s world of Eora for the first time since 2018’s Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. We’ve got the de rigueur “advanced access” preorder bonus for those who forked over for the game’s “Premium” edition, with high roller fans able to access Avowed beginning on February 13.
The rest of us will have to wait for Avowed’s proper release next Tuesday, February 18. Below, I’ve laid out Avowed’s unlock times by time zone, with one section for advanced access, and another for all us plebs.
Avowed advanced access unlock time
Premium Edition players get “advance access” to Avowed beginning at 10 am Pacific on Thursday, February 13.
To play Avowed before its main launch date of February 18, you’ll need to have put down $90 on a preorder of its premium edition to play five days early. Obsidian didn’t publicly reveal specific launch times for Avowed but according to the estimate listed on its Steam store page, and information we received separately from Obsidian, should be available at 10 am Pacific.
Avowed early access launch times
10 am PST, February 13 (Los Angeles)
1 pm EST, February 13 (New York)
6 pm GMT, February 13 (London)
7 pm CEST, February 13 (Berlin)
5 am, February 14 (AEDT)
7 am, February 14 (NZDT)
Avowed full launch release date
Avowed’s full launch date is on Tuesday, February 18, likely at 10 am Pacific. As with the advance access period, Obsidian and Microsoft didn’t give specific unlock times for Avowed. Since its Steam store launch for advance access lines up with a common Steam store unlock time, we should be able to assume the same will apply to its full launch date on the 18th.
Here’s how that breaks down in other time zones:
10 am PST, February 18 (Los Angeles)
1 pm EST, February 18 (New York)
6 pm GMT, February 18 (London)
7 pm CEST, February 18 (Berlin)
5 am, February 19 (AEDT)
7 am, February 19 (NZDT)
Can you preload Avowed on PC?
It looks like you can only preload Avowed on Xbox. Going off Microsoft’s other releases, we’ll likely have to wait for Avowed to unlock to start downloading it on PC.
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An all-new Five Nights at Freddy’s game is coming this summer: Secret of the Mimic, the 11th mainline FNAF game and fourth to be developed by Steel Wool Studios, is set to launch on June 13.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic was first teased in August 2024 with an ominous message: “To see the future sometimes you need to understand the past.” Interestingly, that first teaser focused on Jackie, who can also be seen skulking around in the new trailer, but there’s lots of other trouble on the scene too.
While details are basically non-existent at this point—there’s not even a Steam page, although we’ve got our fingers crossed one will pop up soon—this is clearly a full-on Five Nights at Freddy’s experience, which is to say creepy as hell. Your job this time around is to enter an abandoned warehouse and retrieve technology that was being developed by the now-missing Edwin Murray: “a kind of prototype endoskeleton that can adapt to any costume and become any character.” Yeah, that’s the Mimic, alright.
Also, it might be malfunctioning, “so just be aware of the slim but non-zero chance that you could sustain significant injuries while attempting to retrieve it, including but not limited to death or dismemberment.” But I’m sure it’ll be fine.
As noted, a PC release of Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic hasn’t been confirmed, but we’re optimistic. I’ll keep my eyes open and update when it happens.
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https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1739401584_An-all-new-Five-Nights-at-Freddys-game-is-coming-in.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-12 23:01:362025-02-12 23:01:36An all-new Five Nights at Freddy’s game is coming in June
Killing Floor 3 is one of the most visceral games I’ve ever played. Insofar as, well, even a simple firefight will leave the place spattered with viscera, every corner of the room filled with buckets full of gore for just a handful of kills.
It’s enough to make you want to reach for a mop and bucket, honestly. The thing is a game of Killing Floor 3 is never just a handful of kills. Killing Floor has a rich legacy as a horde shooter and developer Tripwire Interactive has gone hard on the horde part, practically drowning you in enemies at all times. There’s usually a swarm of Zeds pushing at you from every angle, clogging up your field of view and forcing you to fight on the enemies’ terms rather than your own. The game is at its best when you’re on the back foot, low on ammo and hoofing it between enclosed corridors and debris-strewn courtyards.
Killing Floor 3’s core premise hasn’t changed much since the original game made its debut as an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod in 2005. You’re part of an elite paramilitary group desperately trying to survive against hordes of Zeds—not zombies but brand name mutant monsters from the Umbrella Corporation-esque bioweapons corporation Horzine—or die trying. You’ll do this wave by wave, with just enough time between scraps to hustle to a trader and top off your ammo or armour or buy a shiny new gun.
Over time, these Zeds have evolved and so has Killing Floor. Killing Floor 3 takes inspiration from hero shooters like Overwatch or Marvel Rivals, making the individual classes of the previous games into specific characters with their own skills. Practically, this means that the classes have their own unique grenade, a selection of weapons they do more damage with, and an incredibly powerful “ultimate” ability. Mr Foster is no longer a skin you can select, but a character that means you’ll be playing as the Commando.
Across Reddit and Steam forums, this looks like it’s been a contentious change, but after playing for a couple of hours it doesn’t feel that different from Killing Floor 2’s perk system. It’s more efficient to use assault rifles if you’re the Commando, sure, but you don’t have to. The biggest change? That’s that all-powerful gadget that functions like an ultimate, giving you an incredibly effective emergency button you can hit roughly once every round and a half or so. The commando gets a little drone that pops up over your shoulder and fires acid rounds at hordes you target and it’s a total game changer. But that’s not my favourite. The Engineer has little shoulder-mounted sound cannons which you can fire manually, pulverising enemies in front of you until they are little more than paste.
(Image credit: Tripwire Interactive)
Progression for these characters is much faster, too. I played for around three hours during a closed beta weekend and got a handful of levels for the Engineer, Commando and Ninja—this game’s replacement for my beloved Berserker—that allowed me to choose a few different traits. This means each time you play, at least those first few sessions, you’re going to feel like you’re making progress. This was my biggest annoyance with Killing Floor and Killing Floor 2, where after a few hours you never really got anywhere.
Steam helpfully tells me I’ve played 63 hours of Killing Floor and 41 hours of Killing Floor 2 and I never felt like I’d made any meaningful progression. I didn’t make any in a couple of hours with Killing Floor 3 either, but I can see a bright future where I’m actually rewarded for the time I’m pouring into the game.
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Combat flows well, both solo and in multiplayer. A lot of this is the upgrades to the Zeds I mentioned earlier. From the lowliest Clot to the terrifying Scrakes, they’ve all been given some upgrades. Often, this just plays into the science fiction body horror theme of the thing, and they’ve had plates of armour welded on just about everywhere. Every enemy has one new trick though: the Scrake’s chainsaw is now also capable of firing out a grapple hook to bring you right into chainsawing range, while the spiderlike Crawlers can now crawl over walls and ceilings to get to you, something that feels like a tiny change until they drop in behind you, blocking off your escape routes.
(Image credit: Tripwire Interactive)
Bigger enemies will now blast clean through walls, tearing doors off their hinges as they step forwards to mess you up, and combat is faster across the board, and now I find myself pinballing through chokepoints, trying to thin a herd of enemies and avoid getting pinned down.
Gunplay feels fluid with this higher pace, too. Assault rifles bark and skip around at range, meaning you’ll be looking to close the distance yourself, dancing in and out of the crowd so you can do the most damage. You can see this more with the Ninja’s armoury, many of which are melee. This means a good Ninja player will actually have to hop in and out of combat, leathering a few monsters and then dodging back as it gets messy. Later you get a bow, which rewards precise shooting and careful ammo management. This adds a whole new dimension to things because, frankly, while ammo is often at a premium, Killing Floor 3 is not an easy game to conserve your shots in.
(Image credit: Tripwire Interactive)
Despite all of the changes, everything still feels charmingly old school. In an interview with our own Tyler Wilde, Tripwire studio creative director Bryan Wynia explained that one of the biggest things the team learnt from a lengthy prototyping phase on Killing Floor 3 was that “classic wave based combat is the lifeblood of Killing Floor.”
They also learnt that its players don’t just see it as a co-op game.
“One of the things that we gathered data on from KF and KF2 that’s now part of KF3 that I think helps make us a little different from other wave-based shooters is that our playerbase is almost 51 percent likes to play with a friend and 49 percent likes to play alone,” said Wynia. “So, dynamic balancing is really important for us. If it’s just me playing at a specific difficulty setting it’s balanced for that. If there’s six players, we have it balanced for that too. Prototyping let us find the lifeblood, the DNA, of Killing Floor, and really emphasise those biggest parts.”
Which explains how Killing Floor 3 always made me feel like my back was against a wall whether I was playing alone or when I teamed up with PCG’s Evan Lahti to mess up some Zeds as a pair. I vastly prefer the game as a multiplayer experience, both because I like the extra chaos, but because Killing Floor 3 is a game that’s full of “what the f**k was that” moments, and sometimes it’s good to have someone else there to talk through what you just saw.
This taste has given me enough to be excited for the main event, when the game releases on March 25, 2025 and I can get my buddies involved. I’m intending to be knee-deep in Zeds as soon as possible.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1739365563_Killing-Floor-3-is-an-unapologetic-throwback-to-the-gory.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-12 13:00:002025-02-12 13:00:00Killing Floor 3 is an unapologetic throwback to the gory days of the horde shooter
Civilization 7 is officially here, and with it comes (at least for now) a “Mixed” review status on Steam and a lot of complaints about the 4X strategy’s UI. While we’re keeping up with all the latest Civ 7 news and developments, the community has been busy too: the first Civ 7 mods have arrived on the same day as the game’s global launch.
This is the rare occasion where I’m not directing you to Nexus Mods: the early mods that have appeared for Civ 7 are over at the civfanatics.com forums. There aren’t a ton of them yet, but there are definitely a few to point out.
Right out of the gate, there are a couple of mods that address one of the biggest complaints about Civ 7: the UI. Civ 7’s interface is taking a serious pounding: I’ve seen Steam reviewers calling it “buggy,” “inconsistent,” “junk,” “a total disaster,” and most damningly, “somehow worse than Civ 6.”
Firaxis has already issued a patch to address a few of the complaints about the UI and I suspect there will be more coming, but in the meantime you might check out Sukritact’s Simple UI Adjustments. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it’s got nothing but 5-star ratings in the forums. Here’s a quick rundown on its features:
Diplomacy with other Civs and IPs can now be initiated by clicking on the city banner (provided you have met them).
Plot Yield icons are smaller on tiles that are not improved/worked
Tooltips are enhanced.
The default improvement is now shown on unimproved tiles.
All Constructibles now display their icon.
Wonders receive a large fancy icon with description.
Buildings now note if they are damaged or in-progress or ageless.
Another mod is also focused on improving the UI: TCS Improved Plot Tooltop adds tons more info so it’s easier to find what you need, including leader relationship status, settlement ownership, flags for obsolete or unique buildings, district types, and other useful tidbits you can spy at a glance.
If you’re an eager beaver and are interested in instant gratification, check out the Civ 7 Unlock All Civs mod. With it, you no longer have to meet the requirements to access civilizations when you reach the Exploration and Modern Ages, they’re all immediately available to you.
Work is already underway on bringing you bigger maps, with a beta of Larger Map, TSL, Continents++ available to download. It unlocks “large” and “huge” map sizes and adds a “massive” (128×80) map. The mod also lists experimental (not playable) “giant” maps (180×94) and “ludicrous” maps (230×116) to test out.
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That’s not bad for a game that only just came out, and you can find more mods at the Civ Fanatic forums. Make sure you carefully read the installation instructions on each mod’s page before downloading.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1739329487_There-are-already-Civilization-7-mods-that-improve-the-UI.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-12 00:55:422025-02-12 00:55:42There are already Civilization 7 mods that improve the UI, unlock all civs, and add ‘ludicrous’-sized maps
There’s something about Elder Scrolls games. For years, one of the most popular ways for newbies to get into Morrowind was a mod collection called the Morrowind Sound and Graphics Overhaul (MGSO), which bundled up a bunch of gameplay and graphics mods in an easy installer to give the game a ‘modern’ makeover. Problem was it wasn’t great, to the point that even its original creator eventually came out and asked people not to use it.
So it goes with Morrowind’s predecessor—The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall. Daggerfall is a weird, wide, rambling thing, and absolutely still worth playing in 2025, especially since it’s now free. But if you were to just Google an easy way to play it, chances are you’ll stumble across the 2022 Daggerfall GOG Cut, a version of Daggerfall with the GOG stamp of approval, bundled up with a bunch of mods to make it feel a bit more approachable in the modern era.
Problem is, just like MGSO, it’s not great. In most ways, it’s inferior to just downloading the genuinely excellent Daggerfall Unity by itself and running the game straight from there. The GOG Cut is outdated, the mods it includes aren’t their most recent versions, and some of them don’t quite mesh. It’s been the bête noire of the Daggerfall community for a while now, and so GOG has come out and announced it’s delisting the whole thing tomorrow, February 12, at 2 pm GMT.
In a post on the GOG forums yesterday, company spokesperson king_kunat told players that GOG was delisting the Daggerfall GOG Cut because “at this time, the pack is outdated and no longer fulfills its purpose of providing a hassle-free modded experience to the game.”
Anyone who already has the Daggerfall GOG Cut in their library—and anyone who adds it before the deadline on February 12—will get to keep it, but otherwise? That’s the end of the road, buddy. Honestly, it’s for the best. The community’s complaints about the package weren’t wrong. What’s more, king_kunat says GOG is “working on a solution that will allow us to publish and maintain such projects better in the future, so stay tuned!”
Which I find very intriguing indeed. As someone who still regularly revisits old games—replays of Deus Ex, Bloodlines, KOTOR, the original System Shocks, and plenty more besides—I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m fed up with the faff of finding out which community patch is now the de facto best and which quality of life mods are considered total necessities every time I go back to a classic. I could just play the OGs in their original, fuzzy, 4:3 resolutions and with their original charming crashes, sure, but also I don’t hate myself (in that precise way).
So if GOG is trying to figure out a way to make that process a bit less of a pain, sign me right up. For a long time I’ve longed for a world where Steam Workshop got magically switched on for all my favourite classics, so that keeping them in a ready-to-go state was as simple as subscribing to a few mods and never thinking about it again. That’s not happened, but hey, maybe GOG has an alternative up its sleeve? I live in hope.
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But the start of that journey is the end of the GOG cut of Daggerfall. If you want to grab it for posterity’s sake, you should make sure you grab it before it gets yoinked off the store tomorrow.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1739293436_GOGs-bespoke-cut-of-The-Elder-Scrolls-2-Daggerfall-gets.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-11 16:52:312025-02-11 16:52:31GOG’s bespoke cut of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall gets delisted tomorrow, so you’ve got a day to grab it for free as the store works out how ‘to publish and maintain such projects better’ in future
We’ve got a hint for today’s Wordle right here if you need a little help turning your game around, or would just like to make sure you get off to the best possible start. Make sure you pair that boost with our tips, so you can make the most out of every letter you find along the way. Need more? That’s why the February 11 (1333) answer is only a click away.
By the time I’d had my second go I had four green letters lighting up my screen. I was a bit baffled, really, as I’d settled in assuming I was in for a long fight. Not to worry though, because this is usually the part where Wordle gets mean and I spend the next ten minutes fighting for my life against the entire English alphabet. Or uncovering Tuesday’s answer really easily on my very next go. I’m still not entirely sure how that happened.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Tuesday, February 11
The same winning word can mean the number of points recorded in a competitive game, as well as written musical notation.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
No, there is not a double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
Looking to extend your Wordle winning streak? Perhaps you’ve just started playing the popular daily puzzle game and are looking for some pointers. Whatever the reason you’re here, these quick tips can help push you in the right direction:
Start with a word that has a mix of common vowels and consonants.
The answer might repeat the same letter.
Try not to use guesses that include letters you’ve already eliminated.
There’s no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don’t need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Help is here. The answer to the February 11 (1333) Wordle is SCORE.
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Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Wordle solutions that have already been used can help eliminate answers for today’s Wordle or give you inspiration for guesses to help uncover more of those greens. They can also give you some inspired ideas for starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
February 10: GOODY
February 9: BONUS
February 8: STEEP
February 7: SWATH
February 6: PUPIL
February 5: PEDAL
February 4: TOOTH
February 3: REVUE
February 2: CHORE
February 1: RIVET
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it’s up to you to work out which five-letter word is hiding among them to win the popular daily puzzle.
It’s usually a good plan to start with a strong word like ALERT—or any other word with a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels—and you should be off to a flying start, with a little luck anyway. You should also avoid starting words with repeating letters, so you don’t waste the chance to confirm or eliminate an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
Your second guess should compliment the first, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you might have missed on the first row—just don’t forget to leave out any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the correct word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words and don’t forget letters can repeat too (eg: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
First reported by Ars Technica, the “big cheese” of online search appears to have really curdled things, and in the heart of America’s dairyland, no less. An ad for Google’s Gemini AI that played in Wisconsin during the Super Bowl was first shown online last week with a “hallucination”—that is to say, a bald-faced lie—visible during a demonstration of the “writing aid.” The ad was quietly edited to remove the hallucination before it went live during the big game.
Apparently everybody just soft-launches their Super Bowl ads on YouTube a week in advance now, and that goes for Google’s gaggle of 50 spots showcasing how Gemini could help small business owners, with a unique 30-second showcase for each state of the Union. In Wisconsin, the ad focused on a cheesemonger writing online store copy for his assorted victuals.
Wisconsin – Wisconsin Cheese Mart: Gemini in Google Docs – YouTube
The weirdness came partway through, when the ad actually showed Google Gemini in action. It told the cheese vendor that Gouda accounts for “50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption.” Now, Gouda’s hardly a hardcore real head pick like Roquefort or BellaVitano, but there’s also no way it’s pulling in cheddar or mozzarella numbers. Travel blogger Nate Hake and Google-focused Twitter account Goog Enough documented the erroneous initial version of the ad, but Google responded by quietly swapping in a more accurate Gemini-suggested blurb in all live versions of the ad, including the one that aired during the Super Bowl.
Adding another wrinkle to the story, the erroneous statistic can seemingly be sourced to the Gouda page on cheese.com, an SEO-focused website with a love for cheese and a loose cannon, devil may care approach to the facts. Google Gemini will supposedly provide links to the sources it pulls from, much like AI Overview in search, and you could charitably argue that this feature just wasn’t on display during the ad.
But that raises other concerns: Is the ad then just pure “bullshot” like all those pre-rendered E3 game trailers of yore or all of Elon Musk’s silly robots? No matter how much Gemini cites sources, isn’t there something ethically questionable about an automated process presenting itself as a neutral arbiter of the internet, offering potentially rotten information as authoritative statements of fact? Google states Gemini is a “creative writing aid, not intended to be factual,” and notes that suggestions from Help Me Write in Chrome “can be inaccurate or offensive since it’s still in an experimental status.”
But that truly begs the question of who would want writing help from a program that spits out “inaccurate or offensive” information. There is also something darkly humorous to me about Google having to eat some crow due to the output of an SEO slop farm whose existence was incentivized by the company in the first place. Billions of dollars and untold amounts of compute power are being thrown at AI models, but they don’t seem to be making much progress on the “hallucination” problem.
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https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1739221322_Googles-AI-made-up-a-fake-cheese-fact-that-wound.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-10 20:52:552025-02-10 20:52:55Google’s AI made up a fake cheese fact that wound up in an ad for Google’s AI, perfectly highlighting why relying on AI is a bad idea
Last year we had a murder mystery expansion for Magic: The Gathering, followed by a Wild West one. As the cynics put it, they were “Magic in detective hats” and “Magic in cowboy hats”. Now, with the Aetherdrift set basically being themed around Speed Racer and Twisted Metal, the cynics say this is “Magic in a racing helmet,” when what the people really want (for “the people” read “cranky Redditbros”) is more trad fantasy.
This rings false to me. For starters, we just had Foundations, a set that went back to the game’s original inspirations and in some cases the original cards, a set with plenty of dragons and angels and swords being turned into ploughshares. If it’s trad fantasy you’re after, you’ll eat well at the Foundations table. Aetherdrift is for those who crave variety, who don’t want to eat the same high fantasy meal every night of the week.
And, as someone who only got seriously into collecting Magic rather than just playing the digital versions with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty—a fully cyberpunk set with mechs and cards like Born to Drive—the idea of magical Carmageddon doesn’t seem too far out there. Magic’s multiverse clearly isn’t full of worlds that conveniently stopped advancing at the medieval period (New Capenna is blatantly the 1920s with demons), so bring on the Wacky Wheels, I say, and the wackier the better.
I went to a prerelease event at one of my local gaming stores, Plenty of Games in Melbourne, to take Aetherdrift for a test drive. The good thing about these prerelease events is how casual they are. While the hosts do call time so you can end your first match and play someone else, my table cheerfully ignored that and instead played a four-player game that lasted the entire evening, which felt more on-theme for a race than a series of one-on-one duels would.
Playing sealed meant opening a selection of boosters and building decks from what was available. I was tempted to build a black deck around Pactdoll Terror, a toy car piloted by a killer doll, which gives you a point of life and takes one from all your opponents when you play an artifact. There are plenty of artifact cards in Aetherdrift, mostly vehicles, but instead I decided to build a deck to test out the new speed mechanic.
When you play a card with “Start your engines!” on it you gain a speed of one, and it increases one point per turn if you damage an opponent. At max speed, which is four, various card-dependent effects trigger. My deck’s Walking Sarcophagus went from a 2/1 to a 3/3 for instance, and my Aether Syphon forced everyone else to mill two cards whenever I drew one. One of the other players went for a similar tactic, Aether Syphon and all, but because I hit max speed before them I was confident I’d mill everyone else to death first.
(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast/Devin Elle Kurtz)
I hadn’t counted on the player sat across from me having Push the Limit, a card that returns all your vehicles and mounts from the discard pile to the table, and lets them attack without crew that turn. We’d been filling his discard pile for several turns, helpfully loading bullets into a gun he then turned around and fired at the rest of us. The cards you get back with Push the Limit have to be discarded again at the end of the turn, but that one big swing wiped out one player and reduced the rest of us to our last few life points.
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It didn’t win him the game, though. The player sitting in the far corner had not long before played Pactdoll Terror, and then she efficiently drained everyone else’s final life points by following it with a handful of artifacts in a row. I could only applaud. It was a classic tortoise-and-hare situation, with the least assuming racer crossing the finish line while everyone else had their engines betray them on the home stretch. A perfect marriage of theme and mechanics.
(Aetherdrift has a surprisingly in-depth connection to the lore as well, with narrative designer Miguel Lopez really going to town on the worldbuilding side of things.)
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1739185250_Magic-The-Gatherings-interplanar-Wacky-Wheels-set-is-good-actually.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-10 04:20:242025-02-10 04:20:24Magic: The Gathering’s interplanar Wacky Wheels set is good actually
It’s a shame that Mimimi Games, the studio behind the Shadow Tactics games, closed down in 2023. But other studios have picked up the real-time stealth tactics slack, resulting in games like Sumerian Six, and the upcoming prequel to the Commandos series.
Commandos: Origins is being developed by Claymore Game Studios and published by Kalypso. It’ll tell the story of how the dirty half-dozen—the green beret, the sapper, the sniper, the driver, the marine, and the spy—came together in the early days of World War II, over the course of more than 10 missions.
Claymore’s studio director, Jürgen Reusswig, said that, “After more than four years of setting up a new studio, design and development and the invaluable community feedback from various playtests, operation ‘Release’ is a go for Commandos: Origins. We are proud and excited that players will now be able to experience the origins story of the elite unit which started this legendary franchise.”
As well as singleplayer it’ll have two-player co-op, which can be played either splitscreen local or online. Commandos: Origins is scheduled for release on April 9 via Steam, where you can currently download a demo.
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https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1739149196_Stealth-tactics-game-Commandos-Origins-will-be-out-in-April.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-09 23:18:352025-02-09 23:18:35Stealth tactics game Commandos: Origins will be out in April
Abiotic Factor’s Dark Energy update is so vast and comprehensive it opened a rift right into The PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted, where developer Deep Field Games revealed the new faction, new gizmos, and enormous new area coming to the Half-Life inspired survival game. Indeed, it was large enough that the studio delayed the update out of 2024, and only now has Dark Energy formally arrived into the GATE Cascade Research Facility.
In a lengthy Steam update, Deep Field Games further detailed the many strange corners of the Dark Energy update. For starters, it adds a huge new area called ‘Power Services’, which includes another area known as The Reactors. Deep Field Games refuses to divulge much information about the biome, as it likes to “Let the Facility speak for itself”, but I can tell you it’s filled with bioluminescent plant life, a fact I cleverly deduced from some tiny clues in the image below:
(Image credit: Deep Field Games)
Sherlock Holmes, eat your heart out.
Perhaps the most significant addition Dark Energy makes, however, is a whole new faction called The Gatekeepers. This strange group can be found mainly in the Reactors. Again, Deep Field is cryptic about their motivations, but they dress an awful lot like Warhammer 40,000 marines and look about as friendly, so I’d suggest you approach with caution.
Alongside expanding the world and story of Abiotic Factor, Dark Energy also makes a few interesting mechanical contributions. Players can now build and deploy teleporter pads. These can be linked together to instantly traverse the facility (no doubt with zero adverse effects). If you prefer your transportation less…disintegratory, you could instead opt to try Abiotic Factor’s new hardlight technology. This can be used to construct bridges across chasms, while also coming in handy as ad-hoc cover and protection.
Those are the major features Dark Energy adds, but they’re accompanied by a much longer list of smaller additions. These include *inhales* a new pet, an expansion to the Flathill area, new fishing zones, new armour, a fancy retractable harpoon spear, military grade explosives, improved lasers, a short-range jetpack, a construction gauntlet, a grenade that seems to generate black holes, and a dimension in a backpack. Phew. Presumably, Deep Field added that last one so you can carry all the other gizmos Dark Energy stuffs into the game.
The release seems to have gone smoothly. Deep Field has issued multiple hotfixes in quick succession since the expansion release, which caught my eye as this can be indicative of an update not quite going to plan. But that doesn’t appear to be the case here. Certainly, it hasn’t adversely affected Abiotic Factor’s ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ Steam rating, with 96% of gamer thumbs still pointing toward the sky.
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There’s a launch trailer for the update that you can watch above. Dark Energy is supposedly the final major update Abiotic Factor will receive before hitting 1.0, due to happen later this year. Various members of the PCG team have praised its inventive take on survivalism over the past couple of years, and I personally can’t wait to get my lead-lined mitts on it when it finally teleports out of early access.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1739113139_Abiotic-Factors-massive-Dark-Energy-update-which-adds-teleporters-pocket.png6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-02-09 14:00:002025-02-09 14:00:00Abiotic Factor’s massive Dark Energy update, which adds teleporters, pocket dimensions and black hole grenades to the Half-Life inspired survival sim, is out now
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