New Preserved Contaminants - March 22, 2020
New Preserved Contaminants are now available for purchase from MOTHER in the Chamber of Heart. This is live for NA players, EU players will get access to them on Saturday at 9:00 PM CET.

Available in this Rotation

• Masterful Rank 1 - 3000 Echoes
• Void Ritual Rank 1 - 4125 Echoes
• Deadly Momentum Rank 2 - 5000 Echoes
• Siphoner Rank 2 - 6300 Echoes
• Ineffable Truth Rank 2 - 6750 Echoes
• Versatile Rank 3 - 5000 Echoes
• Avoidant Rank 1 - 3300 Echoes

Choosing Your Corruption

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It’s a good time to focus on working together, and there are some tremendous board games that focus on just that experience. Cooperative tabletop gaming has been on the rise for years; a wealth of great options are waiting to be discovered.

Highlighted here you’ll find seven very different takes on the cooperative gaming experience. Any one of them could be a good fit for you and your group. Most folks are spending a lot of time at home these days, and these selections should be ideal fits for a family, friends, roommates, or any other group that might be in isolation together.

Editor's Note: An abridged version of this article first appeared in Game Informer magazine #324.

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Atlantis Rising (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Elf Creek Games

The gods are angry! Atlantis has grown too powerful with its mix of mysticism and technology, and the island is now sinking beneath the waves. As leaders of this grand civilization, you must build a cosmic gate through which the population can escape, or face defeat as the island is lost to the ocean amid the endless assaults by vengeful deities. Employing a fascinating mix of worker placement, push-your-luck, and dice-rolling mechanics, it’s a game of tension and thoughtful planning, filled with evocative art and a captivating setting, built for one to seven players to enjoy as a group.

As each turn passes, the most valuable spaces to collect new resources fall into the sea, demanding hard choices about where you go to gather the essential pieces needed to craft the gate. As a bonus, Atlantis Rising also supports a broad range of player counts, from solitary play all the way up to seven simultaneous teammates. If you’re looking for a cooperative game unlike anything you’ve played before, it’s well worth trying to save this doomed civilization.

Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons
Publisher: Ravensburger

DC’s most well-known superheroine finally has an excellent game to call her own. In this brand-new cooperative adventure for two to five players, Wonder Woman teams up with her fellow Amazons to take on the likes of Ares and Cheetah. The game plays out on the mythical island of Themyscira, and demands that all players capitalize on their unique abilities as they collect ancient and powerful relics like the Lasso of Truth. Challenge of the Amazons features an extremely clever design twist: Players can strategize together at the start of a round, but then additional card options come into play once the fight begins, representing each character’s combat instincts, sometimes allowing an individual player to go rogue from the plan to enact a brilliant strategy of their own. The Wonder Woman board game features gorgeous character art and components, including some especially striking bronze-colored miniatures that lend the whole affair the appropriate mythological flair.

Last Bastion
Publisher: Repos Production

Based on the mechanics of the classic cooperative board game, Ghost Stories, Last Bastion casts you and your friends as mighty fantasy heroes ensconced in an ancient fortress while hordes of undead monsters and demons assault the walls. Playable in about an hour, Last Bastion is one of those rare games that offers an accessible learning curve, but is also carefully balanced to be challenging to win. Sturdy components and attractive miniatures help bring the game to life, even as the smartly paced turns and limited action choices demand nearly constant difficult decisions for every player at the table. Win or lose, the constant sense of encroaching danger perfectly captures the vibe of the desperate final stand against the odds. Anywhere from one to four players can enjoy an attempt to hold down the fort.

V-Commandos
Publisher: Triton Noir

Do you have a group of military history buffs? Then V-Commandos might be the right fit. This engaging and tense strategic game for up to four players casts the players as World War II commandos from a variety of allied nations, sent out to accomplish specialized objectives across the theater of war. Your commandos are always outnumbered, and must move stealthily but quickly to accomplish their tasks, and then get out alive. Tons of randomly dropped items (like German uniforms for disguise, or additional weapons) lend variety to the experience. It’s great fun to see the game transform from a careful stealth approach to a wild action shootout as enemy soldiers swarm the area.

V-Commandos has a straightforward approach to action and turns, so the focus can remain on the unique capabilities of your different soldiers, as well as forming a coherent strategy for tackling each objective. The modular tile-based board allows for a tremendous array of potential scenarios, and the game includes several dozen terrains to tackle in quickplay format; once you know the game, you can get through a terrain’s encounters in about 30 minutes. For more ambitious play sessions, you can tackle a whole operation of linked terrains. Fast-playing, tactical, and rooted in the flavor of WWII action movies, V-Commandos is well worth an engagement.

Arkham Horror (3rd Edition)
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games

Arkham Horror holds an important place in the history and popularization of cooperative gaming. Not only did the earlier editions help fuel the rise of cooperative play, but the game (and the Call of Cthulhu RPG that inspired it) also deserves a lot of credit for the growing popularity of the Cthulhu mythos in the tabletop hobby. The newer third edition of the game is a worthy follow-up, maintaining the focus on existential horror, narrative choices and progression, and a constant sense that defeat is just around the corner. But the revision also features streamlined play with faster overall game sessions, a modular board that makes for more varied setups, and an approach to scenarios that leads to more dramatic shifts over the course of the session.

Like in previous versions, players take on the role of investigators who have come together to halt the rise of some ancient and inscrutable evil in the small New England town of Arkham. Up To six players move between locations, confronting encounters and uncovering clues, even as they face off in battle against cultists and horrific monsters. For groups that relish the tension of always being under the blade of defeat, and the sense that their characters are just barely making it out alive, Arkham Horror delivers exciting defeats, and every once in a while, a slim and satisfying win.  

Just One
Publisher: Repos Productions

If simple party games are your thing, but you’d like a cooperative option in the mix, then go ahead and snag a copy of Just One as soon as possible. This incredibly simple but deeply fun word game challenges players to work together to guess a series of mystery words. One player draws a card  (without looking at it) that includes the mystery word, and the other players must write down a clue that will help that player guess what the word is. The twist is that any repeated clues are disqualified – so you must think carefully about how to help out. Try to get as many successful mystery word guesses in a series of 13 cards, and see how you do!

Just One is one of those games you can pull out and start playing, almost without introducing the rules at all. And, unlike many party games, it’s non-competitive, which can be very appealing to certain player groups. You’ll need three to seven players to make it work.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
Publisher: Z-Man Games

A lengthy catalog of games awaits players who are eager to explore the Pandemic game series. While a playthrough of one of these games might hit a little too close to home given the current health crisis, other players will find that Pandemic’s themes of cooperation to overcome a rash of worldwide diseases to be an empowering experience amid the present situation.

While Z-Man has produced a number of games within the series, Pandemic Legacy deserves special recognition for its depth and long-term play possibilities. Players work together as doctors and scientists to limit outbreaks and find cures, traveling around the world to trouble-spot cities even as the pandemic continues to spread. Unlike other games in the series, Pandemic Legacy has a linked story and events that play out over the course of multiple play sessions. The outcomes of one session carry over to the next, and create an emergent story that is unique to your group’s playthrough. It’s great fun, challenging, and an ideal option for player groups who want something to return to for multiple game nights in sequence. If you really love it, Season 2 is also available, continuing the story of humanity’s struggles with disease, but set several decades later.

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These days, there’s no shortage of great cooperative games to try out, and I’ve only highlighted a few of my recent favorites here. Feel free to recommend your favorite cooperative tabletop games in the comments below, or if you’re looking for something different, don’t hesitate to drop me an email for a personalized recommendation. Happy gaming!

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Saints Row: The Third originally released in 2011, and it quickly became one of my favorite open-world games ever. It combined brazen silliness with empowering freedom, letting players conquer the city of Steelport with a mixture of unique weapons, goofy costumes, and cool vehicles. Today, a remastered version of this title is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and I’ve been checking out the new coat of polish. If you want to know if this over-the-top adventure is worth revisiting, these are the high and low points I’ve encountered during my time with Saints Row: The Third Remastered.

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High: Looks great

From a graphical perspective, Saints Row: The Third Remastered has received more attention than your typical re-release. Comparing the old game and the new one side-by-side reveals a gorgeous new lighting system that brings out the best in the world. Plus, all of the major characters seem to have been rebuilt, with additional facial details that give them even more personality. The vehicle models have also gotten significant upgrades, so the action looks great whether you’re driving through the city, watching cutscenes, or just exploring on foot.

Low: Humor has aged poorly

In many ways, I love the unapologetic crassness Saints Row: The Third. Its obsession with fart and crotch jokes makes it clear that the priority is on stupid fun rather than depicting a gritty crime story. However, in the nine years since its release, some elements of this humor have grown uncomfortably dated, especially with regards to race and gender. The game seems to be equally insensitive to all groups it lampoons, so no one feels particularly targeted – but that didn’t stop me from cringing.

High: Improved performance

When it first released, Saints Row: The Third was ambitious in its size and scope, which caused problems on PS3 and Xbox 360 in terms of framerate, screen-tearing, and other areas. Last year’s Switch version was even worse; it ran so badly at launch that I had to stop playing. This remaster finally gives the game the smooth performance it deserves. You can uncap the framerate in the options menu, but playing on PS4 Pro, I got the best and most consistent results by locking the action at 30 fps.

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Low: The bad kind of chaos

With bullets flying, cars tipping, and rockets launching, Saints Row: The Third Remastered has plenty of mayhem – but not all of it is good. During the several hours I played, I also encountered plenty of chaos stemming from glitches, crashes, and other issues. Combined with questionable ally A.I., unreliable physics, and bizarre enemy behavior, the whole experience still has a sense of instability that left me feeling like I needed to save every five minutes in case something went irreparably wrong.

High: Lots of DLC

This remaster doesn’t just cover the base game. It encompasses the whole experience, including DLC like mission packs, extra costumes, and wacky vehicles. Even better, all of this content is available very early in the game, which gives you access to many options that you normally wouldn’t get until much later. For example, as soon as you get a helipad, you can summon a game-breaking VTOL to go anywhere in the city in no time, firing its infinite-ammo laser as you go. While the weapons and vehicles throw the natural progression out of whack, Saints Row: The Third was never overly concerned with balance, and having the extra options add more the fun than they take away.

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For more Saints Row, check out our wishlist for what we want in Saints Row V, and our review of the series’ most recent installment, 2015's Gat Out of Hell.

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In recognition of National Military Appreciation Month, the Call of Duty Endowment is releasing several ways that players can support veterans.

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The major point of interest for Call of Duty players is the Fearless Pack, which has been designed with the assistance of Medal of Honor recipient CPT Florent "Flo" Groberg.

The pack comes with 10 in-game digital items, including an operator skin, watch, and For the Cause Assault Rifle Blueprint. 100% of net proceeds from the Fearless Pack go to the Call of Duty Endowment. These items are applicable to both standard multiplayer games and Warzone.

A T-shirt featuring the Endowment's logo and elements from Warzone is also available for a limited time with proceeds also going to supporting veterans via the Endowment.

 

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When people mention Castlevania, they usually think about the classic 2D adventures that spawned a completely new genre of games (well half of one, at least. I see you Metroid fans). In 2010 though, Konami wanted to buck that trend and bring its vampire-slaying franchise into a new era. Thus, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was born. The game focused on Gabriel Belmont and his buddy Patrick Stewert Zobek as they try and save the world from the evil Lords of Shadow in the gameplay stylings of the early God of War games.

Join Andrew Reiner, Joe Juba, and me as we return to this Kojima Productions vision of the classic Castlevania franchise.

We'll be going live at 2 p.m. CT so come end your week on a high note and join us in the chat. If you can't get enough of our live shows, remember to subscribe on YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, Twitter, and Facebook to get notified when we go live each week!

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И снова с вами ежемесячная подборка «Лучшие новинки Steam»! Апрель порадовал целой охапкой новых продуктов и разработчиков со всего мира. Как обычно, в этом месяце мы расскажем о 20 самых интересных релизах апреля, отсортированных по объёму выручки за первые две недели после выпуска, и пяти лучших бесплатных играх, отобранных по числу уникальных игроков.

Этот месяц порадовал разнообразием — лучшие игры апреля были разработаны в 14 странах (все подробности вы сможете найти в списке). А ещё в апреле целых девять команд разработчиков достигли успеха, выпустив свой первый продукт в Steam. Наши приветствия и поздравления следующим студиям: 1939 Games, Bad Pixel, Byterunners Games Studio, Gentlymad Studios, Live Motion Games, Meerkat Games Corporation, Steel Sky Productions, Topgolf Media и Unfrozen.


Поскольку мы составляем эти списки каждый месяц, легко заметить постоянство, с которым игры используют функцию раннего доступа. Апрель не стал исключением: целых десять игр вошли или вышли из раннего доступа в этом месяце. 

Мы подумали, что было бы здорово отметить игры, выходящие из раннего доступа, и узнать больше о пройденном пути из уст самих разработчиков. Мы расспросили 1939 Games ( Kards - The WWII Card Game) и Unfrozen ( Iratus: Lord of the Dead) об их опыте участия в раннем доступе, что больше всего понравилось их игрокам и какие рекомендации они могут дать другим командам, которые рассматривают эту модель развития.


1939 Games была основана в столице Исландии, Рейкявике, пять лет назад. Команда полностью посвятила себя работе над карточной игрой о Второй мировой войне — KARDS. Инго Аварссон из 1939 анализирует прошлогодний опыт участия в раннем доступе: «Ранний доступ был бесценной частью нашего приключения, особенно учитывая, что это игра в жанре “Игрок против игрока”. Мы отнеслись к раннему доступу как к генеральной репетиции. Вы не получаете столько же внимания, как полноценно выпущенная игра, но количества игроков будет вполне достаточно, чтобы собрать ценные данные и получить обратную связь».

Инго подчеркнул, что команда не торопилась выпустить продукт в ранний доступ, и дал совет разработчикам, планирующим такой ход: «Было критически важно выйти в ранний доступ с уже отшлифованным продуктом, чтобы создать положительное впечатление с самого начала. Не стоит рассматривать его как проверку качества сырого продукта». 

По словам Инго, сбор данных во время раннего доступа стал основой для развития игры и привёл её к успеху. Он говорит: «Сообщество раннего доступа очень неравнодушно и готово прийти на помощь, так что используйте это во благо своей игры. Цикл обратной связи с сообществом помог нам принять много стратегических решений в разработке».

За последний год подписчики KARDS могли заметить, насколько серьёзно 1939 относится к обратной связи. Практически каждую неделю команда выпускала обновления, журналы разработчиков и исправления ошибок, и все они были сформированы под влиянием поведения игроков, статистики и прямой обратной связи от участников раннего доступа.

Помимо этого, одним из ключевых моментов раннего доступа для 1939 стал url=https://steamcommunity.com/games/544810/announcements/detail/1608270539797836894]чемпионат мира по KARDS[/url], который прошёл в декабре. Кроме волнения от возможности увидеть, как игроки соревнуются в созданной ими игре, команда отметила, что они получили огромную пользу, увидев все тонкости проведения чемпионата в рамках раннего доступа. «Это позволило нам создать вспомогательные структуры и стандартизированные процедуры до официального запуска», - отметил Инго.

Апрельский релиз был достаточно успешным: команда попала в список лучших новинок месяца. Однако это также стало и подтверждением того, что команда 1939 сможет рассчитывать на выстроенные с сообществом KARDS отношения и после окончания раннего доступа. Подвёл итоги Инго следующими словами: «Ранний доступ принёс KARDS значительную выгоду, и наше сообщество теперь — наш самый решительный сторонник и постоянный источник поддержки и внимания».


Unfrozen — ещё одна студия, начавшая свой путь к списку лучших новинок апреля в раннем доступе. Команда Unfrozen запустила Iratus: Lord of the Dead в ранний доступ Steam в июле 2019 года из головного офиса в Санкт-Петербурге. Как только команда Unfrozen убедилась, что у них есть готовая версия тактической пошаговой ролевой игры, они стали рассматривать ранний доступ как возможность создать заинтересованное сообщество, пока отшлифовываются некоторые моменты.

Объясняет Денис Фёдоров, член команды Unfrozen: «Было очень важно, что игроки могли непосредственно влиять на наши решения. Мы видели плюсы и минусы существующих механик и систем, поэтому при принятии окончательных решений опирались на обратную связь сообщества».

Денис также сделал акцент на том, насколько для разработчиков важно быть открытыми и задавать игрокам правильные ожидания. С момента публикации страницы Iratus в магазине у игроков была возможность получить полную информацию о сроках разработки, причинах использования студией раннего доступа, а также перечень доступных функций игры.

«С самого начала проекта мы делились своими планами и видением с сообществом», — отметил Денис. «Здесь самое главное — быть откровенным с сообществом».

Он отметил, что за время пребывания в раннем доступе взаимоотношения с сообществом стали гораздо теснее.

Описывая роль игроков, Денис говорит: «Наши игроки смогли стать частью команды Unfrozen!»

Если вам кажется, что это звучит как преувеличение, взгляните на канал Unfrozen в Discord, историю обновлений или раздел обсуждений игры в Steam за последний год. Вы найдёте огромное количество примеров того, как игроки и разработчики Unfrozen обсуждали механики игры и находили возможные ошибки.

«Самая активная и вовлечённая часть нашего сообщества высоко оценила наше доверие», — сказал Денис.

Достаточно взглянуть на график обзоров в период раннего доступа, чтобы увидеть, как рос уровень доверия игроков: от 71% в момент запуска до 86% положительных отзывов на сегодняшний день.


Огромное спасибо командам 1939 Games и Unfrozen за то, что поделились своим опытом участия в раннем доступе.

Вот список лучших новинок месяца, отсортированных по дате выпуска (этот список также можно найти здесь):


Endzone - A World Apart
Gentlymad Studios (Германия)


RESIDENT EVIL 3
CAPCOM (Япония)


Blush Blush
Sad Panda Studios (Канада)


Deadside
Bad Pixel (Россия)


Fallout 76
Bethesda Game Studios (США)


KARDS - The WWII Card Game
1939 Games (Исландия)


Drug Dealer Simulator
Byterunners Game Studio (Польша)


Dragon Marked For Death
Inti Creates (Япония)


Warhammer Underworlds: Online
Steel Sky Productions (Австралия)


112 Operator
Jutsu Games (Польша)


Cloudpunk
ION LANDS (Германия)


Iratus: Lord of the Dead
Unfrozen (Россия)


MotoGP™20
Milestone (Италия)


XCOM®: Chimera Squad
Firaxis Games (США)


Trials of Mana
Square Enix (Япония)


HYPERCHARGE: Unboxed
Digital Cybercherries (Великобритания)


Gears Tactics
Splash Damage (Великобритания) и The Coalition (Канада)


Moving Out
SMG Studio (Австралия) и Devm Games (Швеция)


Streets of Rage 4
Dotemu & Lizardcube (Франция) и Guard Crush Games (Канада)


Train Station Renovation
Live Motion Games (Польша)

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KARDS - The WWII Card Game
1939 Games (Исландия)


Soldat
Soldat Team (Польша)


Royal Crown
Meerkat Games Corporation (Республика Корея)


Samsara Room
Rusty Lake (Нидерланды)


WGT Golf
Topgolf Media (США)

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Вы можете увидеть списки лучших новинок за предыдущие месяцы:

• Октябрь 2019
  
• Ноябрь 2019
  
• Декабрь 2019
  
• Январь 2020
  
• Февраль 2020
  
• Март 2020

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