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The Pier Arcade is a collection of physics-based and digital arcade games built from scratch and made to mimic the games you’d play in an arcade or pier.

The Pier Arcade can be wishlisted on Steam now: The Pier Arcade on Steam (steampowered.com)

The Pier Arcade will offer 12 arcade machines at launch, based on real-world classics, to test your skills and reactions. With its mixture of physics-based skill games and digital arcade games, The Pier Arcade is sure to keep you entertained for hours.

Outside of playing the arcade games, you’ll also be able to wander the pier performing chores – like picking up litter, refilling vending machines, and repairing faults – to earn money, then spend that money in the arcade. Earn tickets on the arcade games to purchase unique items that can aid you in your chores, or simple to show off your perseverance and arcade playing skills.

The Pier Arcade has a free demo live now as part of the Steam Fest event with the full version releasing on Steam in November.

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Through accessible turn-based competitive gameplay, ongoing content releases, and deep customization, Moonbreaker will offer a variety of gameplay experiences, especially for fans of tabletop and collectible card games. Players will be able to lead their Rosters – which are made up of Captains, Crew and Assists – in fast-paced, turn-based encounters with a variety of gameplay possibilities. With more than 50 Units (Captains, Crew, and Assists) available at Early Access launch, the Roster combinations are endless.

Every aspect of Moonbreaker is designed to capture the feel of a physical miniatures game without the real-world limitations. With detailed, intuitive and constantly evolving painting tools, players can take their Unit customization to the next level. Custom palettes, beautiful finishes, customizable roster banners and professional digital painting tools create the perfect space for player expression. Players can paint their Units using traditional painting techniques (but with an undo button!) or marvel at beautiful paint jobs created by professional miniatures painters.

“Moonbreaker was born out of a natural passion for tabletop gaming many of us share at Unknown Worlds,”

said Charlie Cleveland, Co-Founder and Game Director at Unknown Worlds.

“Our aim with the game is to reduce the traditional barriers associated with tabletop gaming and miniatures while retaining the hobbyist appeal that makes that genre so special. After several years in development, we’re thrilled to officially reveal Moonbreaker and look forward to working with the community to evolve the game while it’s in Early Access.”

“With Moonbreaker, we are offering a wholly unique gaming experience that combines the depth of traditional tabletop gaming with the convenience of modern video game technology,”

said Mike Silbowitz, Head of Americas Business Division at KRAFTON, Inc.

“Our partners at Unknown Worlds have a strong history of taking bold creative swings based on their success with the Subnautica and Natural Selection series, and we expect Moonbreaker to continue this tradition. The game’s launch into Early Access is just the beginning as we are thrilled to support it through ongoing seasons and content updates.”

Moonbreaker is set in an original sci-fi world crafted by renowned author Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn series, Stormlight Archive, Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time). Players will battle in various locations across the Reaches – a tiny solar system with moons held in orbit by a scarce resource called Cinder. Players will also be able to learn more about the world of Moonbreaker and its characters through upcoming audio dramas that will release closer to its Early Access launch.

Celebrate the announcement of Moonbreaker with exclusive access to a commemorative ‘Gloomside’ Crankbait Paint Job via the Moonbreaker Premiere Program. Those who register their KRAFTON IDs by September will be guaranteed access to the exclusive paint job when the game launches for PC and Mac via Steam Early Access on Sept. 29.

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Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun will offer a single-player, good old-fashioned sprite-based, hardcore experience in the boots of the ultimate killing machine: a Space Marine. You can check out the reveal trailer below:

Load up your Boltgun and plunge into battle headfirst! Experience a perfect blend of Warhammer 40,000, classic, frenetic FPS gameplay and the stylish visuals of your favourite 90’s retro shooters. Play a battle-hardened Space Marine on a perilous mission across the galaxy, as they battle against the Chaos Space Marines and daemons of Chaos.

In glorious boomer shooter style, unleash your devastating Space Marine arsenal as you blast through an explosion of sprites, pixels and blood. Run, jump and charge across huge levels to shoot, shred and slice the worst heretics across the galaxy!

“We are delighted to be working on this fast-paced indie FPS alongside the talented Auroch Digital studio, and our long standing partner Games Workshop,” announces Dessil Basmadjian, Chief Creative Officer at Focus Entertainment. “We are excited by Boltgun’s skilful combination of iconic 90s style, the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and thrilling gameplay that is sure to delight all kinds of players.”

“Auroch Digital is proud to be working with Games Workshop again and Focus Entertainment on Boltgun. As a team of massive Warhammer 40,000 fans, this game has been brewing since 2018 and we’re so excited we can FINALLY shout about it from the rooftops! We can’t wait for players to get their hands on it and to see their reactions” says Nina Adams, Operations Director at Auroch Digital.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is being developed by Auroch Digital and published by Focus Entertainment with a planned release date of 2023 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC. It can be wishlisted on Steam here: Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun on Steam (steampowered.com)

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Elite allows you to explore the Milky Way like never before, experiencing a scientifically accurate representation of the galaxy made tangible through clever procedural systems for handling the four billion star systems. It’s a remarkably vast game that focuses on three core experiences: ship combat, trade, and exploration, and each of these experiences are deep and rewarding, keeping you busy for countless hours. Elite Dangerous: Odyssey means to enhance the Elite package with on-foot exploration of planets and instillations with first-person combat and exploration.

Initially this is a wonderfully refreshing change, allowing you to explore from a different perspective and engage in different missions based around the core concepts. You might pick up a mission to steal something, requiring you to acquire a temporary identity so to move freely around an installation. Get caught, however, and it becomes a frantic rush to escape, first-person combat kicking in and the excitement building to a triumphant getaway in your ship, or (more commonly) you being killed or you ship being destroyed.

It’s a great potential enhancement to the experience that came before, all from a new perspective, and making the game feel more alive, and more of a complete sim. Unfortunately, there’s a whole heap of problems with the new content that threatens to utterly ruin your enjoyment.

The aforementioned scenario ending in your ship being destroyed is a frequent problem. The problem isn’t that your ship can be destroyed but that your ship can be destroyed so easily by ground forces. It hurts the illusion of the sim. More egregiously, mission rewards are poor, giving you a poultry amount of credits for highly dangerous missions. Moreover, missions are also a repetitive grinds, especially the alien biology sample collecting, which has you gather samples from organisms across a planet’s surface but with so many organisms providing poor sample data this mission takes forever.

Then there are the bugs. Collision detection is spotty, leading to enemies and players bouncing around on a planet surface. Some mission’s completion doesn’t trigger correctly, forcing you to abandon a mission in progress. Other times progress wasn’t saved correctly or server failures kicked you out of the game. Performance was also an issue, especially when multiple players are in the same area. There’s also an issue with repetitive locations, specifically interiors. You’ll travel hundreds of light years only to end up in a room that looks identical to the room you left, even down to the NPCs.

Frontier have made a public apology for the expansion’s state at release, and have shared their intention to resolve the issues and further enhance what’s on offer, and based on the rest of the Elite experience I’m inclined to believe that everything will be alright in the end. Right now what’s on offer is a teaser of what could be with ‘space=legs’ and all the experiences this opens up. The bugs need squashing, more variety is longed for, and rewards could be made more generous, and with a little luck we’ll see these in the near future. Until then, unless you’re absolutely desperate to experience ‘space-legs’, it might be worth holding off on the Odyssey upgrade.

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In Click and Collect, you’ve been hired as a Customer Service Assistant to serve customers as they enter your store, handing them boxed items from the conveyer belt before they fall off and break, stuffed toys from shelving, and jewellery from a display counter.

You’ll need to stay alert and keep your wits about you to provide customers with the correct order while avoiding hazards such as fires, puddles, thieves, electrical malfunctions and your manager, as well as overcoming surprise special challenges that really push your management skills and reactions. All in an attempt to score three stars in each level.

Serve enough customers and you’ll be rewarded with in-game currency to buy Assists to aid you with the hazards, allowing you the opportunity to retry levels and earn the maximum three stars for each, unlocking more challenging levels.

Once you’ve conquered the sixteen standard levels, four Endless levels unlock to test your reactions and management skills further.

Can you keep your calm and manage customer orders effectively enough to earn all three stars on each level?

Click and Collect will be available for Android via Google Play and PC via Itch.io from Thursday February 18 2021.

You can follow Peacock Pie Productions on Twitter to learn more: https://twitter.com/PeacockPieProd

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At this stage the VR support is for PSVR only, but surely its only a matter of time before it comes to other headsets.

I won’t give any spoilers away, but I am really interested to see how the cliff-hanger plot twist at the end of the main campaign of Hitman 2 is resolved. Unfortunately, the multiplayer “ghost” mode has been removed from this game entirely, so this time around there is no competitive player vs player action to be had.

Hitman 3 is the best place to play every game in the World of Assassination trilogy. All locations from the previous two titles can be imported and played within Hitman 3 at no additional cost for existing owners – plus progression from Hitman 2 is directly carried over at launch.

Hitman 3 is the third, and last in the World of Assassination trilogy and is released on January 20th 2021 for Xbox, Playstation and PC. It features six new locations such as Dubai, Dartmoor, Berlin, and Chongqing.

For more information, please visit the official website.

You can read my review of Hitman 2 right here!

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Available in the in-game item shop now, includes heroes Black Panther and Captain Marvel, as well as villain-for-hire Taskmaster.

The Marvel Royalty and Warriors Pack includes:

BLACK PANTHER

• Black Panther Outfit With Kinetically Charged Style
• Vibranium Daggers Dual Pickaxe
• Wakandan Skyrider Glider
• King Cowl’s Back Bling With Kinetically Charged Variant Style

CAPTAIN MARVEL

• Captain Marvel Outfit With Empowered Variant Style
• Alpha Staff Pickaxe
• Power of Mar-Vell Glider
• Kree Backplate Back Bling With Empowered Style

TASKMASTER

• Taskmaster Outfit
• Mimic Shield Back Bling
• Copycat’s Sword Pickaxe

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The video game market is worth around $159bn, according to Games Industry Biz, making it lucrative and expansive. Some titles are console hits, with huge budgets and worldwide reach, whilst others drop on mobile devices and tablets looking to fulfil a different niche. The absolute best tend to have one thing in common these days – offering the chance to play online.

That is especially the case with football games, which have always been better with more than a single player. Kick Off 2, Sensible Soccer, Pro Evo – they all became big hits on standalone consoles for their competitive edge and how they pit friends against each other in frantic and exciting battles. As technology has advanced, players can now compete with anyone around the world, and not just in actual match action. We have selected four different genres of the beautiful game currently delighting football fans online.

Simulation

The actual game simulation was always the biggest draw, right back to 8-bit machines, and the market is now minimal, but no less competitive. There are two big-hitters for gamers to choose from, the behemoth that is the FIFA franchise, and the pretender to the crown, eFootball PES 2020. The latter tends to be preferred by the purists, but FIFA remains the top title due to the depth of the licenses and their lucrative Ultimate Team mode, which generates $1.49bn in revenue for EA Sports.

Management

Football fans are not just after the intense match action. Some like the other side of the game, the statistics, the players and tactics. They are the supporters who prefer to understand how a team is constructed and to test themselves against other masters of the craft. The best title for fans who prefer numbers and percentages in Football Manager 21, which was recently released on PC. Football Manager dates back to the early eighties when Kevin Toms programmed a version for the ZX 80, amongst other machines, but the current incarnation is heavily linked to developer Domark’s Championship Manager series from the early nineties.

Slots

Football can be represented in games that do not relate to the real world but instead draw from the general themes to give a fan an alternative experience. This is particularly evident in the online slot world, where games can often be varied to attract a range of different players depending on their real-life interests. This is the case with online provider TuxSlots, who have two titles in the form of Football Champions Cup and Football Star, which both use typical images from the game without drawing directly from its rules, gameplay or wider world. These titles do not offer the gamer the chance to take part in match action, but instead, take their interest and move it into a different direction. For a fan with football on the brain, they can be a welcome distraction from the game itself, without straying too far from their core interests.

Chairman

Which football fan dreams of stepping up to be a club chairman? Very few probably, but for those that do, the online gaming world has delivered in abundance. Owning a football club might be out of reach of the average man or woman, but with releases such as Football Tycoon, you can do just that. The original dropped way back in 2009 but has since been followed by mobile games such as Football Chairman which puts you in control of commercial decisions and financial responsibilities.

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Features

The first thing you will notice is the headband, rather than extending the length of the plastic headband like most headset the ELO 7.1 USB has a self-adjusting metal headband that expands depending on the size of your head, it also has rotating earcup hinges for added flexibility. The earcups have a soft memory foam cushioning that feels great and accommodates gamers who wear glasses too.

There are two precision-tuned 50mm neodymium drivers in each ear cup and a removable unidirectional microphone for when you are playing solo.. The left earcup has the power button, volume control and a dial for variable mic monitoring. On the outside of the earcups you’ll find an RGB ROCCAT logo that syncs up with the Swarm software. Personally the RGB seems a bit pointless to me but it looks good while you are streaming.

The headset looks really smart, it’s light and really comfortable too so it will be great for longer gaming sessions.

Setup

Setup is simple, plug the headset into your PC, update the ROCCAT Swarm software and ELO 7.1 USB and you are good to go.

While diving in to the settings you’ll find an impressive array of customisable options including the ability to turn the 7.1 surround sound on and off, managing your mic monitoring and of course the colour that your ROCCAT logo is on the side of your head.

Sound/Microphone Performance

I test a range of PC games from Left 4 Dead 2 to Apex legends, with 7.1 audio turned on I was impressed at how well the headset performed – I was on edge during Left 4 Dead two as you could pick up all the freakish noises around you while in Apex Legends I found it much easier to work out where opponents were when they were out of sight, only to be let down by my own lack of ability! I also tested listening to a range of music and watched a movie and again was impressed with how the headset handled the sound.

When it comes to microphones I’ve tested enough headsets to know when a microphone is good or bad. For me it’s about how clear I am to my friends during gameplay. I’m often criticised when I use my Astro A40 TR edition because it’s often too quiet – I recently picked up the Hyper Quadcast which sounds amazing. However I wasn’t expecting the ELO 7.1 USB to get the reaction from my gaming pals that it did. The first time I used them to party up I was told I was the clearest I’ve even been. This is a huge compliment to this headset. I was also really impressed with the mic monitoring, it can be finely tuned through Swarm to suit your needs.

I’ve often had issues with Swarm, especially with my Vulcan keyboard, it just seems to want to do as it feels when it comes to the colours it decides to display, but so far I haven’t had any issues with the headset.

I’ve only really had one issue (and it’s probably just a personal thing rather than with the headset so far, the usb cable comes out from the left earcup, but my PC is on my right hand side, which means the lead goes across me and just always feels like it’s in the way, it would have great to able to plug the lead into any side of the headset.

Coming in at £59.99 this is a great PC headset that look stylish, is really comfortable and is suitable for all your gaming needs, the fantastic microphone and software support make this one of the best USB headset I’ve used.

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