The April update for Battlefield 5 has gone live, making dozens of smaller changes alongside some much bigger ones. This update also introduces microtransactions, after the game launched without in-game purchases.

According to the studio, most of the focus for this update has been on improving the new Firestorm battle royale mode. To that end, this update changes the loot behavior and adjusts the way safes work, along with patching up some visual issues and making the Flare Gun usable underwater. In the full patch notes (below), Firestorm clearly gets the lion’s share of the attention.

Other adjustments include bug fixes and quality-of-life tweaks, plus the addition of the the soldier stance icon from single-player in response to fan requests. It also adds an in-game shop that sells cosmetics and time-savers. The shop also offers “value bundles” that offer combinations of cosmetics, currency, and time-savers.

Check out the full patch notes below, and make sure to check out the details of the new Firestorm mode. If you’re looking to get into Battlefield 5 now is a pretty good time, as it’s on sale for cheap.

Battlefield 5 April Update Patch Notes

Firestorm – Gameplay fixes and changes

• Fixed an issue which was causing a weapon to be misaligned when a player was in a man down state while being spectated.
• V-1 and Artillery Strikes now count as “gadget kills”.
• Pistols that have been picked up by the player now properly drop on the ground if the player dies.
• Players are now able to use the Flare Gun while in water.
• Increased the draw distance for grenades and melee weapons.
• Grenades now collide with the cover of the pickup truck instead of going through it.
• Fixed an issue where the active VOIP icon would not always show if the entire squad would be talking at the same time.
• Players will no longer deploy a grenade automatically when dropping an item as a passenger.
• When in a tank, the player will no longer switch to the selected tank gun while zooming on the map.
• Added a red outline for the Artillery Strike on the map to make it more visible.
• The health cooldown UI no longer freezes if a player drops their healing items when it is in progress.
• Getting an invite from a player while looking for players enables you to join the squad.
• If the user cancels and resumes the interaction with a safe, it will always reset.
• When the player is watching another player being revived, the camera will remain in the same position.
• The Napalm Helmet will no longer obstruct the player when aiming down sights.
• Players can now jump as soon as they reach the start of the jump location.
• When waiting for the other players, the squad list shows the correct Armor Plates number that the player had before death.
• Players will no longer reload when opening doors.
• The loot rarity icon is no longer visible through soldier bodies and vehicles.
• When getting killed by another player, the text for the weapon used will show properly.
• Switching weapon while dropping a weapon will no longer make the weapon being held invisible.
• The Swap and Drop button callouts are updated if the player changes the keybind in-game.
• Interaction detection has been improved to avoid issues with loot near Objectives and vehicles.
• The interaction prompt for safes will no longer be offset when the player interacts with it repeatedly.
• The interaction prompt for safes will no longer double when the player interacts with it repeatedly.
• Interacting with a safe repeatedly will no longer make the progress bar disappear.
• When the player is killed by an Artillery Strike, an icon is displayed in the kill feed.
• The first wave of capture points now start earlier, before the zone starts to shrink for the first time.

Firestorm – Map improvements and fixes

• Improved the rock wall textures near Pluto (Dig Site A).
• Removed a piece of terrain that was clipping through the bridge towards the farm from the lake, causing vehicles to flip if they drive over it with speed.
• Fixed a floating telegraph pole that was placed east from Nannahavn.
• The crates located west of Hansen Farms are no longer floating in the air.
• Fixed a floating tree west of the Halvoy Dam.
• Players can no longer get stuck between the gap of the barrels inside Hansen Farms.
• The shed door is no longer clipping through the barrels at Minerva Docks.
• Players can no longer interact with the backside of the ladder near Guderos.
• Players can no longer get stuck while prone under the wooden platform next to the fishing cabin near Halvoy Dam.
• Players can no longer get stuck between the wall and the railway sleeper stacks East of Minerva Docks.
• Players can no longer get stuck when jumping between the metal bars at Pluto (Dig site A).
• Improved rock textures near the Odenberg area.
• Player can no longer get stuck between the tree and the wall north of Minerva Docks.
• Players can no longer hide behind the waterfall South of Minerva Docks.
• The wooden crates are no longer floating above the floor inside the shed southeast of Hansen Farms.
• The wooden crate no longer blocks the player from vaulting through the window in arctic house west of Hansen Farms.
• Snow effect is no longer present inside the house southeast of Hotstad as well as the house north of Minerva Docks.
• Fixed an issue that was causing mild flickering around the windshields inside vehicles.The PAK-40 AT towable located southeast of Halvdeler has been moved ten meters to make it more useful.

Vehicles

• Fixed a bug that enabled players to use airplanes during the match start timer period. The animation when entering and exiting vehicles is now smoother and should have less unintended sudden camera movements.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a temporary black screen when reloading a stationary turret while using its zoom functionality at the same time.
• Made audio improvements to audibility of other players’ tanks.

Weapons, Gadgets, and Specializations

• Fixed the Ribeyrolles aperture sights being misaligned and using the wrong magnification.
• Tweaked the Gewehr 43 reflex sight to look better.
• Tweaked the Bren max recoil which was too low.
• Reduced the M1897 damage drop-off start distance by 1 m for all ammo types. Our data indicated that the 1897 had a bit too much range compared to other shotguns.
• Changed the way camera recoil works. When firing, weapons are allowed to go a bit
more off center now. The true point of aim will follow the weapon and is not fixed to the screen center.
• Changed the way SMG and assault rifle dispersion increases while firing in ADS. The second, third, and sometimes fourth shots (for low rate-of-fire weapons) are now more predictable while later shots are less predictable. Also shortened the time it takes for dispersion to decrease when no longer firing. This means short bursts are a bit more effective, while long bursts or mag dumps are a bit less effective.
• Fixed an issue that would prevent shotgun damage decals to appear on vehicles.
• The knife animation no longer triggers after firing the last round of a Panzerfaust.
• Bullet impact sounds have been further localized and the amount by which they can
attenuate non-player weapons has been reduced.
• Improved audibility of single-shot weapons.
• Improved audibility of late reflections for automatic weapons based on distance from listener.
• Adjusted headphone mix for low frequencies to smooth out positioning.

Soldier

• Fixed a bug with the Medic class that would result in the weapon floating in the air while the player was running briefly after reviving another player.
• The first-person animation when picking up health packs and ammo packs have been moved to take less screen space for improved visibility.

Maps and Modes

• Fixed an issue in the Practice Range where vehicles would not spawn when the user restarts the range.
• Fixed a visual bug in the Practice Range which would cause the player’s body to be invisible while driving the Kubelwagen in third person.

UI/HUD/Options/Assignments

• Fixed an issue where the ticket counter was not visible when playing Breakthrough, Frontlines, and Airborne.
• Disabled the saturation effect when regenerating health.
• Fixed a hang that could occur if players looked at server info from within the social hub while being in the Your Company screen.
• Fixed a bug which could prevent players from deploying, prompting the error message “The Class you have selected is violating the server rules” if they had equipped a newly unlocked sight.
• Fixed a bug which prevented players from speeding up the bleed out timer when being in a down state.
• Improved responsiveness and accuracy of the Commo Rose and the Squad Reinforcements Rose when using a controller.
• Fixed an issue that would cause equipped vanity items to get unequipped when players purchased and equipped something else.
• Fixed the placement of the buy button in the Replace Weapon screen to no longer clip into the divider line.
• Fixed an issue where players would purchase something with Company Coin and get a “Not enough Company Coin” error message even if they had enough currency.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the idle kick functionality to not always work.
• Improved how class characters are loaded when scrolling through them while in the
hangar between matches.
• Added the soldier stance icon from single-player into multiplayer.
• In the grenade selection menu, the smoke grenade selection will no longer show the Frag Grenade demonstration video.

Stability

• Made multiple crash fixes and stability improvements.

PC-Specific Improvements

• Increased maximum ray count in DXR Ultra to improve reflection quality.
• DLSS is now also supported in borderless mode.
• Made improvements to DLSS sharpness.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Customization screen to be darker than intended when
having DX12 enabled.
• Fixed a rendering issue that could cause graphical corruption when spamming various player actions.

• Fixed a bug that would cause the game to hang if the player mashed all the keyboard and mouse buttons while in the key binding menu. The player that found this must have
eaten too much pineapple pizza.
• In Firestorm, opening the map and using the “scroll” button while inside a tank in the
gunner position will no longer switch the selected tank gun as well.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/battlefield-5-april-update-patch-notes-detail-fixe/1100-6466044/

For the past two weeks, Epic Games Store account holders have enjoyed access to a free download of Oxenfree, and today, a new game replaces that title in the Epic Store: The Witness, a gorgeous puzzle game set on a remote and mysterious island. From now until April 18, you can download and keep the The Witness at no cost–all you have to do is sign up for a free Epic account.

The Witness is a single-player adventure with a beautiful open-world setting and more than 500 interesting puzzles to solve. Very little is explained to you as the player, and the subtleties of its puzzles increase over the course of the game. To put it bluntly, The Witness is challenging, but if you like exploration and puzzle-solving, it’s a gratifying experience you won’t soon forget.

GameSpot’s Mike Mahardy gave the game a 9/10 in GameSpot’s The Witness review. “The Witness makes few attempts at handholding, opting instead to convey its mechanics in subtle, cryptic ways as you struggle to make sense of it all,” he wrote. “This is what makes The Witness special. Unlike many puzzle games, it doesn’t just make you feel intelligent–it begins on the assumption that you are intelligent. It trusts that you are a perceptive human being, capable of patience and critical thinking, and it rewards you for using both.”

On April 18, The Witness will be replaced by Epic’s next free game, Transistor, a sci-fi-themed action RPG set in a futuristic city. The Epic Store is giving away free PC game downloads every two weeks to celebrate its first year in business and already has a record of giving out high-quality games, so it’s worth your time to make an account and keep an eye on its current and upcoming deals.

Get The Witness for free at The Epic Games Store »

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a-new-pc-game-is-free-to-download-in-the-epic-game/1100-6466038/

The Epic Games Store has been snatching up exclusivity deals as a shot against the bow of Steam, the biggest digital PC game storefront. The company’s latest score is Borderlands 3, and some fans are not happy about it. So not-happy, in fact, that they’ve resorted to review bombing the older games that made them fans in the first place.

Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel have all suffered a spate of negative reviews on Steam. Each is rated as “Positive” or “Very Positive” for overall reviews, but “Mixed” or “Mostly Negative” in hundreds or thousands of recent reviews. Many of the negative reviews explicitly mention the Epic Store. Tales from the Borderlands, which was developed by Telltale Games instead of Gearbox, has been mostly spared.

Borderlands 3 will be exclusive to the Epic Store until April 2020, giving it a six-month window that is shorter than many of the year-long exclusivity periods. The release date of September 13 had leaked before the official announcement, and in that leak a video also showed an Epic Store logo, conspicuously without a Steam logo.

As part of the suite of announcements surrounding Borderlands 3, Gearbox also announced a remastered Game of the Year Edition for the original game, and a 4K texture pack for the other two. Borderlands 2 also had its various pieces of DLC brought into Borderlands VR.

The latest in the loot-shooter series from Gearbox appears similar to prior entries, right down to having a cast of four diverse Vault Hunters with different abilities. Whether you pick it up on PC or elsewhere, Gearbox is looking into supporting cross-play. For more details, including the loot you can gain by putting down your money early, check out our pre-order guide.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/borderlands-games-getting-review-bombed-over-borde/1100-6466036/

For many of the attendees who saw Cyberpunk 2077 at E3 2018 it was the game that stole the show, but my hype ultimately went to a different demo: Remedy Entertainment’s Control. The dazzling combat I was shown, set against the juxtaposition of paranormal oddities and rigid brutalist architecture, had me hooked. And now that I’ve had the chance to play it and been further exposed to its strange secrets, I’m even more convinced of Control’s potential.

Remedy has a way with weird and has repeatedly proven that it knows how to stage a good fight. Control looks like an effort to double-down on these strengths. It puts you in the shoes of a veritable action hero with the power of levitation and telekinetic destruction. Her name is Jesse, and Control starts on her first day on the job as director of the Federal Bureau of Control. The agency is in charge of studying and containing that which defies the laws of science, but after a mysterious force known as the Hiss floods the halls of the bureau, Jesse will have to confront and take down possessed coworkers, demonic entities, and pulsating, corrupted masses of energy.

One of the most common sights in The Old House (the given name for the building that houses the FBC) are Hiss-infected office workers and other employees floating motionless in mid-air. Red flood lights color-in otherwise sterile environments, evoking a sense of foreboding evil. Odd rituals and dream logic are noted as central themes, and when confronted by their effects on people and places in Control, you get the sense that almost anything can happen under the Hiss’ influence.

Surprisingly, Jesse seems to take it all in stride, and with the power to control objects and a shape-shifting pistol in her hand, you have plenty of offensive and defensive options when the Hiss-infected entities turn on her. There’s a bit of a learning curve when it comes to juggling telekinetic abilities and your weapon while steering Jesse mid-flight, but once it clicks, Control becomes a playground for destructive experimentation. This feeling was helped somewhat during my preview demo due to the fact that the basic enemy AI was a bit careless–a balance that remains in flux, according to director Mikael Kasurinen. But for the purposes of getting a feel for Control, at least, I appreciated the lenience as a chance to get my bearings.

Rather than flying freely, Jesse leaps and levitates, and then slowly drifts back down to the ground; you’re also capable of directing her trajectory on the way down or stunning an enemy with a targeted ground-pound attack. Though the factors therein will change as Jesse’s powers increase throughout the game. Even a moment of hovering overhead allows you to get a line of sight on objects and enemies in the distance, both of which can be remotely manipulated. You can take hold of a desk, for example, and fling it into groups of enemies or use it as a shield from incoming fire–you can also pull concrete from the floors and walls in a pinch. The most satisfying application of this move has to be snatching rockets out of mid-air and flinging them back at the shooter.

Jesse isn’t the only person capable of these feats, however. Several of the enemies I fought could also hover in the air and hurl nearby objects. These opponents presented a tougher challenge than the more traditional gun-toting bad guys mentioned earlier. One move in particular, Jesse’s targeted ground-pound attack, feels very intimidating when used against you.

New to the demo shown during GDC was the mind control ability, which effectively lets you turn an enemy into an AI-driven ally. There’s no word yet if enemies will ever be able to overpower Jesse’s mind in the same way, but I don’t imagine we’ve come close to seeing everything they’re capable of.

Jesse’s suite of skills will grow as she locates objects of power, but to acquire their magic requires you to journey to the astral plane, a stark white ethereal realm with minimalist, angular structures. If you’ve paid attention to Control’s marketing since its E3 reveal, you’ve probably seen imagery of Jesse floating towards converging black geometry hovering in empty space. More than just special locations designed to unlock new abilities, the astral plane can also be used to influence the state of things in the bureau, either to solve puzzles or to clear a path forward for Jesse.

Control is being designed with a Metroidvania-like structure that requires you to re-examine previously explored locations when new skills are unlocked, and the thought of incorporating an alternate dimension into this concept is very intriguing. Though I only got a small taste of what’s to come, I walked out of my demo with more questions than answers, pertaining to both the truth behind the strange happenings inside The Oldest House and to Jesse’s relationship to the Hiss. I honestly can’t wait to experience Jesse’s journey from the beginning and to see how strange and unpredictable it becomes as it unravels.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/control-may-be-remedy-entertainments-most-interest/1100-6466014/

Niantic’s annual Pokemon Go Fest event is returning for another year, and this time it won’t be limited to Chicago. As part of the Summer Tour 2019, Niantic has announced it is hosting several Pokemon Go Fests this summer across North America, Europe, and Asia, bringing the big event to other regions for the first time.

The first stop in Niantic’s Summer Tour 2019 is Chicago’s Grant Park, the site that’s hosted the previous two Pokemon Go Fests. This year, the event will run for two additional days, taking place from June 13-16. As before, you’ll need to purchase a ticket in order to attend the event, but this time you’ll be able to do so from within Pokemon Go itself following an update slated to roll out later this month.

After that, Niantic is hosting a Pokemon Go Fest in Dortmund, Germany. That event runs from July 4-7 and takes place at Westfalenpark. Ticketing information will be available on the Pokemon Go Fest Europe website. Rounding out the Summer Tour will be a Pokemon Go Fest in Asia; Niantic says more details about that event will be shared at a later date.

Just as in previous years, even if you aren’t able to attend the Pokemon Go Fests in-person, you’ll have a chance to participate in global challenges during the events and potentially unlock special rewards. Niantic will also continue hosting its monthly Community Days in June, July, and August, giving players more events to look forward to this summer.

Pokemon Go’s next Community Day takes place on April 13. This month, the featured Pokemon will be Bagon, the first form of the powerful Dragon Pokemon Salamence. On top of increased Bagon spawns, players will receive three times the normal amount of XP for capturing Pokemon during the event.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/pokemon-go-summer-tour-2019-events-announced/1100-6466023/