Hour News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Having launched out of almost five years of early access last week and quickly become one of Steam's current most-played games, fantasy action-RPG Last Epoch has laid out initial plans for post-1.0. Expect bug fixes and quality-of-live improvements soon, then new challenging fights later. The developers, Eleventh Hour Games say they're "going to have a heavy emphasis on expanding end-game content". But first, yes, more fixes and improvements to the servers which suffered and stumbled.

Last Epoch is gunning for the action-RPG crown long held by Diablo (and recently contested by the likes of Path of Exile and Grim Dawn). With the power of time travel - and a flash-looking launch trailer - on its side, the indie hopeful certainly looks set to put up a decent fight when it exits Early Access in just over a month.

Fans of The Crew franchise were ecstatic when Ubisoft officially announced the latest game’s release date was just three months out. With developers Ubisoft Ivory Tower only announcing The Crew Motorfest title earlier in 2023, the turnaround has been swift, much to the delight of racing fans. To add to the latest excitement with its imminent release on 14 September, more good news has made waves, in that players will get to experience five hours of gameplay for free.

Apple 2023 event is just around the corner, and everyone is buzzing with excitement. People are eager to find out what Apple has in store for them this time around. One big reveal that everyone's talking about is the new iPhone 15 series. It's rumoured that there will be four models: the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max. One exciting change might be the use of titanium frames for the "Pro" models instead of stainless steel. The Apple event will kick off at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, and you can watch it live on YouTube, Apple's website, or the Apple Events app on Apple TV.

Early access action RPG Last Epoch has just received update 0.9.2, which adds a new class of mage called the Runemaster. The Runemaster has five new spells they can use to tear through the game's monsters, and each spell can be customised via its own skill tree.

Most of us are spending our first days of Starfield seeing the sights in space and enjoying the sandbox of it all. But speedrunning never sleeps, so folks who are well-practiced at breaking Bethesda games are of course completing it quicker than you'll believe. Speedrunner SupaScared already has a playthrough on Starfield New Game+ down to a surprisingly efficient 50 minutes.

As reported by VG247, Starfield already has a routed speedrun under three hours—which is terrifying, since it's not even out of its early access period yet. Heck, widely-used leaderboard website speedrun.com doesn't even open its rankings until September 20, presumably so people can actually play the thing without sweating over skips.

A WoW Classic player has won the race to boost a character to the maximum level cap on the MMO's newly introduced Hardcore servers. 

With the upcoming The Crew Motorfest, Ubisoft and Ivory Tower’s open world racing franchise is taking a much more festive approach, as it changes the scenery from the United States mainland to the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and with its launch drawing closer, Ubisoft has released another new trailer of the game at Gamescom Opening Night Live.

The Crew Motorfest will have a free trial at launch, Ubisoft has confirmed.

If you're still exploring Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we have a quick reminder for you. It'll be especially useful for the fellow completionists out there, as it'll help you find all of those hiding Bubbulfrogs with ease.

We're thrilled to announce the return of GamesBeat Summit Next, hosted in San Francisco this October, where we will explore the theme of «Playing the Edge.» Apply to speak  here  and learn more about sponsorship opportunities  here . 

If I got to redesign Baldur's Gate 3 to fit my specific preferences, the first thing I'd do is get rid of the party system. My posse of Shadowheart, Astarion, and Karlach is great, but my favorite character to roleplay is the wandering ronin—the problem solver with an air of mystery who can take care of himself (Geralt of Rivia, essentially). But alas, BG3 is built with a full party of four in mind. You could try to fly solo, but difficulty doesn't scale to smaller parties, so fights would inevitably become impossibly punishing. Unless mods can save the day.

A Baldur's Gate 3 player has realized they've spent 80 hours underselling themselves at every vendor they've spoken to, potentially losing out on thousands of gold - all because they're using a low Charisma character.

Loop Hero won PC Gamer's 'best design' award in 2021 because it is one of those games that is just small but perfectly formed. «If Diablo is a 10-gallon tank of pleasant ARPG liquid, Loop Hero is a thimble of hyperconcentrated essence,» said PCG Editor-in-Chief Evan Lahti. «The loop: Build level. Fight enemies (automatically). Equip loot. Repeat. How does combat feel this engaging when you have essentially zero control over it?»

Ratatan, an upcoming rhythm strategy game from the creator behind Patapon, hit its Kickstarter funding goal in under one hour.

The developers of PlayStation cult classic Patapon are back with a new rhythm-based game, which was funded via Kickstarter in less than an hour.

Patapon spiritual successor Ratatan has been funded on Kickstarter in under an hour.

The Witcher franchise has been a hit with the video game industry for several years now. Three mainline installments were released under the development team, CD Projekt Red. However, the franchise might have blown up even more with the successful Netflix series. Recently, we just had the last few episodes released for the third season. That ultimately means fans are itching for more content based on The Witcher. While there are books that fans could turn to, some might be interested in giving some of the video games a shot. 

Final Fantasy 14 isn't a typical game to watch people speedrun—while certain parts of the game do have a speedrunning history, and there is a dedicated community running the game, completing it in record time still typically takes hours. These cutscene-skipping blitzes are impressive, sure, but they don't exactly make for great viewing unless you're really into the nuts and bolts of the game.

If you were worried that Star Wars Outlaws was going to end up being an infinite Ubisoft timesink ala Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, the developers at Massive Entertainment want to put you at ease, noting that the experience will be «very manageable».

In some circles of videogameland it's common wisdom that more is better⁠—I remember a quaint time when 30 hours was a «long» game, but today's big budget releases have been pushing that boundary well into the triple digits. In a recent interview with IGN, though, two Star Wars Outlaws devs promise to buck that trend with a «dense» and «rich» game that doesn't wear out its welcome.

Despite its open world, Star Wars Outlaws won't be a «300 hour epic unfinishable RPG». Phew.

Since the last three Assassin's Creed games are gigantic RPGs with equally as expansive maps, there's understandable anxiety when Ubisoft announces a new RPG--will it be an unfathomable time sink of hundreds of hours? With Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft says no.

Ubisoft has a penchant for making long games. A completionist run in Assassin's Creed Valhalla run can take up to 143 hours according to HowLongtoBeat, and some fans are worried that Star Wars Outlaws may be more of the same.

Principal designer of RPG shooter Remnant 2, Ben Cureton, took to Twitter recently to reveal something that's no doubt going to frustrate hundred-percenters world round: Not a soul has gotten to the end of Remnant 2 with 100% completion. Yet.

A Football Manager 2023 player has broken the world record for the longest ever campaign with a game lasting 500 virtual years.